Baker and Weber: The Full Story About Charters in Newark

By dianeravitch

December 13, 2017 //

Bruce Baker and Mark Weber have assembled a full report about charters in Newark.

There are successes and failures and much in-between.

Before accepting the assurances of reformers about Newark, read this.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Newark, Privatization, Research

9 Comments Post your own or leave a trackback: Trackback URL

Robert D. Skeels * rdsathene says:

December 13, 2017 at 2:08 pm

The outright discrimination against Students with Disabilities (SWD) by the charter chains surveyed in the report is in line with that of other reports on privately managed charter schools. At this point, we need to start calling the charter industry out on its not-so-subtle model of ableism and eugenics as their course of industry.

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- ciedie aech says:
  
  December 14, 2017 at 1:46 pm
  
  WORTH PUBLISHING OVER AND OVER: We need to start calling the charter industry out on its not-so-subtle model of ableism and eugenics as their course of industry.
  
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Chiara says:

December 13, 2017 at 2:39 pm

“Figure C5 shows that among the three districts in Newark, only NPS serves any children with limited English language proficiency. As about 10% of the NPS population is LEP/ELL, this, again, raises questions about scalability. The more that charters in the space serve non-LEP/ELL children, the more LEP/ELL children are concentrated in the district schools. As with poverty and disability, it is also desirable to have access to more fine-grained data on the level of language proficiency.”

There isn’t enough of this kind of analysis and you have to take it into account.

So what happens when they concentrate all the children with limited English proficiency in the public schools? Not what happens to the charter schools- what happens to the public schools?

I never see that in “portfolio” schemes. There’s never a recognition that if these children aren’t in charters they are GOING somewhere, and that “somewhere” is the public school system.

It doesn’t matter if they split up a system into three parts and call it something else- it’s still a system. It’s almost as if they designate the public schools as a static “default” or”control” that stays the same no matter what happens around them, and that isn’t how systems work.

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- retired teacher says:
  
  December 13, 2017 at 4:20 pm
  
  ELLs may vary greatly in their level of preparation for academic work. While they all come with a need to learn English, students from poor countries are generally less academically prepared than those from wealthier countries. English level makes a big difference as well. Beginners have the largest academic and language needs while advanced and transitional students require less intensive instruction. In any case a “buffet of choices” erodes the public system while leaving the public system with the neediest, most expensive students to educate.
  
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  - Chiara says:
    
    December 13, 2017 at 5:27 pm
    
    The bogus comparisons must be both infuriating and demoralizing to people who work in public schools.
    
    It simply isn’t fair to equate these two systems and insist one is better than the other when really one is different than the other.
    
    Why not just say it straight out? We have one set of schools with open enrollment requirements and another without. Maybe people would accept that- they accept magnet schools. Why insist the two systems are the same? What possible purpose does that serve?
Chiara says:

December 13, 2017 at 2:44 pm

So if you were actually concerned about the systemic effects of ed reform in a system like my school system you wouldn’t just compare public schools to online charter schools. You would ask what the effects are on the PUBLIC schools of adding online charters to an existing system because BOTH systems are impacted.

If you don’t ask that then you can’t really be about “improving public schools”-instead you’re making trade-offs and designating the existing system as less valuable and important, by default. You’re elevating “expanding charters” over “improving public schools” and it doesn’t matter if you say that- you’re doing it.

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retired teacher says:

December 13, 2017 at 4:04 pm

This study confirms the same pattern we have seen in many other charters. Schools with high attrition rates, a selective process, a lower level of special needs and ELLs have surviving students that can score well on standardized tests.

One comment I wanted to make about the broad category of “speech and language impairment.” This label encompasses students that may have a minor lisp as well as those the may have significant neurological and cognitive impairments. Northstar had many students in the broad speech impairment category, but it would be useful to know the severity of the impairment. Disaggregating the speech and language category data would have provided insightful information.

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Mark "JJ" Weber says:

December 13, 2017 at 6:51 pm

Thanks for the post, Diane. I’ll be discussing the reports on my blog next week.

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Bill McQuaid says:

December 13, 2017 at 11:45 pm

If you know your history you know that an ideologue like Hitler was persuaded by rational arguments like the ones above only once; in his bunker on his last day.

Keep that tucked away in your wallet for future reference. You’ll need it.

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