Charter Schools As Answer Misses The Question

Charter Schools Not the Answer, Especially if We Fail to Identify the Question

One pattern of failure in education reform is that political leadership and the public focus attention and resources on solutions while rarely asking what problems we are addressing or how those solutions address identified problems. The current and possibly increasing advocacy of charter schools is a perfect example of that flawed approach to improving our schools across the U.S.

Let’s start with two clarifications.

First, the overwhelming problems contributing to school quality are pockets of poverty across the country and school policies and practices mirroring and increasing social inequities for children once they enter many schools.

Children who live under the weight of poverty attend buildings in disrepair, sit in classrooms with inexperienced and un-/under-qualified teachers, and suffer through endless scripted instruction designed to raise their test scores. Citizens of a democracy share the responsibility for eradicating both the out-of-school and in-school failures often reflected in data associated with our public schools.

Then, what is a charter school and should any state increase resources allocated to charter schools, and in effect, away from public schools?

Staring with Problems, not Solutions

Charter schools are public schools that function under agreements, charters, that allow those schools to function in some ways without the constraints placed on public schools.

Here, we must acknowledge that if charter schools are a viable solution to the serious problems I have identified above, a much more direct approach would be simply to allow all public schools to function without the restraints we know to be impacting negatively their ability to produce strong educational outcomes.

If innovation and autonomy are valuable for educational reform, then all public schools deserve those opportunities.

Powerful evidence that committing to charter schools is inefficient rests in the research that shows charter schools, private schools, and public schools have essentially the same academic outcomes when the populations of students served are held constant.

In his ongoing analysis of educational research, Matthew DiCarlo explains:

“[T]here is a fairly well-developed body of evidence showing that charter and regular public schools vary widely in their impacts on achievement growth. This research finds that, on the whole, there is usually not much of a difference between them, and when there are differences, they tend to be very modest. In other words, there is nothing about ‘charterness’ that leads to strong results.”

In other words, when schools succeed—which many public, private, and charter schools do—the success appears to have little to do with the type of school. The practices in any of these models can be replicated in any of the other models, but even then, scaling up or replicating what works in Public School A may not come to fruition in Charter School B.

The evidence, then, suggests that all states should avoid investing time and allocating tax dollars to charter schools, particularly when those commitments detract from addressing known problems in our public schools.

But there are additional red flags that should be considered about the charter school movement, cautions that are even more alarming:

• While charter schools across the U.S. are serving high-poverty and minority populations, charter schools tend to under-serve English language learners and students with special needs—two of the most challenging populations facing public schools. If our experiments with charter schools include ignoring populations at the heart of public school challenges, then the experiments are a failure from the start.

• The charter school movement is re-segregating public schools. This is the most disturbing fact of the charter school movement. Children of color and children living in poverty are disproportionately being isolated in charter schools that are without racial or socioeconomic diversity.

• Since charter schools create some degree of open enrollment, they create transient populations of students, thus producing data that are less valuable for mining policies and practices to address the problems facing neighborhood public schools.

• Charter schools have the power to manipulate the population of students served only because public schools must serve the students once they leave those charter schools. Public schools never have, and shouldn’t have, the power to reject students beyond expulsion.

Many states appear committed, then, to contradictory policies: Increasing charter schools and thus their autonomy while decreasing public school autonomy within an accountability system that prescribes curriculum and expands the testing regime.

Charter schools in theory represent a belief in innovation, experimentation, and school autonomy. If these qualities are valuable and if they can address the out-of-school and in-school causes of educational outcomes, then we simply need to allocate funding and policies to insure that our public schools are afforded the same, while also admitting that we have no evidence that a school type—pubic, charter, or private—insures the outcomes we seek.

Recommended Resources

Baker, B.D. & Ferris, R. (2011). Adding up the spending: Fiscal disparities and philanthropy among New York City charter schools. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved from http://nepc.colorado.edu/...

One contradiction of charter school advocacy is the claim that funding doesn't matter or is excessive at the public school level, but that many charter schools benefit from private donations or funding in addition to accepting tax dollars for running those charter schools. This study raises cautions about the wide variety of funding found in New York city charter schools. The authors warn about making careless comparisons and assuming that any charter schools are scalable as reform templates for public education reform.

Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO). (2009, June). Multiple choice: Charter school performance in 16 states. Stanford, CA: Center for Research on Education Outcomes. Retrieved from http://credo.stanford.edu/...

This comprehensive study of charter schools, though not without controversy, presents a solid picture of the range of quality found in any education format. Charter schools appear to have about 17% high achieving, 46% average, and 37% low achieving characteristics when compared to public schools. This data help place in context claims of “high flying” charter schools as all or even most charter schools, but the study does not address key issues such as the ideology and practices of those schools.

Frankenberg, E., Siegel-Hawley, G., & Wang, J. (2011) Choice without equity: Charter school segregation. Educational Policy Analysis Archives, 19(1). Retrieved from http://epaa.asu.edu/...

We often fail to recognize the negative consequences of choice, but the charter school movement is exposing those consequences. This study concludes that charter schools "currently isolate students by race and class" and that charter schools may tend to under-serve English language learners and the extreme low end of poverty.

Fuller, E. (2011, April 25). Characteristics of students enrolling in high-performing charter high schools. A "Fuller" Look at Education Issues [blog]. Retrieved from http://fullerlook.wordpress.com/...

The choice dynamic of charter schools necessarily creates a student population unlike the community-based traditional public schools. In order to understand if and how charter schools in fact provide some evidence for reforming public schools, the populations of charters schools must be fully examined and understood. Fuller begins to examine the characteristics of students in charter schools labelled "high-performing" and identifies many disparities including special education students served, achievement characteristics among high-poverty students in both charter and public schools, and at-risk students, concluding: "This suggests that HP charter high schools do not serve the same types of students as the regular neighborhood schools. Now, granted, the HP charter high schools do enroll a greater percentage of students participating in the free- and reduced-price lunch program and in the free lunch program, but these economically disadvantaged students are not the same as the economically disadvantaged students in the regular neighborhood schools!"

Garcia, D. (2011). Review of “Going Exponential: Growing the Charter School Sector’s Best.” Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved from http://nepc.colorado.edu/....

Garcia debunks think tank advocacy for expanding rapidly charter schools. This review is important for remaining skeptical about charter schools and for continuing to be vigilant about distinguishing between advocacy dressed as research and credible conclusions drawn from scholarship and research.

Miron, G. (2011). Review of “Charter Schools: A Report on Rethinking the Federal Role in Education.” Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved from http://nepc.colorado.edu/....

Miron presents a mixed view of a report from the Brown Center on Education Policy of the Brookings Institution. The Brown Center report represents a growing endorsement of a federal role in promoting the expansion of charter schools. Miron argues for a tempered position on expanding charter schools and for using this report as just one initial piece of evidence in forming policy.

Miron, G. & Urschel, J.L. (2010). Equal or fair? A study of revenues and expenditure in American charter schools. Boulder and Tempe: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. Retrieved from http://epicpolicy.org/...

Funding and how funding is distributed lie at the center of much of the charter school and public school reform debates. This study details the complexity of how charter schools are funding and how that compares to public school funding. Key in this study is a call for more research on charter funding along with greater and fuller disclosure of charter funding, since charter schools tend to receive less per-pupil funding that public school but additional private funding that is not disclosed. As well, public schools remain likely to offer services that charters do not provide, distorting further any comparisons of funding equity.

Miron, G., Urschel, J. L., Mathis, W, J., & Tornquist, E. (2010). Schools without Diversity: Education management organizations, charter schools and the demographic stratification of the American school system. Boulder and Tempe: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. Retrieved from http://epicpolicy.org/...

This study draws a disturbing pattern being uncovered about the charter school movement: "The analysis found that, as compared with the public school district in which the charter school resided, the charter schools were substantially more segregated by race, wealth, disabling condition, and language."

Miron, G., Urschel, J. L., & Saxton, N. (2011, March). What makes KIPP work?: A study of student characteristics, attrition, and school finance. Teachers College, Columbia University. National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education. Retrieved from http://www.ncspe.org/...

Focusing on inputs instead of student outcomes, this study examines KIPP schools and finds that KIPP schools do enroll high-poverty student but under-serve special needs students and English language learners. The study also raises questions about student attrition and about the apparent inequity in funding that KIPP schools receive when all funding is examined, totaling about $6500 more per pupil than public schools in the area. Combined, this evidence challenges the KIPP model as scalable.

Ravtich, D. (2010, November 11). The myth of charter schools. The New York Review of Books. Retrieved from http://www.nybooks.com/...

Ravitch's scholarly commentary is important because of her credibility as a scholar and historian along with her recent shift in positions concerning accountability/testing and school choice. This detailed discussion confronts the media-driven claims of "miracle" charter schools.

Schools Matter

California Commission On Teacher Credentialing Lawyer Blows The California Education Whistle!

Kathleen Carroll, an attorney and fired whistleblower at the California Commission On Teacher Credentials attended the March 5, 2012 rally for public education at the State Capitol and talks about the organized destruction of public education in California and who is responsible for this crisis. Included in her comments is the role of Apple and other online education companies who are draining funds from public schools. She also calls for the investigation and prosecution of illegal actions by lobbyists funded by the Gates Foundation and Broad Foundation who are illegally voting on public money to private schools in which they have an economic interest. She questions why California Attorney General Kamala Harris has refused to investigate and also whey Governor Jerry Brown is continuing to allow criminal activity at the Commission On Teacher Credentials. The California Commission On Teacher Credentials is under the direct authority of Governor Brown and his office.

TFT Welcomes Gideon Stein

Just one graph from School Finance 101 tells most of the story, which you should go read now.

If you're not sure what the graph is showing, it is showing that the neediest kids, described by how many free and reduced lunches are served, are under-represented at KIPP schools in the zip-code in the title of the graph.

This means that when charters claim they are doing better than the other schools around them they also need to mention that the population in the KIPP school is very different than the populations of the comparison schools, making the comparison moot, or useless, or spin. You can decide which it is.

The "100% Graduation Rate" Lies Have Their Own Website Now

The Gallery of "100% Graduation Rates"

Concord Academy Petoskey, Michigan
Petoskey News, June 3, 2011: 
"Concord Academy Petoskey recently became the state's ninth public school academy (charter school) to attain the status of Michigan School of Excellence."
"Concord's authorizing organization, Lake Superior State University, has offered the Petoskey school a new contract to operate for 10 years as a School of Excellence."       "...last year, Concord posted a 100 percent graduation rate"

Young Women's Leadership Charter School, Chicago IL

From an April 5, 2011 news article on WBEZ 91.5 website:
"Rahm Emanuel said that he wants an all-girls charter school to add another campus in Chicago. The mayor-elect praised the Young Women's Leadership Charter School of Chicago, while glossing over parts of its record.
`You have three hundred applicants for 50 openings in class,' Emanuel told the crowd of the school's supporters at a downtown hotel. `Let's give them another choice in the city of Chicago. Another charter.'
Emanuel called the school's results `quite impressive,' though state records show only 15-percent of high schoolers there met state standards. The mayor-elect twice on Monday cited a `hundred percent graduation rate' at the charter school."

More at the link. h/t Tracey Bowens Douglas

The Erection Of An Alternative National System Of Charter Schools (pun intended)

How the Corporate Right Divided Blacks from Teachers Unions and Each Other

by Glen Ford

Back in the mid-Nineties, devious right-wing activists at the Bradley Foundation, in Milwaukee, hit upon a “wedge” issue designed to wreck the alliance at the core of the Democratic Party’s urban base. Blacks and public employee unions – particularly teachers – were the foundations of Democratic power in the cities. Aware that African Americans revered education but were often in conflict with largely white teachers unions over issues of racism and community control, the Bradley gang, under president Michael Joyce, created out of whole cloth a “movement” for publicly-funded vouchers for private schools. No such Black community “demand” had ever existed, but well-aimed infusions of millions of dollars among opportunistic politicians like Cory Booker, a first term city councilman who aspired to become mayor of Newark, New Jersey, grafted Black faces onto a Hard Right corporate scheme to divide key progressive constituencies: Blacks and unions.

By the turn of the millennium, the Bradley outfit solidified its position as George W. Bush’s “favorite” foundation when it invented “faith-based initiatives” to funnel millions of public dollars to churches to provide social services. Faith-based funding and private school vouchers comprised the totality of Bush’s first term outreach to Black America. Neither program drew masses of Blacks into the Republican Party – even the wealthy social engineers at Bradley can’t perform miracles. But Bradley and its far-right sister funders – the Walton and DeVos Family Foundations, Olin, Scaife, Freidman and other troglodytes – had succeeded in penetrating Black Democratic politics, where the real action would unfold. Cory Booker, Harold Ford, Jr., the 29-year-old who inherited his father’s congressional seat in Memphis, in 1996, and other hustlers were the “new Black leaders” ready to embrace “pro-business” solutions to inner city problems, said corporate media boosters. The Democratic Leadership Council, the party’s corporate money bagmen, launched a frenzied, and quite effective, recruitment campaign among Black office-holders and aspirants.

This is the national stage onto which Barack Obama stepped with his U.S. Senate campaign, in 2003-2004, as the very embodiment of the “new” Black politician, full of phrases like “public-private partnerships” and other codes for corporate penetration of the public sphere. By this time, the wealthy foundations were directing much of their money and attention to hawking charter schools as the cure for what ails education in the inner cities. Not that the Waltons and Friedmans and Scaifes give a damn about ghetto kids, but because they understood that Black parents were desperate for anything that might save their children, and would be receptive when fellow Blacks made the pitch. From its inception, the purpose of the project was to drive a wedge between teachers unions and Black constituencies. In addition to being unencumbered by sticky constitutional considerations, charter schools are technically public schools, and African Americans remain broadly committed to the concept of public education. Most importantly, from the rich man’s point of view, charter schools are the gateway to corporate access to the public education purse, a “market” worth hundreds of billions a year in which the public takes all the risk – a capitalist’s paradise! Obama and his Education Secretary, Arne Duncan – a veteran Chicago union buster and corporatist – have labored mightily to erect an alternative national system of charter schools.

The Hard Right foundations now had even bigger company as boosters of charter schools: the institutional weight of Wall Street, huge hedge funds, and individual billionaires, all out to make a financial killing, knock off teachers unions, and mold the world views of new generations. After more than a decade of corporate cultivation of ambitious “new Black leaders,” a large cadre of business-friendly African American politicians was in place – including, by 2008, in the highest place of all.

President Obama is the guy that Michael Joyce, at the Bradley Foundation, was dreaming about when he launched his campaign to split Blacks from unions, 15 years ago. Obama and his Education Secretary, Arne Duncan – a veteran Chicago union buster and corporatist – have labored mightily to erect an alternative national system of charter schools, plugged into a private financial and educational services sector, that in some cities is as large or larger than the traditional public schools. Obama, because of his race and his party affiliation, is a far more effective foe of public education and teachers unions than his white Republican predecessor.

Michael Joyce was right; he knew that the crucial battle over school privatization would have to occur in Black Democratic circles, if it were to work as a fractious wedge issue. Last month, the NAACP and the United Federations of Teachers filed a lawsuit to halt the closing of 20 public schools and to stop giving preferential treatment to charter schools that often share the same buildings. The differences in learning conditions, schedules and equipment are so striking, says the NAACP, as to reduce public students to second-class citizens. Charter schools, which President Obama fawns over like his own legacy, are blatantly favored by school systems and corporate sponsors. The NAACP is seeking to prove – in a different age and racial context – that separate is not equal, in New York City and other sites of breakneck charterization.

The inequalities are by design. From President Obama on down, charter school strategists hope to expand their privatized systems by deliberately making charters relatively more attractive than traditional classrooms, in order to create a political constituency for more charters. At root, it is a kind of bait-and-switch that is not sustainable, and will come to a halt once the public school “competition” is marginalized or eliminated. By then, the political forces necessary to revive public schooling will have been exhausted in fratricidal battles, and the corporations will have established a system to suit their own purposes– as Michael Joyce foresaw.

When the NAACP joined in the teachers union’s suit, charter school advocates declared war on the civil rights group. Two thousand people attended a May 26 rally in Harlem, accusing the NAACP of dividing the community. Of course, Michael Joyce knows who did the dividing – he and his right-wing schemers and billionaires wrote the script.

The Charter School Myth Take-down

School Finance 101 is good at explaining data, especially the lies used to misrepresent the data by those who would like to push their charter agenda. To wit:

The Offensively Defensive Ideology of Charter Schooling

There now exists a fair amount of evidence that Charter schools in many locations, especially high performing charter schools in New Jersey and New York tend to serve much smaller shares of low income, special education and limited English proficient students (see various links that follow). And in some cases, high performing charter schools, especially charter middle schools, experience dramatic attrition between 6th and 8th grade, often the same grades over which student achievement climbs, suggesting that a “pushing out” form of attrition is partly accounting for charter achievement levels.

As I’ve stated many times on this blog, the extent to which we are concerned about these issues is a matter of perspective. It is entirely possible that a school – charter, private or otherwise – can achieve not only high performance levels but also greater achievement growth by serving a selective student population, including selection of students on the front end and attrition of students along the way. After all, one of the largest “within school effects on student performance” is the composition of the peer group.

From a parent (or child) perspective, one is relatively unconcerned whether the positive school effect is function of selectivity of peer group and attrition, so long as there is a positive effect.

But, from a public policy perspective, the model is only useful if the majority of positive effects are not due to peer group selectivity and attrition, but rather to the efficacy and transferability of the educational models, programs and strategies. To put it very bluntly, charters (or magnet schools) cannot dramatically improve overall performance in low income communities by this approach, because there simply aren’t enough less poor, fluent English speaking, non-disabled children to go around. They are not a replacement for the current public system, because their successes are in many cases based on doing things they couldn’t if they actually tried to serve everyone.

Again, this is not to say that some high performing charters aren’t essentially effective magnet school programs that do provide improved opportunities for select few. But that’s what they are.
But rather than acknowledging these issues and recognizing charters and their successes for what they are (or aren’t), charter pundits have developed a series of very intriguing (albeit largely unfounded) defensive responses (read excuses) to the available data. These include the arguments that:

Read the rest, and the excellent point by point take-down (and links) here.

The Inconvenient Truth About Waiting For Superman Trailer

10 Things About Charters (I'll Give You #10)

10. Even great teachers can only do so much.

Much of the public debate over charter schools focuses on teacher performance and the ability to fire ineffective teachers – something that’s more difficult at a traditional public school where teachers are typically union members. While it’s true that teachers represent the most important in-school factor affecting student performance, out-of-school factors matter more, Ravitch says. “The single biggest predictor of student performance is family income,” she says. “I certainly wish it were not so, but it is.” Children from higher-income families get a huge head start thanks to better nutrition, a larger vocabulary spoken at home and other factors, she says. The narrative that blames teachers for problems that are rooted in poverty “is demoralizing teachers by the thousands,” Ravitch says. “And you don’t improve education by demoralizing the people who have to do the work every day.”

Smart Money

Charter School Emulates Prison, Thinks It's A Good Thing

Strict rules at Crown Heights charter school put 16% of students in detention every day

...Some behaviors are considered so bad - rolling their eyes, sucking their teeth or complaining after getting a demerit - students get an immediate 45-minute detention for committing them.

On an average day, one in six kids - about 50 - in the 300-student school stays after class, Achievement First officials said.

"We have high expectations, and we're really confident that what we're doing is in the students' best interests," said Principal Wells Blanchard, who instituted the policies when he took over the school this year.

Charter school advocates say the strict rules maintain order for kids.

But a group of parents with children at Achievement First Crown Heights say the rules are overkill. More than 20 of them met last week at the Crown Heights public library to discuss protesting the policies.

The group agreed to speak out at the school's next board meeting Nov. 22.

"I understand that schools need to have rules, but this is like Rikers Island," said Sarah Dickens, who said she will be at the board meeting to protest her fifth-grade son's daily detention for things like dropping a pen and failing to address a teacher as "ma'am."

"They've gone too far," Dickens said.

Education experts say charter schools with tough rules are a growing trend....

Charters And Vouchers Are An Excuse Not To Fix Real Issues

Paul Karrer: Schools lose with Race to the Top

A letter to my president, the one I voted for.

Your Honorable President Obama:

I mean this with all respect. I'm on my knees here and there's a knife in my back and the prints on it kinda match yours.

You're righting the wrong guys with your Race to the Top program, which provides grant money that "might" go to schools if they comply with unproven, absurd draconian "reforms" such as shuffling teachers around.

You're hitting the good guys with friendly fire.

I teach in a barrio in California. It's a public school. I have 32 kids in my class. I love them to tears. They're fifth-graders. That means they're 10 years old, mostly. Six of them are 11 because they were retained. Five more are in special education and two more should have been.

I stopped using the word parents when I talk with or about my kids because so many of them don't have them.

Amanda's mom died in October. She lives with her 30-year-old brother (a thousand blessings on him). Seven kids live with their grandmothers, six with their dads. A few rotate between parents.

Fifty percent of my 10-year-olds have visited relatives in jail or prison.

Do you and Arnie Duncan understand the significance of that? I'm afraid not. It isn't bad teaching that has taken things to the current stage. It's poverty. We don't teach in failing schools. We teach in failing communities.

It's called the ZIP code quandary. If the kids live in a wealthy ZIP code, they have high test scores. If they live in a ZIP where the people are poor, guess how they do.

We also have massive teacher turnover at my school. Now, we have no money. We haven't had an art teacher or music program in 10 years. We have a nurse twice a week.

And due to No Child Left Behind, we are punished most brutally. Did you know that 100 percent of our students have to be on grade level? That's like saying you have to get along with 100 percent of your cabinet (and unlike my kids, your cabinet gets to quit).

You lived overseas, so you know what conditions are like in the rest of the world. President Obama, I swear that conditions in my school are Third World. We had a test when I taught in the Peace Corps. We had to describe a glass filled to the middle. We were supposed to say it was half full. Too many of my kids don't even have the glass.

And then, of course, there are the gangs. They are eating my kids, their parents and the neighborhood.

One of my former students stuffed an AK47 down his pants at a local bank and was shot dead. Another one of my favorites has been incarcerated since he was 13. He'll be 27 next month. I've been writing to him for 10 years and visiting him in Level 4 maximum security—he's in chains behind bullet-proof glass—in Salinas Valley State Prison.

Do you get that it's tough here? Charter schools and voucher schools aren't the solution. They are an excuse not to fix the real issues. You promised us so much and now you want to give us merit pay based on how the kids do, no matter their circumstances?

You're making it real hard to vote with enthusiasm.

Can you pull the knife out now? It really hurts.

Paul Karrer, who teaches at Castroville Elementary School, writes about education for this page.

Diane Ravitch And Leonie Haimson Discuss Education Reform

Obama Defends Sweeping Education Reforms in Face of Criticism from Minority and Teachers’ Groups

President Obama took on critics of his administration’s sweeping education reform plan on Thursday in a nearly hour-long speech at the National Urban League’s 100th anniversary convention. His address came on the heels of news that New York public school students are not performing nearly as well as prior state tests had revealed. We speak with Diane Ravitch, the former Assistant Secretary of Education under George H.W. Bush, and Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters.

A Tweet Exposes The Truth

I think the above tweet says it all; charters are for poor kids.

It Was Coercion, Not A Pledge

Arne Duncan didn't make states pledge to open more charter schools in order to get RTTT funds, he just coerced them, as pointed out by Valerie Strauss:

Correction on Ed Dept and charters

The Education Department’s press secretary e-mailed me to say that I was wrong when I wrote in a recent post that states wishing to win federal money in Duncan’s Race to the Top contest “had to pledge” to open more charter schools.

The spokesman, Justin Hamilton, said that the department did not require states to make such a pledge.

Hamilton is right. My mistake.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan did not ask states to “pledge” -- which is literally “a solemn promise or agreement to do” -- to open more charter schools.

Duncan has, of course, said that states that did not agree to open more charters would be at a disadvantage in the $4 billion competition. He wrote the following last year in an article published by The Washington Post, entited "Education Reform's Moon Shot:"

“The Race to the Top program marks a new federal partnership in education reform with states, districts and unions to accelerate change and boost achievement. Yet the program is also a competition through which states can increase or decrease their odds of winning federal support. For example, states that limit alternative routes to certification for teachers and principals, or cap the number of charter schools, will be at a competitive disadvantage.”

"Socially Destructive And Morally Bankrupt"

From Valerie Strauss:

Steven Eisman, the Wall Street trader who starred in Michael Lewis’s book, “The Big Short”:

"Until recently, I thought that there would never again be an opportunity to be involved with an industry as socially destructive and morally bankrupt as the sub-prime mortgage industry," said Eisman, of FrontPoint Financial Services Fund. "I was wrong. The for-profit education industry has proven equal to the task."

Read the whole thing here.

Steven Brill Gets Math Lesson About Charter vs. Public Schools

Steven Brill wrote a bunch of crap in the New York Times Magazine and is taken to task by Valerie Strauss:

Charters vs. public schools: Behind the numbers

...It is worth noting that education historian Diane Ravitch reported in her book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System" that only about 100 of the 40,000 homeless schoolchildren in New York City public schools are enrolled in charter schools.

Charter school advocates don’t have to make bogus comparisons to boost their argument in favor of an expansion of these institutions.

The truth may not be as compelling, but it has the virtue of being, well, true. Some charter schools are excellent and work wonders with kids. Some do an average job, and some are awful. There is no evidence that charter schools are the silver bullet that will “save” public education....[emphasis mine]

h/t Valerie Strauss

Apparently Test Scores No Longer Matter. WTF?

From Jim Horn:

...Which is what happened on May 5, as the New York Times published an op-ed by racialist charter advocate and co-author of The Bell Curve, Charles Murray, who now declares that the real reason that parents should advocate for charters and vouchers should have nothing to do with test scores anymore, test scores that are made irrelevant by the facts based on factors beyond the school—and, no, he’s not talking about poverty:

Cognitive ability, personality and motivation come mostly from home. What happens in the classroom can have some effect, but smart and motivated children will tend to learn to read and do math even with poor instruction, while not-so-smart or unmotivated children will often have trouble with those subjects despite excellent instruction. If test scores in reading and math are the measure, a good school just doesn’t have that much room to prove it is better than a lesser school.

So, then, if the good voucher schools of Milwaukee or the good charter schools of the U.S. are made bad by “cognitive ability, personality, and motivation [that] come mostly from home,” then it is not the fault of the good voucher and charter schools, which remain good, according to Murray, even as we stock them with urban students of defective cognitive ability, personality, and motivation. Apparently it is not the fault of perfectly good medicine that the unresponsive patients remain ill. (Note that the terms “poor” or “poverty” are unmentioned in the Murray op-ed).

The real reason for parents to choose charter schools, Murray argues, is that they offer a choice of “highly traditional curriculum long on history, science, foreign languages, classic literature, mathematics and English composition, taught with structure and discipline.” Aside from the total compliance “structure and discipline” that would make the “best” urban charters entirely unacceptable to middle class parents in the leafy suburbs, the kind of curriculum-rich charter school that Murray describes is even harder to find in poor neighborhoods than the 17 percent of charters that simply do a better job at raising student test scores...

Read the whole thing at the link.

Charter Schools: Follow The Money

From Juan Gonzales:

Albany charter cash cow: Big banks making a bundle on new construction as schools bear the cost

Wealthy investors and major banks have been making windfall profits by using a little-known federal tax break to finance new charter-school construction.

The program, the New Markets Tax Credit, is so lucrative that a lender who uses it can almost double his money in seven years.

In Albany, which boasts the state's highest percentage of charter school enrollments, a nonprofit called the Brighter Choice Foundation has employed the New Markets Tax Credit to arrange private financing for five of the city's nine charter schools.

But many of those same schools are now straining to pay escalating rents, which are going toward the debt service that Brighter Choice incurred during construction.

The Henry Johnson Charter School, for example, saw the rent for its 31,000-square-foot building skyrocket from $170,000 in 2008 to $560,000 last year.

More at the link.

Little Schools Of Horror: Updated

Claus von Zastrow explains why the spate of "school horror" films are damaging public education. Here is just a snippet:

The films generally offer simple solutions for the problems they present, and that lets viewers off the hook. Most examples of the genre point to charters and vouchers. Take, for example, The Cartel, which has just hit theaters. According to The Boston Globe, "'The Cartel' leads its audience to what Bowdon [the filmmaker] sees as a promised land of better American education, populated by vouchers and charter schools." Bowden is apparently blissfully untroubled by evidence.

Update: A film review by Stephen Whitty begins:

"The Cartel" Movie Review -- Reviewing documentaries used to be so much easier.
Back in the old days — say, pre-Michael-Moore — a critic went to a film, looked at the photography and editing, made a considered judgment and wrote it up. Now you almost have to re-report the thing yourself. Who didn’t the filmmakers interview? What’s the background of the three “experts” with whom they did speak? Who gave them funding? Which facts were left out?It’s exhausting and, practically speaking, nearly impossible...

...So let me state my own biases before I review “The Cartel,” a biased new film about New Jersey public education and some parents’ push for charter-school alternatives.

Years ago, my father attended Jersey City schools, then Rutgers, and got a good education. My two children are in suburban public schools now and get a great education. I know some schoolteachers who are doing terrific jobs.

DOE Report On Charter School Embezzlement: Lots Of It

40 investigations, 18 indictments, 15 convictions, and 24 remaining in the pipeline. Charter schools are basically criminal enterprises!

Charter Lawsuits DOE

h/t Schools Matter