
“Then they begin to swerve and to stare, And be as brainless as a March hare.”
If this is March, it must be Charter School Propaganda Celebration Month! A couple of weeks ago, we had some of Boston’s white shoe wonders threatening a civil rights suit against the charter school cap. Everyone who wasn’t laughing was taking the proposal with all the serious it deserved. Even Captain Charter himself Paul Grogan didn’t seem to take the threat seriously. Anyhoo, that was last week. There is a week and a half left in March.
This week is the release of the CREDO’s Urban Charter School Study. Picked up by the State House News Service and turned over to the Globe for stenographic treatement, the study was incarnated as headline. Studies like this are less about the facts than the press release, don’t you know? Reading a study like this is like reading a contract for cell phone service: you’d like to know the details, but it’s really hard to understand. In the end, you sign on the bottom-line. And in news, nine times out of ten, the bottom-line is the headline. The headline that doesn’t even mention a study.
The Globe doesn’t have what it takes to read and analyze the study (truth be told, it’s pretty complicated for any lay person), and instead of calling someone about the quality of the research, Globe calls all the usual people and types who haven’t read the study but certainly have an opinion on charter schools. BTU President Richard Stutman challenges the assumptions of the the study: that charter school kids are equivalent to public school kids. Mark Kenen, who chairs the Charter School Cheerleading Squad, has his obligatory cheer: “These are historic achievement gains. Charters are providing a blueprint for success.” Cap the article off with a sensationalized headline like “Boston’s charter schools show striking gains: Test scores surpass traditional public schools, counterparts nationwide.” It’s no wonder reading the news leads us to know more about less.
The Globe may not be churlish enough to point out that CREDO, the organization responsible for publishing the study is part of the Hoover Institution, but I am. (Not surprisingly, CREDO brags about the connection to Stanford University, but they are an arm of the Hoover Institution). And the Globe may not be perceptive enough to question the report’s claim that “The strides at Boston charter schools—in both math and reading—equaled what students would have learned if they had been in school hundreds of additional days each year.” But I am. I can’t do the math, but I know when a little skepticism is called for. I would have called Daniel Koretz, Harvard School of Ed professor and expert on this kind of thing. He might have said something about linear relationships between variables and fallacious extrapolation. Things that might have shed some light on this headline generator report. Alas, I’m too ill at these numbers to argue them. And I don’t have the hours to pore over the report to do a job the Globe could have done with a couple of phone calls.
Aside from the plentitude of charter school boosters and the standard stenography, there’s not much of anything online about CREDO’s Urban Charter School Study Report. Some informed googling on my part, however, turned up some useful information from The National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado (another potential article source):
there are significant reasons for caution in interpreting the results. Some concerns are technical: the statistical technique used to compare charter students with “virtual twins” in traditional public schools remains insufficiently justified, and may not adequately control for “selection effects” (i.e., families selecting a charter school may be very different from those who do not). The estimation of “growth” (expressed in “days of learning”) is also insufficiently justified, and the regression models fail to correct for two important violations of statistical assumptions. However, even setting aside all concerns with the analytic methods, the study overall shows that less than one hundredth of one percent of the variation in test performance is explainable by charter school enrollment. With a very large sample size, nearly any effect will be statistically significant, but in practical terms these effects are so small as to be regarded, without hyperbole, as trivial.
To be clear, this summary describes NEPC’s review of CREDO’s Charter School Study of 2013. Yet the Urban Charter School Report uses the same methodology: the same sketchy Virtual Twins comparison; the same questionable estimation of growth in “days of learning.” The results may differ from those of two years ago, but it will take better-trained minds than mine to untangle all of that, And by then, the headlines will have already had their effect.
But hey, no worries. it’s March. And that means Charter School Madness.
IF…IF there was magic wand that imparted students with the equivalent of doubling their eduction time (the “hundreds of additional days each year”) and had corresponding academic results, there would be a clear and undisputed improvements in other indicators…like SAT scores, or high school graduation rates, or % of students going to college, etc.
But that hasn’t happened, in fact there is no correlation between the magic numbers that appear in these studies (2013 & 15) and the reality of how public charter school students are doing compared to traditional public school students IN THE REAL WORLD.
one of those rightwing thinktanks created to push propaganda.
Like the Manhattan Institute (which was funded by Big Tobacco), and the Discovery Institute (which pushed the Creationsist retread, “Intelligent Design”).
http://mothercrusader.blogspot.com/2012/12/is-credo-part-of-bandwagon.html
Talk to anyone in favor of charter schools (as they exist in the USA) long enough and they’ll tell you why they want charter schools. It’s the unions. Teacher unions are hurting our schools, don’t cha know? This is followed by a anecdote about tenure and how, at some school some where, a horribly inept or criminal teacher was still on the payroll because of tenure and the unions.
In your conversation with these folks, nod your head and smile, as if you agree with what they are saying. Then ask them this: “Worldwide, twenty or more nations rank higher in math, science, and reading and the lion’s share of these nations, all have union teachers.” Then follow with this; “In fact, Finland ranks highest in test scores year after year and yet Finland has one of the strongest teacher’s unions.”
And then ask, “If unions are not a problem world wide and if the nation with the best results has the strongest union, why are you so quick to blame unions as the problem?”
And your Charterists will inevitably come back with American Exceptionalism: Those countries are small. Those countries have homogenous populations. Those countries are full of foreigners. It’s the same set of reasons that single-payer health care and gun control can’t possibly work here. We’re too special, and that makes unions harmful here, even if they are beneficial everywhere else.
I hear this all the time with regard to health care and my reply is this:
I would love to live in an America that was rich in diversity, a place where driving from Maine to Florida or from New York to Chicago would deliver a cornucopia of cultural experiences equal to a trek across Asia with a few stops at the cantina scene from Star Wars. But the truth of the matter is that we are now pretty much the same in the USA, no matter where you go. In fact, if you blindfolded me, tossed me out of an airplane (with a parachute please) on a random flight over any densely populated area of the USA, I could no doubt land anywhere and walk to a Home Depot, Bank of America ATM, McDonald’s, Jiffy Lube or Bed Bath & Beyond in a few minutes. I can walk into any grocery chain anywhere in the USA and find the same products from sea to shining sea. When I turn on my radio, or television, or grab a newspaper or magazine to see what’s going on, the odds are that my source of information is from one of only six mega-media corporations in the USA. We are a nation of over 300 Million people and it only takes six corporations to deliver the news, and even those six are eerily similar (with the exception of Fox, which is just creepy, not eerie).
attack unions outright, just endorse policies that weaken them. I don’t know of any charters with unionized teachers, but we may have some in Massachusetts. The biggest obstacle with charter schools unionizing is the fact that their teachers turnover too quickly. With that said, it’s up to them to unionize. It’s okay not to be unionized.
Charters could eventually harm unionized teachers by underpricing us and driving down salaries and decreasing the number of living teachers paying into teacher retirement, which we pay for ourselves and are well on the way to fully funding.
The charter program fits in with the general model of 21st century capitalism: cut taxes, drive down the costs of labor, and put elites in charge. That’s not to say that elites are starting, running, or working in charter schools, but they are supported politically and financially by billionaires like the Waltons, the Broads, and the Gates. Massachusetts has been more careful with charters than Chicago, New Orleans, and Florida. We don’t allow for-profit schools, and we have let them multiply like bunnies.
In a good school, the teachers chose to have a union.
As far as turnover goes, one of the founding teachers 30 years ago is now the principal.
Have you ever BEEN to a charter school? Or been involved with one? Or do you just regurgitate rumors about what they are like created by MTA officials?
I’ve been involved with half a dozen refugees from charter schools, who jumped to public schools as soon as they got the chance.
I’m still waiting to hear about a single improvement to pedagogy that came out of a charter school.
up yours!
I’m inclined to tell you to take a flying… but, I think you get the point and I’m starting to cool off. I have to assume that you’re just trying to piss me off because you’re not generally this stupid. You don’t usually offer up false dichotomies as a form of argument. So I’m guessing you’re just being inflammatory. (I did uprate you for providing information on unions and charters).
How do you know about teacher unions? Have you ever been a member in one? Or do you just regurgitate the opinions of Rush Limbaugh? Have you ever been in a caucus of the Mass Democrats or do you just regurgitate the Mass GOP talking points? How do you know you don’t think like a dog? You’ve never been one.
I’m going to assume that you do NOT think you’re an authority on charter schools because you were “involved with” one 20 years ago when charter schools in Massachusetts were nascent. Because that would be generalizing from a very small sample in the very distant past. Same with your friend who’s been at a charter 30 years (in Massachusetts? I thought they started after 1993). I never said every teacher in every charter school leaves. Just that they typically have high turnover. And charters school vary quite a bit in educational method. Some seem to do very well. Some not so much. Would visiting SABIS help me understand what’s happening at the Chinese Immersion school? In fact, it wouldn’t. I saw Karyn Polito speak today. Did she give me a clearer idea of how the Baker Administration will govern? Of course not. How could it? Do I need to live in Texas to understand the state’s conservatism? I’ve visited a few times, but that doesn’t count for much How would going to a charter school help me understand their role in neo-liberal economics or the effects on future union membership? Seriously, tell me what I might learn if I visited a charter school?
Clearly, I’ve never been involved in a charter. You’d have known that from your previous trolling. The closest I came was when one of my daughters thought about going to Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter School. (She made her own choice and stayed at her public school). Even if I had become the parent of a charter school student, my opinion on the charter cap wouldn’t be likely to change.
So on what do I base my opinions? That would have been an infinitely less obnoxious question for you to pose. The answer, reading and personal relationships with people involved with charters. As I assumed most of us do, I test what I learn from one source with another source. I’ve already figured out that Massachusetts charters are better than many in the country. Some of that might be due to the fact that we are culturally sharper than some parts of the country, but I think it might also be due to the fact that we don’t allow for-profit charters, a source for corruption experienced in others states.
One of my colleagues was English Department chair at SABIS for years. After your last bit of trolling, I talked to her about if any of her colleagues are still there. She’s my age, 50, and none of the people she worked with are there. That’s anecdotal evidence, but it supports my reading. We talked about how much they got paid. It was less than teachers in my school. I was interested to learn that SABIS accepts kids not only in the first grades, but in grades 4, 8, and 10. SABIS has a somewhat peculiar curriculum based on private schools started in the Middle East. I had a good friend who now lives and teaches in Montreal that started work in a charter out East. He was making $35,000 and creating the curriculum as he went along. I have friends kids who attend PVPA and the Chinese Immersion school. I have had students who started out in charters and then moved to the town I teach in. We’ve talked.
You ought to know me well enough by now to know that I don’t regurgitate much of anything. I source things more thoroughly than just about anyone on here. If you want to discuss charters, either step it up or step off.
Charter schools can be deceiving because they portray themselves as something they are not – public schools. They are not public schools because they do not have to accept all students, and they have the ability to throw students out. But they want to be compared to – and judged against public schools.
The question should not be “are charters doing better?” – the question should be “why aren’t they doing much better”? Given that they peel off the best students in any system, they should be doing a hell of a lot better than they really are.
Anyone who knows anything about anything should know that if you have a process, and want to improve the quality of your outputs, you can do this two ways: improve the quality of your work, or improve the quality of your inputs. Charter schools do the latter. They are not working harder, nor are they innovating. They simply do not educate the same group of children as the public schools, and they have rules and policies in place to make this happen.
That is why they are popular among the public – because the public loves to segregate. Think about it – who wouldn’t like to be rid of all their problems? It is a wonderful thing for a parent when all of the bad students are taken out of a class and their child is left with a class of only the good students.
The major problem with this method is that it makes the bad students even worse. It is a less-than-zero-sum game because as you concentrate the bad students, they become unmanageable, a problem that can’t be solved. This is probably ultimately bad for the urban communities because people choose a community based on the reputation of its public educational system, not on the reputation of its charter schools.
This segregation is the real debate here, one that no one in this state wants to have because it actually cuts to the core of our public school system and our very way of life – because this segregation already occurs in our public schools between urban and suburban systems.
Why are urban schools so bad? It isn’t because of the teachers. It is because anyone who cares about education and has the means does not send their children to an urban school. They do whatever it takes – even taking on mortgages that are 50% of their salaries – to stay away from the urban schools. Kids with problems correlate pretty highly with kids from dysfunctional families, and dysfunctional families generally do not function highly enough to afford to live in wealthier communities.
Charter schools are like a poor-man’s wealthy suburb. Instead of having to move to a wealthier community, they can get a similar benefit by simply putting their kid in a charter school, where there is more protection from problem children – because charters also keep out children from dysfunctional families – not via monetary barriers (as do private and suburban schools) – but via higher bars to entry and retention.
So in one sense, I do not think that charter schools are very good, but on the other hand, I understand why parents, especially in urban communities, desire them, and why they are valuable to said communities.
I agree with most of this, until the “Why are urban schools so bad” paragraph.
“They” do NOT do “whatever it takes”, at least in Boston, because “whatever it takes” includes raising taxes, investing in the schools, and participating in the management and direction of the public schools.
Somerville is “urban” by pretty much any metric chosen. Somerville public schools have a high minority population in comparison to suburban towns like Newburyport. Brookline is an “urban” town, although very affluent. My younger son graduated from Somerville High School in 2012. Somerville residents support our schools. We support them financially, we support them by participating in and caring about the school board and decisions made concerning our schools, and we support them by sending our children there.
The Brookline public schools were just rated among the top five in the state. Brookline certainly supports its public schools.
I agree with your contention that racial attitudes (yes, racial. I think the phrase “economic segregation” is a whitewash on racism) play a huge role.
I think charter schools are to public schools as creationism is to science.
I think that analogy works on a second level: I think charter schools were invented as a way to whitewash (literally) the earlier concept of “private school vouchers”. That older idea was the reaction of racist whites who didn’t want their children attending school with black children. They wanted to siphon off public funding, in the form of vouchers, so that they could send their children to private (meaning “whites only”) “academies”. A wrinkle was to claim an infringement on religious freedom — they claimed they wanted to send their children to private religious academies (that just happened to be all white), and they wanted the public to pay for it.
The motivation and goal of all that voucher nonsense was the same — segregated schools desired by racist parents. Sorry, I think that’s just speaking the truth about an ugly reality.
The public caught onto it, and rejected it — much as the public rejected the “Young Earth” and “anti-evolution” religious arguments against science.
So I think the second level of the analogy is that charter schools are to “voucher” programs as Creationism is to “Young Earth” movements — an effort to mask the real agenda with a nice-sounding new name.
It’s the same (racist) pig, no matter how much lipstick is smeared on it.
of you. No Politician’s experience is reflective of mine. I teach in a suburb next door to Springfield. Race certainly has been an issue, but I don’t see racism playing out in my high school where we get some Springfield kids through METCO and other students of color who live in town. I don’t discount racism, but it’s more complicated than that. Racism may have been there in the beginning in charter schools, but No Politician’s saying what I’ve heard from our METCO director, that most of our METCO students would do just fine in Springfield, but in East Longmeadow, they don’t have the same distractions. Pregnancies happen, but rarely. Violence is virtually non-existent. We haven’t had a student death in years, and never had a student death from violence.
Not all of them, of course, but here’s an “Excellence in action” conference held in 2011 :
Also at the conference, noted educator/philanthropist Rupert Murdoch enthused, “When it comes to K-through-12 education, we see a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed.”
I’ve been trying to keep Massachusetts charters separate from charters nationally, but the boosters are the same. I don’t think individual charters are necessarily anti-union as Peter Porcupine points out in their otherwise obnoxious comment.