Steven Singer wrote a great post about a study by corporate reformers proving that they are wrong. Will they care that one of their favorite tactics is a failure? Of course not.
Open the link to read it all and to see the links he cites.
He writes:
“You might be tempted to file this under ‘No Shit, Sherlock.’
“But a new study found that closing schools where students achieve low test scores doesn’t end up helping them learn. Moreover, such closures disproportionately affect students of color.
“What’s surprising, however, is who conducted the study – corporate education reform cheerleaders, the Center for Research on EDucation Outcomes (CREDO).
“Like their 2013 study that found little evidence charter schools outperform traditional public schools, this year’s research found little evidence for another key plank in the school privatization platform.
“These are the same folks who have suggested for at least a decade that THE solution to low test scores was to simply close struggling public schools, replace them with charter schools and voilà.
“But now their own research says “no voilà.” Not to the charter part. Not to the school closing part. Not to any single part of their own backward agenda.
“Stanford-based CREDO is funded by the Hoover Institution, the Walton Foundation and testing giant Pearson, among others. They have close ties to the KIPP charter school network and privatization propaganda organizations like the Center for Education Reform.
“If THEY can’t find evidence to support these policies, no one can!
“After funding one of the largest studies of school closures ever conducted, looking at data from 26 states from 2003 to 2013, they could find zero support that closing struggling schools increases student test scores.
“The best they could do was find no evidence that it hurt.
“But this is because they defined student achievement solely by raw standardized scores. No other measure – not student grades, not graduation rates, attendance, support networks, community involvement, not even improvement on those same assessments – nothing else was even considered.
“Perhaps this is due to the plethora of studies showing that school closures negatively impact students in these ways. Closing schools crushes the entire community economically and socially. It affects students well beyond academic achievement.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Amusing. Ed reformers opposed education funding until it meant additional funding for the schools they prefer and promote:
“That ballot question focused attention on the manner in which the state funds schools, which causes charters to compete with district schools for the same limited pool of education dollars. At that time, many charter advocates argued against the idea of increasing the pool of state education funding through a tax increase.
“We’ve been throwing billions of dollars at public education for decades and not getting results,” pro-charter Great School Massachusetts Coalition director Shane Dunn said in a public forum.
Now, with a ballot initiative that would generate public education funding directed both to charter and district schools likely to appear on the 2018 ballot, leaders of organizations funded by charter school advocates are sounding a different tune. Three corporate-funded education reform groups — Democrats for Education Reform Massachusetts, Massachusetts Parents United and Stand For Children — are seeking to join the union-backed Raise Up Massachusetts coalition that is behind the Fair Share amendment.”
I don’t mind that ed reformers prefer and promote charter schools over public schools- I mind that they bill themselves as “agnostics” when that is so clearly not true.
They’ve been reciting that line about “throwing money” at public schools for how long, now? Two decades at least. Seems like a radical change of political tactics to drop it.
http://baystatebanner.com/news/2017/aug/28/charter-advocates-seek-alliance-former-adversaries/#.WaVpOBP18m8.twitter
“But the irony of groups like DFER, which funneled millions of dollars of funding from wealthy Wall Street investors in support of Question 2 last year, now supporting the Fair Share Amendment hasn’t escaped Maurice Cunningham, associate professor of political science at UMass Boston.
“Millionaires in New York are paying groups to support a tax on millionaires in Massachusetts,” he said. “It doesn’t really add up.”
He’s right. It doesn’t add up. It’s completely ridiculous and incoherent but so is most of what DFER does so it shouldn’t surprise anyone.
It’s a lot easier to figure out when you accept the reality that DFER do not work for public schools. They work for charter schools. Once you accept that it all makes sense.
Oh that Trump’s growing Anti-Public-Schools insanity forces the DFER movement to be exposed as complicit.
Copies of Singer’s article should go to all elected representatives. Singer shows that privatization is pure wasteful, destructive folly. There is no magic “voila” to closing schools and privatizing. The privatization hurts students and their families in so many ways other than raw scores on bubble tests. Some of this destruction is racist and classist by design in order to reinvent neighborhoods, and it targets minority students unfairly. Singer also shows that students perform better when they attend well resourced schools. Yet. we see state after state and city after city trying to deliberately starve public schools to make them collapse for political reasons. Any complicit elected representative should be targeted for removal on election day! To CREDO’s credit, it did release the results of their study despite the fact that it trashes the value of “reform.” I hope others will share Singer’s article to distribute it widely as this deserves to be read.
Right, retired teacher. Singer’s article is right on!
Read about large scale privatization of New Orleans Public Schools AFTER Katrina.
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/41760-how-the-large-scale-privatization-of-new-orleans-schools-upholds-inequality
The residents of New Orleans now understand that privatization was not about improving education for poor students. It was about seizing a democratic institution and turning it over to corporate interests. Poor students continue to struggle with all the chaos and racism inherent in privatization.
It’s an important issue that CREDO addresses regarding impacts on students who attend a school that is being closed.
But far more kids experience the impacts after a closure… kids who would have gone to the closed school but didn’t.
What do we know about those effects?
Well there’s this from The Research Alliance for New York City Schools at NYU/Stenhardt (is that a reputable outfit, Diane?)
“Closing high schools produced meaningful benefits for future students—i.e., middle schoolers who had to choose another high school because the school they likely would have attended was closing. These students ended up going to schools that were higher performing than the closed schools, both in terms of the achievement and attendance of incoming students and on the basis of longer-term outcomes. In addition, “post-closure” students’ outcomes improved significantly more than students in the comparison group, including a 15-point increase in graduation rates”
High School Closures in New York City: Impacts on Students’ Academic Outcomes, Attendance, and Mobility (2015) James J. Kemple
http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/research_alliance/publications/hs_closures_in_nyc
Stephen,
Here is my opinion of the Research Alliance at NYU. It was funded by Bloomberg’s Department of Education with a few million. Joel Klein was the chairman of the board. I was an NYU faculty member and a well-known researcher. I was not invited to the opening ceremonies and never included in any of its activities. I did not need any new responsibilities but the very noticeable snub led me to believe that this Alliance was never open to open discussion or debate. So count me not a fan
I know of no evidence from NYC or any other city that school closures improve academic outcomes; they do, however, destabilize communities, and communities are important in supporting students.
Closing schools does a couple of things. It dumbs down the population so they can get POS into power like trump and his billionaires to get cheap dumb labor. And with stupid people that can’t earn a living they get them drinking koolaid and into the army. Stupid people usually don’t vote and the one’s that can get to a voting booth are easily manipulated.
Never have given a damn about standardized test scores and never will as they are onto-epistemologically bankrupt, without any valid meaning. At best, and it is a worse case scenario, the score is a piss poor mechanism to assess how a particular student interacted with a particular test, on a particular day and at a particular time and place. A simple score is a bastardization of an assessment process gone completely awry.
Why anyone gives any credence to any of these standardized test scores (yes, including NAEP, the darling of many here) is far beyond my comprehension. So many fooled, so many fools who insist that those standardized tests tell us something. Ay Ay friggin Ay!
Beat me to it. So are we saying that if closing schools did raise test scores we should do it?
For once I beat you to the punch!
I have never found standardized tests to be useful in any way. I would love to see them disappear, but in our test crazed world, it is doubtful they will go away. If we think of standardized test scores as an indicator or litmus test, they often serve to reassure parents that some type of progress is occurring in school. In the case of Singer’s article, the results of scores serve to show that school closures do not improve outcomes for students, but investing in schools and students will improve results on these so called measures. We also know that students will not do better when they are subjected to endless chaos and instability. This is one of the reasons, I believe, the NAACP has called for a moratorium on charter expansion. The assault on public education has been a detriment to poor, minority students that have been unfairly targeted.
“but in our test crazed world, it is doubtful they will go away.”
“To every season, turn turn turn”
“This too shall pass”
My quixotic idealism prevents me from agreeing with your statement RT.
Closing schools was never meant to raise test scores. It is meant to privatize the school system and control costs, not to mention dumb down children so that they will grow into obedient workers ready to buzz busily into the beehive of corporate America and serve the overclass without ever knowing or detecting their oppressive servitude.
Let’s be accurate about this. Get your motivations right, please.
I agree. Closing schools is sold to the public as “rescuing students from failing schools.” The results of this students show there is no magical improvement from closing schools. It creates chaos and a greater level of anxiety. The great irony here is that the study is from CREDO, a charter cheerleader.