The National Education Policy Center interviewed Bruce Baker about his review of a much-ballyhooed study of the impact of market forces in the New Orleans schools.
The Education Research Alliance at Tulane University released a study last July declaring that the privatization of almost every school in New Orleans was a great success. That very day, Betsy DeVos gave $10 Million to ERA to become a federally-funded National Center on School Choice. The report was written by Douglas Harris and Matthew Larsen.
Bruce Baker, a researcher at Rutgers University, has studied charter schools, school funding and equity for years. He was commissioned by NPE to review the ERA study.
His conclusion: Harris and Larsen had minimized the importance of demographic changes following the hurricane and the enormous influx of new funding. These changes alone, he said, could have accounted for the effects in New Orleans documented by the ERA.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“That very day, Betsy DeVos gave $10 Million to ERA to become a federally-funded National Center on School Choice. ”
Great! Glad to see the leader of thousands of federal employees is focusing on the ideologically correct (preferred) schools, and utterly ignoring the unfashionable public school sector.
Every week in DC is charter schools week, unless it’s voucher week. When do they get to the part where they add some value to the public schools 85% of people use?
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Any analysis from Tulane should be examined through a critical lens. Tulane has been co-opted by “reform” dollars. There are so many variables surrounding Katrina and New Orleans, it is difficult to draw a direct connection in education between pre and post Katrina.
One of the criticisms often levied against urban school districts. and mentioned in this post, is that they have a bloated bureaucracy. However, recent research has shown that charters are often burdened with a top heavy administration. They tend to spend a lot more money on administration that public schools.
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every time one of our city’s larger traditional high schools is invaded and methodically turned into multiple “choice” schools, the parking lots are suddenly over-full with non-student cars…
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ciedie,
Reflects carpet baggers.
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Meanwhile, the vultures are picking away in Puerto Rico and will soon be circling over the FL panhandle: https://wp.me/p25b7q-2ig
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ERA is funded by the Arnold Foundation.
Receiving some of Douglas Harris’ REACH grant, Professors Strunck and Cowan, at Michigan State University. A public university taking money to design a product and marketing plan for charter schools (private), provokes anger from a public paying the schools and faculty’s freight. (80% of Michigan’s charters are for-profit.
What do the cv’s of Strunck and Cowan show in terms of grants received from “philanthropic” foundations?
Big Pharma and the ed industry, birds of a feather.
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Bruce Baker writes Ed Finance 101 blog. My early conceptual understanding came from Michael Kirst and Jim Guthrie…. since those days, I agree with Bruce Baker when he talks about his newest book in light of research over the past 2 + decades.
“These were the very types of analyses needed to inform state school finance polices and to advance the art and science of evaluating educational reforms for their potential to improve equity, productivity and efficiency. But these efforts largely disappeared over the next decade. More disconcerting, these efforts were replaced by far less rigorous, often purely speculative policy papers, free of any substantive empirical analysis and devoid of any conceptual frameworks.” It is so sad what we see coming out from MA Business Alliance, Pearson Corp etc and marketing psychology that is now termed “research” and politicians are buying into it
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