Troy A. LaRaviere is principal at Blaine Elementary School. In this article in the Chicago Sun-Times, he explains how the city’s public schools got higher test scores than the city’s well-funded, politically favored charter schools. To my knowledge, the Chicago Tribune–a cheerleader for charters– has not reported this story, nor has Mayor Rahm Emanuel acknowledged it. Please let me know if I am wrong.
LaRiviere writes:
“In terms of assessing the effectiveness of charter schools, I believe the most accurate comparison is to public magnet schools since both charters and magnets have lottery admissions processes that increase the likelihood of enrolling students with involved parents. In essence, charters are privately run magnet schools and therefore should be measured against publicly run magnet schools. I believe that turnaround schools should be compared to neighborhood schools since they both must accept students within their attendance boundaries. Using the Sun-Times results, the comparisons are as follows:
“READING
* The most dramatic performance gaps are in reading, where the public magnet school growth percentile is 83, while the charter score is 48.
* The public neighborhood percentile is at 75, while turnarounds are at 51.
* Although neighborhood schools must enroll any student in their attendance boundary, their students’ reading growth percentile is 27 points higher than that of lottery-driven charters schools. Neighborhood schools are at 75 and charters are at 48.
“MATH
* In math, the public magnet school growth percentile is 67, while the lottery-driven charter schools are at 49.5 — over 17 points lower.
* The neighborhood school growth percentile is at 55 while the turnaround school percentile is at 43 — 12 points lower.
* Even with their admissions limitations, public neighborhood schools outperformed the growth in lottery-driven charter schools by more than five percentile points, with neighborhood and charter schools at 54.9 and 49.5 respectively.
“A simple look at a list of the schools reveals even more. Of the 490 Chicago schools for which elementary grade MAP data was available, 60 of those schools are charter (12 percent), 24 are turnaround (5 percent), and 406 (83 percent) are traditional public schools. When sorted by growth percentile rank, I found the following:
* Although charters and turnarounds make up 17 percent of district schools, they account for none of the 60 schools with the highest growth percentiles.
* Of the 30 lowest performing schools in CPS more than half are charters or turnarounds.
* Of the 10 lowest-performing schools in CPS, seven are charters or turnarounds.
* Nearly nine out of 10 charter/turnaround schools are in the bottom half of CPS performance.
“In summary, charters and turnarounds are overrepresented among the schools with the lowest student growth, and not represented at all among schools with the highest student growth.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane, the Tribune is not the only daily newspaper that refused to print the LaRaviere analysis.
The Sun-Times didn’t print it either!
As part of my job media watching and covering Chicago’s public schools, I subscribe to and read the print editions of the Chicago dailies (as well as The New York Times and Wall Street Journal) ever day. When word came that the LaRaviere piece was “in the Sun-Times” I went through the Sun-Times — print edition — and didn’t find it. That was on September 1. Then September 2. Now it’s September 4 and I have all of the copies of the Chicago Sun-Times since last Thursday sitting in front of me — and the column is not in any of them.
Since Labor Day weekend began, the Sun-Times has published five print editions.
August 30, 2014 (Saturday). 48 pages.
August 31 2014 (Sunday). 80 pages. The Sun-Times did publish a full page story, headlined “Growing Gains And Pains”, which quoted Troy LaRaviere — but NOT his analysis. They did publish an Op Ed headlined “Let CPS counselors do their jobs”, but not LaRaviere’s piece.
September 1, 2014 (Monday). 60 pages. Among the other stuffings that appeared that day in the Sun-Times were “You’re cute, smart for reading this column” (by pundit Neil Steinberg), “A zombie’s boo…” and several political stories.
September 2, 2014 (Tuesday, the day the kids went back to school). 64 pages. Full pages in the Sun-Times that day included ‘HACKED, FBI gets involved as private nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence, other celebs surface…” and “FOREVER GOOSEBUMPS” on how the R. L. Stine books are finally going to become movies.
The current owners of the Sun-Times have tried (desperately) to monetize their “property” into a dot.com entity, among other things by firing a large number of reporters (including all of their photo journalists, among those two who had won Pulitzer prizes) and filling their pages with punditry, fluffery and flumoxery. A reader who wants accurate news reporting in CHICAGO SUN-TIMES.COM (that’s what they call it today) has to go to the sport pages. Like the totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe before 1989, this “newspaper” specializes in photos of the Supreme Leader (there was one stretch about a year ago when Rahm Emanuel was on the front page a dozen times in one month, promoting me to surmise that there must be an upcoming Pulitzer Prize for Pandering that we hadn’t heard about) and accuracy in the sports pages. During the final years of the Ceasescu dictatorship in Romania (which I covered most closely while working with the Chicago-based Democratic Romania newspaper), the formula was clear: Praise the dictator (and his wife, in the case of Romania) and make sure you get all the football news in accurately and early.
Should anyone find Troy LaRaviere’s lengthy and well documented analysis in print in the Sun-Times, please share it.
Meanwhile, let’s not chide the Chicago Tribune so quickly. Over the past couple of days, they’ve done a bit more to cover Chicago reality than SUN-TIMES.COM, even going so far as to report on that $100,000 bottle of wine Rahm was carrying while vacationing with billionaire Bruce Rauner (and today putting in print a delightful editorial cartoon on the same topic).
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George N. Schmidt: your comments are a perfect example of why I visit this blog.
“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.” [Frederick Douglass]
Thank you for helping make us all unfit.
😎
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George Schmidt, I first learned about the Public school advantage by reading Troy’s analysis in the Chicago Sun-Times. Many people tweeted it to me, as did Troy.
And Mike Klonsky wrote:
“To be fair, the Sun-Times did carry Troy’s personal op-ed “Drop CPS’ reform strategy: CPS neighborhood school growth outpaces charters” on Sept. 1st. https://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/29378381-452/drop-cps-reform-strategy-cps-neighborhood-school-growth-outpaces-charters.html#.VAiBD6Ouk65
“You can read my full account at http://michaelklonsky.blogspot.com/2014/09/a-color-coded-visual-of-chicagos-reform.html“
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Good for him. No one else is going to do this work, apparently.
Why isn’t the mayor congratulating these principals and teachers for all their hard work and tenacity in the face of budget cuts and “disruptive innovations!” and the mass public school closure he engineered?
Great job. I’d appreciate the information if I were a CPS parent.
More of them should do this. Maybe they can find a wealthy philanthropist to hire a media professional, huh? Where are THOSE grants?
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I never miss a comment by you.
Not a one.
“It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.” [Ionesco]
Chiara vs. the BBBBC [BusyBody Billionaire Boys Club].
The former by KO, first round.
😎
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I don’t know why he has to volunteer to do this. How many data specialists and ed reform consultants has CPS hired? Why is the principal defending his own work?
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To be fair, the Sun-Times did carry Troy’s personal op-ed “Drop CPS’ reform strategy: CPS neighborhood school growth outpaces charters” on Sept. 1st. https://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/29378381-452/drop-cps-reform-strategy-cps-neighborhood-school-growth-outpaces-charters.html#.VAiBD6Ouk65
You can read my full account at http://michaelklonsky.blogspot.com/2014/09/a-color-coded-visual-of-chicagos-reform.html
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Good for Chicago public schools. We love to hear information like this. I hope that they continue the good work and receive recognition for all that they do.
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I saw UNO got a slap on the wrist and a stern letter from those “cops on the beat” at the SEC. Remember when regulators used to regulate instead of offering suggestions?
The IRS inquiry will go nowhere too.
Remember when they paraded those Atlanta school teachers in front of the cameras for that ridiculous and purely political “perp walk”? UNO gets to deal-make behind closed doors while one of those people in Atlanta is facing (a possible) 35 years.
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Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
More evidence that the corporate supported, for-profit, fake-education reform movement is failing and doesn’t work. Instead, it will destroy public schools that do work. It’s obvious that for-profit, private-sector Charter schools suck money out of the classroom and they cut every corner possible to turn a profit for their investors while paying higher salaries to the Charter school managers and lower salaries, on average, for teachers who end up moving on causing a revolving door and less stability.
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My only issue is that turnarounds are being lumped in with Charter schools in this article. Chicago turnaround schools are CPS neighborhood schools with Union teachers. My turnaround school has veteran CPS teachers. We are fighting to keep our school open as new charters open every in our low income neighborhood. The one size fits both category analysis is not fair and is biased.
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Have any of the major news outlets covered this story? There’s seems to be lots coverage when public schools are low performing, and half the time it isn’t even true. It seems to me the media shapes too much news by what they cover and how they cover it. Positive message get lost in the mix. As fo negative messaging, if you keep telling the same lie repeatedly, it will gain traction. Next thing we know, conservatives have a new talking point.
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WBBM (CBS) radio finally covered it yesterday. Otherwise, the story doesn’t exist for Chicago’s corporate media. Meanwhile there is widespread coverage of all of Rahm’s opening of school carefully staged media events. Not surprisingly. This isn’t the only major story being ignored. As far as Chicago’s corporate media are concerned, Connecticut no longer exists and there is nobody named Terrence Carter who was once an official at AUSL after arriving to save Chicago from New Leaders for New Schools and the Harvard seminar…
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I thank George N. Schmidt and Chiara for their comments on this thread for moving me to write the following long comment. *Although neither is responsible for my particular take on things.*
On this blog I have been wont to describe those benefitting the most from the charterite/privatization movement as being the “self-styled leaders of the ‘new civil rights movement of our time’” and as being in “mad dog pursuit of $tudent $ucce$$” and as living by the mantra “unfettered greed will answer every need.” Not to mention my description of the supporting cast, e.g., the edubullies that enforce the “hard bigotry of mandated failure” and the “educrat enablers” that grossly mismanage public schools and districts to the advantage of eduprenuers.
Some might consider those harsh words but, IMHO, they are not harsh but descriptive.
Question: descriptive of what?
Answer: of a business plan that masquerades as an education model. It abuses metrics in order to protect and increase profit (disguised or open).
Recourse to numbers and stats [see the posting above] is nothing new to the leaders of the charterite/privatizer movement; it’s what they do with them. 100% graduation rates conspicuously ignore 30/40/50% attrition rates. Test scores go up: when you unethically keep the test suppressors out during Pearson days. Owners and managers of charters sometimes make money that puts big city public school superintendents to shame. Midyear dump: keep the ‘bad’ kids for a month or two then push them back out to the public schools while keeping the full year’s monies for those students. VAM: misuse and abuse of numbers & stats to punish many, reward few. School/district grades and ranking systems: precision used to mask ludicrously untrustworthy assessments.
Darrell Huff in his HOW TO LIE WITH STATISTICS (1954) called his third chapter, “The Little Figures That Are Not There.” The numbers in the posting aren’t part of charterite/privatizer branding and promotion and selling. They generally present only the ‘good numbers’ [no matter how unreal or unrealistic] in order to keep and grow market share in the ed biz.
So it is no surprise that the piece by Troy A. LaRaviere gets short shrift in the pro-education establishment MSM. Inconvenient data analysis. Some might ask: so what?
But let me pose what I see as a searing hypocrisy: over and over and over again we hear from fervent supporters of charters that they are the “rising tide that lifts all boats” and that they are setting new standards in collaboration and innovation. If that were truly so, they should be celebrating what the public schools are doing precisely because higher standards (at least by “ed rheephorm” measurement) are being met.
Yet, as I see it now, many of the fervent pushers of charters and privatization aren’t in their own eyes being two-faced or duplicitous or unfair by not broadcasting—or even suppressing—the “good news” about public schools because when you are promoting a particular type of eduproduct you don’t maintain or increase market share by building up your competition.
It’s a belief system. It’s a dog-eat-dog world. Winner take all. I win, you lose. The bidness of bidness is bidness. Look at hamburger brands or car brands or soda brands: they battle for every customer!
“Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” [Vince Lombardi]
And the leading charterites/privatizers are in it to win it! Their “grit” and “determination” is not in silly unsubstantial things like developmentally appropriate curriculum or developing citizens for a democracy but in the bottom line. Something that can be counted and measured and compared against the countables of everyone else: rheeal accountability.
That’s what they mean when they echo the famous comment:
“If winning isn’t everything, why do they keep score?” [Vince Lombardi]
To them, the true ₵ent¢ of that statement is in the black and red that was used in old accounting ledgers.
IMHO, that’s where most of us part company with them. Yes, it’s a battle over values. And most of us don’t believe that “unfettered greed will answer every need.”
We’re for a “better education for all.” Whatever it takes.
Again, please excuse the long comment.
😎
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LaRaviere’s and the Sun-Times’s analysis is interesting, but it doesn’t seem to be comparing apples to apples. What were the growth rates at district schools with demographically similar student bodies as charters? For kids attending charters, what were the growth rates at their zoned neighborhood school?
It’s also rather sloppy, perhaps even completely wrong, to say that the widening of the achievement gap in Chicago is due to the increase in the number of charter schools. It’s more likely explained by simple demographics: the whites and Asians in the system, although still a tiny percentage of the overall enrollment, are increasingly coming from more affluent and well-educated families, while at the same time, the blacks who have the means and ability to do so are fleeing Chicago in droves, leaving behind a concentration of children from the poorest and least-educated families.
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Good points, as usual.
Is that true, the demographic trend you refer to?
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There’s no doubt there has been an enormous loss of black population that started as early as the 80s but has accelerated in the past 15 years. Many are leaving for a band of mostly black suburbs south of the city, but a huge number are moving out of the region entirely (same as what we see here in NYC): http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2011-05-20-chicago-blacks-exodus_n.htm
My evidence for the white/Asian enrollment trend is purely anecdotal, but Chicago has a very similar dynamic to what’s going on in NYC: lots of families leave for the burbs, but the ones that stay can either afford to buy housing in the “right” zone, which is extremely expensive, or have a kid who tests well enough to get a spot at a selective school. Either way I think there’s been a general uptick in the abilities of the white CPS population (also keep in mind that the traditional white/white immigrant working class neighborhoods have also mostly disappeared).
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Two facts from Chicago.
First, the lethal combination of “school reform,” “welfare reform,” and “housing reform” have disrupted the lives of hundreds of thousands of black people from Chicago. When the projects were torn down, after that barrage of propaganda about how “bad” they were (they had been disinvested, as everyone who worked in them, as I did, or lived in them knew), many of the residents were promised housing nearby. That was a lie told by successive black leaders from Phillip Jackson (now well subsidized at Black Star but once upon a time head of the Chicago Housing Authority) to Barack Obama. Many of those displaced families were given Section 8 vouchers and told never to return to Chicago, some moving as far away as Iowa.
Second, from the 1960s into the early 2000s, the Chicago Board of Education published, every year two “Racial Ethnic Surveys”. One detailed staffs, the other students. The surveys were forced out of Chicago by the federal government, first in the preliminaries to a federal deseg order and then as part of the two orders (1979 and 1980).
The Board of Education stopped publishing those documents while Arne Duncan was CEO of CPS, as I said at the time, as one way of hiding the evidence of their dirty work. Which at the time was “reconstituting” neighborhood schools in black communities for “underperformance” and turning them over to AUSL as a very lucrative “consultant.” Black staffs were replaced with young, mostly white TFA type kids.
But the evidence was thrown out, so that it was much harder after 2005 for anyone to actually go school by school and get the “data” that Duncan and others claim to cherish.
Finally, when U.S. District Judge Charles Kakoris ended the desegregation consent decrees five years ago, it was open season on inner city schools. With the support of the entire plutocracy, the federal courts went over completely to the side of “reform” and eliminated that last vestige of equity as part of the issue. The judge’s creepy comments in court during that final hearing were so Reaganesque as to be right up there with Plessy and Dred Scott. But they were uttered here in Chicago in the 21st Century.
We don’t need desegregation
Now that we’ve got school reform…
It could almost be a song, to the tune of “We don’t need no education…”
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George, residential hypersegregation was firmly established in Chicago many, many decades ago, and the black exodus began as early as the late 70s / early 80s. Both conditions predate charters and “reform”. If charters and “reform” are worsening hypersegregation in Chicago, it is to an infinitesimal degree, a patch on what was created and sustained by the zoned district model.
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