A new study demonstrates that charter schools in Chicago get worse results than Chicago’s much-maligned public schools. Here is the abstract of the study by Myron Orfield and Thomas Luce:
“Charter schools have become the cornerstone of school reform in Chicago and in many other large cities. Enrollments in Chicago charters increased by more than ten times between 2000 and 2014 and, with strong support from the current mayor and his administration, the system continues to grow. Indeed, although state law limits charter schools in Chicago to 75 schools, proponents have used a loophole that allows multiple campuses for some charters to bypass the limit and there are now more than 140 individual charter campuses in Chicago. This study uses comprehensive data for the 2012-13 and 2013-14 school years to show that, after controlling for the mix of students and challenges faced by individual schools, Chicago’s charter schools underperform their traditional counterparts in most measurable ways. Reading and math pass rates, reading and math growth rates, graduation rates, and average ACT scores (in one of the two years) are lower in charters all else equal, than in traditional neighborhood schools. The results for the two years also imply that the gap between charters and traditionals widened in the second year for most of the measures. The findings are strengthened by the fact that self-selection by parents and students into the charter system biases the results in favor of charter schools.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Overworked, underpaid and undercertificated – what’s new!
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From the posting: “The findings are strengthened by the fact that self-selection by parents and students into the charter system biases the results in favor of charter schools.”
So even when charterites/privatizers rig the system in favor of themselves—they are still found wanting by their own metrics.
Perhaps they need to change their mantra of “factories of failure” when talking about public schools and apply that term to their edubusiness outlets—and start calling public schools “centers of success.”
But then, as they will retort, why should they opt for the “choice” of truth in labeling at the expense of $tudent $ucce$$?
In their eyes, it makes no ₵ent¢…
😎
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Perhaps they should just give it up and return students to the more effective and efficient educational provider, public schools. Within any decent sized urban public school, there are actually more “choices” for diverse students than any amateur, “one size fits all” school can provide. We all know this will never happen when there’s gold in those student seats.
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Your suggestion that instead of calling our schools Failure Factories we could be calling them Success Centers hits a nerve: Where has been the nonstop advertising on the part of public school proponents (presumably the unions, for example) telling our nation that we have GOOD/GREAT/WELL-FUNCTIONING public schools (and teachers)? It feels as if public school supporters at the top level have been very remiss in allowing the conversation to be so endlessly and negatively one-sided.
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“Chicago’s charter schools underperform their traditional counterparts in most measurable ways.”
Those “measurable ways” do not have any basis in rationo-logical thought. Those “metrics” are chimeras, duendes, falsehoods and fabrications and a bastardization of the results of the teaching and learning process. Nothing is being “measured”–assessed, yes that is happening but measured, NO!
Let’s examine the absurdity of those supposed “measures”.
Richard Phelps, a staunch standardized test proponent (he has written at least two books defending the standardized testing malpractices) in the introduction to “Correcting Fallacies About Educational and Psychological Testing” unwittingly lets the cat out of the bag with this statement (notice how he is trying to assert by proximity that educational standardized testing and the testing done by engineers are basically the same, in other words a “truly scientific endeavor”):
“Physical tests, such as those conducted by engineers, can be standardized, of course [why of course of course], but in this volume, we focus on the measurement of latent (i.e., nonobservable) mental, and not physical, traits.” [my addition]
Now since there is no agreement on a standard unit of learning, no exemplar of that standard unit and there is no measuring device calibrated against said non-existent standard unit, how is it possible to “measure the nonobservable” which is what all this standardized testing insanity, truly insane if you think about it, is about???
YEP!, We’re going to “measure” the “non-observable” with a non-existent measuring device that isn’t calibrated to a non-existing standard unit of learning giving us results that are used to discriminate against and harm many students.
So using standardized testing “metrics” as an assessing device can only be seen as chimerical as duendes and fairies.
So much harm to so many students is caused by the educational malpractices that are standards and testing or as Phelps contends in “measuring the nonobservable”.
How insane is this all???
Utterly beyond my comprehension!!!
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Nonsense. Everyone knows charter schools are better than public schools. You hear it every day- over and over and over.
Why else would ed reformers in government be expanding charters while starving public schools?
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Illinois will soon join Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania as ed reform disaster states. This list keeps getting longer.
It’s a huge swathe along the Great Lakes at this point. Take heed, Wisconsin. They’re coming for you!
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I’m tempted to cherry pick a bit of data in that research: “However, charters use suspensions much less extensively than the other school types. The suspension rate for traditionals, for instance, are more than 20 times the average for charters.”
Even not cherry picking (charter expulsion rates, at 6 tenths of one percent, were higher), I didn’t find the analysis persuasive.
In fact, it seemed sufficiently tilted that I wasn’t surprised to see this: “This work was funded by project support from the Illinois Education Association, the Chicago Teacher’s Union, the Illinois Federation of Teachers…”
For example, in attempting to undercut the CREDO results that had demonstrated mildly positive results for Chicago charter schools in respect to academic proficiency as measured by improving test scores, Orfield and Luce write:
“However, there are reasons to worry about the CREDO results. The studies match charter students with traditional school students based on race/ethnicity, gender, English proficiency, free/reduced price lunch status, special education status and grade level. The method is designed to control for selection bias by creating a control group like those used in randomized experiments, but the list of matching variables does not include anything that reliably captures parental engagement, a primary source of selection bias in charter studies (Maul, 2013; Miron & Applegate, 2009).”
They mention six of the CREDO variables. But conveniently omit the seventh (though Maul had certainly acknowledged it). The seventh variable that they omit? Baseline test scores. If those doesn’t “reliably capture parental engagement,” their argument falls apart.
A major flaw like that tends to make me receptive to a critique like this:
https://www.incschools.org/five-reasons-im-taking-professor-orfields-research-seriously/
whose manifold criticisms, include claims that Orfield/Luce present:
“1. Patently false data: data in both the study’s “School Characteristics” and “School Performance” tables simply do not align with the data publicly available on the CPS data page.”
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I’m also concerned with the vehemently anti-organized labor “ed reform movement” designing programs for skills training.
The last thing we need is more politicians and lobbyists pushing wages down in the midwest.
Should finance sector CEO’s be designing training for working class people anyway? Shouldn’t they find people who have some connection to these skills or trades? Putting a hard hat on Michael Bloomberg doesn’t really cut it.
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I don’t think most of the public is aware just how pervasive the “public schools suck! rah rah for charters!” IS in ed reform unless they start reading in the echo chamber:
https://www.the74million.org/article/whitmire-rocky-mountain-ties-in-denver-charters-excel-working-with-district
They literally attribute any success in a public school TO a charter school. Everyone should be reading these people. It’s amazing how they have convinced themselves they are “agnostics” when every word they say or speak contradicts that.
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This is an example of the blindness:
They are JUST NOW looking at whether charter schools negatively impact kids who remain in public schools? 15 years into a huge privatization effort this is raised?
Come on. That’s a clear bias. They didn’t value existing public schools enough to even look at systemic effects of charters on the systems they’re in the midst of privatizing!
What can this possibly be other than a preference for charter schools? The public system simply ceased to exist in this world. I can’t imagine parachuting into a place like Cleveland and busily privatizing while completely ignoring the effects on the existing schools while my privatization effort is underway. That’s pretty brutal to the kids and parents in those schools, don’t you think?
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Chiara,
No doubt you know this but Marty West is a big supporter of school choice. He is one of Paul Peterson’s proteges at the Kennedy School at Harvard, where everyone learns that charters and vouchers are always better than public schools.
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I didn’t see anything in the study about looking at the demographic variable for students needing special education services except for Gifted programs. This is interesting because, as we know, manipulating their special education population is another way that the charter schools artificially inflate their “positive” results. Even without that variable, the public schools still outperformed the charters. And yet, the charter industry expands!!!
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This should not be surprising. These kinds of findings have been evident since Dr. Ravitch first book came out.
It just seems to make no difference. Don’t confuse me with the facts, my mind is already made up.
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Something I think no one has considered, perhaps the various filtering mechanisms of charters select for kids who will do less well in school. Perhaps it indicates some out of school, i.e family factor such as an authoritarian household that likes no excuses harshness or that represents a lower support level for creativity. These factors combined with the rigid structures of charters might explain their lower performance. We’ve known they are a social engineering experiment using the kids as guinee pigs, but it seems we may have been blind to some of the things unintentionally being tested and their outcomes. I wish I could recall more about the failures of Taylorism as I think that might inform this question.
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In other words, the unknown, unexamined factors that are at the root of this reality seem likely to be the best refutation of the methods and claims of charter pushers and of reformers in general. Overall, they seem to have done a good job of falsifying their own experiments without understanding why they keep getting inferior results.
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It is indeed very often the case, that parents by default send their children to the local district schools… and if and when things don’t work out well for the child, whether it’s being bullied by other kids, or struggling academically, the parents then start to explore other options, such as charter schools.
Here’s anecdotal evidence.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/11/01/charter-school-success-story-made-possible-chance/pMboUyVwZ6iSxQsmk8cD8I/story.html
And keep in mind that the McKinley where the child had been, is one of the better Boston schools… has intensive behavioral interventions and emotional supports.. for kids who have not been able to succeed at regular Boston schools.
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So Stephen,
You would destroy amthe best state school system in the nation based on an anecdote. I bet there are thousands of equally compelling anecdotes about kids who were saved by public schools or kids who were kicked out of a charter school and welcomed by their public school even though the charter kept the money
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“You would destroy… the best state school system in the nation based on an anecdote.”
One of the several most uneven and inequitable school systems in the nation is also “the best”? Rather than celebrating that, better to focus on its continuing susceptibility to improvement.
“or kids who were kicked out of a charter school and welcomed by their public school even though the charter kept the money”
Anecdote alert: I went to an early voting location yesterday… the Strand theater. Very long lines. There was a woman walking the line with a microphone shouting at full volume for people to vote no on our Massachusetts ballot question that would lift the cap on charter schools here. The one and only reason she gave… again and again and again at intense volume… was that if a kid goes to a charter school the money goes with the child, but when they then leave the latter school, the charter school keeps the money. “Your child will be out on the street” she yelled, because no money would go back to the district school.
Like many of the arguments against Q2, “even though the charter kept the money” would be even more persuasive, Diane, if it survived swift fact-checking.. Instead, we find: “For students who attend the charter school for less than the full year, the tuition payment shall be reduced based on the number of days of enrollment.”
http://www.doe.mass.edu/charter/governance/adminguide.doc (page 74)
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Stephen,
One of the benefits of reaching Nov 9 is that you will stop writing here about the glories of expanding charter schools.
If you knew how charter schools were bankrupting public schools in other states, you would be better informed.
I used to be a charter cheerleader, like you, but that was in the 1990s before we know what we know now.
You are hopelessly uninformed. If you had been reading this blog since 2012, when I started writing it, I don’t think you would continue with your advocacy for privatization of public school dollars.
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