BOULDER, CO (June 18, 2019) – The Florida Department of Education recently published a report consisting almost entirely of simple graphs comparing achievement levels, achievement gaps, and achievement gains on statewide tests among charter school students to those among traditional public school students. The Department’s press release touted the report as showing that the state’s “charter school students consistently outperform their peers in traditional public schools.”
The release also quotes Florida’s Education Commissioner, asserting that the “report provides further evidence that [school choice policies] are right for Florida” and that there’s “no denying that choice works.” The press release’s spin was then echoed in pieces published/broadcast by several television stations, newspapers, and online outlets.
Yet simple comparisons such as those in this report reveal very little about the relative effectiveness of charter schools. Robert Bifulco of Syracuse University, reviewed Student Achievement in Florida’s Charter Schools: A Comparison of the Performance of Charter School Students with Traditional Public School Students, and found it to be of extremely limited use.
Beyond the odd exercise of counting the number of comparisons that appear favorable to charter schools, the report offers no discussion. The comparisons are not even explained. The fact that the report merely presents comparisons required by law without putting any policy “spin” on them might be considered a virtue. But the danger is that such reports can (and do) encourage erroneous conclusions.
At the very least, Professor Bifulco believes, the report should have clarified the purposes of its comparisons and cautioned the reader against drawing unwarranted and potentially harmful conclusions.
Find the review, by Robert Bifulco, at:
http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/fl-charters
Find Student Achievement in Florida’s Charter Schools: A Comparison of the Performance of Charter School Students with Traditional Public School Students, published by the Florida Department of Education, at:
http://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/7778/urlt/SAR1819.pdf
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This “study” began getting play on the news in the state shortly after DeSantis announced his vast expansion of vouchers. The statement that “private schools out perform public schools” was also repeated in print ads for private schools as well. I do not know if the state planned this so-called report to link it with the governor’s voucher expansion, but they seemed to happen simultaneously. My husband even asked my about it. I told him I was unfamiliar with the “study,” but it sounded like a load of propaganda to me. It is one thing to read a lot of misinformation from lobbying groups and biased foundations. It is another thing when the state government starts providing the public with “fake news” to promote their political objectives.
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It matters not whether the graphs are there or pretty. The FL legislature has successfully made publicly-funded resegregation legal again. Schools like Mason Classical Academy in Collier County—co-founded by Erika Donalds—do NOT reflect the district demographics. —And we pay for it all.
While we were trying to get rid of testing, for-profit vultures swooped on in.
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Unless I was just sleeping when I read this review, it would appear that the author of the review accepts the idea of making comparisons using a tests. Thus this was a very kind review of a very pernicious process. The process begins when we start to test students for the purpose of stacking them up Yurtle the Turtle style. But in the modern Yurtle Stacking, each student is stacked so that all of society teeters dangerously on the back of its most needy. Thus the self-fulfilling prophecy of the process that says I am better than all those people is activated and becomes self-perpetuating.
This report does not damn the study, but tries to look at the story objectively and without bias. This makes it seem that its authors accept testing and measurement. I say hogwash. We have reached a point in the use of data that each figure must be justified as a legitimate observation, and that claims to be anything else but observation need to be challenged harshly, and we must hold them to the light of reason.
As I write this, a mother Mallard swims past on the lake with her four ducklings. How odd it seems to be that the ducklings are provided a nice lake where they can peacefully grow up (Nonwithstanding the occasional predator). Could we do that for pur children maybe?
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Today’s high stakes tests are weaponized to undermine and close public schools. Under such dire circumstances, opt out is the best option. Sadly, the schools threaten students to coerce them to take the tests.
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