Review
of The Charter School Dust-Up
Reviewed By Merri Rosenberg
The
Charter School Dust-Up: Examining The Evidence On Enrollment & Achievement
by Martin Carnoy, Rebecca Jacobsen, Lawrence
Mishel and Richard Rothstein.
Economic Policy Institute (Washington, D.C.)
and Teachers College Press (New York, NY). 2005: 186 pp |
There is more than a touch of Schadenfreude in this seemingly objective, scholarly
book analyzing the relative effectiveness of charter schools compared to regular
public schools.
And
honestly, why shouldn’t
there be?
When charter schools came onto the national educational scene,
critics of neighborhood public schools hailed charter schools for their innovative
potential and liberation from bureaucratic inefficiencies. Charter schools
were seen as the savior for those students most at risk. Politicians, especially
those whose agenda supported school vouchers, eagerly embraced charter schools
as a shining alternative to the benighted public schools that were often held
in scorn.
Guess
what? Charter schools, according to a provocative report released in the
summer of 2004 by the American Federation of Teachers, using test results
from the federal government’s
National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), aren’t better than
public schools at improving student performance and raising student achievement. Not
surprisingly, passionate advocates of the charter school movement immediately
responded, challenging the methodology of the NAEP study and—in an irony
not lost on the authors of this book—questioning the very validity of
testing accountability being applied to charter schools. (They, of course,
had no problem using accountability for regular public schools.)
This
book, then, is a systematic, scholarly attempt to discover whether in fact
the charter school advocates’ complaints are justified—or
whether, indeed, charter schools aren’t living up to their hype. It’s
not meant for the casual reader, but for those educational leaders–school
superintendents, principals, advisers and analysts to political figures–who
have to grapple with these issues.
Although
this book focuses on the charter school versus public school debate, many
of the issues it raises have serious implications for those concerned with
the relentless focus on accountability that drives No Child Left Behind.
Recognizing the limits of data is important—for example,
the authors agree that it’s simplistic to look at relatively crude indicators
of student and family socio-economic status. Far better, they suggest, to closely
examine the complexities of a student’s family background, and to recognize
that it is a complex variable. Similarly, the authors urge that changes in
test scores matter when the same students are observed year-to-year, not when
different groups of students are measured on a standardized test.
Charter
school advocates have often claimed that these schools educate the “disadvantaged of the disadvantaged.” Not
so, say these authors: “At least for states for which data have been
analyzed, charter school students from racial or ethnic minority groups are
probably at least as advantaged as regular public school students from the
same racial or ethnic groups and, in many cases, probably more so.” Which,
logically, should translate into better performance from the charter schools–but
doesn’t, according to these authors’ careful analysis.
In a fascinating discussion of the KIPP schools, the authors
found through interviews with regular public school teachers who recommended
students for these particular charter school programs, the students tended
to go into the charter school with “better-than-average
test scores and parents who cared, motivated parents.” That
flies in the face of arguments made by many charter school advocates who insist
that charter schools attract students who are less adept academically.
In
fact, say these authors, there is “no consistent anecdotal
or systematic evidence to support the claim than, on average, charter schools
recruit students who are more challenged academically than those in traditional
public schools serving the same student pool.”
At
best, charter schools’ student performance is about
the same as public school students’ performance on standardized tests
(there are, as always, some exceptions)–but usually it’s lower.
And the authors think “the real question that charter school supporters
should confront is...whether the underperformance of some charter schools is
a price worth paying for the overperformance of others. This is a much trickier
public policy issue, and there is no easy answer to it.”
Ultimately,
the authors conclude that, “It seems, therefore,
that charter schools are not, and likely will not be, able to play a large
role in reforming public education as a whole.”
Provocative stuff...and well worth reading carefully.#
