Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, responds here to critics of NPE’s “Asleep At the Wheel,” the landmark analysis of the deeply flawed federal Charter Schools Program and invites comments and criticisms.
NPE wants readers to scrutinize the report carefully. If there are any errors, we will promptly correct them.
She writes:
Examining a list of nearly 5000 charter schools to determine which were open, closed or never open was a difficult and tedious task. There is no common standard when it comes to state reporting on closed charter schools—some states give lists of closed schools. Others do not. Many states only give a list of currently opened schools. Even those lists are not often up to date and rarely indicate if the school’s name has changed.
In the case of unopened charters that received federal CSP funds there is no list at all. We (myself along with two part-time staff, Darcie Cimarusti and Marla Kilfoyle), would hunt for school information on the internet if a school in the database was not on the open or closed list and had no NCES number. Some of the schools that never opened had shells of Facebook pages and odd commercial information that is meaningless, but nevertheless pops up.
And then there are charter name changes, takeovers, charters turning into public schools and other complications with which we had to contend. Often we needed to make a judgement as to whether or not the school was indeed the school that had received the grant. We did the best we could, realizing that there would be some errors. We promised we would correct any mistakes we made and we will.
We also knew that school choice advocates and groups opposed to public education would attempt to discount our work by finding error as a means to convince policymakers to disregard the report.
On December 12 William Flanders of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL), a right wing think tank that promotes vouchers and charter schools, and Jim Bender of School Choice Wisconsin did just that in their blog on Fordham. They claimed to have found ten schools on our list of 132 Wisconsin closed or never opened schools that were open. They said these were “glaring” errors and it was not an “honest” report and therefore the entire 40 plus page report should be discounted.
Let’s go through those “ten glaring errors” (they actually list 11 schools) one by one. The first name in bold is the school they say is open. The second name in bold is the school on our list of closed schools.
Banner Prep of Milwaukee—may indeed be open, but we listed the Banner School of Milwaukee, which according to the list of closed schools on the website of the Wisconsin Department of Education closed in 2015.
Class Act Yes that is open. But we do not have it on the list of closed schools.
Etude—Perhaps this is also a different school because the Etude School, which is the name we list, closed in 2011 according to the state list. The NCES number (551365002690) associated with the school that got the grant does not return a school when you search here.
Island City Academy. That was our error and we will correct it. Island City Research Academy is closed.
Jedi Virtual K12 We list Jedi Virtual High School as closed. According to the state list it closed in 2011. In 2007 it had 14 students. In 2018 it had 13. Jedi Virtual High School was awarded a $400,000 grant.
Lincoln Inquiry School. If you pop in the NCES number of the school given the grant, (551668002180) up comes a public school—Lincoln Elementary. It may have once been a charter but the school that received the grant is now a public school.
Mead Elementary School. According to the school closure list, it closed in 2008. The NCES number returns no school.
Milwaukee College Prep 36th St. and College Prep North closed in 2016 according to the closed independent charter schools’ list. The first NCES number comes up as no school, the second did not have an NCES number when given the grant. They were independent charters. Milwaukee College Prep 38th St. got a grant but that is not on our closed list. Perhaps the authors got the streets confused.
Hmong American Peace Academy the school listed by us as closed is HAPA/International Peace Academy. International Peace Academy closed in 2013. This may be a school merger, since the initials fit. If the merger occurred before they got the grant, we will take it off the closed schools list.
Mc Kinley Academy received a grant and we do not list it as closed. We list McKinley Middle Charter School as closed. According to Wisconsin’s closed schools list. There is a Mc Kinley Middle School that closed in 2012 in one location, and another that closed in 2018. The search by NCES number (551236001631) results in no school coming up. Mc Kinley Academy has a different NCES number (550861002701).
You can find a list of closed independent charter schools and closed public schools (district charters are on the closed public schools list) at:
https://dpi.wi.gov/cst/data-collections/school-directory/directory-data/published-data
We will remove Island City Academy from our list of closed schools, and further research the school merger.
We will continue to review our list and keep track of charter failures. We welcome corrections to our lists with documentation which can be sent to info@networkforpubliceducation.org. We will periodically do updates adding and removing names as information becomes available.
Here is the bottom line. The Department of Education should report to Congress and the public on its $4.1 billion dollars investment in charter schools by providing transparent listings of schools that never opened, schools that have closed and why those schools failed. The public deserves transparency and accountability not only from charter schools, but from the program designed to start them. The data that is available, limited as it is, shows a clear and undeniable problem.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
There is, in this criticism of the NPE report, what I observe as an inherent characteristic of modern conservative thought. This aspect of their thinking marks conservatives with a sort of intellectual mark of Cain that keeps serious thinkers from considering their ideas. It is the tendency to destroy the opponent’s argument by single or limited example. Surely one of the more erudite among us has a name for this mode of arguing.
The basic idea is that an entire argument may be unraveled by finding one flaw in the whole of the line of thought. When Darwin was wrong about one Species, you cannot trust him to be right about any species. When a political figure opposes one legislation, he needs to be cast out as unclean. Everything in the world is seen as a garment made of one connected thread. One clip and the garment unravels. Everything is like a house of cards. One touch and the whole thing comes down.
This world view does not really work in any reality. Even the theoretical world of mathematics finds its theorems often need only to be adjusted a bit to reach their truth. No other world exists except the one in which truth depends on conditions. When these critics spend what must have been an inordinate amount of time to find just a few errors in this report, many of which were appropriately rebutted above, they are engaging in what I will call, in my ignorance of correct terminology, the house of cards fallacy. Even if they had been correct about the schools that were still open, they would not have impugned the integrity of the entire report because the other multiplicity of closed schools and mounds of wasted money would still exist in reality.
The house of cards fallacy is the primary tool of the modern right wing. It is in use in the republican argument that the impeachment proceedings are a scam. It is in use in the defense of Trump’s pervasive and corrosive effect on the maintenance of government and its purposes. It rears its head almost all aspects of political debate. We need to call out this type of thinking.
Ed Deform/Disruption defenders (e.g., the crew at Fordham) spend a great deal of time scouring reports looking for some example, somewhere, of an instance in which there appears to be some improvement that can be, however tenuously, linked to a) high-stakes standardized testing, b) charter schools, c) VAM, d) vouchers, e) third-grade retention, f) no excuses models, etc. It’s really pretty amusing how they twist themselves into pretzels doing this.
Yolanda, a ninth grader at ZuckiGates Academy for Future Part-time Tech Company Customer Service Telephone Reps, got a silver star on the Data Wall for most improved construction using virtual Popsicle sticks! You see? The reforms are working! Stay the course!!!!
Ludicrous.
“Surely one of the more erudite among us has a name for this mode of arguing.”
If I may show some Show Me State erudition, it is called Bullshit!
As far as the rest of the states the name for that mode of argumentation is “argument by exception.”
I am sure the information, for the most part is accurate. However, those of us who support public education are also asleep at the wheel. We have a wealth of talent who could overhaul the system if allowed. The system of education is deeply flawed and unless and until we present a plan to change that, we will remain asleep at the wheel.
We cannot wait for politicians to do because they don’t know what to do. And that stupidity trickles down to those in authority.
Maybe we should ask the readers for their suggestions as to how we can change the system. Politicians won’t do it, charters won’t do it. We must do it from the trenches.
What changes would you make, and what effects would you expect to see from these changes, were you the individual who could make them?
Ah, yes, the level of accuracy in reporting and research that we’ve come to expect from Fordham!
there it is
It can be extremely difficult to determine from online research whether a planned school opened or not, and it’s highly likely that the research for the study missed some charter schools that didn’t open — there are probably more errors in that direction than in the other direction. Matt Barnum of Chalkbeat spot-checked some of the schools in the study and found errors, but if he didn’t point out the likelihood that the research also missed schools that didn’t open, he was remiss.
It’s common and routine for research to have errors, in this case a few errors in a very long database. Ethical researchers correct the errors. Database errors don’t discredit the finding of the research.
As to the difficulty of determining whether a planned school ever opened, here’s a real-life example: In the mid-2000s, there was an effort to launch a new high school in my district, San Francisco Unified — the Bayview Essential School of Music, Art and Social Justice. In the planning, it went back and forth about whether it would be a charter or have charter-like characteristics but technically not be a charter; in the end, the latter won out. The district had given it a site, and in 2007 the school was supposedly ready to go and started trying to recruit students.
Long story short, the school struggled to recruit students and never opened, not even for a day. But if you Google the Bayview Essential School of Music, Art and Social Justice, you get credible hits that make it appear to be open. It had a listing on GreatSchools.net for quite a few years as though it were an existing school; to this day it’s listed on the California Department of Education website (with, if you open it, “no information” for most data points). If the researchers looked for this school, it’s quite likely they would have erroneously counted it as having opened.
That’s to illustrate both the difficulty of confirming whether a school exists and the fact that the researchers are far more likely to have missed charter schools that never opened than to have erroneously included schools that did open.
It seems that Flanders and Bender made glaring errors in 90% of the schools that they falsely claimed were still open from the NPE list.
If Barnum was using information from this error-ridden source, it is quite possible that Barnum himself was making serious errors.
Did Barnum also do what Flanders and Bender do (to their credit) and list exactly the schools on the NPE list that supposedly still are in existence so that readers would know whether he is making the same glaring errors that Flanders and Bender did?
If indeed the NPE is accused of making hundreds of errors and it turns out that it is only a few but the critics are the ones whose error rate is 90%, then there is an extreme double standard going on in Barnum’s reporting.
Flanders and Bender have a real credibility problem now, if 90% of their claims were false! A 90% error rate is inexcusable. I suspect the NPE’s error rate is very small, while Flanders and Bender have a 90% error rate, and if Matt Barnum only calls out those making the smallest numbers of errors while elevating as truthful those who mislead in 90% of their statements, then something is very wrong. And our country is in danger from that kind of awful reporting.
Did Barnum list the schools he “spot checked” so we know if he made the same errors that Flanders and Bender did?
It’s America’s shame that the free press can’t draw the parallel between the theft of community assets- schools -and the theft by Putin’s oligarchs of the Russian people’s assets.
I have looked at enough databases to understand the problems of unreliable information and in the case of charter schools the phenomenon of now you see them, now you don’t. Thanks for the serious effort to find and correct errors in this report. Regular updates are likely to be needed precisely because of the charter industry is so casual about opening and closing schools. The Fordham does not have the integrity that Carol, Darcie, and Marla have.
Is Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat writing an article about how William Flanders of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty and Jim Bender of School Choice Wisconsin made glaring errors on the Fordham blog in the attempt to mislead readers about 9 out of these 10 schools?
Has the Fordham blog apologized for the glaring errors that William Flander and Jim Bender made?
Have William Flanders and Jim Bender corrected those glaring errors snd apologize for doing such shoddy research in which 9 out of 10 off their claims are errors?
And will Matt Barnum write his story about those glaring errors by William Flanders and Jim Bender? Those errors are far worse than any errors in the NPE report and that is certainly more newsworthy unless Barnum’s only agenda is to promote what they say and he doesn’t want to write anything that is even mildly critical of those who offer error-filled critiques he embraces.
NYC PSP,
We will watch and see whether Matt Barnum acknowledges the errors of the article assailing the NPE report and whether TBFordham admits error.
The real test of the quality of both researchers and journalists is the ability to admit errors and correct them.
If TBFordham does not admit error, I hope you stay on their case!
Every day you should post:
Day 3 and TBFordham did not admit that they made an error and Matt Barnum did report their errors.
Day 4 and TBFordham did not admit their errors and Matt Barnum is not reporting on their errors.
Day 100 and TBFordham did not admit their errors and Matt Barnum is still not reporting their errors.
While TBFordham and Matt Barnum understand that as long as they keep printing what the right wing billionaires like, they can make any errors they want, I believe that it would be good for Chalkbeat readers to understand that Matt Barnum’s reporting may contain many errors that he will not correct if those errors are made by right wing charter supporters.
Do not forget that these Deformers obviously believe in the Nobel Lie, but make no mistake about it, they are not Nobel people. They are greedy, power-hungry liars and deceivers.
“In politics, a noble lie is a myth or untruth, often, but not invariably, of a religious nature, knowingly propagated by an elite to maintain social harmony or to advance an agenda. The noble lie is a concept originated by Plato as described in the Republic.”
One thing the “Noble Liars” do not take into account is what the Bible says about them:
“There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers. ” – Proverbs 6:16-19
“The Eighth Commandment condemns lying. Because God is regarded as the author of all truth, the most obvious way to fulfill this commandment is not to lie — intentionally deceive another by speaking a falsehood.”
“Etude—Perhaps this is also a different school because the Etude School, ”
Well, Etude schools seem open as “public charter schools”
http://www.etudegroup.org/about-us/
and listed at the shaboygan area school district’s website
https://www.sheboygan.k12.wi.us/
On the other hand, the Etude schools were called ESAA schools before and they got renamed Etude schools in 2017.
As we have already shared, our name is changing from ESAA to Étude Elementary to further unify our K-12 organization.
http://www.etudegroup.org/elementaryschool/esaa-blog/taggednews/ESAA
So this may be a different school. The blog entries go back to 2012, and according to Carol’s data, the Etude Schools closed in 2011.
http://www.etudegroup.org/elementaryschool/esaa-blog/archive/2012
It seems that Carol’s team was correct: the Etude schools might have been something different: I have found this entry in a 2014 post
The Étude Sessions is a concert series benefiting the three schools of Étude Group: I.D.E.A.S. Academy, The Mosaic School and Elementary School of the Arts and Academics (ESAA).
So at the time, there were three different schools with three different names, but now when you click on the links of hese schools, you end up at the Etude group’s website.
I asked Carol about Etude and this was her answer:
It could be a few things. The school closed and later opened or it is a Different school with the same name. What I know is that the NCES number of that school that got the grant cannot be found on an NCES search and that the school of that name is listed on the closed schools list of the Wisconsin Department of education.