Cross-posted at General Discussion.
From the Schools Matter blog, Kenneth Libby posts an essay by AEI/Fordham's Andy Smarick, a former Bush II Domestic Policy Council member tasked with K-12 and higher education issues.
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2009/11/from-vault_06.htmlHere, in Smarick's own words, the coldly calculating business scheme for the raiding and hijacking of public education through the charter school movement. Corporate feeding from the public trough has sure done wonders for democracy and the common good hasn't it?
Here, in short, is one roadmap for chartering's way forward: First, commit to drastically increasing the charter market share in a few select communities until it is the dominant system and the district is reduced to a secondary provider. The target should be 75 percent. Second, choose the target communities wisely. Each should begin with a solid charter base (at least 5 percent market share), a policy environment that will enable growth (fair funding, nondistrict authorizers, and no legislated caps), and a favorable political environment (friendly elected officials and editorial boards, a positive experience with charters to date, and unorganized opposition). For example, in New York a concerted effort could be made to site in Albany or Buffalo a large percentage of the 100 new charters allowed under the raised cap. Other potentially fertile districts include Denver,Detroit,Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Oakland, and Washington, D.C.
Third, secure proven operators to open new schools. To the greatest extent possible, growth should be driven by replicating successful local charters and recruiting high-performing operators from other areas. Fourth, engage key allies like Teach For America, New Leaders for New Schools, and national and local foundations to ensure the effort has the human and financial capital needed. Last, commit to rigorously assessing charter performance in each community and working with authorizers to close the charters that fail to significantly improve student achievement.
In total, these strategies should lead to rapid, high-quality charter growth and the development of a public school marketplace marked by parental choice, the regular startup of new schools, the improvement of middling schools, the replication of high-performing schools, and the shuttering of low-performing schools.
As chartering increases its market share in a city, the district will come under growing financial pressure. The district, despite educating fewer and fewer students, will still require a large administrative staff to process payroll and benefits, administer federal programs, and oversee special education. With a lopsided adult-to-student ratio, the district's per-pupil costs will skyrocket.
At some point along the district's path from monopoly provider to financially unsustainable marginal player, the city's investors and stakeholders--taxpayers, foundations, business leaders, elected officials, and editorial boards--are likely to demand fundamental change. That is, eventually the financial crisis will become a political crisis. If the district has progressive leadership, one of two best-case scenarios may result. The district could voluntarily begin the shift to an authorizer, developing a new relationship with its schools and reworking its administrative structure to meet the new conditions. Or, believing the organization is unable to make this change, the district could gradually transfer its schools to an established authorizer.
Below find links to and excerpts from some of the latest reports on the "success" of charter schools compared to truly public schools. It says something that our traditional public schools generally outperform charters despite serving a much more challenging population of children. It says a LOT.
From the New York Daily News on the performance of charter schools in New York City, where Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein are hell-bent on more charter schools:
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2009/10/30/2009-10-30_charters_making_less_progress_on_tests__ed.html?r=ny_localAn Education Department report shows that charter schools have done worse than traditional public schools according to the department's own measurements.
The report also acknowledges that traditional public schools enroll almost four times as many English language learners and about 70% more special education students.
The mayor and chancellor lecture us incessantly on how charters are better than traditional public schools, yet DOE's own accountability data shows charters lag significantly in the metric they prize above all else: improvement in state test scores," said Patrick Sullivan, a member of the Education Department's central policy board.
The report, buried on the agency's Web site, also revealed that while 15% of district school students are not proficient in English, the same is true of only about 4% of charter students.
Special education students make up about 16.4% of students at traditional public schools and 9.5% of those at charters.
And from an article by Diane Ravitch on the most recent and comprehensive national study on charters to date:
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2009/09/27/2009-09-27_the_charter_school_problem_results_are_much_less_positive_than_a_new_study_sugge.htmlA national study conducted by Stanford University economist Margaret Raymond found that 37% of charter schools got worse results than comparable neighborhood public schools, 46% did about the same and only 17% were superior to the local public schools. The Raymond study surveyed half the charter schools in the nation and more than 70% of all charter school students. Raymond said, "If this study shows anything, it shows that we've got a 2-to-1 margin of bad charters to good charters."
Unlike the Hoxby study, the Raymond study concluded: "This study reveals in unmistakable terms that, in the aggregate, charter students are not faring as well as their TPS counterparts. Further, tremendous variation in academic quality among charters is the norm, not the exception. The problem of quality is the most pressing issue that charter schools and their supporters face."
Charter schools have participated in the federal testing program since 2003. Charter school students have never outperformed students in regular public schools, except in isolated instances. In 2007, charter students had lower scores than students in regular public schools in fourth-grade reading, fourth-grade mathematics and eighth-grade mathematics. Only in eighth-grade reading did charter school students score the same as their peers in regular public schools. Education Week reported that "the latest data do not bolster the early hopes of charter advocates that the sector as a whole would significantly outperform regular public schools."
Dear readers, given the evidence, please ask yourself why the moneyed interests driving the Obama/Duncan education reforms are so intent on expanding charter schools rather than strengthening and improving our existing public schools and keeping them public.
Finally, let me say that in this particular post I have addressed only ONE of the Obama/Duncan education initiatives which are not supported by research. More on that later but for now you can read here:
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/10/08/07academies.h29.html?r=1825027161
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