Lieutenant governor: Charter schools report uses correct data but lacks context

Forest said "information needs to be added" to the report "to make sure we're really painting the correct picture of charter school education in North Carolina to the General Assembly."

"The statistics data was negative. It did not have a lot of positive things to say," Forest told board members, who agreed to delay their vote. "Once we put those reports out, that’s the fuel that the media uses to criticize what we’re doing."

The report found, among other things, that "the overall charter schools student population is more white and less Hispanic than the overall traditional school population." It also found that charter schools serve fewer poor students than traditional schools.

Adam Levinson, interim director of the state Office of Charter Schools, which compiled the report, said it is intended to be objective.

"I would call it a vanilla report that is providing statistics," he said. "It's not intended to be editorial one way or the other."

The state's Charter Schools Advisory Board is expected to discuss the report at its meeting Tuesday at 8:35 a.m.