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DERRICK Z. JACKSON
Charter schools' troubled waters

By Derrick Z. Jackson, Globe Columnist | March 30, 2005 DESPITE promising us a compass, charter schools have hit another shoal. More evidence says they are no better than public schools.

''Proponents of charter schools have a deregulationist view of education that says the marketplace leads to better schools," Lawrence Mishel, president of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, said over the telephone. ''The facts of the matter suggest that this view is without merit."

Mishel and three other university researchers from Columbia and Stanford universities are authors of the forthcoming book ''The Charter School Dust-Up." The researchers reviewed federal data and the results from 19 studies in 11 states and the District of Columbia. They found that charter school students, on the whole, ''have the same or lower scores than other public school students in nearly every demographic category."

In a politically charged environment where the White House and many governors, including Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, are pushing charter schools, the authors found that federal data ''fail to confirm claims that the performance of charter schools improves as these schools accumulate experience." Charter schools four years or older ''report lower scores than new charter schools."

Coauthor Martin Carnoy, an economics and education professor at Stanford, said one of the most telling findings was that low-income African-American students, the group many charter advocates claim to want most to help, showed no improvement. The study found that the test scores of low-income black students in charter schools are lower than in the public schools in both math and reading. That is despite the fact that a lower percentage of black students are low-income in charter schools (68 percent) than in public schools (76 percent).

''You might be able to account for lower test scores if you were able to say you were serving the most economically disadvantaged," Carnoy said over the phone from California. ''But the fact is, these aren't the most disadvantaged of black families. We tried to compare black kids with black kids on several levels, and black kids in charter schools are not doing any better and in a number of states are doing worse."

By definition, the comparisons debunk the charter school movement's trashing of teachers unions and the claim that if you get ''bureaucracy" out of the schools, you will get better schools.

Not only did Mishel, Carnoy, and coauthors Rebecca Jacobsen and Richard Rothstein of Columbia find that charter schools do not generate higher student achievement in general or the educational performance of central city, low-income minority children in particular, they also found that charter schools are associated with increased school segregation. And they found minimal accountability. Despite their inability to show across-the-board improvement, fewer than 1 percent of charter schools have been shut down for academic failure.

The authors say there are indeed many stellar individual charter schools, founded and staffed by innovative and dedicated teachers and administrators. In many cities, the lining up for charter schools debunks any stereotype that African-American families do not care about education. But such schools remain far from typical.

Also, many charter schools rely on less-experienced, uncertified, and often less-well-paid teachers. In a regular central city school, 75 percent of the teachers have more than five years' experience. In a charter school the percentage is only 34 percent. In public high schools, 70 percent of the math teachers either majored or minored in math in college. In a charter high school, the percentage is 56 percent. ''While freedom from certification rules undoubtedly permit charter schools to hire teachers who are more qualified than typical teachers in regular public schools, the data do not reveal evidence that charter schools, on average, are actually using their freedom to do so," the authors wrote.

Mishel and Carnoy both said that whatever systemic problems the charter school movement is trying to address, they may be far outside the realm of either public or charter school. Unfortunately, many of the possible solutions have either been underfunded for years or are currently being cut.

''If you want to talk about real improvements in education, you are probably going to have to talk about vastly expanding early-childhood education and targeted in-school and after-school programs for kids," Mishel said. ''We are probably talking about substantial after-care and a community schools approach that incorporates health, social services, and housing. It's going to take a full-court press . . . to attract quality teachers to stay in schools. It's not going to be one single thing."

It is certainly not going to be -- by themselves -- charter schools.

Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com.

 

BEYOND DISCORD: RESOLVING THE TENSIONS BETWEEN CHARTER AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS

A REPORT OF THE MASS CHARTER SCHOOL TASK FORCE

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

DRAFT

The Massachusetts experiment with charter schools has created widespread controversy and mixed results. Created as part of the Education Reform Act of 1993, charter schools were meant to be laboratories of innovation that would demonstrate the power of suspending the bureaucratic and union rules under which school districts function, thereby producing exceptional results for children.

Ten years later, with only a few charter schools appearing to outperform their community’s public schools and many listed as underperforming, there are numerous questions that have been raised about their viability as a reform solution. In addition, it has become clear that charter schools drain valuable financial resources away from the sending school districts, making it even more difficult for the sending district to move reform forward.

The experiment with charter schools has been an expensive one. Since 1993, the state has invested more than $1 billion to fund charter schools and to partially reimburse school districts for the initial years of lost charter tuition. In addition, these small schools must maintain their own administrative, financial and capital operations. This significantly increases administrative overhead and takes valuable resources away from instructional services to children.

Complicating the experiment further has been the application and approval process for charter schools. The process has become highly contentious. The contentiousness creates a negative environment in which charter schools must operate and draws valuable time and resources from public schools combating the possibility of a charter school opening in or near their community.

The financial, educational and political tensions have been a destructive, rather than a constructive force for change and improvement. They have created a highly polarized environment in which it is difficult to realistically assess the problems with the experiment or the benefits of providing educational alternatives. After ten years of experimentation, the flaws within the initial legislation, regulations, and Department of Education implementation are apparent. If charter schools are to be a successful experiment, if school districts are to live with and learn from charter successes, and if the state is to provide policy guidance through legislation that will advance reform and student performance, it is now time to correct the flaws in the current financial and policy structure that support this experiment.

In the fall of 2004, the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents convened a working group of more than twenty active superintendents to discuss these issues and formulate recommendations to address the flaws in this aspect of education reform. After numerous meetings and review of data on charter school funding, policy, and performance, we believe that a workable charter school experiment may be able to succeed alongside the existing public school system. However, this will require that the state carefully study current charter school performance, restructure the financing of charter schools, and reform the policies and regulations that guide their development and implementation.

After extensive study, the MASS Charter School Task Force developed a detailed set of recommendations that can decrease tensions, advance reform, and help us learn from this experiment. This executive summary can only highlight the major recommendations.

Clearly the most contentious issue between public school districts and charter schools has been the issue of funding. The current funding system for charter schools excessively compromises school districts and serves to undermine rather than advance reform. In the area of charter finance, the MASS Charter School Task Force recommends that:

1. To address the financial issues created by the current charter funding system in which school districts carry the entire tuition burden, the state should restructure the financing of charter schools in a way that is consistent with the school choice program. The tuition paid by school districts would be a maximum of either $5,000 or 75% of per pupil spending of the sending school district. The state would provide the difference between the portion of the tuition paid by the school district and the full tuition calculated by the charter school tuition formula so that the state shares the financial burden of this experiment and cover the excess administrative costs created by charter schools. In addition, capital costs for charter schools should expenditure driven and funded directly from the state in a separate line item.

2. The state should improve the financial responsibility and accountability of charter schools by requiring charter schools to complete the standard end-of-the-year financial reports, comply with the uniform procurement act, assess cities and towns based on existing enrollment and formal registrations, and update waiting lists yearly using a standardized parental intent to register form.

3. There should be transitional financial assistance to school districts impacted by the closure or non-renewal of a charter school and the liquidated assets of that school be returned to the sending school districts.

In the area of the charter application and approval process, the MASS Charter School Task Force supports the set of internal Department of Education recommendations based on its review of this process in November 2004. However, additional steps are necessary in order that all parties feel heard, decisions are made without bias, community concerns are given appropriate consideration, and charters are approved that have the best chance of appropriately serving all students. Therefore, the Task Force offers recommendations to:

1. Reestablish the centrality of replicable innovation in the application and renewal processes;

2. Improve the ability of charter schools to attract and address the needs of children who need special education and English language learning services; 3. Ensure local engagement from the inception of the proposal; 4. Address issues related to where charters are situated; 5. Provide more accurate demonstrations of local interest; 6. Ensure information is provided to applicants and school districts in a timely manner; 7. Enhance fairness, transparency and accountability within the Department of Education’s review process; 8. Ensure unbiased and judicious decisions by the Board of Education; 9. Enhance financial transparency and accountability within the application process; and 10. Expand the data maintained by the Department of Education on student, teacher, and administrator attrition rates at charter schools.

Finally, an experiment in innovation and reform of this scale deserves continuing and thorough scrutiny to ensure that this is a worthwhile expenditure of scarce taxpayer dollars. The MASS Charter School Task Force recommends that before spending additional resources on charter schools, the state initiate a full and independent review of the effectiveness of our charter school policies and the schools themselves. This kind of comprehensive and independent study could provide powerful insights into how well charter schools are advancing reform in Massachusetts, how well they are serving Massachusetts children, and how well they are meeting the mission of replicable innovation defined for them in the Education Reform Act of 1993. In addition, this study could provide policy recommendations to improve the success rate for future charter schools and give the public confidence that their tax dollars are spent judiciously.

The Commonwealth has a rare opportunity to decrease tensions, advance reform, and continue to learn from the experiments and innovations we initiate. The MASS Charter School Task Force believes that charter schools can play a role in improving public education if we hold them to high standards of quality and innovation and ensure that they do not adversely impact children who remain in the public schools. MASS believes that the recommendations in charter school finance, in the application and review process, and in support of a thorough and independent review of charter school performance offered in this report will enable the state to accomplish that.

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A failing grade: Charter schools and education reform
Public Policy / From People's Weekly World
Posted by terriealbano on Jan 25, 2005 - 12:00 AM

A failing grade: Charter schools and education reform By Rosita Johnson, People's Weekly World Newspaper, ILCA Associate Member

Charter schools are a major aspect of the political right wing’s education reform agenda, which also includes vouchers and privatization.

Turning failing schools into charter schools is one of the No Child Left Behind law’s sanctions, but in 2003 the first national comparison of reading and math test scores for students in charter schools versus regular public schools showed that charter school students often did worse than their counterparts regardless of family income, race, ethnicity or school location.

The comparison study by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), part of the U.S. Department of Education, tested students in Arizona, California, Colorado, Michigan, Texas and Washington, D.C. Apparently the Department of Education was disappointed with the results, because the Report On Charter Schools was not made public until American Federation of Teachers staff were able to retrieve the information.

Presently there are 3,000 charter schools with over 600,000 students in 41 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. Charter schools comprise only 3.4 percent of all public schools, but the Department of Education expects the number to increase rapidly, because it is doing everything possible to encourage the conversion of public schools into charter schools. Most of the students in “failing” public schools are African American, Latino and low-income students. It is not surprising that the majority of students in charter schools are also from these groups.

A charter school is an autonomous public school created by a group obtaining a written contract (the charter) from the state or local government to operate a school. Charter schools are funded with tax monies, mostly from a state’s education budget. The group applying for the charter must present its purpose and goals and a plan to accomplish them. The government then decides whether to grant the charter for a limited time. If the school is unable to meet its goals, the charter can be revoked.

Charter schools are subject to the same No Child Left Behind testing standards as other schools and are expected to make “adequate yearly progress” (AYP) as projected by the state in which they are located. But most charter schools are funded at a lower per-student rate than the regular public schools and must raise additional funding from foundation grants, corporate donations and in-kind contributions from parents and the community. This includes such things as cleaning and maintenance.

When the Jingletown Charter School opened in the late 1990s in Oakland, Calif., it had to sacrifice having a janitor and an alarm system in order to keep classes no larger than 24 students. Parents volunteered four hours a month to clean the building and do other jobs.

In many states charter schools are exempt from having to hire only certified teachers and most charter school employees are not represented by a union, allowing the schools to pay teachers less.

In Arizona
Deb Wilmer has taught at two charter schools in Arizona. At the first school there were few certified or experienced teachers. When she was hired, no one even asked to see her college degree. The turnover in staff and students was nearly 70 percent the first two years she was there. Some teachers were fired and some left voluntarily.

“This school was marketed as a college prep school,” said Wilmer. “But the graduation requirements were not sufficient for entry into the Arizona university system.”

The book used for world history and geography was poorly written and only at a fourth or fifth grade level. Group discussion was discouraged. The method of instruction was called Mastery Learning, which meant a student kept doing the same assignment until he/she got a passing grade. There was no small group instruction.

Just follow the syllabi, the curriculum director told the teachers.

Wilmer’s second charter school was located in a suite of business offices. The students were at-risk students, many with serious behavior problems. Yet the program was unstructured and poorly planned. One classroom was in a reception area with many distractions.

“There was a great deal of nepotism in both schools,” Wilmer said. “They hired personal friends regardless of qualifications.”

Charter school students in Arizona and Michigan scored up to two years behind regular public school students on the National Assessment of Educational Progress test in 2003. Arizona and Michigan allow their charter schools to operate pretty much as they see fit.

Segregation, ‘choice,’ and profits
Since the 1954 Supreme Court decision prohibiting racially segregated schools, many Southern states have used charter schools, vouchers and tuition tax credits to maintain segregated schools. Racial discrimination and family poverty have always been major reasons for failing schools. State governments refuse to provide adequate, equitable funding for all students. Teacher training institutions ignore the damaging effect of racist attitudes and policies.

The charter school movement became popular in the 1980s on the premise that learning could be improved through innovative methods and curricula and freedom from rigid state standards.

The Reagan administration introduced the political right’s education reform plan of “choice,” allowing parents to shop around in a “free education market” for the schools best suited for their children. Charter schools would be one of the choices.

The argument was that competition for students would force public schools to improve or go out of business. Education would use the business model. The political right had ulterior motives, though. Like vultures surveying their prey, business interests eyed the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on education each year as an opportunity for super-profits. The dismantling of public education is the ultimate plan, not education reform.

Conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, CEO America, Eagle Forum and many others began making plans. It was much easier to sell the idea of charter schools to parents and communities who had failing schools.

States view charter schools as less expensive than other public schools. Even the teachers unions, the AFT and the National Education Association, supported the concept of charter schools as long as they were accountable. Albert Shanker, AFT president in the 1980s, actually persuaded his union to support charter schools as a legitimate educational reform.

Private educational management companies are in the business of managing charter schools. The California Charter Academy is the largest operator in that state. But this company was forced to close 60 of its schools after a state investigation of its financial problems and academic practices left 10,000 students stranded in September 2004.

Progressive allure
There are progressive teachers, parents and community activists who also support charter schools as an opportunity for community control and empowerment. They want to develop schools that meet the needs of their children. Aisha Imani is one of them.

Imani is the administrator of Imhotep Institute Charter School in Philadelphia. When Imani’s Masterminds Program at William Penn High School was dismantled, she took a leave of absence to write her Ph.D. dissertation on African-centered education.

“I’m interested in pedagogy for an oppressed people,” said Imani. “Where would I go in this system to focus on the issues that concern this African American community?”

Imani is serious when she describes Imhotep as a real community school where parents and students are encouraged to help run the school as a collective. The school is open seven days a week for many extra curricular activities and tutoring. Most of the 525 students live in the neighborhood. All the teachers are certified, caring and dedicated to student progress, she said.

The students at Imhotep are similar to many of the students at any of the neighborhood high schools in Philadelphia. But most came to the charter school because they had academic or behavioral problems at their former school. This surprised Imani. She expected better students.

“Parents want a miracle,” said Imani. “But change takes time, even in a transforming environment.” The pressure of testing for No Child Left Behind took a toll on the school’s program but did result in much higher scores than last year. Imani sees inequities in the charter schools — nepotism, different pay for different teachers.

“We all need to be working together for full funding for all public schools,” Imani said.

Julia Webb teaches at a small high school in New York City. It is not a charter school, but rather a public, neighborhood school serving a very low income community. It is part of the New Visions program, developed as part of the “small schools movement.” Webb says public schools, with adequate funding, can do everything charter schools might do, and more. Her school has 400 students instead of up to 3,000 students at other city high schools. Webb’s humanities classes have 26 or 27 students. Grades are performance-based, not test-based. The 30 teachers are mostly young with two to five years experience. The Gates Foundation provides supplemental funding for the New Visions program. All schools in the program are different and may have a different innovative focus. The teachers get to know their students and this in itself supports their success. Webb first taught at a high school in Brookline, Mass., which spent far more money on its students, who came from upper middle class homes. She wishes her current school had the same kind of funding.

Real solutions
The Bush administration says the No Child Left Behind Law wants to close the achievement gap between wealthy and poor children, between white and Black students, between students proficient in English and those who are not, and between regular and special education students. But the funding for schools to accomplish these goals by 2012 has not been provided. Over $9.4 billion authorized by Congress was cut in 2004. More is to be cut this year.

The Department of Education is playing a shell game with its citizens. Charter schools will not solve the problem of failing schools.

Full funding is needed for the proven methods of education reform: smaller class size, smaller schools, comprehensive pre-school for three- and four-year-olds, after-school and in-school tutoring and enrichment programs and mentoring for those who need them, state-of-the-art school buildings equipped with updated books, materials, equipment and technology. Caring, well-trained educators who have the needed experience for the job are also needed.

Family poverty does not support the academic development of children. Living wage jobs, available health care and affordable housing are all part of the kind of environment that supports a positive family life and the cognitive development of children. Public schools do not need to be charter schools to be innovative and creative. Public education works in the suburbs. Quality public education should be a right of every citizen not a privilege of the wealthy.

Rosita Johnson (phillyrose1@hotmail.com) is a retired teacher and PWW editorial board member.

RELATED STORY: Right-wing commentator paid to promote NCLB
Armstrong Williams, a conservative syndicated newspaper columnist, radio and TV talk show host, admitted he was paid $240,000 by the U.S. Department of Education to promote the No Child Left Behind law. Tribune Media Services has stopped the distribution of William’s weekly column to nearly 50 newspapers. “Accepting compensation from an entity that serves as a subject of his weekly newspaper column creates a conflict of interest,” said Bryan Monroe, a vice president of the National Association of Black Journalists. “I thought we in the media were suppose to be watchdogs, not lapdogs.”

Williams syndicated radio and TV shows appear nationwide via Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Liberty Channel and conservative-owned Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which reaches approximately 25 percent of the television market. Williams appears frequently on CNN and FOX as a guest commentator.

For the $240,000 (more than the total of the PWW fund drive!) paid to his public relations company, Williams was to influence other Black journalists, distribute Department of Education propaganda and interview Education Secretary Rod Paige on his shows.

Democrats and other critics accused the Department of Education of bribing journalists to push government policies. Federal Communications Commission members called for an investigation into whether Williams broke the law by failing to disclose the Bush administration paid him to plug its education policies. The agency has received thousands of complaints against Williams.

Williams apologized for blurring his roles as commentator and paid promoter but said he will not return the money.

Williams began his political career as an aide to Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. Williams claims that the problems African Americans face are due to their history of dependency on government welfare programs, not racial discrimination.

— Rosita Johnson
www.pww.org/article/articleview/6354/1/248

This article is from ILCA Online www.ilcaonline.org

The URL for this story is:
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"They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself."

Andy Warhol
Kate Toomey
Worcester School Committee
50 Ideal Road
Worcester, MA 01604-1452
508-798-1815
cell: 508-735-8058
25,730 students (October 1, 2003)
3,141 employees
65 buildings (56 school buildings)
Buildings comprise of 3,700,000 sq. ft.
sitting on 400 acres of land
FY03 Budget $224.45 Million

 

The following is included in the Jan. 20, 2005 newsletter of the Public Education Network:

MASSACHUSETTS CHARTER SCHOOLS UNDERENROLLED

A majority of commonwealth charter schools in Massachusetts are under-enrolled, according to data recently released by the Department of Education, raising serious questions about the accuracy of claims that these publicly funded, privately-run schools have extensive waiting lists. According to Department of Education figures, 34 of 48 commonwealth charter schools have fewer students than they claimed they would on "confirmed enrollment" reports filed with the state last spring. Yet all but five schools say they have students waiting to enroll.

State-wide, there are 803 fewer students enrolled in charter schools than claimed on enrollment reports filed with the Department of Education in March of last year. Charter schools are required to notify the department by March 18 each year of their "confirmed enrollment" for the coming school year. "If waiting lists figures were accurate, there would not be so many empty seats at so many charter schools," said Marilyn Segal, director of Citizens for Public Schools. "Waiting lists appear to be little more than cooked up numbers served to the public for political gain."

The legitimacy of charter school waiting lists has been increasingly called into question. Charter proponents repeatedly claim that some 15,000 students are waiting to enroll in commonwealth charter schools, and have cited the figure as evidence of "demand" for more schools. Public school advocates have said the figures are grossly inflated, noting that they include students with only a passing interest in a school as well as students who may have been interested at one time but have since enrolled elsewhere. Also student names may be on waiting lists for several charter schools and counted several times in the total waiting list figure. www.massparents.org/charter_schools/under-enrolled.htm

CHARTERS UNDERENROLLED
January 13, 2005

According to Department of Education figures, 34 of 48 commonwealth charter schools have fewer students than they claimed they would on "confirmed enrollment" reports filed with the state last spring. Yet all but five schools say they have students waiting to enroll.

State-wide, there are 803 fewer students enrolled in charter schools than claimed on enrollment reports filed with the Department of Education in March of last year. Charter schools are required to notify the department by March 18 each year of their "confirmed enrollment" for the coming school year.

"If waiting lists figures were accurate, there would not be so many empty seats at so many charter schools," said Marilyn Segal, director of Citizens for Public Schools. "Waiting lists appear to be little more than cooked up numbers served to the public for political gain."

The legitimacy of charter school waiting lists has been increasingly called into question. Charter proponents repeatedly claim that some 15,000 students are waiting to enroll in commonwealth charter schools, and have cited the figure as evidence of "demand" for more schools.

Public school advocates have said the figures are grossly inflated, noting that they include students with only a passing interest in a school as well as students who may have been interested at one time but have since enrolled elsewhere. Also students names may be on waiting lists for several charter schools and counted several times in the total waiting list figure.

The 48 commonwealth charter schools operating this year reported to the DOE in March a combined "confirmed enrollment" of 18,536 students. However, only 17,733 students actually attend the schools, according to data recently released by the education department.

One charter school in Somerville, Prospect Hill Academy, has 110 fewer students than it claimed on its "confirmed enrollment" report in March. The school reported to the state it would open in September with 842 students. Instead the school has only 832 students. Yet it claims to have 172 students on its waiting list. This is the third year in a row that Prospect Hill’s enrollment has fallen more than 100 students short of its pre-enrollment report.

The controversial Roxbury Charter High School for Business and Finance reported to the Department of Education that it would enroll 175 students in September, and that it had 118 students on its waiting list. The school opened with fewer than 110 students. Enrollment has since fallen to about 100. Last year the school claimed it would have 93 students. It ended the year with fewer than 55 students actually enrolled.

The Benjamin Banneker Charter School in Cambridge has 61 students fewer than it reported would enroll. Yet the school claims a waiting list of 494 students.

Boston Renaissance has 27 fewer students than it reported would attend, even though the school claims to have 1,695 students waiting to enroll.

The Sturgis Charter School in Barnstable has 21 fewer students than it reported would attend. Yet the school claims 56 students on its waiting list.

The five charter schools with no waiting list are: Foxborough Regional Charter School , the Murdoch Charter School in Chelmsford, the North Central Charter School in Fitchburg, Lowell Middlesex Academy, and Smith Academy Leadership Charter School in Boston.

"Waiting list figures have gone unquestioned for too long," said CPS policy analyst Paul Dunphy.
"Finally, many policy makers are catching on to the exaggerated claims. There is a growing skepticism about all aspects of the charter school initiative. It is increasingly seen as a billion dollar mistake."

Citizens for Public Schools is a coalition of more than 50 civic, civil rights, religious, labor and education organizations committed to public schools that are democratically accountable and open to all children.

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Forwarded to Joe O'Sullivan from Marilyn Segal,
Director, Citizens for Public Schools
marilyn@citizensforpublicschools.org

On Tuesday, Diana Jean Schemo of the New York Times had a page one story on how charter schools lag behind regular public schools. The data came from the 2003 NAEP assessments, the first NAEP assessments with all 50 states getting state-level results (NCLB makes state-level participation in NAEP mandatory). The analysis was conducted by the American Federation of Teachers.

When matched for poverty level or location (e.g., inner cities) charter students scored lower. There were no significant differences between black students in charters and blacks in regular public schools but the black-white gap was as large in charters is in publics (I know that charters are public schools, but it's too awkward to keep repeating that). The next day, the Times weighed in editorially and Section A carried a rather pathetic defense of charters by Rod Paige.

The Right went ballistic. Jeanne Allen foamed at the mouth on Tavis Smiley. Checker Finn hurled bombs in both his newsletter and in the New York Post. The Manhattan Institute's Jay P. Greene did likewise in the New York Daily Sun. Floyd Flake, a former New York congressman defended the charters in the Times (the Times credit line neglected to mention that Flake is the former President of Charter Schools for Edison Schools, Inc). Today's Times has five letters, three supportive of the study (including Howard Gardner and Peter Cookson, Dean of Lewis and Clark University in Portland), one negative--Clint Bolick who argued the Cleveland voucher case before the Supreme Court, and one from a parent who said people choose charters to get away from the test mania of public schools. (The Times archives are free for a week so any EDDRA member who wants the articles and letters can get them gratis through next Monday, www.nytimes.com). William Howell, Paul Peterson, and Martin West slammed the study in the Wall Street Journal (you have to subscribe to the Journal to get its article, but the article,"Dog Eats AFT Homework," is also on Peterson's Harvard website, www.ksg.harvard.edu/news/opeds/2004/peterson_dog_are_homework_wsj_081804.htm.

The National Charter School Clearinghouse headlined its take "AFT Charter School 'Study' Lobbying, Not Research." Your tax dollars at work--the Clearinghouse is funded by the U. S. Department of Education. A particularly nasty--and sloppy--attack was mounted at www.eduwonk.com, the website of the Progressive Policy Institute which I often refer to as the Pathetic Policy Institute.

I am amused. In January of this year, I presented a paper commissioned by the Charter School Accountability Center at Florida State University, "Can Charters Ever Be Truly Accountable." The Center is pro-charter. The other four presenters (Lisa Keegan of the Education Leaders Council and author of Arizona's charter law, Lisa Snell of the Reason Institute, Joe Nathan who helped write Minnesota's charter law, and laid back Casey Lartigue of the Cato Institute) were pro-charter. The audience all worked in or around charters. The experience is recounted in the forthcoming "Fourteenth Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education," in a section title, "Invitation to a Mugging."

My conclusion: we have to seriously consider that charters are a failed reform. I had mostly data from state-level evaluations in AZ, CA, MI, OH, and TX, but they were all consistent: Charters promised to increased achievement and they've failed to do that. Worse, charter operators now claim achievement is irrelevant. The deregulation of charters is sufficient to justify them. It's a classic bait-and-switch.

I will send to paper (33 pages, 80 references) to whomever asks for it. The people at FSU technically own it, but they've been so slow to do anything with it (or the others) that they've told me to have people contact me for it.

I attach an op-ed sent to the New York Times this morning that likely has zero chance of publication. The op-ed also follows in plain text.

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THE AFT CHARTER STUDY: NOT NEWS

Gerald W. Bracey George Mason University and High/Scope Educational Research Foundation

This article is abridged and updated from “Can Charter Schools Ever Be Truly Accountable,” commissioned by the Charter School Accountability Center, Florida State University and presented there January 22, 2004.

The recent flap over the American Federation of Teachers’ charter school is surprising, not because the study used the wrong methods or reached the wrong conclusions, it didn’t, but because AFT’s conclusions are nothing new. The AFT study is the first to use the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) as its database but state-level reports from around the country have documented charters’ problems for years. Consider summary statements from evaluations in three of the most active charter states, Ohio, Michigan and California.

The Legislative Office of Educational Oversight, not a body hostile to charters, studied Ohio’s charters for five years. In its December 2003 final report on “community schools,” as charters are called in Ohio: “In sum, the most that can be said about the academic performance of community schools as a group is that they are doing no better than low-performing traditional schools with similar demographic characteristics.” That’s the most that can be said?

The AFT study was attacked on the grounds that many charters are too new to be evaluated, but the LOEO studied only the oldest ones. The LOEO then laid out a number of recommendations for the charter sponsors and the Ohio Department of Education. It considered the situation so dire that if the recommendations are not implemented, the legislature should terminate all charter school funding.

Western Michigan University researchers Gary Miron and Christopher Nelson concluded, “In the aggregate our findings cast doubt on proponents’ claims that Michigan charter schools will leverage gains in student achievement. With the exception of Grade 4 math, Michigan Educational Assessment Program pass rates in the typical charter school grew less (or fell faster) than those in their host districts.” Researchers at Columbia University and the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research reached similar conclusions in separate, independent evaluations.

Miron and Nelson also found that charters run by private, for-profit firms did worse than those run by non-profits, no small finding since 76% of Michigan’s charter are operate by the for-profits, and, nationally, an increasing proportion of charters are in the hands of such companies.

In California, the RAND Corporation’s evaluation gave charters something of a free ride. Tracking the same students over a number of years, RAND concluded “charter school students are keeping pace with comparable students in conventional schools.” RAND and the media, including the New York Times, treated this as a positive outcome. But is it? What does it mean to “keep pace” with public school students in California? In the 2003 NAEP, California finished 49th in reading at the fourth grade and tied for 50th at the eighth grade. Thus, “keeping pace” means matching the performance of the lowest scoring kids in the country.

That is not what charter schools promised. Joe Nathan, a charter school advocate at the University of Minnesota delivered the charter schools’ vow in 1996: “Hundreds of charter schools have been created around this nation by educators who are willing to put their jobs on the line to say, ‘If we can’t improve student achievement, close down our schools.’ This is accountability—clear, specific and real.”

And non-existent. The charters haven’t improved achievement and they haven’t been shut down. On the rare occasion when they do go out of business, it is almost invariably because they mismanaged the money, sometimes criminally. Charters with clean books and low achievement stay open.

One must wonder why policy makers and the public have criticized charters so little in spite of many headlines like these: “Charter Schools Fail Proficiency Testing: Pupils Score Far Below Their Public-School Peers” (Akron Beacon Journal), “Substandard Charters Fail 17,000: 6 Management Firms Underperform Worst Michigan Urban Districts” (Detroit News); “Quality Uneven Despite Popularity: No Evidence That Achievement Tops That of Regular Schools” (Washington Post); “Most Charter Schools Fall a Bit Short” (Chicago Tribune).

Consider these propositions:

Charter schools sprang from disillusionment and outrage over the alleged poor performance of public schools.

Charter schools promised to improve achievement.

The overwhelming majority of charters are small (fewer than 200 students) with smaller classes sizes than found in most public schools. Small schools and small classes both act to produce higher achievement. Thus, charters have two advantages over most publics.

Charter schools do not perform as well as demographically similar public schools.

So, where it the outrage and disillusionment over poor charter school performance?