If charter schools served the neediest children, if they recruited the students who had dropped out, if they made an effort to collaborate with public schools in a joint undertaking, they would have a valued place in American education.
But in the current context, they have been turned into a battering ram to compete with public schools and skim the ablest students.
Where will this lead? Will we have a dual school system in ten years, with one system (the charters) for the motivated and able students, and the other system (the public schools) for those who didn’t get into a charter?
Many years ago, Harold Noah–an economist at Teachers College, Columbia –described how the Soviet system eventually reproduced the same class inequities that existed in its schools before the Revolution. How certain schools were set aside for this elite and that elite, and eventually it became impossible to see what had changed.
Are we reverting to the dual system in American education that existed pre-1954? Will there be charter schools in gated communities to keep out the others? And charter schools to skim off the cream in poor communities? And impoverished public schools, overwhelmed by the students with the greatest needs?
A regular reader writes:
Enrollment-skimming, not whether charters provide a better education or get higher test scores, is the fundamental threat posed by charters.
Charters — by definition — populate their student body via enrollment. This means that all of the students in a charter have parents who were sufficiently concerned/functional to pursue/complete the charter application.
In the low-SES areas — where virtually all charters are located — many parents are too unconcerned/dysfunctional to pursue/complete a charter application. The result: Many/most of the children of the concerned/functional parents go to the charters while all of the children of the unconcerned/dysfunctional parents go to the neighborhood schools.
This passive enroll-by-application segregation operates independently of and in addtion to any affirmative discrimination by the charters against the “problem” students (i.e., ESL, LD, behavior problems) in either the application or the expulsion stages.
This passive enroll-by-application segregation practiced by the charters is, in many ways, analogous to the racial segregation practiced by southern school systems before Brown v. Bd. of Ed.
In the case of the racially-segregated schools, the govt created white schools so the white parents could avoid sending their white children to school with the children of black parents. In the case of charters, the govt creates charters so the concerned/functional (albeit low-income) parents can avoid sending their children to school with the children of the unconcerned/dysfunctional parents.
The charter segregation is not as morally reprehensible as the racial segregation, but poses similar threats to society. The charter schools, like the racially-segregated schools, result in a large group of disadvantaged students (the children of the unconcerned/dysfunctional parents like the children of the black parents) being educated in separate schools that are theoretically equal to the charter/white schools but are, in fact, inferior to the charter/white schools.
Society is still paying a high price for its failure adequately to educate generations of black students in the segregated schools. If we continue the charter experiments, society will pay a similar high price for its failure adequately to education generations of children of unconcerned/dysfunctional low-income/inner-city parents in the neighborhood public schools.
Clearly, the socially-responsible approach is to operate a unitary school system while addressing the problems (i.e., misbehavior, low reading levels) posed by the children of unconcerned/dysfunctional parents via school reforms specifically targeting those problems (i.e. improved discipline, improved reading programs) in that unitary school system.
In Trenton, NJ, the only charter that went after those difficult-to-teach students was just closed for not making adequate progress. the property was awarded to another charter operator with ties to Commissioner Cerf. go figure.
The problem with this analysis is does not address the reality that many low-SES parents face. Should they be expected to send their child to a poor performing school filled with many students who because of living conditions they face are unable to meet the challenge of learning? These parents are simply looking for an alternative for their child. I can certainly see the value for arguing in favor of greater charter regulation, or the need to have more general anti-poverty assistance–but the blanket attack on charters smacks of elitism.
They could choose to send them to a low-performing charter school instead.
I think it is more likely they would choose a school that they believed would serve their children better than the school to which they are assigned. It could be a public school if they had any chance of getting in.
Agreed. They could make that mistake. Which is precisely why better regulation of charters is needed, not necessarily elimination.
Why are there more low-performing charter schools than high-performing ones? It is because someone is choosing to send their child there, even though they are no better or worse than the neighborhood public school.
If the school is no better or worse than the public school, they may be sending the student there because it is closer to the home, more convenient hours etc. If it is no better or worse for education, that seems like a reasonable reason for choosing one school over another.
More likely the parents have been fooled by advertisements and false claims to think that the school will get their child into college.
Have economists ever heard of false advertising and phony claims?
No one disagrees that there are many low performing charter schools. But it is disingenuous to argue that there are not high performing charter schools in many communities that are available to low income families. My point is that there are families in economically disadvantaged communities that are fleeing the zoned poor performing school. I think choice, whether through magnet or a regulated charter system would be a positive thing. I think rather than argue against charters in a universal way–a focused recommendation in favor of regulated non-profit charters is a positive thing.
I have never denied the existence of charters with very high test scores. Nor the existence of charters with very low test scores. On average, charters do not get different test scores from public schools. The deeper question, which I raise as a historian, is the value of creating a dual school system–one with selective admissions, self-chosen disciplinary policies, freedom to hire uncertified teachers, and the other tightly regulated by the state and federal government. What is the purpose? No lessons are learned other than the value of “escaping” from the public sector to a privately managed schools that can kick out kids who are troublemakers and exclude non-English-speaking students and kids with special needs.
Parents of course should have choices. But when charters co-locate in a public school, taking away much needed space including the library for their own use, and completely use our tax dollars to renovate their section of the building, that smacks of segregation.
The geographically determined admission criteria for public schools sorts students primarily on the basis of socioeconomic class. If the district has a liberal transfer policy, it is also engaging “passive enroll-by-application segregation” as only the active parents will seek to transfer.
When this statement was originally posted, I asked if magnet public schools, which engage in ACTIVE enrollment segregation, were a problem as well. I did not get a response, though of course I understand I am certainly not entitled to one.
If we’re in service to the students, then we might reconsider forcing all kids into education to begin with. Public education started out (and should have been continued as) free education – not forced education.
If public schools continue to be forced education, I don’t see why we shouldn’t have charter schools that are set up for the so-called “ablest” students.
With the unimpressive performance of charters why do we still talk about a dual system that will replace our current system with charters serving those students who are more motivated and able? With these kinds of statements it feels like an admittance that charters—or some alternative to public education—are somehow inherently better. Is there another way to describe the possible emergence or evolution of a dual system without implying that only the “better” students will go to charters? I ask this because I feel like the US is obsessed with the myth of rags to riches. Framing the argument against a dual system this way seems to only give fuel to conservatives/privatizers whose underlying belief is that those who achieve success deserve it, and those who fail deserve it as well.
You are losing me as you become more and more disillusioned with the prevailing trends in American public education. It is a mess, but it’s reached the point where charter schools may offer the best hope for revitalizing the system.
The bureaucratic education state simply failed to read the signals while there was an opportunity to initiate change from within the system. Ignoring the message of A Nation at Risk had dire consequences. Sad to say, it took a “battering ram” to shake the “Teacher Trust” and produce a “creative disruption.”
Charters have arisen to serve poor, disadvantaged communities and are producing results. That’s what’s really threatening the public school dream of Horace Mann and his successors. Horace’s School has past the point of “compromise” and is losing its place.
I welcomed The Death and Life of the Great American School System because I thought it represented a break with the past. It saddens me to see a fine educational historian like you swept up in the vortex of the conservative-progressive ideological wars and contributing to the cycle of decline. It also amazes me that you have not absorbed the lessons of Kieran Egan’s Getting It Wrong from the Beginning (2003) and his subsequent essay “Why Education is So Complicated.”
American public education is torn between conflicting visions, identified by Kieran Egan, and largely ignored by the current education warriors. It’s obvious that neither the Fordham Institute nor the NEA have the answers. We need to find a “third way” and the seeds were sewn in Egan’s The Future of Education. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDAOKJpg2fM The future lies in breaking out of the mold and seriously considering the potential of “imaginative education.”
Are you gloating that teacher’s are getting what they deserve because the didn’t heed the warnings? I’ll assume better of you and move on.
Thanks for reminding us of Egan. He provokes constructive thought. But how do charter schools help lead us toward schools that eliminate the contradictions he identifies within the present system? How are they superior to traditional public schools in identifying a “third way”?
The unfortunate truth is that education policy discourages fundamental, creative change within traditional public schools, which are subject to top-down prescriptions like those presented in A Nation at Risk (You’re the expert, but I don’t see how you reconcile Egan and the NCEE recommendations at all.). Maybe by defining what traditional schools can’t be, charter schools become our only hope.
Sorry, Mr. Bennett, but I’m going to question your hoary statement that “Charters have arisen to serve poor, disadvantaged communities and are producing results.”
No, they’re not.
The results, according to Stanford University’s (fundamentally conservative) CREDO study was that roughly half of charters perform no better than public schools. 17% were better and almost 4 out of 10 were “significantly worse”.
Yet, people like yourself continue to use this now thoroughly discredited canard about the “success” of charters, over and over, with what…the “hope” that you can hoodwink enough people to believe it if they just hear it enough?
Sorry, sir. You’ll have to do better. And despite whatever ideological difference we might have, you still have an obligation to stay factual and accurate.
The Stanford CREDO study was funded by the ultra conservative Walton Foundation.
The overwhelming preponderance of charter studies find that they get the same results when they enroll the same students.
Some get high scores, some get low scores. Most are no different.
On this blog, I always find the comments to be as enlightening or provocative or noteworthy / remarkable as the original post. Thank you to all.
The writer begins with this paragraph:
“If charter schools served the neediest children, if they recruited the students who had dropped out, if they made an effort to collaborate with public schools in a joint undertaking, they would have a valued place in American education.”
Actually, even when charter schools do an excellent job of teaching low-income, minority students, the teachers’ unions are still against them.
Here is a real world example of a charter school which has done an excellent job of teaching low-income, minority students, As is always the case with successful charter schools, the teachers’ unions want it to be shut down, because they are terrified of competition. The teachers unions want these low-income students to be trapped in the horrible public schools:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122394095677630803.html
OCTOBER 14, 2008
Charter Success in L.A.
School choice in South Central.
This month the Inner City Education Foundation (ICEF), a charter school network in Los Angeles, announced plans to expand the number of public charter schools in the city’s South Central section, which includes some of the most crime-ridden neighborhoods in the country. Over the next four years, the number of ICEF charters will grow to 35 from 13.
The demand for more educational choice in predominantly minority South Los Angeles is pronounced. The waitlist for existing ICEF schools has at times exceeded 6,000 kids. And no wonder. Like KIPP, Green Dot and other charter school networks that aren’t constrained by union rules on staffing and curriculum, ICEF has an excellent track record, particularly with black and Hispanic students. In reading and math tests, ICEF charters regularly outperform surrounding traditional public schools as well as other Los Angeles public schools.
ICEF has been operating since 1994, and its flagship school has now graduated two classes, with 100% of the students accepted to college. By contrast, a state study released in July reported that one in three students in the L.A. public school system — including 42% of black students — quits before graduating, a number that has grown by 80% in the past five years.
Despite this success, powerful unions like the California Teachers Association and its political backers continue to oppose school choice for disadvantaged families. Last year, Democratic state lawmakers, led by Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, tried to force Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign a bill that would have made opening a new charter school in the state next to impossible.
This particular charter school selects its students based on random lottery. Its low-income, minority students do far better than the low income, minority students who had lost the lottery admissions process.
So, as is always the case when a charter school does such an excellent job of teaching low-income, minority students, the teaches’ unions want it to be shut down, because the teachers’ unions are afraid of competition:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703730804576312880501768962.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Harlem Success Academy 1 (founded by Ms. Moskowitz after she left politics), has students who are demographically almost identical to those in nearby schools, yet it gets entirely different results.
Eighty-eight percent of Harlem Success students are proficient in reading and 95% are proficient in math. Six nearby schools have an average of 31% and 39% proficiency in those subjects, respectively. More than 90% of Harlem Success fourth-graders scored at the highest level on New York State’s most recent science tests, while only 43% of fourth-graders citywide did so. Harlem Success’s black students outperformed white students at more than 700 schools across the state. Overall, the charter now performs at the same level as the gifted-and-talented schools in New York City, all of which have demanding admissions requirements. Harlem Success, by contrast, selects its students, mostly poor and minority, by random lottery.
The students in her school are not demographically similar. Her schools have fewer ELLs and special education than nearby public schools.
The article says the students were chosen by random lottery – the ones who attended the charter school did far better than the ones who did not attend the charter school. It was a random lottery, so the two groups were equal.
Why won’t you admit that some charter schools do a great job, and other do a horrible job?
Why do you ignore the successes, and keep insisting that all of them are failures?
I don’t care if a school is public, charter, private, or religious. I just want to make sure that no student is trapped in a bad school, and that every student gets to attend a good school.
I believe the comparison is not with nearby schools, but with students in the city. Does her schools have fewer ELL and special education students than the average school? Knowing how many fewer would also be a very good idea.
The comparison is not with the entire city but with a school sharing the exact same building, PS 149.
Unfortunately the WSJ article is behind a pay wall, but the post talks about comparing the results to more than the socres at PS 149. Is the post incorrect?
Here’s another charter school that has been very successful at teaching low-income, minority students:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-charter31-2009may31,0,6518091,full.story
Spitting in the eye of mainstream education
Three no-frills charter schools in Oakland mock liberal orthodoxy, teach strictly to the test — and produce some of the state’s top scores.
Not many schools in California recruit teachers with language like this: “We are looking for hard working people who believe in free market capitalism. . . . Multi-cultural specialists, ultra liberal zealots, and college-tainted oppression liberators need not apply.”
That, it turns out, is just the beginning of the ways in which American Indian Public Charter and its two sibling schools spit in the eye of mainstream education. These small, no-frills, independent public schools in the hard-scrabble flats of Oakland sometimes seem like creations of television’s “Colbert Report.” They mock liberal orthodoxy with such zeal that it can seem like a parody.
School administrators take pride in their record of frequently firing teachers they consider to be underperforming. Unions are embraced with the same warmth accorded “self-esteem experts, panhandlers, drug dealers and those snapping turtles who refuse to put forth their best effort,” to quote the school’s website.
Students, almost all poor, wear uniforms and are subject to disciplinary procedures redolent of military school. One local school district official was horrified to learn that a girl was forced to clean the boys’ restroom as punishment.
Conservatives, including columnist George Will, adore the American Indian schools, which they see as models of a “new paternalism” that could close the gap between the haves and have-nots in American education. Not surprisingly, many Bay Area liberals have a hard time embracing an educational philosophy that proudly proclaims that it “does not preach or subscribe to the demagoguery of tolerance.”
It would be easy to dismiss American Indian as one of the nuttier offshoots of the fast-growing charter school movement, which allows schools to receive public funding but operate outside of day-to-day district oversight. But the schools command attention for one very simple reason: By standard measures, they are among the very best in California.
The Academic Performance Index, the central measuring tool for California schools, rates schools on a scale from zero to 1,000, based on standardized test scores. The state target is an API of 800. The statewide average for middle and high schools is below 750. For schools with mostly low-income students, it is around 650.
The oldest of the American Indian schools, the middle school known simply as American Indian Public Charter School, has an API of 967. Its two siblings — American Indian Public Charter School II (also a middle school) and American Indian Public High School — are not far behind.
Among the thousands of public schools in California, only four middle schools and three high schools score higher. None of them serve mostly underprivileged children.
At American Indian, the largest ethnic group is Asian, followed by Latinos and African Americans. Some of the schools’ critics contend that high-scoring Asian Americans are driving the high test scores, but blacks and Latinos do roughly as well — in fact, better on some tests.
That makes American Indian a rarity in American education, defying the axiom that poor black and Latino children will lag behind others in school.
“What we’re doing is so easy,” said Ben Chavis, the man who created the school’s success and personifies its ethos… Although he retired in 2007, Chavis remains a presence at the school.
A Lumbee Indian who grew up poor in North Carolina and later struck it rich in real estate, Chavis took over American Indian in 2000
He began by firing most of the school’s staff
All students at American Indian take Algebra 1 in 8th grade, and the school prides itself on its math achievement. Last year, every 8th grader scored “proficient” or better on California’s state algebra test. Statewide, only half the 8th graders even took algebra, and fewer than half of those scored “proficient” or better.
I would encourage the person who posted the article about Ben Chavis’ school to do a bit more research before singing his praises. And check out some videos of Ben Chavis’ remarks on you tube for some eye popping comments
You’ve chosen an outstanding example, Dan. Here’s an update on the California Auditor’s report of criminal fraud and self-enrichment by AIPC founder Chavis.
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/92510/archives/2012/06/18/its-time-to-close-the-american-indian-public-charter-schools
You can Google for mare current links that explain that while it’s also illegal for AIPC to require parents to submit test scores with their child’s application, AIPC claims it’s only to assist in placement and tutoring the for students, if they happen to be randomly selected.
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/92510/archives/2012/06/18/its-time-to-close-the-american-indian-public-charter-schools
The school’s test scores are indeed high. By locating it a few blocks from a high performing elementary school, Chavis is able to win a high scoring student pool specifically by offering a racially exclusive option: the school is 86% Asian American, in a district which is 13% Asian American. Students include not a single self-identified American Indian, by the way.
Racial divisions and fears are certainly available as recruiting tools for Charter School charlatans, and by publicly promoting his intolerance, Chavis can assure undesirable diversity isn’t a problem for him. His students and Oakland’s community are his victims and cash-cows.
My apologies. Here’s the correct link for the test-score discussion:
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/are-american-indian-public-charter-schools-test-scores-inflated/Content?oid=3233632
Parents, not teachers’ unions, should be the ones who decide what’s best for their children. Your article shows that there is controversy over American Indian Public Charter. Of course different people will have different opinions of it. But ultimately, parents should be the ones who decide where their children go to school. if the school is as bad as teachers’ unions claim, then parents wouldn’t be fighting to hard to send their children to it. The real concern of the teachers’ unions is that they are afraid of competition. It’s the parents who care about their children.
Hahahaha! You have been hoaxed. Ben Chavis, the founder of the American Indian Charter School, is under investigation as a result of audits finding millions of dollars missing. Do you trust the test scores? And by the way, there are almost no American Indians at the American Indian Charter School. http://www.insidebayarea.com/top-stories/ci_20850728
If he embezzled money, he should be charged and tried in criminal court.
I can now understand why you are skeptical of the test scores. The only way to know for certain is to have someone else – someone with no personal involvement in this – give the students a brand new test. If they are as smart as the school claims, they should have no trouble with this. On other other hand, if the students can’t replicate their high scores on a new test, then yes, some adult altered the results of the original test.
As far as there being almost no American Indians – many schools have names that are symbolic, and should not be taken literally.
Did the late Albert Shanker actually say, “”When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of schoolchildren.” So much for unions caring about the kids. There’s blame enough to go around.
No, he didn’t. The primary source for that quotation was a scurrilous anti-union pamphlet, not Shanker, and the “quote” has been thoroughly debunked.
Shanker wrote and spoke volumes, literally. it’s dishonest and contemptible to resort to fictional attributions of the form “did he actually say….”
Shame on you, George.
Why build separate schools for a select few? Why create separate laws and separate governing bodies for these schools? Why not change existing laws for ALL schools?? What the hell kind of country are we living in where our tax dollars can be used to operate a school that is not open to all children??? I have always considered myself lucky to have been educated in a post-segregation American school system. Unfortunately, it is starting to look as if my children won’t be so lucky. I won’t allow this to happen in my community.
“Why build separate schools for a select few?”
The people who support charter schools want to build enough of them so that all children have the choice to attend them.
It’s the opponents of charter schools who are trying to keep them limited to the “select few.”
Another missing comment here, a fairly short one. Has it been removed?
I will try posting the essence of the comment again. A zoned public school is only available to the students who live in close geographical proximity to the school. It is not open to all children. This has lead to a wide differences in the profile of students within my school district and even wider when you look at the differences between school districts.
i am afraid that we are slowly reversing our social history by going back to a time of segregation in schools (however, this time based on socio-economic class and not race) the segregation will trickle into our society and eventually we will become an entirely two-tier system, not only for education, but for an entire way of life. the gap between the have and the have not’s will continue to get bigger and bigger and down the road we won’t be discussing the education achievement gap, but we will be talking about an entire life chasm that further separates and divides this country. civil war II, anyone?
The title of this blog posting is “The Charter School Threat to American Society.”
“Threat?”
To whom exactly are charter schools a “threat”?
Well, I think that we can all agree that bad charter schools are a threat.
But to whom exactly are good charter schools a “threat”?
Good charter schools are certainly not a “threat” to the students who attend them.
The only people who view good charter schools as a “threat” are the teachers’ unions, the people who work in colleges’ education departments, the public education bureaucrats, and the various radical leftists who support them.
So, it occurred to me that the author of this blog must belong to that group.
So I looked at her about page, and it says:
“I am a historian of education and Research Professor of Education at New York University. I was born in Houston, Texas, attended the Houston public schools from kindergarten through high school, and graduated from Wellesley College in 1960. I received my Ph.D. in the history of American education in 1975.”
So I was right.
In at least one other post in one of her blogs, I pointed out how the people who work within the educational system are far more likely to send their own children to private schools. Source: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/sep/22/20040922-122847-5968r/?page=all
So let’s see if the author of this blog fits into that category.
She writes on her about page:
“I am the mother of two sons. They went to private schools in New York City.”
Good. Good for her. I am glad that she chose to send her own children to private school. I am glad that she did not send them to the horrible public schools.
Obviously, the writer of this blog did not view it as a “threat” to send her own children to a private school.
So, why does the writer of this blog want other people’s children to be trapped in horrible public schools?
The real “threat” is not the good charter schools. Instead, the real “threat” is the teachers’ unions, the people who work in colleges’ education departments, the public school bureaucrats, and their supporters, who want to force children to stay trapped in horrible public schools, and who oppose the good charter schools. That’s the real “threat.”
I am appalled with this outrageous post. You haven’t been looking at some of the amazing success coming out of blended learning environments such as the Carpe Diem Schools. I guess you have been looking at only the problem children. Why is it that you have this disdain for any change to public education? Why is it that protectors of the status quo look at change as a threat and not as an opportunity? Why do you scare your readers and tell them that charter schools are the equivalent of the evil empire?
We wouldn’t be having this conversation if public schools would have reinvented their “system” and embraced the opportunities that digital learning provide our youth. Instead, you make bold generalizations about a new type of public option for students. Just like there are several types of public schools, there are several types of charter schools. Since most communities have underperforming schools, then it is clear that our parents deserve other public options because only through this type of mechanism will public schools fix their broken system. This is Economics 101, Ms. Ravitch. And please don’t go down the path that public education isn’t a market. It is – albeit, a highly regulated one. Try telling the textbook publishers who control more than 80% of the market and generate more than $3 billion in annual profits from K-12 that it isn’t a market. Monopolies only act in the best interests of themselves and will do anything they can to protect their monopoly power. And they don’t innovate.
Again, your logic is flawed, and I am very much interested in what this “education historian” has to say. Racial segregation, huh? Don’t think so. I have been to several charter schools, and to tell you the truth, our public education system has disadvantaged them the worst of all.
Charters are a threat to the idea of equality in education, because they only serve those children whose parents are capable of looking for “choices” for their children. Public school children of parents who do not research choices, are left behind in underfunded public schools.
So pleased the direction of public education is being discussed among thoughtful folks. I am definitely wondering where the current schooling trends will lead in terms of building or “ignoring” our democracy with its inherent potential for increasing opportunities for all. “Radical openness” is probably the way of the future – not only in culture, but also in schooling – question: how can we, as a concerned society, promote both innovation/creativity AND social justice while still preserving the best consequences of choice AND our shared commons?
Having just returned from visiting charter schools in New Orleans, I could not possibly disagree more with Ms. Ravitch’s opinions. Make no mistake, this is hyperbole at its highest level and in no way represents what is actually happening in many urban communities today. Of course charter schools are not a magic bullet, and there are charter schools that fail. But charters also provide innovation and autonomy, which has facilitated the quick turnaround of some of the nation’s lowest performing schools. Go visit SciAcademy, or John McDonogh High School and see for yourself. You will find highly dedicated educators working in some of the most complex neighborhoods in the country, and they are improving the lives of inner-city kids. The best part is that, if they can do it in a city that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina just 7 years ago, then it can be done in every city throughout the United States. The only stopping us is our own narrow thinking, and outdated policies that protect the status quo. Ms Ravitch contends that, “the socially-responsible approach is to operate a unitary school system”. But in reality, the opposite is true. We need to remove bureaucratic layers that restrict innovation, and give schools autonomy instead. The United States is a diverse nation, with distinct regional and cultural influences. The one-size fits all school district is an outdated model that has only worked for some. It’s time we allow site-based decision making, and empower educators at the school level. Charter schools may not be a panacea, but they are having a positive effect on public education in communities like New Orleans.
Yes, you can find a few charter schools in New Orleans that are performing reasonably well. But the facts about the system as a whole tell a very different story. Last year, the state assigned a “D” or “F” to 79% of the state-run charters. Shocking, isn’t it, given the hyperbole about the New Orleans “miracle”? The state-run school district in New Orleans ranked second to last in the state. Charters that do well simply skim off and retain the best performing students (Sci-Academy has a 27% attrition rate from 9th to 12th grade and suspended 38% of all of its students last year–something they left out of your guided tour of the school). Charters systematically discriminate against special needs students–some, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, expelled more than half of their special needs students. The progress in the aggregate in the state takeover schools is neither unprecedented or remarkable: students scores were rising 5% a year before Katrina and the rate of progress has not increased in six years. The price we pay for privatization is that the public does not govern or control a single charter school–though we pay for them and are forced to send our children to them. The state abolished all neighborhood schools so children are bused miles from home. For statistics on these and other issues, just google “Research on Reforms.” The next time you visit New Orleans, ask to visit one of the remaining public schools where charters dump students they think will bring down test scores: there you will find 80% test failure rates and 100% of the students in D or F schools.
I’m not at all shocked by the state’s assigned ranking. Every school leader we met with acknowledged that they still have a long way to go. What we heard is that charter schools have taken failing schools, and turned them into good schools. For example, at John McDonogh Senior High, the graduation rate was 45.6% in 2011. Based on test results, attendance figures and dropout rates — it had one of the lowest academic ratings in the state. So a ‘D’ rating would be huge improvement for John McDonogh and many other turnaround schools.
I think you got the Potemkin Village tour.
Why don’t you ask Lance Hill to show you what is happening in the majority of New Orleans’ charter schools?
I would love to go school by school to unravel the data smoke screen.
But my question is this: if you visited one high-performing public school, would you conclude that all public schools in that district were successes? Why is it that charter advocates use anecdotal evidence about charters to make their argument yet refuse to accept the same anecdotal evidence for assessing all public schools? Why the double standard?
There were successful public schools in New Orleans before Katrina, but that does not mean it was a successful system. Now that the charters have been revealed to be a mirage and not a miracle, all the charter operators justify six years of failure as a result of “a long way to go.” .Would we accept that excuse from a public school principal?
I am a public school high school teacher in inner city Philadelphia.Some of my classes have had up to 40% Special Ed students. This is because poor families who live in disadvantaged communities have a higher proportion of children with special needs. These parents cannot choose for their children because many are not equipped to make sound decisions for them. Parents who are uneducated do not research choices for their children-they send them to neighborhood public schools. In addition, many of my students don’t even live with their parents, they live on a friend’s couch, in shelters, or in foster homes. Many charter schools exclude kids with special needs and ELL students. Of course a school will be more successful if it has a student body with a smaller number of children with emotional and behavioral problems. Public school teachers see charters as exclusionary and discriminatory to those children who have no one to advocate for them.