Charter schools.

Sorry I didn't post Friday, I am visiting my family and was distracted. Charter schools are an interesting case study in school autonomy yet it seems as if many schools decide to exercize that autonomy in one way: teacher accountability. Remember, charter schools still have to make AYP and get their kids to pass the same standardized tests as public schools. Those tests are still the only way charter schools are officially assessed under NCLB. Here's what I wrote:

Opinion 4 (continued):Charter schools are the darling example of good schooling put forward by the Obama administration, the left-leaning education think tanks, NBC, etc (but not teacher's unions). They argue that charter schools, which are established by state DOEs and are exempt from some legal and union controls, provide a reproducible model for school success. The often cited film Waiting for Superman depicts successful charter schools serving urban poor populations. (Notice Michelle Rhee makes another appearance in the film and on its website. More on her record here and here.) The reasons charter schools are said to succeed include their ability to fire teachers at will, their ability to use merit pay systems, their ability to hire non-union teachers, their ability to use a non-traditional curriculum, and their emphasis on teacher accountability.

Diane Ravitch is one of the biggest critics of the charter school movement. She plows into the fight headlong with an article reviewing Waiting for Superman and the mythos growing around charter schools. She writes:

The message of these films has become alarmingly familiar: American public education is a failed enterprise. The problem is not money. Public schools already spend too much. Test scores are low because there are so many bad teachers, whose jobs are protected by powerful unions. Students drop out because the schools fail them, but they could accomplish practically anything if they were saved from bad teachers. They would get higher test scores if schools could fire more bad teachers and pay more to good ones. The only hope for the future of our society, especially for poor black and Hispanic children, is escape from public schools, especially to charter schools, which are mostly funded by the government but controlled by private organizations, many of them operating to make a profit.

and

Known as the CREDO study, it evaluated student progress on math tests in half the nation’s five thousand charter schools and concluded that 17 percent were superior to a matched traditional public school; 37 percent were worse than the public school; and the remaining 46 percent had academic gains no different from that of a similar public school. The proportion of charters that get amazing results is far smaller than 17 percent.Why did Davis Guggenheim pay no attention to the charter schools that are run by incompetent leaders or corporations mainly concerned to make money? Why propound to an unknowing public the myth that charter schools are the answer to our educational woes, when the filmmaker knows that there are twice as many failing charters as there are successful ones? Why not give an honest accounting?

and

According to University of Washington economist Dan Goldhaber, about 60 percent of achievement is explained by nonschool factors, such as family income. So while teachers are the most important factor within schools, their effects pale in comparison with those of students’ backgrounds, families, and other factors beyond the control of schools and teachers. Teachers can have a profound effect on students, but it would be foolish to believe that teachers alone can undo the damage caused by poverty and its associated burdens.

Lest you think I am biased and omitting counter-counter arguments, read this article about Diane Ravitch's intellectual "u-turn" in recent years. Long-story-short, she was one of the biggest advocates of NCLB and has completely changed her mind as to the validity of standardized testing. She's a bit of an iconoclast in the education world, but I enjoy her work and think she has good points to make in the overall debate. Here's another article about her change of mind.

I also have my own questions about the strengths of Charter schools. The documentary shows what I believe to be the biggest flaw in charter schooling: selection bias. Even though the schools are populated through lottery style drawings, students (or more accurately, their parents) still have to apply to be entered in the drawing. Even though hundreds of kids are in the lottery, how many aren't? How many kids have parents who don't care enough about their children to sign them up for a chance at charter schooling? That one little step selects out a huge chunk of the most at-risk students - those whose parents just don't care. Parental involvement has a big impact on students' performance in school. If these kids moms, dads, and grandparents cared enough to get them into the lottery, then they already have an advantage over their peers. 

Charter schools simply don't have to serve the same population of students that the public schools do. Public schools have to serve everybody. EVERYBODY. That includes students who don't speak English; who have severe learning, mental, or physical disabilities; who commit crimes; who have high truancy and absentee rates; who just don't want to do their work. Any of these factors could prevent a child from attending a charter school (and from ruining their high achievement reputation). Do the studies of charter schools compensate for these affects? I haven't seen any literature suggesting they do. As far as I'm concerned, charter schools are similar to private schools: they get to pick their students and therefore get to keep the best and drop the rest. (Yes, students can be kicked out of Charter schools but not public schools - no seriously, I teach kids who fight, sell weapons at school, who can't speak English, and who will never be eligible to go to charter schools.)

I suppose this is the last of my targeted criticisms. You'll notice that I've left off school vouchers. I don't know enough about how vouchers would work and what their unintended consequences would be. No states have instituted a voucher program on a large scale. No major studies of voucher systems have been done by uninterested 3rd parties (usually academic economists, because you can't trust the research coming from schools of education). I know they're every bit as controversial as charter schools, but I just don't know enough about vouchers. So I'll refrain from having any opinion, for now.

In my next post I'll look at how standardized testing, as the only method of teacher and school assessment, has significantly changed the way schools view themselves and their students.