Please read this article about an important new book by Christopher and Sarah Lubienski, scholars at the University of Illinois.
Their book is The Public School Advantage: Why Public Schools Outperform Private Schools.
The article contains an interview with Christopher Lubienski, in which he explains their “counterintuitive” findings.
Here is a sampling:
IDEAS: The thought of a “public school advantage” seems counterintuitive, and as you mention in the book it was initially a surprise to you, too. What did the data show?
LUBIENSKI: We know that private school students tend to score higher than students in public schools. But we also know that these are different populations, and they have different selection criteria. So we looked at the demographics of the different students in these nationally representative data sets, and we found those demographics more than explain the student achievement patterns….We focused specifically on mathematics, because math achievement is a better reflection of the school effects rather than the other subjects, like reading, which are often reflective of what the students are learning at home….Once we actually delved into those achievement statistics, public schools turned out to be more effective. Public school students are outscoring their demographic counterparts in private schools…at a level that is comparable to a few weeks to several months.
IDEAS: So public school students might be months ahead of their peers. And what about charter schools?
LUBIENSKI: They were already scoring beneath public schools before you control for demographics….But even once you control for those demographics, charter schools were still performing at a level lower than public schools, by as much as several months.
This is a book that Arne Duncan and every state and local superintendent should read.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The idea that Duncan and superintendents should read this book assumes they are interested in improving education. That is a mistake. They are interested in privatization, and the profits that enables.
Here we go again. We just show proff that test scores are not an indicator of achievement, and then we use test scores to show public is better. Hypocritical. Either the scores are achievement or they aren’t. No wonder no one believes us.STOP LYING TO THE PEOPLE. THE TEST IS NOT, I SAY, NOT AN INDICATOR OF ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT! This is http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/accountability-with-honor-and-yes-we.html
The point, I think, is that by the DOE’s own measures, public schools are better than charters–there is an advantage students receive from public school attendance. I didn’t read anything here about how standardized tests are the holy grail. I also didn’t read anything about how standardized tests are without value.
“I also didn’t read anything about how standardized tests are without value.”
You may not have read it but I’m not sure how something can have value when it is competely invalid.
I don’t see the hypocrisy. We’re fighting a multi-front war.
There’s nothing wrong with arguing that, by their own narrow measures, those who attack public schools as failing are wrong. It looks like the book Diane is talking about corroborates the argument she makes in Reign of Error. Because the “reformers” have manufactured the current conventional wisdom, this is a message that needs to be directed at policy makers and media figures alike.
But this message is separate from the argument that standardized tests don’t actually measure student learning or student achievement. To me this is an obvious truth that’s been proven time and again, in theory and in practice. Policy makers and media figures need to hear this as well.
I don’t think there’s any conflict between the two arguments. They’re just two dimensions of the complex misunderstanding that passes for public debate on education these days. It’s just another front in the war.
An even more important front: how to foster true learning and true achievement in schools. For me, that should be the goal, and that’s where our resources should be focused. To that end we need to bring to bear both enlightened social policy (again, see Reign of Error) and constructive pedagogy (see writers like Gary Stager; see also the critics of the Common Core Standards).
Focusing on the “measurement of outcomes” is a fool’s errand. Unfortunately, that’s where the money is. Diane often invokes Campbell’s Law. Here’s a simpler formulation for everybody, Goodhart’s Law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” That’s NCLB and RTTT and all the other wrongheaded “reform” ideas in a nutshell.
There’s nothing hypocritical about invoking these ideas while at the same time pointing out that the “reformers” continually fail at their own game.
Agreeing with Cap Lee on this…aren’t we told over and over here that test scores don’t matter, that they aren’t a valid description of schools, that students who score well on test scores don’t necessarily have needed skills?
But when a comparison has results some people like, then yes, apparently, test scores are important.
One other point…district & charter public schools vary widely. I’ve been in district & charter public schools all over the nation…they vary widely in philosophy, instructional practices, curriculum etc.
Trying to compare district and charters on tests is like trying to compare mileage of rental & leased cars. Not a meaningful comparison.
We should be using a variety of measures, including many developed by great groups like the Rochester NY SWS & Ann Cook & her colleagues at Urban Academy in NYC, plus Hope Survey at Mn New Country School – and learning from a variety of outstanding district & charter public schools.
Joe, the point is that some evidence demonstrates that public schools are doing better than advertised by policymakers by the metric that policymakers value.
I don’t value test scores but it’s like beating them at the game where they created the rules. It’s a schadenfreude experience.
I agree with much of the rest of your post but all I hear is test scores, test scores, test scores. In newspapers. As a justification for our policies and attacking failing schools and so on. Test scores are the driver of this argument from those that make the decisions. (Didn’t Arne Duncan just use PISA scores as a further way to promote CCSS?)
It doesn’t matter, Diane. They’ve moved the goalposts on charters and vouchers for private schools. We were measuring on standardized tests until it became clear that public schools were hitting the number ed reformers put in place. Not surprising really. My kid does a LOT of standardized testing under the last decade of ed reform. I imagine he’s improving his skills. I think he’ll be ready to proctor a standardized test by high school, which may come in handy because ed reformers keep cutting public school budgets.
Now it’s all about choice 🙂
Unless you choose one of the public schools ed reformers have designated “failing”. Then it’s not about “choice” it’s (again) about standardized test scores.
And if standardized tests and “choice” don’t get you where you want to go there’s the all-purpose fall-back, which is “great schools!”
“The education secretary however dodged questions on a local hot topic, charter schools. Asked what he thought of CPS’ proposal to open 21 new charters after closing more the 52 regular schools, Duncan said he’s for anything that will improve results for students, but that the proportion of charters to regular schools was a local issue he has no control over.
“So many of these fights are the wrong fights,” Duncan said. “There is one common
enemy — that’s academic failure. We just need more high performing schools in every neighborhood. I don’t think you should close one in favor of another. I think you need look at how you replicate fantastic schools.”
To quote David Coleman (but in nicer words), “Who cares what he thinks?”
If you want high performing schools, the first thing to do is get rid of charter schools. The next is to make sure that school districts are funded equitably and that teachers have good working conditions and strong unions.
Actually, Minnesota gives more dollars to schools serving high percentages of low income and limited English speaking students. That helps but has not solved all the problems.
“Equitably” is not the same as “equally”. Giving more money to schools serving higher needs students would be equitable.
Minnesota does give more $ to those schools.
Perhaps, Joe, but what about the substantial private funding that almost all charters receive, combined with the fact that the overwhelming majority of charters serve different populations than real public schools (and, no matter what you may say, charters are not public schools).
@ michael fiorillo
The charter school my son attends is taught by a teacher who receives a paycheck from my school district, on the same salary scale as my paycheck. The school is administered by the same superintendent of schools and reports to the same BOE as the other schools in the district. The kids take the same standardized tests as the kids in the other schools and have the same days off. The school is housed in a district middle school. How is it not a public school?
@daveeckstrom…I guess the question for me is who pays the head of that charter school, and where does the money come from that funds the charter school. If the answer is the money to pay the head and school, in general, comes from the district at the same pay scale as other principals in the district, then you appear to have a truly public charter school, much like Al Shanker proposed way back. Not all charters are for profit, just way too many.
Prominent reformers make a practice of serial testifying against equitable funding in courts (including the Supreme Court of the United States) where lawsuits have been brought seeking more equitable funding. They testify that funding methods are a state’s rights issue and that furthermore their studies tell them that equitable funding is “inefficient” and produces “inconsistent” results. Instead, they recommend getting rid of unions and firing teachers whose students get the lowest scores over several years in a row. This they claim would be a sure-fire, cost-free, efficient method to improve school performance without harming or raising taxes for anyone, despite the fact that it has not worked in the 10 years it has been tried. I am not making this up!
What is worse is that many courts have bought this convenient argument, including the Supreme Court of the United States in a five-to-four decisions with the majority opinion written by Justice Alito that cited the opinion of the “reformers.”
I have read the work in question.
From the back cover of THE PUBLIC SCHOOL ADVANTAGE:
“This important book provides clear evidence that the ‘free-market model’ of schooling does not match the hype of the privatization movement. It demonstrates that public education is a valuable and successful institution. It must be protected and strengthened, not privatized.”
This blurb brought to you by: “Diane Ravitch, author of Reign of Error.”
IMHO, the value of the book is not in destroying the most critical argument that the leading charterites/privatizers bring up, i.e., the alleged failure of public schools to produce high test scores—or at least that the public sector “under-performs” the charterite/privatized sector when it comes to raising test scores.
Rather, it is in explaining the mindset behind the self-styled “education reform” movement, which I would label [I agree, a tendentious phrase] an unwavering belief that “unfettered greed will answer every need.”
Read it for yourselves.
Make up your own minds.
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One key advantage that they have is not having to re-invent the wheel.
I don’t think pointing to better public school performance, as measured by tests, is contrary to Ms. Ravitch’s view. Instead, it shows that even as judged by “reformer’s” preferred metric of success, the scores on standardized tests show public schools are better.
Reformers insist over and over again that test scores matter and can be valid measures of student learning teacher value, etc. When Ms Ravitch brings up those studies here, it is to demonstrate that even by their own yardstick, “reform” doesn’t measure up.
As to the Parent Choice argument: That argument doesn’t work so well when every school is required to test using the state test, designed by a distant test-maker to align with Common Core, and parents are having the new deeply flawed Common Core curriculum forced into their schools, regardless of the local fervor against it. It appears “reformers” are against choice of curriculum. Although I suppose school board will have a choice of spending ther ed dollars on I-pads, Murdoch’s Amplify tablets, or windows tablets to implement the Common Core computerized worksheets and mandated computerized Common Core tests.
Brooklyn mom is correct. The reformers insist again and again that only test scores matter. They also insist that they matter more than teacher preparation or background and, especially, more than money expended on the schools.
Most of the reformers are generously funded by people with a large financial interest in the manufacture and selling of standardized tests and the computer hardware on which to administer, store, and harvest (for profit) the information gleaned from such standardized tests, as it happens.
They want to privatize social dollars from taxation for a steady stream of private gain.
Brooklyn mom: in baseball, your three paragraphs are what’s known as a “four-bagger.”
You’re at the plate. Bases loaded. You hit a home run. Four runs score.
Outstanding!
😎
Frequently we are told that tests are invalid, they measure unimportant things.
It doesn’t matter than Finland did not do so well on recent international tests, because the tests are not important. Having high scores is not an important goal.
Ignore results of studies that come to conclusions about tests that we don’t like.
Then we’re told – when we like the results of tests, they matter.
Cap, I don’t think Diane is being hypocritical. To address flawed test questions or to argue that teaching to the test narrows learning and stifles creativity, that deformers love to draw sweeping conclusions by overlooking and/or skewing testing data, that test-type knowledge isn’t sufficient to be a “flexible thinker,” that students in the U.S. are overtested, etc., isn’t the same thing as saying “tests don’t matter.”
Moreover, in terms of debating deformers, given that they place undue emphasis on test scores, it’s an effective argument to not only discredit their claims regarding standardized testing but also add further insult to injury by demonstrating that even when using their faulty measurements, their trumpeted solutions–charter schools, for instance–come up short.
What Brooklyn Mom said 🙂
This is fairly easy to see if you live in an affluent suburb. In these communities, the public school students often do better than the students who attend the private schools in the same communities.
In my town the private high school has far fewer resources and a much narrower curriculum than the public high school and does not, in general, attract the very strongest students.
In my area, the private schools have tons of resources, have tuitions in the $27,000 to $37,000 range and that’s not counting gifts, fund raisers and bequests. Not to mention that these private schools can be selective about whom they accept who by default are mostly the kids of wealthy parents. The public schools and public high schools do just as well if not better than these elite private schools. The public schools take all pupils who live in the district not just a select few.
Tuition at the private high school in my town is a little under $12,000. Fees bring it up to about $13,000. The public high schools offer a much larger variety of courses, including advanced courses, than the private school offers.
Never thought I’d see the day when TE would come out in support of public education!
I have never said anything bad about public schools. I, my spouse, and my children have only attended public primary and secondary schools (the youngest is a junior in the zoned public high school). My middle and youngest sons both attended a title 1 elementary school and my youngest transferred into a title 1 junior high school.
If memory serves, you have children in a private progressive school. Is that correct?
Yes, in these affluent areas, the private schools often cater to the students who need smaller classes, one-on-one or other accommodations. Of course, there is nothing wrong with this, but these students are often weaker than their affluent public school counterparts. I discovered this the hard way when I paid big bucks for a private education for my older son but sent the younger one (his choice) to a public magnet where he got a superior education and had higher test scores than his brother. In the end, though, both went on to great colleges (Harvard and Stanford) and did equally well.
As Coleman famously said, “It’s all family.”
There are many kinds of private schools. In the authors’ 2008 paper, they use a dataset with 140 Catholic schools and 118 “independent” schools (some of these could be religious too). I don’t know what the breakdown is in the book. The public/private distinction is not apples to oranges. Its more like apples to a fruit salad with a lot of grapes in it (assuming the grapes are Catholic schools).
On the whole, most private schools are under-resourced and pay their teachers less than public schools. (I am obviously not talking about the Cranbrooks or the Lakesides.) It completely makes sense that under these circumstances, and controlling for SES, public school students would show more gains than their peers in Catholic schools. (The authors did not show a statistical difference between other private schools and public schools. Another paper using NAEP data showed Lutheran schools were on par with public and conservative christian schools were below). After all, the public school students have professional state licensed teachers who are better paid. The public schools also have learning resource teachers, social workers, and other professionals that private schools cannot typically afford. Why would we not expect all this to positively benefit students?
I don’t know that you would call my area affluent. About 30% of the students in high school qualify for free or reduced price lunches, but there are also occasionally students whose parents earn in the seven figures. There are no magnet high schools though, only a couple of traditional zoned schools.
I think that is true of public schools in general because the high schools are able to provide a broad level of classes. My husband attended a private school in a small town. His school did not offer the higher level math classes that the public school had available. I think that is where a higher performing public school student definitely has an advantage.
One reason that public school kids do better in Math than private school students is the question of certification. At least in NYS (until the TFA came along), teachers had to be certified in their subject area and have a masters degree.Private schools disciplines don’t have that stipulation. My friend found this out the hard way when her A student son took the optional Trigonometry Regents and failed, not because of his lack of ability, but because his “teacher” didn’t know enough math.
I think the biggest lesson of ed reform for me, looking at those cities that were “reformed” is that if you “relinquish” democratic control of your district you will never, ever get it back.
The conversion from public to private is never reversed. Just seems incredibly sad to lose it forever.
http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2013/12/new_orleans_recovery_school_di.html
From that nola.com article: “In fall 2015, the Recovery School District will make history as the United States’ first all-charter system.” That is a very sad commentary; the charter school board of directors are unelected and can’t be voted out. The disaster of Katrina was used as an opportunity to privatize, charterize and voucherize the New Orleans school system. The residents were in shock and scattered all over the map, a great opportunity to fire more than 4600 school employees and to nullify whatever clout the teacher’s union may have had. Naomi Klein explains it all with the shock doctrine and disaster capitalism.
True that, Chiara, and even more tragic is the result of the failing charter school(s)–they close, and the students are tossed into the winds. But the reformers say, “It’s all about the children.”
This is why we must NEVER, EVER give up the fight to save our genuine public schools.
Looks like charters outperform non charters in Louisiana state wide:
Click to access LAstatepressreleaseJuly2013.pdf
I hope this couple are ready for the attack that the multi-billion dollar educational industrial complex is going to be launching against their research. Stand tall–do not flinch–others are with you!
Great stuff! This is what I call S.I.T.Y.S(See I Told You So) moment.
Stanford Study Says Charter School Children Outperform Non Charter Children…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-25/stanford-university-study-says-charter-schools-improved.html
Charter school students are making larger gains in reading than their peers in traditional classrooms while performing on par in math, according to a study of 1.5 million U.S. children.
The average student at a charter — a privately run public school — learned eight more days of reading a year than a pupil in a regular school, according to the Stanford University study. In both subjects, poor students, black children and those who speak English as a second language fared better in charters.
Their two papers were about math scores because reading may be more influenced by home factors. The argument is that more math learning happens at school so math scores are a better reflection of the effect the school has on learning. I can’t speak to what the book says about reading because I haven’t read it but the interview suggests that the data come from their two papers on mathematics.
Some families “drill” their kids with math facts. Families can have an influence on both reading and math.
Whether its the Stanford Credo study or the Wisconsin study, I think lumping together all district & all charter schools and then comparing them makes as much sense as trying to compare gas mileage of rented & leased cars. These are not appropriate comparisons – district schools vary widely, as do charters.
Endless debates about which of these studies are more valid clearly attract lows of people to share their views.
But I think the goal of helping youngsters learn more is better served by studying schools that are helping most youngsters make a lot of progress (measured in various ways).
And yes, we need to be working simultaneously to reduce poverty.
Not just improving schools, not just reducing poverty. Both.
“The average student at a charter — a privately run public school — learned eight more days of reading a year than a pupil in a regular school, according to the Stanford University study.”
Learned eight more days of reading a year? A claim like this makes a mockery of everything I’ve learned in decades of going to school, teaching school, and studying the reading process on my own. It just doesn’t make sense.
I wonder if the Stanford study actually says something like this. If it does, shame on the authors, and shame on Stanford. This isn’t just relying on standardized tests to evaluate student learning and achievement (deeply questionable in the first place). It’s framing the question of the efficacy of private management of public schools in a highly reductive way. And the way it frames the measurement of reading ability is ridiculous.
This is how they framed growth (in standard deviations) for lay readers. But either way (SD or “days of school”) the effect is small. IMO, saying “charter school students outperform public school students” – while perhaps technically true according to these data – is overstating things. To justify such a policy change, one would ideally look for a month’s, semester’s or year’s worth of difference. That kind of gap could possibly accumulate over time. But 8 days?
Thanks for clarifying that. It still doesn’t make sense to me, and there are even more potential problems with this kind of claim than the ones I mentioned. For example, does the study account for attrition (caused by “counseling out” noncompliant kids or bad test-takers, and so on)? Experts in education statistics and measurement have analyzed this and similar studies and pointed out their flaws. Even if you believe in their basic assumptions, methodology, and metrics–which I don’t–claims of significant gains are shaky at best.
I’ve worked in charters. They are definitely not better schools. These studies are a joke
How about if we agree that district & charters vary widely among themselves. Or are you saying all charters are worse that all district schools?
Emmy and Randal Hendee: thank you for your comments.
Clicking on the link provided and doing a cursory google search gives a very different picture.
I provide just two short quotes, followed by the links [the first is provided above!] so the accuracy of the quotes can be verified.
[start quote] Some education researchers criticized the study’s claims. The data from the report show no significant difference between charters and traditional schools, according to Andrew Maul, a researcher at the National Education Policy Center and a professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
“It’s incredibly small, and therefore it’s basically a zero finding.” Maul said in a telephone interview. [end quote]
Link: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-25/stanford-university-study-says-charter-schools-improved.html
[start quote] “Charter critics, such as Western Michigan University’s Gary Miron, who has evaluated charters for various states, take issue with CREDO’s glowing press release. “I was surprised by the headline that charter schools are making progress. It could have read just the opposite,” he said. “For the majority of students there’s no significant difference. … These differences are so incredibly small and they’re only statistically significant because they have hundreds of thousands of records in their sample size.”
Still, Miron said the study is “one more piece of the puzzle.” [end quote]
Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/25/charter-school-performance-study_n_3493023.html
So let me highlight a little of these two fairly innocuous POVs on the earth-shattering Stanford report on the superiority of charter schools: “it’s basically a zero finding” and the report of “progress…could have read just the opposite” and the differences were “incredibly small.”
And for a more nuanced and realistic look at just two other Stanford CREDO studies, see this blog and that of Dr. Bruce Baker:
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2012/12/07/what-the-credo-study-of-nj-charters-really-said/
Link: http://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/what-does-the-new-york-city-charter-school-study-from-credo-really-tell-us/
To riff off of one of Gerald Bracey’s principles of data interpretation, “beware of selectivity in sources.”
Massaging information and torturing numbers is not so easy when there’s those new fangled inventions like the world wide web and computers.
😎
I think The Atlantic covered this research a couple months ago, and I posted a comment on that article. If I remember correctly, the title of that article was misleading – and I think the researchers partially misrepresent their work. “Private schools” in this case means parochial schools – not elite, college prep institutions. That’s not to say that test scores are necessarily better in those schools; however, I’d pause before using this research as proof that public schools are better than all “private” schools.
The consensus of previous work, based on data collected in the 1980s and 1990s, was that there is a positive “private school effect” on performance. The Lubienskis find the opposite to be true. They use data more recently collected across the country to study outcomes for elementary and middle school students. The Lubienskis specifically focus on mathematics, claiming that math is more isolated from “family background factors” than other topics because “mathematics is a subject that is learned primarily in school.” By using more recent data, a far larger sample of students, and accounting for family background with the latest statistical techniques, the Lubinskis made a surprising discovery. [2] On average, public schools are better at teaching math. The Lubienskis credit the routine licensing, certification and professional development requirements that public school teachers face to maintain high quality teaching. Considering the dominant presence of religious schools in their sample and their narrow focus on mathematics, the authors’ sweeping conclusions about private education are overly ambitious. That said, there are important lessons for private school shoppers in their work.
. . . .One thing the the Lubinskis book might do to ultimately help the field of education is to inspire some standardization in the independent school industry. Please see my blog here:
http://process999.wordpress.com/2013/12/29/only-discerning-consumers-can-determine-if-public-is-better-than-private/