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Coney Island Prep's first report card is one for the refrigerator door. The charter school, which opened in 2009, got an "A" as did many other charters.

Eighty-one charters got grades on the city's annual progress reports last week -- double the number three years ago.

"There are some charter schools that are doing very well compared to other schools in the city. There are also some charter schools that are not doing very well at all," said Teachers College professor Aaron Pallas.

Compared to traditional public schools, a higher percentage of charter schools earned "A" grades, but charters also had a higher percentage of "D" and "F" grades.

The schools given rent-free space in public school buildings performed better than the charters located in buildings not owned by the DOE.

Coney Island Prep has done both.

The founder says being in a DOE building makes things easier.

"They don't need to worry about rent, utilities, maintenance, operations, custodial services, food services, security, etc. They can just focus on the academic program," said Coney Island Prep founder Jacob Mnookin.

Charter schools that are banded together into networks, with central administrations and philosophies, did better than stand-alone, independent charters.

And newer schools, founded since 2004, did better than the older ones.

"It may well be that the charter sector has learned something about what sorts of things work," Pallas said.

But where charters really did well was with middle schools, as more than half got "A" grades.

"Middle schools have always lagged in performance and we've been trying to figure out what do for a long, long time. So I hope educators look at the strong middle schools," said James Merriman of the NYC Charter School Center.

And many of those "A" rated schools are likely to be expanding over the next two years. Chancellor Dennis Walcott said last week that as he looks to open 50 new middle schools, he'll be looking at high performing charter schools to serve as models.

But researchers caution not to take this data too seriously.

"Because the progress reports are blunt instruments, they don't tell us very much about what exactly schools are doing," Pallas said.

So the reports could spur more research into charter schools but don't provide any final conclusions.