The Politics of Education: Charter Schools
21st Century Education, Ed. Policy, Ed. Research, Equity / Discrimination, NAEP, blogging October 17th, 2008
You couldn’t expect a guy with a doctorate in the politics of education to let the education portion of Wednesday night’s presidential debate go unchecked, could you?
Apparently, both candidates support charter schools. No surprise from McCain; the Republican party tends to support most forms of school choice (that’s a gross generalization, but I’ll live with that for now). That Obama supports charter schools signals an interesting policy shift, assuming that Obama’s stance is representative of the Democraticy party as a whole (which it may very well not be). I’m personally pretty mixed on charter schools. On one hand, I think any policy or set of policies based in free market principles where perfect information on the part of consumers is assumed is highly problematic in the field of education. On the other hand, these days I’m for anything that attempts to disrupt the status quo in public education.
And, speaking of “perfect information,” both candidates at least implied that charter schools “work” or that they are “effective” in some way (as opposed to voucher programs, where there seemed to be some disagreement). Well, that’s less than perfect information. Consider this study conducted as part of NAEP’s pilot study of charter school performance in 2003. According to the executive summary for the report, “After adjusting for student characteristics, charter school mean scores in reading and mathematics were lower, on average, than those for public noncharter schools.”
I also bring your attention to more recent research conducted by colleagues and “social associates” (I’m not sure I can call them “friends,” but I have been out socially with them on multiple occasions) Sarah and Chris Lubienski. Based on their analyses of NAEP data, Sarah and Chris concluded that “charter schools, privately operated and publicly financed, did significantly worse than public schools in the fourth grade, once student populations were taken into account.”
(BTW, teachable moment…the next sentence in the NYT article is as follows: “In the eighth grade, it found, students in charters did slightly better than those in public schools, though the sample size was small and the difference was not statistically significant.” That’s a nonsensical statement. If the differences were not statistically significant, then nobody did better than anybody else; not even slightly better. So, the first part of the sentence cannot logically precede the second part. This bugs me!)
The body of research on charter schools and school choice policies more generally has become overly politicized. There are too many researchers with agendas dabbling in that field, and too many policy advocates who cherrypick a single study to support their argument. However, in my reasonably well-informed opinion, the two studies above are as “independent” as they come.
So, Senators Obama and McCain, I’m in favor of exploring any and all educational policy options, including choice-based alternatives. But, let’s please not mislead the American public.
Tags: charter schools, choice, education, election, NAEP, policy
Indeed. Lets not mislead the public, least of all by implying that charters have 1) been given a fair shake and 2)have turned up lacking. Its quite the opposite.
First point: it is not required for charter schools to be internally “effective” for them to have the desired effect. The purpose of charter schools was primarily twofold: a, to allow for experimentation in ways that the hidebound public schools could not or would not attempt; b, to place pressure on the public schools to accelerate change. In states where schools receive part of their funding based on enrollment, the flight of students to other schools puts pressure on the public schools to reexamine their methods and try to do things better.
There is also a perhaps intended result, which is that charter schools have proved in various inner cities that quality schooling can be done in neighborhoods where it was written off. For too long, educrats made excuse after excuse (they still do) for why it was impossible to educate kids in these circumstances. Today we know it isn’t. In many places, charters have replaced failing schools and turned things around. Granted, in theory, the public school could have brought in new leaders and new curricula and done the same. Yet they didn’t. Charters became the solution to a political problem that blocked local school improvement.
Second point: The research shows charter schools have not at all been given a fair shake. First, in many states they were hamstringed by many factors, including
i. reduced funding far below the public schools, ii limited enrollments (effect: can’t apply economies of scale),
iii.limited # of schools (effect: can’t apply economies of scale),
iv. unfavorable press from the start,
v. public abuse by teachers unions, etc.
Finally, charters have had another role, which is to help develop new, non big-box-publisher curricula. Often this is richer and deeper than what has come out of the state committees.
Which of these should be examined in most depth is hard to say. As one who started in science, and came through engineering, I personally have to place some emphasis on the value of experimentation, and the expectation that when you are making changes, many attempts will fail.
On the other hand, as one who is deeply troubled by the education of inner city kids these past decades, I place high value on the role charters have played in showing what can be done in the worst neighborhoods.
My comment above needs a third paragraph inserted, and maybe someone can help with it. I’m thinking of the ed establishment’s response to charter schools. Not the reactionary, negative, protecting turf response; the other one, the one with experiments and new alliances and new approaches.
For example, I think that the Great Schools or the Great City schools organizations were responses to this. Also, in Akron, and other places I believe, teachers unions decided to start their own charters. Curricula were given a second look. Other things?
Thanks, Ed, for the thoughtful comments.
The politics around charter schools are so vexed; they displace lots of cherished conceptions of who should believe in what.
That said, Ed, do you have specific examples of where quality schooling is being done in urban areas?
Also, I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around your “fair shake” point. If economies of scale can’t be applied, doesn’t that just argue against charter schools? Also, “unfavorable press” and “public abuse” are normative statements (which may be what you meant). But, what’s the point there? And, I would argue that there’s been plenty of pro-charter advocacy out there (not from teachers, though).
Jon, arghh!! I was afraid you’d ask that. The research I refer to comes primarily from the conference series AEI held over the past couple years; I’m having trouble going back through it and finding the direct links.
But let me work backward through your questions.
Press: I live in the Akron press area, home of David Brennen of Whitehat Management, Hope Academies, ODEHLA, etc. Last week the Beacon Journal ran this headline: Charter schools across Ohio face closing. Thats literally true enough, but the impression is that some huge number of schools are being forced to close. In reality its 23 of 328, or 7%. For an experimental program widely open to all comers, that’s not a bad failure rate. Edison would be ecstatic. More to the point, the control schools (public) are equally failing or worse.
My issue is that since the idea of charters was broached, all press coverage I’ve seen outside the WSJ has run this way. Never a positive story, always a negative one. Guys like my Dad (strong republican), who read the BJ faithfully but never other sources, are turned against charters and think Brennan downright evil.
This gives the educrat lobby more power to hamstring the charters in ways that were not intended when we sought to have schools outside the thumb of the Union/bureaucrat oppression.
More later…you might check the bias against scale and profit in education entrepreneurship, by John Chubb. Alas, they took the pdf off the web. There is still conference video, mp3 and transcripts and of course the book.
Jon, Catchpa ate my 1st post - i emailed it.
Another paper is Ruminations on Reinventing an R&D Capacity for Educational Improvement, Anthony Bryk, Stanford.
Charters as a group should be evaluated against their intended role, experiment outside the normal educrat pyramid. (While many recoil in horror at the use of the word experiment in the same sentence with the word children, when the status quo is educating perhaps 20% of its victims - I mean clients - its hard to see any other experiment doing too much worse.) That said, there are some remarkable successes, and I’ll try to line some up here later.
Oops. The quote should read “education research is poorly funded…”