Yet another NYT article pointing out the evidence that charter schools do not outperform traditional public schools and that often times they lag far behind.
Why are Democrats embracing Republican ideas about education – especially when the data shows that those ideas don’t work?
The data are pretty clear about something else as well. The key to improving student achievement is teacher training and expertiese.
Please share widely!
First, the study looks at 4th grade math and reading to conclude that yep, Charters are no better. No reference point like, oh, say the child’s prior school academic record. Wouldn’t you think that improvement would be the key measure as opposed to a snapshot in time?
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Next, everyong know that poverty corellates to education performance. Also, everyone knows that Charter schools have high enrollment of low income kids.
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So, to adjust for poverty, the study uses the free-lunch program as the proxy. Yet nearly 30% of all charters don’t enroll in the fed lunch program because of the paperwork and compliance costs. It doesn’t mean the kids are any less impoverished; it simply means the Charter isn’t enrolled in the Federal program!
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So, then the NYTimes pipes in a headline “exploding the charter school myth”. Certainly their opinion (that you link) is myth.
But there is a growing body of evidence that shows that traditional public schools outperform charter schools for a variety of reasons. Even traditional inner-city schools, which have higher percentages of low-income, special ed, and behavior students – even those schools are outperforming most of the charters.
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Three big Republican lies:
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1. There is no global warming (and if there is, humans aren’t causing it).
2. Intelligent design is based on scientific fact.
3. Charter schools outperform traditional public schools.
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Simply saying that charters work better doesn’t mean that they do. Charter proponents need to show some evidence, and so far the evidence is grim.
First, I’m not a Republican, so your rant falls on deaf ears.
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Second, we’re not discussing global warming.
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Third, nor intelligent design.
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And forth, we’re not discussing a ‘growing body of evidence’. You’ve cited a study–a very flawed study–to support the notion that Charter Schools underperform Public.
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The study, inappropriately adjusted to account for poverty takes a snapshot of two test scores in 4th grade kids, doesn’t compare those scores against any earlier benchmark and finds Charter School kids scored lower and claims public are better?!
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‘Republican’ lies? Look in the mirror.
They are a failed experiment.
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Elitist Republicans love them because they are think their kids are too good for public schools.
Try the Dem National Platform in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004 – all pro-charter.
It has been noted elsewhere that many parents are keen on the notion of a charter school when the specific school to which they would otherwise be permitted to have their chidlren educated is perceived to be a failure.
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So, the relevant comparison shouldn’t be all “traditional” public schools, but rather should be the very worst of that lot, shouldn’t it?
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Otherwise, the (presumably) successful unionized elementary school on Beacon Hill would artificially inflate the results of a struggling school in a poorer neighborhood.
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I suspect that the data can be aggregated in order to prove whatever is already believed.
Actually, most of the criticisms of the NAEP analysis of charters is bunk. If you want to read the entire analysis NAEP results comparing charters to traditional public schools, you can find it here.
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http://www.asu.edu/e…
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As Ricky might say, the charters ‘got some ‘splaining to do’.
Hi mcas net –
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1. This study examined 44 studies of charter v. district performance. (Jan 05 version 38 schools; July 05 version 44 studies).
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Basically, charter kids start behind (tougher kids) and make faster progress.
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2. Here’s a question:
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Since you accept snapshot studies as valid, do you support MA charter schools? Unlike national studies, charter schools here significantly outperform their sending districts.
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So using the same criteria, you would have to support charters in Massachusetts, correct?
I agree with gary here. I think that unless the comparison is done very precisely, comparing “charter schools” to “public schools” can’t be done because charters typically only operate in poorer communities — and were created in response to what people see as the failure of the public schools.
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I think that there is a place in the school network for charter schools, but they should probably be created to be something different than public schools. Otherwise they just serve the purpose of concentrating the students from concerned parents into their school, and as a result, concentrating the students from unconcerned parents into the public schools. And they don’t do it in a way so that ALL parents who are concerned are served, so they don’t make urban areas all that more attractive. They’re a gift to the wating list lottery winners.
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I also think that the funding needs to be addressed. Everyone knows that communities participate in the “school choice” program because the incremental cost of adding a single student to a system is nearly zero. Well, the incremental savings from removing a single student from a system is also nearly zero. It seems bad to penalize host districts by deducting money for each student that chooses a charter school.
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Charter schools could be a way to experiment with different mechanisms of teaching, so that there isn’t constant confusion in a public school system as districts try every new fad in the book. They could be a way for a school to be nimble. Face it, the large education unions don’t exactly embrace change, nor do they allow the rules to be different for a segment of their members.
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A better key to improving student achievement is to stop concentrating all the bad students into certain communities, and all the good students into other communities. A school system with overwhelming poverty and problem students is going to be too overwhelmed to do much of anything, especially when that community usually has less financial resources than other communities with a fraction of those problems.
as if it were a bad thing. Of course that is excatly where I want my kids, where the teacher does not need to spend 99% of classroom time trying to get the kid just back from suspension to sit down and STFU.
I agree that when you’re in a situation where 75% of the kids don’t care, the other 25% are losing out. But if the demographics were more spread around, the incremental effort to reach a handful of kids who don’t value education wouldn’t impact the rest of the class that much.
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It is a bad thing when the effect is to “ignore the kids whose parents don’t care”. Why? Because those are the kids that we’ll be spending tax dollars on for jails, social services, or putting gates around our communities.
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Do some reading on Raleigh. They have instituted policy that says that no school can have more than 40% of students eligible for free or reduced lunch, or 25% reading below grade level. They are doing it without forced busing. One article I read said “In Wake County, overall test scores are rising, and the achievement gap is narrowing.” I’d have to do more research to see the true effects of this.
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Small problems are easier to solve than big problems. Our system right now is to shunt failing students into large urban systems, and then cut the funding because those districts aren’t performing. Duh.
At least up to about the tenth grade. I can tell you as an urban middle school teacher that this is a very complicated issue.
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But more to the point on charter schools. The reason that traditional public schools are outperforming charters is simple. The number one link between a school and student achievement is teacher training and experience. Charters are at a severe disadvantage because:
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1. Many of the teachers they hire are uncertified, untrained or inexperienced.
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2. The turnover is so high at charters that teachers do not have the time, space or resources to grow and gain experience.
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BTW – thanks for responding to my post! I always enjoy the give and take.
1. Most charter schools are not run in any kind of experimental fashion. They are incredibly rigid and perscriptive – run in a traditional fashion. They are not ‘freewheeling’ and open about their curricula. Teachers must adhere to strict pacing guides and adopt preferred methods of teaching or be fired. In short, there is no experimenting going on.
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2. Nothing that is happening in a charter school is transferable to a regular inner-city school classroom. Why? Because traditional urban schools have many special ed students, behavior students, more poverty and less parental involvement than traditional public schools.
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And yet, traditional public schools are STILL OUTPERFORMING CHARTERS!
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3. You are right on the money about concentrating kids of concerned parents and segregating the children who are left behind into the regular public schools. Maybe that is good, maybe that is bad – depending upon your personal point of view. But from a public policy standpoint, it is dishonest to stick all of the hardest cases into a small group of public schools and then label them as ‘failing’.
Your assertion that most charter schools use the drill-and-kill model and have underqualified teachers may well be true, but it exemplifies the problem both sides have in using a study like this to argue policy about all charter schools.
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I’m familiar with one charter school, Pioneer Valley Performing Arts school in South Hadley. It has an innovative approach (centering all academics around performing arts), has a record of specialized achievement (performances, a champion mock trial team) and seems to do ok on MCAS. The teachers I know who work there are “underqualified” in traditional ed-school terms but impress me as being “differently qualified”, particularly some with extensive professional theatre experience.
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Some people in and around Amherst are applying to start a Chinese immersion charter school, for both heritage speakers and others. This looks like a brilliant idea, and they will probably need to make use of “underqualified” teachers who have the necessary Chinese expertise but have no ed degrees.
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Another friend of mine is now working for a sort of “internal charter” within the Springfield public system in cooperation with Holyoke Community College, where about 120 students take courses on more of a college schedule, including some college courses. The idea is to salvage students who will not succeed academically when forced into the high-school lifestyle and community — I’ve seen many such students who have dropped out, taken GED’s, and entered UMass with some success.
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The notion that all teenagers should be educated in the same way is insane, and charter schools offer a potential way to try out new methods. Your anecdotal evidence, which I respect, is that the charter school policy has been hijacked to run drill-and-kill schools with underqualified teachers. My anecdotal evidence is that the policy is being used as intended. Since the plural of “anecdote” is not “data”, we have to try to measure the overall effectiveness of the policy in some constructive way. But just comparing the average MCAS scores of charters with those of ordinary publics doesn’t convince me of much.
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By the way, “thank you for your service”, as we say to soldiers, etc. — I have the greatest respect for people like you who are educating the next generation.
I looked at the NAEP study you quoted, thanks. It was put together by the AFT (I’m an MTA/NEA member through my university faculty union, but I’m more in tune with the AFT philosophically) to address the policy of forcibly converting schools to charters when they are designated “underperforming” under NCLB. Using data they could get out of the NAEP, they found that charters had lower test scores than other publics, and that when you looked at free-lunch or minority students, they also had the same or lower scores.
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The point they draw is that there is no evidence that charters are inherently better, particularly with free-lunch and minority populations, and thus that the forced-conversion policy is not supported by the data. They seem to have made this case pretty well. What I don’t think follows from this is that “charter schools are a bad idea”. GoldsteinGoneWild claims that the data internal to MA is that charter school students do better overall than general students. There is always going to be a tradeoff between the advantage of having students targeted or selected in some way, and the advantages or disadvantages that might come from relaxing standard teacher qualification rules. (I find your claim, that teacher training and motivation is the key, to be quite plausible, but I’m not sure how I’d run an experiment to test it.) To make policy, we need to have some idea how these factors compare in different kinds of situations, and the NAEP study doesn’t give us that.
The data you reference me referencing above was just made public this morning: MA Charters significantly outperform their MA sending districts, consistently.
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One part of the MA study uses the exact same methodology as the national study that “MCAS.Net” citesto show lower charter performance.
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Unlike the national study, though, which sampled less than 5% of all charters for a single year (2003), the MA study samples EVERY charter for the last 5 years!
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Therefore, MCAS Net’s position MUST be that nationally he opposes charters but in Massachusetts he wants more of them!
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Can’t wait for that post…..
Goldstein, why did the DOE feel the need to do its’ own study using MCAS when the NAEP data is already available?
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A few questions/problems with the DOE vs. NAEP:
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1. The NAEP is the ‘gold standard’ of education achievement data. It is much much more rigorous than the MCAS because it relies upon random sampling. Over all the NAEP exam is widely considered by researchers to be more rigorous than state wide exit exams.
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2. Unlike the MCAS, there is no way to ‘prep’ or practice for the NAEP. When the NAEP folks come to a school, they select a sample of kids, and administer the exam under tight controls.
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3. Bombshell of a question: did the charters have any prior knowledge of this study? If they did, then the results of this study are bunk. I can tell you from first hand experience that by simply reviewing past years MCAS exams with students, it is possible to raise a schools scores by as much as 5-7 pts.
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As for more charters in Mass improving student achievement, here is the dilemma that charter supporters face.
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If charters are performing at the same level as traditional public schools, then it is largely because of their selectivity. If they expand the model, then their achievement scores will drop as they take in a larger number of children who much more difficult to educate.
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For them, it is a dilemma of ‘quality control’.
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And believe me, anyone who thinks that urban charter schools and traditional urban schools are dealing with the same kinds of kids and families has absolutely no idea what they are talking about.
Segregating kids by ‘readiness to learn’ helps no one. And it is certainly not a strategy for “Leaving No Child Behind”.
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One thing – there seems to be some kind of myth that the charters are embracing experimental teaching strategies, when quite the contrary is true. Many of the charter schools are run very traditionally vis-a-vis curriculum and instruction.
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Many of the charter teachers I know report that there classes are incredibly regimented and formal. Like private schools.
I love expertiese. I done learned that in that there charter school. But then my momma, she’s the real fat lady over yonder, she done took me out o that there charter school and home school learned me how to spell and cipher. I can count to 22 due to my feet having six toes each. In the big hospital that called that polydactylism but my daddy tell me that they don know nuthin bout nuthin.