The Forward Institute has released a study of charter schools in Milwaukee, comparing district charters, privately managed charters, and public schools.
The findings are instructive. The 2R charter schools are the privately managed charters.
The privately managed charters are skimming, doing grievous harm to the public school system. Any educational “gains” are the result of skimming, not educational effectiveness.
Summary of most significant findings
1. School to school comparisons:
- MPS/2R raw scores – We need to take into account that 2R charter schools have lower truancy and student poverty rates. When we equalize for those factors, the difference becomes insignificant. This means that the 2R Charter school type is NOT creating higher scores.
- 2R/MPS Charters – We need to take into account that 2R charter schools have lower truancy rates and higher rate of fully licensed teachers. When we equalize for those factors, the difference becomes insignificant. This means that the 2R Charter type is NOT creating higher scores.
- MPS public/MPS Charters – We need to take into account that MPS public schools have higher disabled enrollment, teacher experience, and student poverty rates than MPS charter schools. When we equalize for these factors, we find that the difference BECOMES significant. This means that MPS public school Report Card Scores actually ARE higher than MPS charter schools.
2. The most significant factor in the Milwaukee School Report Card scores is habitual truancy (Truancy effect slope figure). We can explain almost the entire effect on Report Card scores by three significant factors – habitual truancy rate, student poverty, and the percent of teachers with at least five years of experience. It is important to underscore that “Percent of Teachers with 5 years experience” have the same POSITIVE effect with scores as student poverty has negative effect. The negative truancy effect is 3 times that of the teacher and student poverty effects.
3. The negative effect of truancy is equal across schools. No school type counters these effects through educational effectiveness.
4. The data presented in this study along with other cited research indicates a strong likelihood of student selectivity (“skimming”) by 2R charter schools. This factor creates perceived positive effects which are overstated and unrelated to school type.
5. We suggest that school and parental bias factors are theorized to have a negative effect on the students left behind by an opt-out system which functions as a new form of segregation based on prior student achievement, parental participation, and schools picking “desirable students.”
The study reached the following conclusions:
1. There is strong evidence that 2R charter schools [privately managed charters] have selection biases which reinforce each other, and have nothing to do with educational efficacy – confirming theorized “skimming” effects.
2. Recent published research (Dr. Kern Alexander, U of I, Journal of Education Finance, Fall 2012)[1] confirms what is now known from 20 years of Cognitive Science research[2] – that people make decisions based on deeply held values, beliefs, and cultural biases – not from best information. This is critical in understanding how ANY publicly subsidized, parallel education system is based on a false premise – that people will select a school based on educational effectiveness. THIS IS FALSE. In education decisions, as in economics, people do not behave as rational actors. WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?
3. The system in Milwaukee is leading to selection bias on the part of schools and parents, which is causing predictably higher performing students to opt out of public schools for multiple bias reasons, leaving higher concentrations of higher needs student in the public schools.
4. Higher concentrations of higher needs students places more stress on a school, requiring more resources – which are not there because of funding required for the parallel, publicly subsidized schools which are skimming funding as well as students.
5. The cycle is now continuous as funding for higher needs, public school students continues to be cut. These are the schools in our most distressed communities which will be faced with closure, only to be replaced by 2R style charter schools which do NOT offer a better education for a more select group of students – leaving many behind.
This is becoming a vicious, downward spiral in Milwaukee. Current policy being debated would perpetuate this cycle through inappropriate use of School Report Cards. School Report Cards provide local schools with another rung on the educational ladder of success. They provide insights into what works, and what requires further development and investment to ensure educational opportunity for every child. Instead, there are policymakers who would have the Report Cards be used as a wrecking ball – to literally wreck public schools in our most distressed communities, and replace them with schools that do not provide equal opportunity for every child.
Policy Recommendations
1. The entire Milwaukee community (and the state of Wisconsin) should commit to a proactive, wide reaching truancy project. One place to start is the model program “Walking School Bus” which has been successful in getting kids to school in other urban areas.
2. A ten year plan to sunset the 2R charter and any publicly subsidized private schools. A 20 year experiment has cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and shown no real educational benefit or effectiveness beyond what is available in public schools.
3. Develop criteria for proper use of School Report Cards as another means for local districts to gauge successes and further needs – not as a wrecking ball.
4. Address the issue of inequitable funding in Wisconsin Public Schools in the face of increasing populations of high needs students.
5. The state needs to begin addressing the real issues facing communities in distress, as schools will follow.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The 2R charter schools have more highly qualified teachers than traditional public schools? I wonder how the recruiting and pay practices differ between the two types of schools that the more experienced teachers choose the charter schools. It also seems to me that the school might have an impact on truancy. One way to read the report is that if you control for R2 schools practices hiring more highly qualified teachers and efforts to reduce truancy, they perform worse than schools that hire less experienced teachers and are less successful in their efforts to reduce truancy. That is not an especially surprising result.
It does not seem irrational for a family to choose a school with a more qualified teaching staff and low truancy rates.
OK TE. Perhaps you need to go back and do a little ‘close reading’. I think perhaps you misinterpreted the main idea and you were also not able to correctly pull details from the text.
“MPS public/MPS Charters – We need to take into account that MPS public schools have higher disabled enrollment, teacher experience, and student poverty rates than MPS charter schools.”
I think that the above line taken from the text says that the public schools have higher teacher experience. Am I wrong?
You seemed to have missed the truancy rate discussion.
A agree that the statement is worded badly, but why would controlling for teacher experience improve the performance of traditional public schools relative to R2 schools if the traditional public schools have MORE highly qualified teachers than the R2 schools? Shouldn’t controlling for teacher experience lower the relative score of the kind of school with the more experienced and qualified teaching staff?
It looks like there are two things going on. R2 charters have a higher percentage of fully licensed teachers but interestingly a lower percentage of teachers with more than 5 years of experience (I would have thought that longevity would increase the percentage of fully licensed teachers, but apparently not).
The concern with the study is that there might be policies at R2 schools which make it more attractive to fully licensed teachers and reduce truancy. If so, the study is basically saying that if we eliminate the effective policies used by some schools, they are little different than schools that don’t use these effective policies.
A critical note – there is some confusion and misinterpretation from commenters regarding the Teacher License/Experience data and School Type. First – The coefficients in Table 1 only show the variable association (positive or negative) with Scores, and whether they are statistically significant – NOT the variable occurrence difference between the type of school. For the record – MPS public schools have a higher rate of teacher experience than the 2R schools (88% – 62% respectively) – but that was NOT a significant confounder in the analysis. Also – IF the school type was significant in reducing the effects of truancy, it would have shown not only in the analyses, but in the year-to-year changes in score. Again – all of these possible confounders were controlled for as the regressions were conducted, and the scores were adjusted accordingly based on the significant variables. Please do not misinterpret the coefficients in Table 1 as variable occurrence differences. The above conclusion by teachingeconomist is not consistient with the data.
Is it the case that 2R teachers were more likely to be fully licensed than traditional public school teachers? It seems that this difference was significant if it must be controlled for in your analysis.
If teacher experience was not significant in the analysis, why the statement that it has the “We can explain almost the entire effect on Report Card scores by three significant factors – habitual truancy rate, student poverty, and the percent of teachers with at least five years of experience.”
What, exactly, is the evidence that 2R schools do not cause students to be less truent? I would think that characteristics of a school have some impact on a students willingness to attend the school.
First – the variable “Rate of Fully Licensed Teachers,” along with all other variables listed in the methodology, were analyzed in the regression to find and control for confounders. Table 1 shows that Licensed Teachers is only significant in one comparison – 2R compared to MPS charters (2R charters had a higher rate of fully licensed teachers than MPS charters). That variable was NOT a significant factor when analyzing ALL Report Card Scores for ALL schools (which is clearly stated in the report).
Second – Again, as the report indicates, those three factors explain Report Card Scores for ALL three schools types. This analysis was conducted because it is clear that school TYPE is not a significant factor, as confirmed by the full regression analysis.
Third – see previous comment, and read the full report. We clearly point out the evidence from the data which tells us that the 2R schools are not offsetting the effects of truancy. If they were, we would expect that school type would be significant, 2R charters would be higher-performing outliers (they are not – scores fall well within expected and predicatable deviations for both above and below truancy means), and the comparison of 2012-2013 scores would not fall perfectly within predictable score ranges based on truancy differences (i.e., 2R Charter school truancy increaases, and scores fall). There is also a gret deal of evidence that 2R schools have a selection bias effect, which we need to understand more…
From above^^ “….people make decisions based on deeply held values, beliefs, and cultural biases – not from best information”. This is the hardest nut to crack. The studies will continue to show what this research has shown, and what most education professionals already know. It is helpful to remember, in our struggle to turn the tide and right the current wrongs, that changing people’s deeply held values, beliefs, and cultural biases will take time and a strong commitment from those of us who are willing to do the hard work.
When I read things like this, I recall the wonderful poem, “The People Yes” by Carl Sandburg. Central to democracy is trusting people to make good decisions. They don’t always do that. But on balance, the nation’s founders figured it would be better to give some people the power to make important decisions.
Over more than 200 years, one of the central features of our democracy has been to expand the number of people allowed to make decisions about key features of their lives. But it is not total freedom. There are some limits on what people can choose to do.
Personally, I’d rather live in a country that empowers its people to make many decisions, recognizing that every decision won’t be great.
What about the decision to keep their kids in local public schools – a decision many parents are being denied?
What an uplifting, and totally disingenuous, civics lesson, Joe: while you assume the good guy posture, your funders are busy destroying the “choice” of parents having a well-resourced neighborhood public school.
Michael Fiorillo: quite so.
But isn’t having “choice & voice” [thank you, Chiara Duggan!] dangerous? Couldn’t we avoid that danger if we let the leading charterites/privatizers make one set of choices for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN and a completely different set of choices for THEIR OWN CHILDREN? C’mon, we wouldn’t want to waste resources and time and effort on mixing in the masses of unworthy ‘uneducables’ and ‘non-strivers’ with those few select children who come from the right sort of families, now would we?
Next thing we know you’ll be advocating democracy and transparency and a full audit of charters and vouchers and the elimination of double standards when it comes to high-stakes testing in public school and charters, and other such nonsense…
To quote the immortal words of Governor Chris Christie: “What is it with YOU people?!?!?!?”
What is it indeed…
😎
P.S. Keep posting. I’ll keep reading.
Can someone or more than one person answer questions for me on charter schools (knowing that they don’t operate the same): 1) do only 50% of teacher have to be certified in all charter schools; 2) do students have to take the same Common Core testing as in public schools; 3) some have endowments, most take tax-dollars–do we have any accounting of where smf jpe that tax money is used and how much is going to the various charter companies; 4) how do they get away with taking public money when they say there is none for public schools; 5) why are they allowed to get away with accusing public schools of bad teaching, when they don’t have to requirecertified across the board; 6) where’s the outcry of one-size-fits all for testing when children in certain neighborhoods come to school without the most basic learning and experience that children in economically stable neighborhoods have.
As a former special education teacher with multiple certificatons at a time when that was critical to getting a teaching job, the move by the right-wing and privatizers to have a select society is immoral to say the least. And now I’m going to add a political note, a judgment: these seem to be the same people (not all, of course), who are against women’s choice and contraceptives, but feel it’s the obligation of these women, mostly in poor neighborhoods, to pull themselves up by their bootstraps to become something like their children have done in the self-righteous neighborhoods–as though there are jobs, or a good education or a family structure available to guide them.
I suspect regulatory requirements for charter schools differ depending on the state, and likely some charter schools exceed the regulatory minimum.
It is interesting to note that the R2 schools in this study had a HiGHER rate of fully licensed teachers than traditional public schools.
“…and likely some charter schools exceed the regulatory minimum.”
Perhaps, but what we do know is that many do not meet regulatory minimums, but, as Diane has documented in post after post, it can be nearly impossible to adequately regulate charters or get them to correct themselves or shut down when they aren’t meeting regulatory guidelines.
If charter schools don’t meet regulatory minimums, they should lies their charter. I agree that if there is insufficient enforcement, enforcement should be made sufficient.
Reply to the above questions as concerns Wisconsin – 1. All teachers in any charter school must be licensed by DPI, and there is a special “Charter Instruction License” which can be subject-specific. There is a full license and a provisional license. All 3 school types have over 83% fully licensed teachers. 2. In all 3 school types in WI, students take the same test – this is mandatory, and is why we can apply the School Report Card rating to those schools, as the metrics are consistent. This is NOT the case with the voucher program – which we do not have enough consistent data to compare. 3. A vast majority of the funding for the 2R charters come from the public. 4. Good question…it’s called $$ in politics. 5. See previous response. 6. The Dems on the State Assembly Education committee, as a result of our study, unveiled a plan to invest in education yesterday – and includes “turnaround funding” and additional support for high needs students, along with State Superintendent support for schools that need it most. Unfortunately, because of Scott Walker and the tea party – it won’t go anywhere this year…but it is changing the debate.
Question for the Forward Institute:
What do the state Dems mean by “turnaround funding?” Are they taking a leaf from Duncan’s failed fire-the-staff strategy or is this something else?
No – definitely not Duncanesque…instead of using the School Report Cards as punitive, the proposal would provide intervention funding for struggling schools directly to the community School District, to be used with support from the State Superintendent, for educational resources, further staff training and development, etc. Of course, our next big push is to get that type of “turnaround” funding to the broader community…but it’s a start. And changes the dialog from punitive accountability to community investment.
Diane, thank you for posting this study. It is refreshing to read.
I particularly like this policy suggestion:
“A ten year plan to sunset the 2R charter and any publicly subsidized private schools.”
However, I think ten years’ time is too much given the twenty Milwaukee has already had. Ten more years of a sunset phase-in might be too much for the already-damaged traditional public schools to bear.
“The twenty” refers to the twenty years that Milwaukee charters have been draining the MPS system.
What’s the plan in Milwaukee? No publicly-run schools at all?
They can’t continue using the publicly-run schools as a back-up to the parallel “choice” system.
Do they even admit this IS a system, or are we still denying that one piece of a system has an effect on all the other pieces?
They know that when the publicly-run schools that are acting as a back-up are gone, the scores will decline, right, because the public school kids will then be part of the privately-run system? They’ll simply have replaced the publicly-run school with a privately-run school as the “back up”.
If the majority of Milwaukee schools are charters will the reformers and Obama blame Milwaukee’s failures on charters and CEOs? Ha! we all know the answer to that.
Another piece showing the negative impact of privatization on public schools.
http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/how-privatization-perverts-education
Our school has had to send in the lust of highly qualified teachers for many years. We have to check our qualifications every single year, even though we have had the same teaching assignments each year. In Ohio, that means we are licensed to teach the subject and grade levels to which we are assigned. If we weren’t “highly qualified” we would have had to get immediate recertification or lose our jobs. We never hired teachers who were teaching out of field. I know some districts in isolated areas are forced to hire people who are out of field due to the unavailability to find personnel.
I have wondered for some time just when there will be a requirement for all teachers to have a degree in special education, since we have been required increasingly to teach students who should require special interventions.
List not lust ^^^
I think the focus on how ed reform is affecting existing public schools is wonderful, BTW.
Why aren’t there more studies that look at this? Obviously when you introduce charters and vouchers the existing public schools don’t remain static and unchanging. It’s a system.
Are these existing schools considered completely without value? Is that why the entire focus is on charters and vouchers within the system?
It’s perplexing to an outsider to this, like me. It doesn’t make any sense to look at only two parts of a three part system.
How do publicly-run schools fare within a parallel choice system. Wouldn’t that be something we’d want to consider?
I read one of Arne Duncan’s speeches to a charter org, and he tossed of that some percentage of schools would remain public, 70 or 80% or something, but public schools aren’t like the tides or the phases of the moon. They’re not inevitable and to be taken for granted.
““….people make decisions based on deeply held values, beliefs, and cultural biases – not from best information”. This is the hardest nut to crack. ”
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been
bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the
bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The
bamboozle has captured us. it is simply too painful to acknowledge —
even to ourselves — that we’ve been so credulous. (So the old
bamboozles tend to persist as the new bamboozles rise.)
Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and bamboozle requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication and courage.
But if we don’t practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us — and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along….” Carl Sagan
Cracking the nuts “One bad apple spoils the bunch, or the apple doesn’t fall too far
from the tree” might be as hard as viewing the results as being “Proof” of the
strategy.
Establishing a cultural apparatus (Public Ed.) to serve as a cornerstone of Government
and the CULTURE, was a Government strategy.
If that’s too painful to acknowledge, WHAT has shaped the culture or the perception
of Government? If Public Ed. is NOT the basis for the culture or the perception of
Government, WHAT IS???
Indeed. What is? Public Education has been under attack in a similar manner as currently exists for 40 years.
I was born in WV and was beginning teaching when the Alice Moore book banning/burning insanity took place. As our laws were changing to accommodate equal rights and civil rights, people became paranoid of the changing mores. The grassroots fear of “the other” set in, laying the groundwork for today’s political division.
Those aforementioned “beliefs, etc.” From the post above have been built upon and fortified and seized by people who have accumulated wealth, often on the backs of needy workers, giving them a glimpse of the “middle class” while stealthily hoarding away their riches off shore.
Now they want power. Power to lower the pay for all people …so they bust unions and professions. They laugh all the way to the bank, rendering all in their wake as defenseless. They hold all the cards: financial, political, moral, religious, and prosperity. How do they continue? They serk power. How do they assure even more power?
Deceit.
Privatize education. Privatize public services. Tell voters they will protect their tax dollars while, in actuality, protecting their investment. Undermine institutions. Degrade universities, research, science, verifiable truths, and replace that with their opinion, their standards, their bank accounts, and throw in their supposed religious dogma as good measure for those in need of reassurance that they are following God’s path.
To me, this is what we are dealing with and what makes me feel sickened by the continued smokescreen offered up while the job market dries up for those with degrees and analytical thinking skills. This new version of “left over” public education will continue to dilute the options for so many once the private charters skim money and talent from public dollars. It will take a while, but it seems their goal is to re-segregate America, hoping to preserve an entitled and fearful of diminishing by 2050 part of our society (that many feel they are part of by birth right, not even realizing that they are being used by the few).
I heard a report on NPR this morning about a study examining the real value of the tests that have been used for years for college admissions. It seems that those tests aren’t real predictors of success in college. So, I ask you, how can ADDITIONAL testing improve the situation? Oh, and they were discussing how these tests have HURT minority and rural youths.
So, what fuels the so-called reform movement in education? Profit. Not education!! Class division not more college readiness. This needs to STOP.
Sorry for the rant.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
Interesting.
Sharp drop in (polled) support for vouchers, and the polling was done by The Friedman Foundation for Choice, which is an ed reform group formed to privatize the public school system:
http://www.jointhefuture.org/1410-poll-conducted-by-corporate-ed-backers-backfires#.UwOIUbhcssM.twitter
Even they couldn’t get better than 30%.
Seems like this study verifies +20-year demise of charters and vouchers in Milwaukee, placing many of those to 37%(those choice schools that are performing worse than public schools) bracket. Or maybe 46% group that is not much different from struggling public schools? Anyway, finding those belonging to 17%(choice schools that are considered better than public schools), is, to me, like looking for the needle in a haysack.