So I love flipboard, as a news aggregator it is fabulous. the presentation is pretty the categories are useful, and the articles tend to be stuff I don't find at the other websites I check out for news, it makes me happy, Until I stumble upon an article that just makes my blood boil, then I can't sleep at night, I can't focus on my job. I must be a moron, where so much of my contentment and sense of self can be derailed by more charter school cheerleading in the form of the newest CREDO study.
Sigh. I hate charter schools, not for what they were envisioned to be, but for the cesspools of test prep and financial corruption they have become. There are charters in this country that focus on interesting and valuable things, special education, the arts, engineering, emotional support, and those can be valuable and important parts of a rich tapestry of public education. But what you generally are discussing when you discuss "Charters" is a test prep factory whose board and or sponsors and or management company has a purpose of stealing money from the public under the guise of educating your children better. When in reality, all they are doing is segregating our schools further, giving parents of many colors the option to get away from "those" children. The individuals you grow up to step on on your way to the top.
So naturally while perusing business insider the other night on my Flipoard, I saw the linked article and immediately began crying. Everything I have thought and felt all these years was wrong, my hatred for charters was misplaced, I was contributing to holding back the impoverished from achieving their potential. It was so obvious (see what I did there) how did I miss it. Shame on me, shame on me. Then my pride kicked in, and having been a former urban public school teacher I got pissed. Who were they to think they were better then me, this had to be some high class bullshit.
So I did something we never do, but we all should do. I opened the study and read it. Seems pretty convincing, maybe I was wrong. I wanted to be sure though, so I opened the technical appendix and was greeted with some math that was mostly beyond me (I love statistics, but it is not my specialty, education is) but I kept going, moving on to the details of their categorization of students, and it was there I found some information that leads me to the conclusion that we must discuss this study with all that it tells us and all that it misses, and it is not some wild flying piece of evidence that confirms the beliefs of policy makers and rich hedge fund managers everywhere.
First my usual disclaimer. Test scores are so limited it hurts. Using a test score to make a determination about your education level, about your readiness for society, about how functional you will be when you grow into an adult, is tantamount measuring someones height when you want to determine their weight. It might be a nice piece of information when trying to decide if they are overweight, but it is not the most important piece of evidence, by far. That said, we live in a world where test scores are our mode of argument (damn economists) so let's argue on that basis.
As I see it there are three main points of criticism that are not addressed by the techniques used in the CREDO study, and therefore in my opinion render their conclusions limited, and their evidence of little value for policy decisions moving forward.
First is the issue of poverty. the CREDO study makes the claim that charter schools can improve the test scores of students while servicing similar amounts of students in poverty. to make this claim they use the number of students qualifying for Free or Reduced lunch. To be fair to CREDO that is our standard measure of "poverty" in public schools, and it isn't great, but it does give us a common place to being our discussion. But, there have been some (I'm looking at you Jersey Jazzman) who have convincingly made the point that free lunch, is significantly different then reduced lunch and one of the new games charter schools play is to grab kids from poverty for their stats, but focus on the students who qualify for reduced lunch, making their outside of school challenges just a little easier. and in the world of statistical significance over large sample sizes, the smallest change can be important.
I'm not saying that the schools in the CREDO study serve more reduced price then free lunch students, I'm saying they don't address it, and before we bow down to this study as the answer to all our prayers, or the panacea that ails our country, we better find out if it is the case. Because to assume the only place it matters is in Newark NJ where the Jersey Jazzman did his work, would be Niave.
Second is the issue of special education. All teachers in public schools are quite familiar with the challenges presented by IEP's, as inclusion is the model of the day. What any teacher will tell you is that not all special education students present the same challenges in the classroom on a daily basis. there is a great difference between a student who has a high level of intellectual ability, but a slow processing speed, and a student who has the social development of a 3rd grader in a 10th grade classroom. There is a great difference in need and accomadation between a student with ADD who might need frequent refocusing, and a student with social emotional issues so severe they barely attend class because they are fighting the strongest demons of depression or worse. Not the CREDO study though, those students are all the same, and charter schools serve "Special education students" better then public school. If you believe that then I have a bridge in NY to sell you.
Not all special education students are created equal, but all should be educated fairly. Charter schools create a separation of students where, "normal" (whatever that means) students don't have to be educated with "those"students. The CREDO study makes the claim that charters in the urban environment to a better job with special education students then urban public schools. Except they never make an effort to classify the types of special education students by need. Again the excellent work of the Jersey Jazzman (at this point I might as well sell him a controlling interest in my blog) points out that while charter schools can (they don't always) serve a comparable percentage of students with disabilities, you must look closer at the types of disabilities they service, not something the CREDO study bothers to do.
If they can't/wont't service students with the most challenging disabilities, what can we really learn about improving education from them? What replicable lessons can we learn from what they do? Or is it just more propaganda to funnel money away from public schools and into the coffers of the hedge fund managers who support these schools? Is it just a legal and acceptable way to recreate segregation in the public school, but this time not just by race but by disability as well?
Final criticism is retention. Charter schools as a whole do a horrible job retaining students. Many charter schools only admit students for the first few years of their schooling, refusing to add students at the higher grades (imagine you move into a town and the public school says sorry, we can't take your kid because they haven't been with us the whole time. 1. ouch 2. think that doesn't effect test scores? but I digress). Charter schools regularly have their class sizes shrink by 50% or more by the time those students are taking the tests that matter. (suspcious, no of course not, look over here at this bad bad public school) and in some cases don't even try to hide it. (google search success academy attrition there are too many articles to link)
The CREDO study does make some attempt to address this fact, but it misses a clearly salient point, are these charter schools through their policies that lead to student attrition artificially selecting for students who have some trait that aids them in doing better on tests? It is entirely reasonable that some social skill developed by these students makes them more skilled in test taking, and/or learning in a way that directly correlates to test success. Something the article doesn't even think about.
So what we have here is a study that some policy maker, or some charter school advocate is oing to grab onto as THE piece of evidence that proves that public schools are the worst and charter schools are the best, and if you disagree then you are a stinky face poopy head. Unfortunately not enough people will look closely at the study and really think about the information that is missing.
Of course the biggest flaw in all of this is the base assumption that whatever skills or educational techniques that are required to succeed on these tests are something we want for our children, are something we want in our population, in our workforce, for ourselves. With all the flaws that can be pointed out in this study, that is the single most important question that is never asked, is this really what we want for ourselves and our children?
It almost seems....obvious... that that should be answered first
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