The New York Times published an article today about the “success” of charter schools, especially for low-income black students. The article was written by Susan Dynarski of the University of Michigan.
It seems odd that anyone living in the state of Michigan could express enthusiasm for private management of public schools in light of the disastrous experience of that state. About 80% of the charters in Michigan operate for profit, a scandal in itself. The Detroit Free Press ran a weeklong series of articles last year
about the failure of charters to be transparent, accountable, or better than public schools. The year-long investigation concluded that charters got worse results than traditional public schools, received $1 billion a year taken from public schools, and were not held accountable for waste, fraud, abuse, and poor outcomes.
Professor Dynarski looks not at her own state, but at Boston, where there is a heated debate about expanding charters. She says they are successful for poor black kids, but not so much in the suburbs, where parents mobilize to keep them from destroying their public schools.
In her research, she pulls the reform trick of looking at data only from charters with lotteries. These are the successful charters. Bad charters don’t have lotteries; charters with lotteries have more applicants than places. The students who lose the lottery usually go to a public school that has larger class size and fewer resources than the charter.
Bruce Baker has explained this phenomenon. Comparing charter winners and losers is not a randomized study; it is a lottery-based study. The lottery losers are likely to go to a public school with the kids the charter doesn’t want: the children who don’t speak English, the ones who have behavior problems, the ones with disabilities–physical, cognitive, and emotional. There is something called “peer effects,” meaning that students are influenced by those in their group. If they attend school only with well-behaved, motivated students, they tend to act like their classmates.
So, what is the innovation that public schools should adopt? Excluding the “losers”? Excluding those who might lower scores? That works for elite private and public schools. But public education must educate all, not just the winners.
We are hurtling towards the re-establishment of a dual school system–one for schools allowed to choose their students, the other for those that the charter industry rejects. We are resurrecting the “separate and unequal” system that the Supreme Court held unconstitutional in 1954. This new system allegedly helps black kids, except that it leaves most behind.
PS: I know that baloney is spelled Bologna. I am using a colloquialism.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
i had a Twitter conversation with Prof. Dynarski last night. It’s pretty clear she could have written this study before she collected any data. And her definitions of “data” and “science” are both alarmingly narrow and arrogant. It’s all about test scores for these “researchers”. My guess is that she never set foot in one of the schools she “studied.”
It’s like doing a restaurant review by doing a word count of menus. You may wind up with some “data” but it doesn’t mean what you think it does.
“It’s like doing a restaurant review by doing a word count of menus. You may wind up with some ‘data’ but it doesn’t mean what you think it does.”
You may have your studies confused. The above is how NCTQ rated schools of education, including one school that didn’t have a school of ed.
Consider the source: “Susan Dynarski is a professor of public policy, education and economics at the University of Michigan, where she holds appointments at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, School of Education, Department of Economics and Institute for Social Research. She is a Faculty Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Center for Analysis of Postsecondary Education and Employment. She is a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution. Dynarski earned an A.B. in Social Studies from Harvard, a Master of Public Policy from Harvard and a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT.
Dynarski has been a Visiting Fellow at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and Princeton University as well as an associate professor at Harvard University. She has been an editor of The Journal of Labor Economics and Education Finance and Policy and is currently on the board of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. She has been elected to the boards of the Association for Public Policy and Management and the Association for Education Finance and Policy. The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators awarded her the Robert P. Huff Golden Quill Award for excellence in research on student aid.
Dynarski has testified about education and tax policy before the US Senate Finance Committee, the US House Ways and Means Committee and the President’s Commission on Tax Reform.”
It’s all telling, but that second paragraph is the killer.
Bravo, Michael. Thanks for the background on yet another sold out New World Order freak!
“Experts” are often wrong, but rarely in doubt…
Thank you for this excellent information. From an academic perspective (for some of us “geeky types) I also find it informative to get a sense of how some of these folks are connected. For example, I find it also intersting that the eminent historian of education Maris Vinovskis is connected to the Gerald Ford School of policy – and then we see the Harvard connection etc. The fact is these types have a long hisotry impacting education policy it seems to me. Although this may be trivial to some, I find it frighteningly informative.
The success is that they have extinguished every bit of individually out of the low income children of color. They have soothed the savage beast within, and trained them how to behave around their masters. Ask Eva Moskowitz about treating little children like silent prisoners, like lesser-thans. Ask her about the plantation education she prefers for children of color.
“Scholars,” rhymes with dollars, means “child who has a broken spirit.” They are robotic. They don’t talk back. They are silent all day long unless spoken to. They are taught to use hand gestures for every need. They pee themselves during pre-tests and during tests. They are meant to demonstrate, and desired to feel, shame when they are on the lower percentiles of whatever scoring is happening. If they don’t succumb to the will of Eva and her ilk, they are thrown away, tossed out, sent back to the public schools, where, usually, they flourish.
Ask Eva.
http://mytruesense.org/2013/10/02/the-agenda-behind-educating-black-and-brown-children/
Don’t ASK Eva, investigate Eva. One more point about how lotteries insure success. It means a parent has gone to meetings at least once if not several times. This means the likelihood of having parents “involved” in their child’s education is much higher. Education starts at home, and if parents are involved in their child’s education their children will be more successful!
So no special education (at least learning disabled or emotionally disabled), no ELL students (0% of failing schools are failing because of these two subgroups) and involved parents. So why are charter school test school’s higher than they are?
Donna-Thanks for the link. You should send it to Professor Dynarski, who enjoys cherry picking facts like the lottery charters cherry pick students.
Should be 90% of failing schools are failing because of these two subgroups
Stale baloney for sure.
It is, unfortunately, stale baloney that is in the NY Times and is being read by millions, helping frame the narrative for millions, and being used to reinforce policy decisions in countless places.
Our narrative….well…….
I used to take whatever the NYTimes reported on in articles and its editorials as a valuable source of relatively unbiased information. Now with twenty five years of public school teaching experience I cringe whenever I read one of their editorials or reportage on education. This has lead me to greatly devalue their editorials on any subject matter. In fact when I read an editorial that I agree with I question my judgement on the agreed upon subject.
I have much the same reaction to NY Times education coverage. We can talk all day and into the wee hours about the intricacies of what they get wrong, why, and how.
More importantly however is a discussion that we need to have, in detail and with great intensity, about narrative. Whatever we think about the NY Times and their reporting on the issues central to us, we have to be clear that they are furthering a narrative, on a grand stage, that we have come nowhere near countering, on any level or at any venue. We operate, for the most part, with the assumption that if we can produce yet another article or piece of research or statement proving how we are right, that we will somehow win against a narrative reinforced in such places as the NYTimes. This is so deeply wrongheaded that it is angering at least.
This latest article in the NY Times is very clearly ridiculous and built on shaky foundations, BUT that hardly matters!! We squabble over the technicalities of how it is wrong, which is good practice for sure, and inevitably sharpening of our minds and reasoning, but this is NOT THE SAME THING as organizing and mounting an aggressive counter-narrative. This is what our side is missing. It’s a biggy. It’s really what our unions should have been doing since the minute after “common core” was established as a term. Alas, that end of things has failed on a cataclysmic level. If we are to do this hard work of counter-narrative crafting, taking our unions back needs to be our first effort.
I totally agree. The union leaders have done the bidding of the “reformers” and none more so than Randi Weingarten. As far as the NYTimes goes they erroneously appointed Michael Winerip as an education reporter. I say that because he reported truthfully on education issues. Needless to say he was quickly removed from educational reporting. The only conclusion I can reach by the removal of Winerip is that the NYTimes is willfully biased.
Ultimately it is the fault of too many uninvolved teachers who don’t bother to vote in union elections or are too lazy to bother to learn about the issues and reelect the same leaders.
This was an opinion piece based on her research. It was neither a NY Times editorial nor an article by a NY Times reporter.
I thought it was a careful description of her research. I realize many people who post here disagree.
It’s really a lose-lose hypothesis put forth by the NYT government news: that corporate charter chains have higher standardized test scores. If they do, it is suggestive that they have increased inequity by draining resources from truly public schools, dividing communities and leaving truly public school families to struggle more than before. If they don’t “outperform”, it is suggestive that, well, they don’t.
What would MLK have fought for: funding equity and integration, or school marketing campaigns fueled by competition for funding of families who seek to segregate themselves from their neighbors?
With all the lying and cheating in the lottery chains, do you believe the data they present when they go to such great lengths to protect their brand? Since they control all the data, I think I would only trust the conclusions of an independent evaluator.
Massachusetts state auditor, “After two decades and the transfer of millions,
there’s little more than anecdotal data about charters.”
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/12/30/dispute-over-tutors-pay-roils-match-charter-school/Zo0iry9UCbKqPxDGtFYTxN/story.html
Diane, I am happy you chose not to impugn real bologna by linking to this article and used the colloquial expression instead!
It is deplorable that the gray lady’s coverage of education has declined to the point that, upon perusing it, one believes one may be reading the words of self-interested parties, rather than of journalists or in this case, “researchers”.
One suggests, instead, the perusal of a true journalist on the topic of Boston’s charters – the inimitable Edushyster:
http://edushyster.com/charter-cap-n-gown-ii-the-college-years/#more-6326
“Fifty percent of the BPS students had scored a college degree within six years vs. 42% of their charter peers. Now I know what you’re thinking. That equals a difference of eight percent, and eight rhymes with *hate* and also *overstate.* Which is why it’s time to look at the numbers behind those numbers. The 2007 class of Boston high school grads consisted of 1700 students, of whom some 850 have now attained their post-secondary attainment. The 2007 class of Boston charter high school grads, from a total of five charter high schools, consisted of 80 students, of whom 33 have scored their sheepskin.
Boy oh boy
If you are thinking that the number 33 (from five schools) is not a very big one, prepare to squint your eyes, for we are about to visit a smaller number still. As was documented by this very page last year, Boston’s charter high schools have something that we might delicately describe as a gender imbalance, meaning that by the time it’s time for charter grads to climb aboard the college express, there are very few boy grads left to make the climb. Like six at this school, six at this school, and four at this school. In fact, girls at Boston’s charter high schools typically outnumber boys by two-to-one by the time the final stages of the excellence extraction process has been reached. Apply that ratio to the 33 college grads and you end up with a number in the 15-ish range (if one is feeling generous…), meaning that five different charter high schools managed to produce a grand total of 15 boy college graduates.”
Christine, the NYT is but a sad, pathetic, plutocratic joke.
Thank goodness for IT, where we can source other, more accurate and balanced news.
The good news is in the comments section. Stale baloney doesn’t seem to be selling very well.
Hooray for NYSTEACHER who writes: “We squabble over the technicalities of how it is wrong, which is good practice for sure, and inevitably sharpening of our minds and reasoning, but this is NOT THE SAME THING as organizing and mounting an aggressive counter-narrative. This is what our side is missing. It’s a biggy. It’s really what our unions should have been doing since the minute after “common core” was established as a term. Alas, that end of things has failed on a cataclysmic level. If we are to do this hard work of counter-narrative crafting, taking our unions back needs to be our first effort.”
Yes, yes, and YES!
Exactly what I’ve been saying to anyone who will listen.
I’m ready for organizing and action.
How do we begin?
And, Alice, the one key difference in our narrative is that we educators have the TRUTH behind us, and we can prove the systemic effects of poverty and its causes in 2015 deregulated capitalist America . . .
I guess I’ll say it again:
The brilliant writing and analyses go so far.
I’m ready for action – in a real and substantive way.
Is anyone else?
How do we begin?
Alice,
Join up with others in your state. Join the BATS. Join NPE. Get involved.
It may become a lot easier if the Supreme Court rules against unions. Why? The unions are guaranteed their dues (agency fee) whether or not a teacher joins the union. The union leaders do the bidding of the politicians who protect this system. If the guaranteed fee structure is ended the unions will have to convince the rank & file to pay voluntarily. That won’t happen unless teachers (or any other unionized job) see a benefit worth paying for. Hence the leaders will be forced to support the workers if they want to survive as a union and as well paid leaders.
“It seems odd that anyone living in the state of Michigan could express enthusiasm for private management of public schools in light of the disastrous experience of that state. About 80% of the charters in Michigan operate for profit, a scandal in itself. The Detroit Free Press ran a weeklong series of articles last year”
It certainly does, especially because of this, from a year-long investigation by the Free Press:
“Charter schools as a whole fare no better than traditional schools in educating students in poverty”
And this, from Ohio:
“Ohio’s charter schools don’t quite match up on state report card grades to even Ohio’s big urban districts – districts that consistently rank near the bottom of state ratings, one analysis suggests.
A Fordham Institute analysis of report card results for districts and charters concludes that charter schools even in Ohio’s eight largest districts usually perform worse than that city’s district – with Cleveland as the only exception.”
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/09/state_report_cards_show_charte_2.html
Why are they promoting expanding charter schools all over the country based on schools in Boston?
The claim about the wonderful Boston charters is as much a lie as the rest of the piece. Jennifer Berkshire at Edushyster as well as others have totally debunked that claim. But at the moment, Boston’s mayor and the governor and Families for Excellent Schools and the Pioneer Institute and the MA DESE are all pressing to remove the cap on charter schools, and there’s a lawsuit claiming that children are deprived of a proper education without charters.
I’m guessing that having this laudatory piece in the NYT is a part of that strategy. Oh and the Harvard GSE links all of the reformyness above – Dynarski, Roland Fryer, etc.
This is hilarious!
Dynarski wrote this article about how guarding student data hurts research.
The article is filed under: Economic View
https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2014/09/25under45.htmhttps://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2014/09/25under45.htmhttps://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2014/09/25under45.htmv
Dynarski is a shill for these folks and all the others like them
The entire ed reform movement can be summed up as 1. charter schools are great and 2. public school students must produce and turn over more data.
Public schools only exist as national data collection centers. That’s their role in this “movement”. They have no value other than that. As long as my son shows up during “testing season” and turns over the data, I think he can stay home the rest of the year as far as this “movement” is concerned.
“Rigorous research suggests that the answer is yes for an important, underserved group: low-income, nonwhite students in urban areas. These children tend to do better if enrolled in charter schools instead of traditional public schools.”
That simply isn’t true in Ohio and Michigan or Pennsylvania. Why would national researchers write something that only applies to Boston to promote more charter schools all over the country?
I could do this the other way. Ohio’s urban public schools do better than Ohio charters. Therefore, based on that, we should promote public schools all over the country, right?
I also love this lack of accountability:
“A charter gives schools the autonomy to innovate. But it also obliges state and local governments to hold schools accountable. If schools that don’t educate children well are allowed to stay open, it’s a failure of government, and not of the charter experiment itself.”
Charter school successes are due to the success of the charter experiment. Charter school failures are due to government. Can public schools use that excuse? If not, why not?
Here’s some local coverage of actual Ohio charter schools, rather than the theoretical schools described in the NYTimes piece:
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/11/illegal_charter_school_ratings.html#incart_m-rpt-1
The state appointed an independent panel after the “director of school choice” gamed the scores to protect John Kasich’s political donors, who run the for-profit schools.
That is literally exactly what happened. I know that didn’t happen in Boston or NY, but it did happen in this state.
One would think researchers who are based in Ann Arbor would pick up an Ohio or Michigan newspaper occasionally, as local media in both states have had extensive near-daily coverage of the problems with charter schools for the last two years, but I guess not.
The disconnect between local and state coverage and national coverage is just amazing. I keep thinking that at some point there has to be some reckoning, some epic crash between the national narrative and the daily coverage in the states, but it never happens. It’s like trains on two tracks and they never intersect.
“Professor Dynarski looks not at her own state, but at Boston,”
Yet another economist Chetty picker.
What a surprise.
Ditch Chetty.
Pick up, instead, Picketty . . .
Ohio State Superintendent Ross, according to state newspapers, sent 65 pages to the Dept. of Ed., this week, trying to justify why Ohio should receive federal money to expand
charter schools. This occurs simultaneously with many local districts suing the Ohio Board of Education to recover funds diverted from their districts to charters. If Ohioans were polled, an overwhelming majority would tell the U.S. Dept. of Ed. to stop the expenditure of an allocated $71 million in federal tax dollars, to privatize public schools. The federal government, instead of encouraging corruption, should work to stop it. Ohioans would tell Duncan to focus on the crony capitalism occurring in Ohio public universities, as the result of political influence. (Dayton Daily News- Attorney General to Probe Million-Dollar Wright State University Contract. Issue is whether contract violates state lobbying laws.)
The only reason there is any investigation at all is because of reporters, Josh Sweigart and Laura Bischoff. After a FOIA request, Wright State claims they can’t find the contracts that awarded Ron Wine, $2 million dollars.
Obama’s Dept. of Ed. is an abomination.
The article hits the nail on the head!
An aside: one of my peeves – “fewer” resources, not “less” resources.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.