Research Findings - Rochester, New York Rochester is New York's third largest city. The vast majority of its students are from poor families. In 1998, in an effort to raise student achievement, six of the city's 52 elementary and middle schools adopted the America's Choice School Design. But by 2003 over half of Rochester's schools were using the America's Choice design. A forthcoming study by researchers Jonathan Supovitz and Henry May of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) at the University of Pennsylvania reveals why. Supovitz and May studied a decade's worth of Rochester test scores and compared the performance of America's Choice students with that of students in the city's non- America's Choice schools. They found that: America's Choice students out-performed their counterparts by an average of 17 percent a year in reading in grades 4 through 8, and by an average of 26 percent a year in math, even though the America's Choice schools served greater percentages of disadvantaged students. African American and Hispanic students in America's Choice schools, Supovitz and May reported, "consistently out-gained white students, reducing the gaps in performance between white and minority students." The America's Choice design has proven "particularly powerful" for Rochester's lowestperforming students. The bottom 25 percent of students in America's Choice schools "gained significantly more" than did the lowestperforming students in other Rochester schools. The longer students attended America's Choice schools, Supovitz and May concluded, the more likely they were to meet New York State Standards. Back to Results