Tom Ratliff, a member of the Texas state Board of Education, wrote this article for the Longview News-Journal. It is a warning to parents not to assume that charter schools are better than public schools. On average, he says, the opposite is true.
Public schools ranked higher for financial accountability:
During the 2012-13 school year (the most recent year of the rating), Texas’ traditional public schools far outperformed charter schools in both academic and financial measurements. Don’t take my word for it, look at the information straight from the Texas Education Agency:
Financial accountability: bit.ly/1rIFYsm
Academic accountability: bit.ly/1pXZ3RZ
To summarize these reports, I offer the following:
The FIRST rating is the Financial Integrity Rating System of Texas and, according to the education agency, is designed to “encourage public schools to better manage their financial resources in order to provide the maximum allocation possible for direct instructional purposes.” I think we all agree, that’s a good thing to measure.
According to the agency, the FIRST rating uses 20 “established financial indicators, such as operating expenditures for instruction, tax collection rates, student-teacher ratios, and long-term debt.” How did the schools do? Glad you asked.
Traditional ISDs: 89 percent ranked “superior” and 1.2 percent ranked “substandard.”
Charter schools: 37 percent ranked “superior” and 20 percent ranked “substandard.”
Yes, one out of five charter schools ranked “substandard” on how they spend the tax dollars supporting them, while almost 9 out of 10 ISDs ranked “superior”.
And public schools outperform charter schools academically too:
Let’s shift our attention to academic performance. If the academic performance is good, the taxpaying public might be more understanding of a low rating on a financial measure. Unfortunately, the charters do not compare well there, either, under the 2014 TEA Accountability System.
Traditional ISDs: 92.6 percent met standard, while 7.4 percent did not.
Charter schools 77.7 percent met standard, while 17.3 percent did not.
Again, almost one out of five charter schools failed to meet the state’s academic standards.
And then Tom Ratliff asks the best question of all:
“Where is the outrage from groups like the Texas Association of Business or the Austin Chamber of Commerce?” Those groups rarely miss an opportunity to criticize the shortcomings of traditional ISDs. Why not express concerns when numbers like these relate to charter schools? If these numbers were attributable to ISDs, you can bet those groups would be flying planes around the Capitol and holding press conferences like they have in the past. A little consistency would be nice when asking for taxpayer-funded schools to perform as expected.”
Ratliff points out that his father wrote the original charter law. It is refreshing to see a policymaker looking at the data and seeing that competition does not translate into better education or more accountability. By the way, Tom’s father Bill Ratliff –former Lieutenant Governor of Texas–is already a member of the blog’s honor roll for his willingness to speak up and think for himself. A good Texas family.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thanks for posting this information. We are very proud of Tom Ratliff.
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We already know that if we don’t fund the public schools adequate so they can do the job they are supposed to do, student performance suffers, but what happens in the private-sector, for-profit Charters when even more money is removed to make a profit?
I think we now have an answer.
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I hope Texans hear this and remember when they go to the polls in the fall. Abbott is very much pro-charter school.
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I agree….I don’t care who you vote for just as long as it’s not Abbott and Patrick. They are bad for Texas public education.
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I would love to see an end to all such vain comparisons–letter grading of schools, comparisons of public schools to charters and private schools to public, for example. Mikhail Baryshnikov once said, ” I don’t try to dance better than anyone else. I try to dance better than myself.” He recognized how vain, how fruitless, comparisons often are.
Just as letter grading of schools makes no sense because of differences in the populations served, neither do comparisons of charters and regular public schools. Some private schools and some poorly supervised charters, as Dr. Ravich has pointed out, cherry pick students and so artificially drive up their scores (on tests that are themselves highly suspect evaluation instruments). There are also many, many charters–especially urban charters–that serve high risk, challenged populations and many parents of challenged students who give charters a try after their kids have failed to succeed in public schools.
In short, schools, like students, differ enormously in the challenges that they face. All these comparisons are apples to oranges, Hostess snowballs to edamame. It’s simply sloppy thinking to compare them.
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Amen…The grading of schools is a person’s attempt to justify their actions.
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While I agree with you wholeheartedly Bob, by using my enemy’s weapon against him, he may then have to drop the test score line because he is tired of getting beat over the head with it. The wonderful irony is that they can’t meet their own designed standard. Indeed, test scores are meaningless. As far a sloppy thinking, we do have a better vision, but first we must save the schools then redesign them to undo the damage that has been done.
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This should be sent to every news outlet in Texas, print as well as TV news.
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Bob, it is important to note that some charters (those that focus on at-risk populations) fall under an “alternative accountability system” and are not measured in the same ways as “regular” schools. Public schools can also fall under this system, but the threshold is much harder for them to get out of the “normal” accountability system. Just wanted you to know that not all schools are measured in the same manner.
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