For years, charter schools tended to perform slightly better than the Detroit district on state standardized tests. But a Chalkbeat analysis suggests the traditional public school system is catching up to suburban and city charters.
The percentage of students in the Detroit district at or above proficiency in math surpassed the overall performance of their peers in suburban and city charter schools in nearly every grade last spring, the analysis found.
Charters still outperformed the Detroit Public Schools Community District in all grades for reading and writing on the Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress, or M-STEP, but the gaps narrowed.
For the analysis, Chalkbeat compared the combined scores of city charter schools, as well as suburban charters in Wayne, Macomb, and Oakland counties where a majority of full-time students lived within DPSCD enrollment boundaries in 2025-26.
The biggest standout for DPSCD was sixth grade math, with a 3 percentage point advantage on the overall performance of students in city and suburban charter schools. Still, only 12.1% of DPSCD sixth graders and 9% of those in charters met or exceeded proficiency for the subject in that grade.
For charter schools, the biggest difference overall was in third grade reading where 20.3% of charter third graders were at or above proficiency while 14.1% were in DPSCD.
It can be difficult to compare Detroit’s charter schools, as a group, to district schools. Charters, also referred to as public school academies, are independently managed public schools with differences in educational practices, grade spans, and demographics.
But the charter sector is a key part of the educational landscape in Detroit: Roughly half of the city’s school-age children attend charters. Many charters point to their academic achievement when advertising to parents.
Tara Kilbride, assistant director for research at the Education Policy Innovation Collaborative, said the differences between charters and district schools do not allow for a broad apples-to-apples comparison. In some grade levels and subjects, DPSCD showed improvements while charters’ scores declined — and both contributed to the performance gap narrowing.
But she said DPSCD’s test results show “consistent year-over-year improvements rather than abrupt single-year changes, which is an encouraging sign that their longer-term efforts are contributing meaningfully to closing the gap, regardless of what’s driving the patterns among the charter school comparison groups.”
The main takeaway, Kilbride said, is that the analysis points to sustained systemic growth in DPSCD rather than abrupt changes or declines in charters.
Representatives from Central Michigan University and Grand Valley State University, which authorize most Detroit charter schools, declined to comment, saying they are still analyzing the M-STEP results.
Detroit school district and some charters lag behind state
Each year, Michigan public school students in grades 3-7 take the M-STEP in English language arts and math. Fifth graders also take the test for science and social studies. Eighth graders take the PSAT for English and math, and the SAT is given to 11th graders in the same subjects.
In spring 2026, DPSCD maintained long-term growth in the percentages of students meeting or exceeding proficiency on the M-STEP and bucked a statewide trend of little to no improvement in early literacy.
But the district — and many of the city’s charter schools —lagged far behind statewide averages.
Ralph Bland, CEO of charter district New Paradigm for Education, said students in Detroit often start far behind their peers in more affluent communities because of systemic racism and poverty.
“The growth trajectory happens at different times for different students,” said Bland. “Every year, it’s a different cohort of students that are assessed, and so you know, being fair to the students, you have to really look at that, too.”
Buddy Moorehouse, vice president of communications for the Michigan Association of Public School Academies, said it’s hard to compare charters and traditional public school districts.
“With DPSCD, those are all schools within the same district, whereas charter schools are each their own separate district, so it’s hard to lump all the charter schools in together and look at their performance as one cohesive unit,” he said.
Some city charters exceeded not only the district but statewide averages.
Moorehouse pointed to Pembroke Academy, which outperformed the state’s averages in every subject and grade. More than 56% of third graders at the school were at or above reading proficiency compared to the statewide average of 44% and the DPSCD average of 14.1%.
Detroit charter schools have big gaps in performance
Maria Montoya, an education consultant whose child attends a Detroit charter school, noted vast differences in proficiency rates among charters.
For example, at Voyageur Academy, only 9.9% of third graders were at or above proficiency in reading. At Detroit Edison Public School Academy, part of Bland’s New Paradigm charter district, 50.5% of third graders met or exceeded reading proficiency.
Jazmine Allen, principal of charter high school Jalen Rose Leadership Academy on the northwest side of Detroit, said the school has come a long way in improving its reading and writing scores.
In 2018-19, 13.3% of 11th graders met grade-level benchmarks in reading and writing on the SAT. Last spring, 38.5% met the benchmark.
Allen attributes part of the improvement to the school only offering Advanced Placement English courses.
“All of the research says that just being in an AP class does wonders for your matriculation in college,” Allen said. “We’ve explained to parents that the word AP might be daunting, but the reality is, kids deserve that level of rigor, and they deserve that exposure.”
Math scores have continued to be low at the school. Only 6% of students met or exceeded the math benchmark on the SAT in 2025-26.
This year, Allen said the charter extended math classes from 45 minutes to 90 minutes.
KIPP Detroit Imani Academy, a K-4 charter that opened on the far northwest side of Detroit in 2022, participated in the M-STEP for the first time in 2025-26.
In reading, 37% of third graders met or exceeded proficiency, while 29.6% did in math.
“You can’t be satisfied with 37% when your goal is to ensure that every child receives an education that allows them to be proficient,” said Superintendent Candace Rogers. “We promised our parents a transformational education.”
Micah Walker is a reporter covering arts and culture and education for BridgeDetroit. You can reach her at mwalker@bridgedetroit.com.
Hannah Dellinger covers Detroit schools for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.