Jan Rsseger here reviews the CREDO report on charters in Ohio. Jan lives inn Cleveland and has watched ruefully as civic leaders have anandoned the public schools.
She writes:
“Charter schools in Ohio are notorious because the state legislature, filled with money from supporters of some of the worst charters, has chosen hardly to regulate the charter school sector at all. On Tuesday, the Stanford Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) released a new study of the academic effectiveness of Ohio’s charters (as measured by standardized test scores).
The report is scathing: “First, recent efforts across Ohio to improve the quality of charter school performance are only dimly discernible in the analysis. Overall performance trends are marginally positive, but the gains that Ohio charter school students receive even in the most recent periods studied still lag the progress of their traditional public school peers… Despite exemplars of strong results, over 40 percent of Ohio charter schools are in urgent need of improvement: they both post smaller student academic gains each year and their overall achievement levels are below the average for the state. If their current performance is permitted to continue, the students enrolled in these schools will fall even further behind over time.”
“Compared to the educational gains that charter students would have had in a traditional public school, the analysis shows on average that the students in Ohio charter schools perform worse in both reading and mathematics.”
Market-based “reform” doesn’t work in education.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane, Please help us in Ohio with the “5 of 8” rule elimination….it will change education as we know it!! We are desperate for coverage and support!!
Rachel N. Rowen Art Educator Columbus City Schools Columbus, OH USA
Rachel November,
I posted about Ohio’s 5 of 8 and got 150,000 page views. Write about it and I will post again.
Dear Governor Cuomo and fellow like-minded minions,
Your hyperbolic statement of public schools being the last monopoly is incorrect. A better analogy is that you and others like you who are making demands of teachers teaching children in public education is analogous to a slave owner demanding his slaves pick more cotton faster than is humanly possible or face punishment for no wrong doing of their own but rather inhumane demands and treatment. The technology of the cotton gin didn’t reduce or eliminate slavery as it was hoped by the inventor but rather ramped up the desire for more profit. The dehumanization of the system was increased as inappropriate, inhumane demands and treatment were thrust upon the captive labor force of enslaved humans in the name of greed and excessive profit. This profit in no way benefitted the enslaved population who were insanely considered property not people in the eyes of the law.
We the Citizens of the United States who teach children in the public school system are not some outsourced industry to some newly industrialized nation where the citizen workers are being exploited because the workforce is abundant and workers are easily replaced once any exploited worker is injured or dies trying to keep up the inhumane pace. That is what Cuomo and his kind want to do. They want to dehumanize the process of teaching and reduce it to a form that is easily replaced by minimally trained individuals. OK so we current teachers with Master’s degrees conferred upon us by New York State are now the wretched refuse because we are doing the job you trained us to do. Your system trained us. If your system was so flawed in our training at that time why would we think you and your kind are an appropriate dictator of the improvement?
Yes there is a breakdown in the system…we realize this as the teachers of children. This is after all the GREAT EXPERIMENT WE CALL THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. We the Amazing citizens of the Amazing United States of America are aware of the authentic improvements that will transform the United States educational system. You Mr. Tammany Boss have misdirected the energy of the educational system in order to kill it and rebuild an outsourced cheaper and inferior product not improve the product so stop espousing that you are improving the system. You are a robber baron of the worst kind. You hide your sincere motives and pretend with your forked tongue to be promoting a reform that will improve the quality of education when the words you really mean to say is a cheaper form of education will prepare the 21st century workforce to be drones that will feel their inferiority and never rise up to speak truth to power.
Today’s educational system isn’t about educating faster and cheaper like exploited labor sewing in a sweatshop. This is about educating human children better not faster and cheaper. Time has come to reallocate resources for new models of public education that value the human capital of teachers who pay to educate themselves as instructed by the rule book with Master’s degrees and seeking continual opportunities to learn, grow, and improve as educators.
We began with a public education model that was noble and valiant to educate all in the 1800’s, and now we want that to evolve into a 21st Century educational model that isn’t about cheaper and faster, or one that lays waste to those students who need more and deserve more. From the accelerated student to the challenged student, and the students from one end of the spectrum to the other who have their own unique leaning needs regardless of scoring the highest or lowest on a test because they all have learning challenges and needs…all students deserve more than the system is allowing these children, yet powerful, ignorant, politicians expect the same accomplishment at the same time from all of these children. We know, you know, and even parent knows each child begins with different physical needs, emotional needs, and educational needs even when born to the same two parents.
The system created by No Child Left Behind and Race To The Top has attempted to create a future workforce that feels it is not enough as a human and deserves less as a person, worker and so he, she, they, don’t ask or expect protections in the workplace and society as a consumer. That is who you Governor Cuomo and others like you are training and what you are training into existence with the laws you have adopted.
We are the amazing citizens of the amazing United States of America, our amazing children are citizens and they deserve smaller class sizes, appropriate models of comparison to the schools that people pay $40,000 dollars a year or more to send their children to as examples of the best ways to educate children. Is my tuition waiver to a charter school going to cover the cost of $40,000? No but your child will get that education and you want to make mine cheaper now by paying the human capital less in order to provide profits to investors. Who will win out in a decision between education improvements and shareholder profits? You can’t be beholden to two gods Andrew and you have demonstrated that your god is the golden idol of greed wrapped in green backs. We the public school products do most of the living, breathing, buying and dying that make the economy move. So we deserve our due, a top of the line educational system.
We aren’t going to be treated like exploited laborers working with a piece of metal…slow down the assembly line Henry Ford…We are teachers working with children and in both cases our work deserves to be valued and justly compensated. Technology is used to improve the process not dehumanize the process, not cheapen the process but rather enrich the process. Fast isn’t fast enough for you Andrew. Where are you racing to because it is the space between birth and death that the race takes place and some of us want it to be more than what you have planned for us? Oh that’s right your race is to the White House so who cares if you step on some children’s bodies in the process. That is your race to the top. Just like Rockefeller you have to tear down a few Italian immigrant grocery stores to make room for progress. Well we citizens, teacher, parents, and students are here to stay to insure a better future for all children in our care because we made and will continue to make a difference in the future of a child.
A sad thought to reflect upon is this following stark inequality, that if you have power and influence nothing in this process matters because you can buy your way through it with expensive private schools or buy influence over the system itself, BUT for the vast majority of us we can’t buy our way into that club of influence. We need a real education that provides real opportunity and not admittance to exclusivity. We are working towards inclusivity. ALL CHILDREN CAN LEARN AND WANT TO LEARN AND LEARN DEEPLY, INTENSELY, PASSIONATELY, AND AT A HIGH DEGREE OF MASTERY AND SOPHISTICATION.
To those of you who think this is a poor hyperbolic analogy let us recall that THE AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARIES from the streets of Boston to the House of Burgesses who compared their plight as colonists of England to slavery and that was for paying taxes that were less than those paid by the British in mother England without representation in Parliament. Well who is representing our voices when the lines are gerrymandered Andrew.
Sam Adams was a hypocrite after the American Revolution because he condemned those Revolutionary War Veterans in Shays Rebellion for protesting the same way the Sons of Liberty did leading up to the American Revolution. Veterans were mistreated in 1786 too. So Governor Andrew Cuomo you have reached the pinnacle of power like the early revolutionaries and now you want to deny the pathway to others. Your ancestors and mine hailed from Italy on a boat to make something more of themselves with the opportunities in America. Some of those same ancestors like my grandfather and grandmother grew up here in America during the Great Depression and some like my grandfather, gave his last full measure as a patriotic American and died in WWII to preserve the opportunities for future generations like his daughter and grandchildren, nieces and nephews. He didn’t lose his life so those who came after him would have the same struggle he had being exploited and pushing a vegtable cart by age 8. Hard work yes, but not the extinguishing of hard won opportunities.
All children deserve more and to learn how they learn best. Testing that screens learners for how the learner learns best in order to create a well educated, involved, citizenry of excellence is the goal. Stop the smoke and mirrors version of testing that doesn’t improve students and education but rather relegates students to the sidelines sooner because the testing forces them out of the game before they’ve even learned to swing the bat. The tests tell the children they aren’t enough even though the tests aren’t appropriate. You remember this testing you support well the outcome is much like the communist testing of the COLD WAR ERA. All of us who grew up during the 1970’s and 1980’s were appalled by the educational testing that we learned about in history class or while listening to a spotlight biography of an athlete from the SOVIET UNION or another WARAW PACT country during the Olympics. The testing that eliminated opportunities rather than opening opportunities for all.
We teachers are creating leaders with skills to lead themselves and others around them.
We teachers are creating leaders with skills to make the world humane, with skill to be effective problem solvers, and creators of a world where problems are engineered out or minimized before the creation is manifested. We are creating our world…
It isn’t about profit or perfection it is about the journey of excellence.
My words are to inspire the next leg of this journey if you are reading this what can you do to help create a manifestation of this public school of excellence into existence.
Famous people are quoted to inspire us daily and one such quote is
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
Winston Churchill . Students and teachers are experiencing the antithesis of this quote when they should be trying and failing and learning and growing in order to bring the best into the present.
Cuomo has teachers chasing their tails like the private sector has employees running a race that sucks the life out of humans. All this exhaustion and defending to prove we are worthy of humane treatment as employees and consumers, who are trying to do our best to maintain our families and communities. OHH Master Andrew don’t sell us away from our family our way of life our opportunity for happiness amidst the labor of slavery. I’ll be good, I promise to be good and behave. Well guess what Andrew we already are good we are amazing. We include all children in our country in the public educational system.
Many maybe even most feel unable to put forth energy to protect what generations before us fought for and what our generation should be rebuilding and expanding to include ever more humans, a decent way of life where we are respected along with the ideals espoused in our pledge to the flag, the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution.
And Andrew if public schools are a monopoly, then what are The College Board and Pearson Publishers? Perhaps part of Boss Cuomo’s New Tammany Regime.
Best Regards,
Peace
“In life, surround yourself with those who light your path.”
A serious question: why do so many parents sign up their children to go to charters like these?
“(as measured by standardized test scores).”
Since Wilson has proven that educational standards and standardized testing ARE EPISTEMOLOGICALLY AND ONTOLOGICALLY ILLOGICAL AND COMPLETELY INVALID and I add UNETHICAL TO USE THE RESULTS for anything, all the blathering about the “results” and “comparisons of results” are nothing more than MENTAL MASTURBATION whether one is for charters, against them or don’t give a hoot one way or the other.
Why is the fact of the illogicalness, invalidity, and unethicalness of those educational malpractices so hard to understand?!?
Oh!! Look!! Test results. Let’s go masturbate our minds, yeh, yeh, yeh!!!!!!!
Thank you for pointing out what is continually missed throughout the discussions regarding charter schools and other school choices – educational standards and standardized testing is not the only measure (and in fact it shouldn’t be used at all) of student/school success. Ms. Ravitch and others continually fight against standardization except when bashing charter schools. I am well aware of the many problems with charters in many parts of the country, but to vilify charter schools based on their standardized test score in one post and then vilify standardized testing in the next is somewhat disingenuous. I think the question many who are threatened by charters and other choices should be asking is why are parents and students making the decisions to leave their home schools? I will tell you as a Director of a charter school in Minnesota, it is not always about white flight and leaving others behind. Our school has almost double the special education population (46%) as the local district school, a higher than local average of students on free/reduce lunch (50%), and our ethnic diversity mirrors the local district. The reason we attract the majority of our students is because of obscenely large schools and class sizes, unmet academic and special education needs, and unaddressed social and mental health needs including a proliferation of bullying. Our standardized test scores may not be the best or even the midrange in the state, but our student’s engagement, hope for a better future, connections with staff and peers, post-secondary success, and 21st century skills are miles past where they were before they started with us. Those metrics are much more difficult to measure, but they the reasons I got into teaching and why I will continue to defend my decision to help start a charter school.
Oops, forgot to reference Wilson’s work:
“Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. And a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it attempts to measure “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
By Duane E. Swacker