A study of charter schools in Indiana found that the test scores of students who transferred from public schools to charter schools lagged and later rebounded. But it also found very high attrition as students left charter schools and returned to public schools.
A recently released study raises questions about whether charter schools improve academic achievement for students in Indiana more than traditional public schools.
Researchers from the Indiana University School of Education-Indianapolis examined four years of English and math ISTEP scores for 1,609 Indiana elementary and middle school students who were in a traditional public school in 2011 and transferred to a charter school in 2012. The main findings were that students who transferred had lower math and English score gains during the first year or two in their new school than if they had stayed in a district school.
The researchers were able to draw the conclusion by using a type of statistical analysis that enabled them to compare students’ actual score gains at the charter school to potential gains had they not transferred from a traditional school.
But for the students who stayed in charter schools for three years or more, some of those gaps disappeared, and students caught up with where they would have been if they hadn’t transferred. Both of these results — the dip in score gains after transferring and the increase over time — are consistent with other studies, researchers said…
The researchers also found that of the original number of students who transferred to a charter school in 2012, 47 percent returned to a traditional public school by 2016. Only about a third of students remained enrolled in charter schools long enough to see their scores catch back up. The study called the mobility “problematic,” and suggested other researchers look into it further.
Well, that’s curious. Only about a third of students remained enrolled in charter schools long enough to see their scores catch back up to what they would have been if they had stayed enrolled in a public school.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It did not take us a complex examination of data to figure this out years ago. Stability is the way to get students to learn. Even students who find themselves mobile within the framework of the armed services suffer the loss of continuity due to moving, despite the excellent instruction many can get at their schools. This is all common knowledge. Students who simply change buildings see scores drop for a brief time.
Why then, do charter advocates suggest that “disruption” is a good thing? Could it be that they are only Interested that we know some of the truth? Do they look through rose colored glasses at an idea whose time has passed? Really never was?
The charter idea that suggests that it is a good thing when a school closes to be replaced by a better one is fanciful for exactly this reason. Stability is better for a community than revolution. The paroxysms of rapid change produce Bad results for all, and where history seems to make them necessary, the bad cannot usually be avoided.
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There is a political theory that chaos is good and it is being driven by autocratic billionaires and the politicans they helped get elected in the UK, the US and other democratizes.
In London, ‘Eric Pickles, the local government secretary, leaves no doubt about what that message is. “We are going to shake up the balance of power in this country. We are going to change the nature of the constitution. Be in no doubt about our commitment to localism. I know I look like an unlikely revolutionary, but the revolution starts here,” he said recently.’
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/dec/19/coalition-government-chaos-theory-politics
The chaos theory of Donald Trump: Sowing confusion through tweets
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-chaos-theory-of-donald-trump-sowing-confusion-through-tweets/2016/12/23/11e1315c-c928-11e6-85b5-76616a33048d_story.html?utm_term=.e9fa8a497f81
The Art of the Deal: President Trump Loves Confusion and Chaos
https://www.blackpressusa.com/the-art-of-the-deal-president-trump-loves-confusion-and-chaos/
‘Bannon’s War; Looks at How Trump Strategist Steve Bannon Came to Thrive on Disruption.
https://variety.com/2017/biz/news/steve-bannon-frontline-documentary-looks-at-trumps-chief-strategist-1202440736/
And who is behind this strategy of Chaos?
Putin
https://variety.com/2017/biz/news/steve-bannon-frontline-documentary-looks-at-trumps-chief-strategist-1202440736/
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Disruption and chaos are good for the oligarchs because they prevent people from resisting.
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“improve academic achievement ”
Whatever that means, eh!
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“Overall, these results indicate that the promise of charter schools as a vehicle for school improvement should be viewed with some skepticism,” said study co-author Gary R. Pike, a professor of education at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis.”
Professor Pike is kidding himself if he thinks there will be “some skepticism”
The lineup of professional charter cheerleaders gets longer every year. There are whole orgs, university departments, entire state governments where they’ve purged every single dissenter or skeptic.
They’re opening as many charters as they possibly can in Indianapolis right now, and they just expanded to 9 other cities. No skepticism permitted. All questions are treated as inconvenient obstacles to The Agenda that can be taken care of with better marketing and new slogans. Ed reformers have whole conferences about how to get around “resistance” by which they mean “the public”.
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The supporters of charter churn dismiss the whole idea that children and teens are harmed by the closing of schools and rip-offs now so widely reported.
“Disruptive innovation” is in. The phrase stands for one theory about corporate moves that have major economic consequences. That theory has been stretched to “explain” the absolute need to dump “the factory model of education” and go with edtech as a panacea.
See more than you want to know at https://www.christenseninstitute.org/blog/topics/policy/
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They’ve set this up so there’s no possible legitimate criticism of charter schools.
All criticism is declared invalid from the get-go, because it must come from self-interested people who are irrationally attached to the status quo.
Arne Duncan could not conceive of a valid opposition to the Common Core tests. He immediately smeared the parent-critics.as spoiled, delusional, self-interested. he didn’t think he had a testing problem- he thought he had a political problem. It never occurred to him he could be wrong.
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that the promise of charter schools as a vehicle for school improvement should be viewed with some skepticism”
Ed reformers don’t even debate this anymore. They have heated debates around how quickly they should privatize, and what their eventual privatized system should look like.
Privatization itself? That decision has already been made.
Your child’s public school is part of the “legacy system” they’ve abandoned. They’re winding it down and you’re the last to find out. Perhaps you’ve noticed – they no longer invest in the unfashionable public sector schools. They’re ridding their portfolio of them.
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When are people going to understand that privatization is a wasteful, unnecessary exercise that offers little to no academic benefits. It is a wholly political ploy to transfer pubic assets into private pockets. Students get disruption and academic setbacks often for no value add. Students also lose the legal protections that public schools provide, and corporate schools will never provide.
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Ohio has an ed reform dominated government. Captured.
This is what they have accomplished for PUBLIC schools in the last 4 years. They put in a new high school graduation scheme, and then took it out.
That’s it- that’s the sum total of the ed reform contribution to the schools 90% of the kids in this state attend.
I don’t want to pay for this. If they are ideologically opposed to the schools 90% of kids attend and don’t plan on contributing any value they should work somewhere else.
There’s no shortage of billionaire funded orgs and lobbying groups and such- go work for one of them. We really don’t need thousands of public employees who oppose the schools they’re hired to serve. If they’re not adding any value to 90% of schools then they’re not worth paying.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
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Just received this book from Garn Press. It is really excellent.
AUTHOR: Susan DuFresne, “The History of Institutional Racism in U.S. Public Schools”
http://garnpress.com/author-announcement-susan-dufresne-the-history-of-institutional-racism-in-u-s-public-schools/
This book is a gem.
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