Julia Sass Rubin, a professor of public policy in New Jersey, took a close look at the CREDO study of charter schools and made a startling discovery: the press release misrepresents the findings of the study.
It recognized the dramatic demographic differences between the students in public schools and in charter schools (“the traditional public schools it looked at served four and a half times as many students with Limited English Proficiency and one and a half times as many special-needs students as did the charter schools”) but ignored the severity of students’ disability or language difficulty.
This is an excerpt from her longer analysis. Rubin wrote:
“The CREDO press release claimed that “New Jersey charter public schools significantly outperform their district school peers.” However, this is not even remotely what the CREDO study found.
“First, the CREDO study looked at only about half of New Jersey’s charter schools (46 out of 86).
Second, the study excluded another quarter of the state’s charter school students (23 percent), particularly those from groups that score lower on standardized test scores (students who have to repeat a grade, students with special needs, and students with limited knowledge of English).
Third, the study did not include students who had left charter schools. This is especially problematic given the significant attrition levels at the highest scoring charter schools, with the most academically challenged students the most likely to leave.
“So what did the CREDO study find about the performance of the remaining students?
“The vast majority of charter school students performed worse or at the same level as students in the traditional public schools from which they came (70 percent lower or same in math and 60 percent lower or same in reading).
“The charter school students who performed better were located almost exclusively in Newark, while charter school students in other cities and rural areas consistently and significantly underperformed their traditional public school peers.
“The charter school students who performed better did so only for their first two years at the charter school, while their third year performance was actually worse than their traditional public school counterparts.
“In other words, the study looked at a limited sample of charter school students, excluding those most likely to be academically challenged, and still found that only a minority of those students outperformed their traditional public school counterparts, and only for some of the years studied.
“Which brings us back to the first question: How can an institution that claims to be academically objective put out a press release that is so misleading about the study’s findings?”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How can they, indeed!? And when is the public going to wake up to this tsunami of lies and misrepresentations? It’s unbelievable.
Personally, from a classroom teacher of 42 years, I would like to say “thank you” for speaking out!
Diane-
I just sent this email to the contact person on the press release to see if they might have an answer to the questions raised by Ms. Rubin. If I hear back I’ll pass along the response… or maybe she’ll correspond directly with you or Ms. Rubin.
To: mcotter@stanford.edu
I am an avid reader of Diane Ravitch’s blog and wonder what your response might be to this blog post and the analysis cited in the post? Here’s the link to the post?
And here’s the link to the analysis:
http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/12/12/06/opinion-credo-s-study-of-charter-schools-in-nj-leaves-many-unanswered-questions/
I am confident that Ms. Ravitch would be happy to post your responses to these questions. Absent a response, I think Ms. Ravitch’s readers will conclude that there is some bias in the research or in the framing of the results of the research.
I will be happy to print a response if I or you get it.
Meanwhile, regardless of the correctness of this post, the national CREDO study has been the #1 research weapon of the anti-charter movement. I’m curious to see if that changes.
Many people were surprised to see such a strong critique of charters from a Walton-funded study. That’s what gave the 2009 CREDO study its cache. I like Macke Raymond and I know she stands behind those findings. She told me so. Nonetheless, it is always important when comparing charters and public schools to know if the same students are enrolled in both. When they are not, then it is a comparison of apples and oranges.
Reblogged this on ipledgeafallegiance and commented:
Because I am from New Jersey and spent 33 years teaching in its public schools this post was very interesting to me. It also represents a trend that began during the last few years of my career, that being a misrepresentation of the facts about teaching, learning and schools.
Yes, until people understand that the basis of all the blather about test scores is fundamentally wrong in the sense that the whole process of educational standards and standardized testing has so many errors (as proven by Noel Wilson) that it renders the whole process completely invalid we will be stuck with all the accompanying mental masturbation that is the current discussion.
Yeah, I’ve got an attitude tonight because I am completely frustrated by the fact that most in education, even the “good guys” here on this site, refuse to go to the root of the problem, which is what Wilson has shown to be a complete falsehood, with all this data driven bullshit.
Until we go to the root of the problem we do harm to the students, plain and simple.
Oh, you’re a “D” student, or oh you’re “not proficient”. It’s all bullshit. Why do we even have these types of discussions????
Duane, we have conversed online before, I agree with many of your comments. Can you give me a location for Wilson’s research in print with his references?
The Forward Institute of Wisconsin performed a study on school achievements, looking at both public and charter institutions. I would love if you would take the time to review our findings and report on them.
Our results can be found at: http://forwardinstitutewi.org/wisconsin-report-card-study-2012/
Thank you!
Nathaniel Haack
Secretary, Forward Institute
will do
I don’t need a study to tell me charters are no better. I’ve already seen it firsthand. It’s all a big farce.
As this blog is about “A site to discuss better education for all”, why no discussion of what’s going on in Newark? Doesn’t fit the agenda?
There have been many discussions of what’s going on in Newark.
Since I don’t live in Newark, I rely on others to forward posts.
One of my favorites is Jersey Jazzman.
John,
Professor Bruce Baker has looked extensively at what’s going on in Newark with charter schools. He found that the segregation between charter schools and public schools by special needs, language proficiency and income was resulting in a concentration of the most challenging students in the public schools, but with many fewer resources to fund their education.
See here: http://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2012/08/06/effects-of-charter-enrollment-on-newark-district-enrollment/
That was helpful, thanks. I still think that there are some excellent charters getting great results in NJ and that the study clearly shows that. We should be looking at what is going right instead of dismissing results because they are charters.
How many studies do we need to find out that charter schools are just a financial scam? If you use what I call the “Correction Factor” charter schools do not do so well. This allows for charter schools avoiding most ed code and local regulation, cherry picking parents and students, not dealing with behavioral problems, ESL and special education. When these parameters are factored in to the difference between charter schools and regular public schools charter schools do not do so well. Even without that factor according to the Stanford Study they still do not do so good. Then there is the recent, Sept. 2012 DOE OIG report on the total lack of accountability for charter schools in Florida, Arizona and California. This report is DOE-OIG/A02L0002. Take a good look and then talk about the wonderfulness of charter schools and how accountable they are. How can you hold a public institution accountable when you cannot look at their financial records as it is with charter schools. All you have a legal right to look at is their tax returns. That is how they caught Steve Barr of Green Dot.