That's according to a recently published study from Stanford University, which tracks individual charter school students' performance, and compared it with a public school "virtual twin" to see which school environment delivers the best results for specific student populations.

The report, issued Monday, covered 16 states and the District of Columbia, and found the effectiveness of charter schools varied widely. While some schools in New Mexico fared better or worse than traditional schools, about half showed no significant difference, according to the report.

"It appears that the major difference provided by charter schools is choice in curricular focus and school size," state Education Secretary Veronica Garcia said Monday in a prepared statement. "These factors are attractive to some of our families."

The study could be of interest to the Moriarty-Edgewood School District because one of the schools in the district, Moriarty High School, draws from the same pool of students as East Mountain High School.

However, Superintendent Karen Couch said she didn't find enough information in the study to comment.

It was a similar story for East Mountain High School Principal Doug Wine. He said he spent hours trying to find something to take away from the study as far as what it means for his school.

Part of his interest is because his school is currently working toward a charter renewal, which has to be done every five years. Wine is very interested in what the study might say about which areas the school could improve upon.

"I'd really like to know specifically," he said. "From what I'm seeing right now, I really don't know what to do with it, and I'd like to."

For example, the school could be teaching students math computation well and be weak in critical thinking and problem-solving, he said. In that case, the charter school would be performing opposite of one of the school's stated goals, which is to develop students' ability to question rather than rely on rote memorization, as well as preparing students for college and inspiring them to achieve excellence. Those kinds of missions are typical of charter schools, which makes it difficult to judge how well schools with charters involving outdoor education, filmmaking or other missions are doing, he said.

"How do we measure that?" he asked. "You can try to do a study to measure all of the charter schools. … That would be a trick."

Wine, whose previous jobs have been in private schools, also pointed out that charter schools are still a new development, and there are no charter school students with parents who also went to a charter school. There are also very few charter school graduates in the pool of possible teachers.

"There's no such thing as a charter school world ," he said. "We're all so young, and we're looking at data as though we're established."