This is a smart, funny article that demolishes the claim that charters are better than public schools.
The writer, Ben Joravsky, did something almost unprecedented after he read denunciations of unionized public schools: he checked the facts. This is a little-used, old-fashioned skill that seems to have been abandoned by the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune, as well as the major broadcast media.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
You are right about that, Diane: people spout off about everything without knowing anything about the subject. You’d be surprised at the number of people I meet who are education experts, without having taught or even been a student in the last 30 years!
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Diane, as to “checking the facts”: John White is withholding the 2012 School Performance Scores in Louisiana. I would like for someone to investigate this. I assume one or two issues that “muddy” John’s plans for his voucher push/renunciation of public ed: 1) Public school scores have risen; 2) RSD tanked. My thanks to anyone who will publicize this issue.
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If state scores went up, he will crow that he did it.
Reformers have a ready response: when scores are flat or fall, blame teachers. If scores go up, they take credit.
Diane
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I think Johnny is caught in his own words here. If La scores went up, then such flies in the face of his advice for parents to take the voucher money and flee those lousy public schools in favor of “less expensive” private schools. As it is, the voucher program is a flop with fewer than 5000 placments and now the Lane Grigsby survey revealing that approx 38% of those asked favor vouchers (54% are against). So, John White once again refuses to publicize information that is rightly public. My goal in writing my previous response is to catch the attention of someone who will publicize White’s withholding of the 2012 SPSs.
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Mercedes–We travel to New Orleans frequently, & read every paper while there. I have read good stories in Gambit (the N.O. free weekly that is like our Reader {the paper Ben Joravsky writes for} in Chicago). Call Gambit & tell them to write about this because,
as aforementioned, every time I read it there is some good, truthful reporting about what’s been going on under Jindal (e.g.–some of the weird charter schools in LA that were opened & licensed).
I’m sure they’ll publicize this good information. Good luck!
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The trick in New Orleans is that a few charters get high test scores by dumping low-performing kids into the other charters. The sector as a whole is faring poorly.
Diane
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Hi, ReTired. I have contacted one of our BESE members and a Baton Rouge paper, and I think the BR paper will pursue the issue, especially since the constitutionality of the voucher gors to court on Oct 15 (White has been hiding info from public view in an effort to protect himself against this and other lawsuits).
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Diane, thanks for a fascinating post and article. After reading, I clicked through to the following link posted by one of several readers who challenged The Reader to make an apples-to-apples comparison. The link–from “Chicago Libertarian”–purports to show that among schools with high proportions of poor kids, the charters do better on math and reading than do the traditional publics. This raises two questions: 1) Can this difference between Chicago publics and charters be accounted for by “creaming” and/or relatively low special-ed levels? If so, would love some stats if any of your readers has them. 2) Do the well-regarded studies that show that most charter schools do NOT outperform the traditional publics take into account aforementioned creaming and sped levels? If not, how should one interpret the numbers in this chart?
http://www.chicagonow.com/chicago-libertarian/2012/09/comparing-apples-to-apples-in-chicagos-charter-schools/#comment-84
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Some studies do, some don’t. Bruce Baker’s charter studies of NY and NJ do, so do Ed Fuller’s of Texas. They show that charters spend more and have fewer ELL and spec-ed.
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Now that’s an idea for public education. Keep students busy “checking the fcts.” It’s a nice “habit of mind”/
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The fct is, “fcts” is spelt “facts”
Proof-reading included. Ah well, I should revert to one key at a time and one finger. My fingers–especially the pinky does odd things when I’m not looking. Especially the left one.
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