Paul Thomas marks the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina by looking at Charleston, South Carolina, a coastal city similar to New Orleans but without the devastating hurricane. Proponents of the “New Orleans Model” or the “New Orleans Miracle” imply that school choice is itself a solution to the problems of racism and poverty. School districts across the South are proposing ways to be like New Orleans, without a public school system or with full choice.
But Thomas shows that school choice is a diversion from the root causes of low academic performance.
A large body of research finds that:
Private, public, and charter schools have about the same range of measurable student outcomes, regardless of the school type and strongly correlated with the socioeconomic status of the child’s home. (See this discussion of “charterness.”)
Research on school choice has shown mixed results at best, but even when some choice has shown promise of, for example, raising test scores for black, brown, and poor students, those increased scores are linked to selectivity, attrition, and extended school days/years—none of which have anything to do with the consequences of choice and all of which expose those “gains” as false success.
School choice, notably charter schools, has been strongly linked with increasing racial and socioeconomic inequity: increased segregation, inequitable disciplinary policies and outcomes.
SC advocacy for charter schools as the newest school choice commitment fails to acknowledge that charter schools in the state are overwhelmingly about the same and often worse than comparable public schools (see analysis of 2011 and 2013 data here), and the South Carolina Public Charter School District is among the top four worst districts in the state for racially inequitable discipline with blacks constituting about 19% of the enrollment but over 50% of suspensions/expulsions.
The research on school choice does not support the claims made by SCPC [a free-market think tank], and the rhetoric is also deeply flawed.
School choice advocates often fall back on “poor children deserve the same choices that rich children enjoy.”
However, several problems exist within this seemingly logical assertion.
The greatest flaw is suggesting that affluent and mostly white affluent children are thriving because of choice is itself a lie, a mask for the reality that the key to their success is their wealth and privilege. Being born into a wealthy family trumps educational attainment, and white privilege trumps educational attainment by blacks (see here and here).
In its most disturbing form, then, school choice advocacy is a distraction from the consequences of racism and poverty, both of which are reflected in and perpetuated by the education system.
All the links are included in his article. Read it.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“extended school days/years—none of which have anything to do with the consequences of choice and all of which expose those “gains” as false success.”
How do extended days and years not have anything to do with choice and represent a “false success”?
Makes no sense to me. I think it’s one of the aspects of most high performing charters that most contribute to thei success.
LikeLike
Extended school days/years is not related to “choice”. Plenty of public schools have also extended their days/years.
Of course, then there’s the research that shows that such extensions are only beneficial (as “measured” by test scores, for those who care) for a small portion of the very “lowest performing” students. Research also shows that extended days/years have a negative effect on self-reported school enjoyment which makes it more likely that kids will go elsewhere or drop out entirely – the attrition/selectivity that Steve K talks about below. So if all you care about is modest test score gains for some kids, and you’re willing to have an increase in drop-outs, yeah, extended days/years are great.
LikeLike
Our public school got a grant to do an extended day. It’s voluntary and open to all of them but some are “recommended”. A retired principal runs it.
This idea that public schools can’t or won’t try things is misguided, in my opinion. This is an ordinary public school with a unionized workforce and an elected school board. It’s about half lower income kids. They applied for the grant, got the funding and put it in place. Did it take longer because they had to get some majority consensus and bring it to the public for review? Probably. Is that a bad thing? No, I don’t think so. I think the public SHOULD review and debate decisions made by a public entity. I don’t think that’s optional or to be jettisoned for the sake of efficiency.
LikeLike
Dienne,
These kinds of extended day pilots rarely amount to anything because they’re half-assed attempts. Are there District schools that do 60% more instructional time as many charters do?
Also, to those who say longer day and year means attrition, I disagree. We get many students solely because their parents want them someplace free and safe while they work.
LikeLike
John –
You’ve got childcare confused with schooling. Civilized nations provide high quality, affordable childcare to working parents. We don’t. We just pretend that all families have someone at home (usually The Beaver’s mom, Mrs. Cleaver) in her apron waiting with a fresh plate of cookies, delaying any important decisions until Ward comes home from the office.
LikeLike
I’m not sure “data” has anything to do with these decisions. The expansion of charters and vouchers in my state obviously has nothing to do with data or they would have changed direction from the Bush/Obama template a decade ago. They don’t lack “data”.
The US Department of Education has been funding the expansion of Rocketship charters and Rocketship funded a study to measure their own effectiveness compared to “non Rocketship schools” :
Click to access rocketship-year-one-findings-8-10-15_final.pdf
Reading this, I’m not clear why the Obama Administration is pushing the expansion of these schools. Why federal funding of Rocketship charters over any ordinary local public school, since Rocketship seems to do about the same on test scores?
LikeLike
Agreed, in spades, that data has nothing to do with these decisions. Too, from my perspective test scores do not necessarily equate with education. As has been blogged many times many of these tests, are counterproductive to education causing way too many children to feel like failures.
Too, again, being able to parrot the “correct” answers to politically imposed tests is: A. not necessarily indicative of understanding the material and B – hardly indicative of critical thinking. The Japanese, whose schools we were admonished to emulate found out to their horror that so many of their students when finishing high school had learned 2 things: to hate school and learning and how to pass tests. They had not even learned the material that was on the tests they had passed.
My concern as has been often stated that uncritical thinking, merely learning to accept what has been proclaimed as fact is counterproductive to a democratic society, for a dictatorship, yes, for democracy, emphatically no.
Further, as I have blogged many times in my view our most pressing societal problems are not not there ar not enough scientists, mathematicians etc but rather lack of integrity, honesty, people never learning who they are as human beings, etc, all the things which humankind’s greatest minds have proclaimed as “education”. For me that is what has been absolutely forgotten in all this. Looking critically at what is going on in the world and even in our own U. S., has led me to this belief.
Are children to become widgets in the corporate ruled world or are they to be raised to their highest potential as human beings, that which the HUMANITIES endow to people? Are people “its” or “thous”, spiritual beings whom we can love as humans or “its”, robotic entities?
LikeLike
John, I see your point when you isolate that part of the sentence. You left out selectivity and attrition from that sentence. An extended school day / year is a form of generating selectivity through attrition. What families and/or students will be willing to do more? The highest functioning ones.
This is one of the big charter schemes. My district has hired three teachers, each from a different charter organization over the last four years. I realize that this is a small sample size but each one stated that their charters had steady attrition. Why? Because they created an environment that was so academically difficult and discipline driven that only the best could pass classes and the worst behavioral offenders were routinely suspended leading to their failures and frustrating the students and their families.
Extended school day/year is a contributing factor to that. It adds to selectivity (who applies for the lottery) and attrition (who can navigate through the system).
LikeLike
Excellent points. Thanks.
LikeLike
We have a couple of high school teachers in the family and both of them tell me that the longer school days and school years force their teen wage earners to drop out. Each teacher has had numerous students who have had to work in order to help support their families. These students are always barely passing their classes because they head to their jobs right after school and take buses home from work at 11:00 or midnight. When the School Board considered imposing longer school days on their “failing” schools so there would be more time for test prep, these students told everyone that it would force them to drop out. I am convinced that many trustees and administrators view forcing out these super poor students as a feature, not a bug of extended days and hours.
LikeLike