Helen Ladd and Edward Fiske: States Need an Equity-Oriented Accountability System for Charter Schools

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1. retired teacher says:

   February 15, 2021 at 11:15 am

   Privatized schools are never equitable. Privatization promotes cherry, picking students, eliminating those with problems and enhanced segregation. The ELLs in this study attended charter schools that did not have teachers trained in second language acquisition. Charters do not create environments in which integration of diverse students is encouraged. The charter schools in this study were either mostly all black and brown or mostly all white. The result is the stratification of students by race and social class.

   Our fragmented society needs to bring diverse students together in well resourced, integrated public schools. This study confirms once more than separate is never equal. Public schools provide professional teachers that have met minimum standards of training for the disciplines they teach. Students and schools are so much more than test scores. With public education the public knows where their tax dollars are going. The public does not get any such information in publicly funded private charter schools where waste, fraud and embezzling are frequent problems. Too many districts are wasting money on separate and unequal schools when they should be investing in the public schools that serve all students and bring diverse young people together. With a qualified staff members public schools generally offer far more options for students than one size fits all private charters operated by amateurs.

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2. Wait, What? says:

   February 15, 2021 at 3:07 pm

   Like any research study and informed commentary, what is not stated is as important as what is. Absence of omission is just spin without an agenda.

   What are the attrition rates DURING the school year? (Attrition rates here are defined as end of school year to start of next).
   How much “attrition” is actually parents withdrawing students to avoid an excessive suspension or expulsion on their record (and how many of those are coached or deals cut by the charter administration)?
   How many parents of students with disabilities and English language learners “don’t bother” applying knowing the word on the street is charters contract out hours of services for compliance and cannot accommodate their child – but will be in compliance?
   What percent of the charter students with disabilities are students with low incidence disabilities – in other words students’ whose annual cost per student are $50,000, $70,000…? Very few are admitted and again, most don’t bother applying.
   What is the budget impact on the local school? Charter students carry a fixed amount with them from the local school. (Similarly Mass. has open choice enrollment). 6-10 students exiting a public school to a charter is the equivalent of one teacher’s salary and no capacity to eliminate a section in the school. In a small town school, the loss of a few students with money following them can decimate the staffing or salaries – and definitely programs and opportunities.

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3. NYC public school parent says:

   February 15, 2021 at 11:42 pm

   From the report:

   “To evaluate how well the students are treated within a charter school one would need information on attrition rates, suspension rates, and, importantly, on the availability and quality of school programs specifically designed to meet the needs of disadvantaged students.”

   I’m glad that these researchers are examining the accountability system of charters more thoroughly, and not doing what almost all other education researchers do and minimizing (or simply ignoring altogether) the significance of attrition rates.

   I did wish that Ladd and Fiske went a little further and addressed that studying charters en masse and comparing charters en masse to public schools en masse doesn’t get to the heart of this issue. There needs to be a much deeper dive into the data at individual charters.

   Wait, What? is correct in the post above — it is absurd to only look at summer attrition and not the attrition that happens between the first day of enrollment to the last day of the school year. And it is absurd not to differentiate between different types of attrition if the purpose of a study is to learn and not simply cover up.

   From the study (page 28): “We begin with student attrition, which is defined as the proportion of students who leave a school between the end of one school year and the start of the next, i.e. over the summer. While high attrition rates suggest that something may be amiss within the school, we are not able to distinguish between students who chose to leave for family reasons (such as residential moves) irrespective of the quality of the school, or for reasons signifying a misfit between the student and the school. ”

   I was very surprised – and very disappointed – that the researchers seemed to just simply give up on any way to distinguish between different types of attrition and seemingly could not come up with any ideas to help them learn more about why students leave. I have a very easy suggestion:

   Simply find out which schools the students who left enrolled in! And don’t try to fudge the numbers by combining huge groups of students from different grades over a single summer to hide what is really going on.

   It’s not rocket science. Take the group of students who enrolled in the charter the first day of Kindergarten 5 years previously, and make note of what happened to all the ones who are not currently in the 4th grade with their cohort. These are the possibilities:

   Student was flunked at some point and still in the school in a lower grade.

   Student transferred to a school in a different city or state because family moved.

   Student transferred to a local private/parochial school.

   Student transferred to a public school in the same school system.

   Student transferred to a different charter school serving students in the same school system.

   Although the size of the first group (students flunked but still in school) is important to note, Fiske and Ladd should be particularly curious about the numbers of students in the last 3 groups who did not leave the school because the family moved. Those are the attrition numbers that would help enlighten them. Knowing what school those students left for – and looking closely at that transfer school – explains a lot about attrition. Parents pulling their students from a struggling and underfunded school in order to enroll in a school that appears to be stronger academically or that has more resources or an appealing special program is an understandable choice that doesn’t need to be explained. Parents pulling their students from a well-funded and high performing school for one that appears to be a less desirable choice should absolutely raise red flags. If high performing, well-funded schools of any type do not have extraordinarily low attrition rates, then any decent researcher would ask questions and find out why. Not dismiss it as “we can never know why”. Of course we can know a lot more about why students left.

   It seems to me – from anecdotal evidence and the limited data I can find on state education websites – that the highest performing charters have extraordinarily high LONGITUDINAL attrition rates relative to high performing public schools and extraordinarily high longitudinal attrition rates relative to lower performing charter schools that serve a similar population. That fact seems to be dismissed by education researchers who believe that as long as there are struggling, underfunded public schools that also have high attrition rates, there is no red flag about similarly high attrition rates in charters that are high performing and well-funded. And it seems suspiciously obtuse for any education researcher to cite high rates of attrition in struggling public schools serving some of the most at-risk and transient students to rationalize high attrition rates in high performing well-funded charters that are populated by students whose motivated parents jump through hoops for their kid to attend. Researchers should be closely examining those red flags when high performing schools have unusually high attrition rates, not looking for rationalizations as to why there’s no reason to look more closely.

   It has always astonished me that all this money is spent on charter oversight and studies and promotion and yet there is no study of whether there is a connection between high test scores and high attrition when it comes to charters. Ladd and Fiske did make a reference to some charters’ attrition rates being low the first 2 or 3 years and then suddenly rising and becoming higher. That is not the type of consistent attrition that happens because families move. That should also be a red flag for researchers. Were students leaving before testing grades and if so, why?

   What shouldn’t be acceptable is Ladd and Fiske’s implying that there is no way to look closely at each charter’s longitudinal attrition rate and have a better idea of why students are leaving because why those students leave is just not all that important.

   Education researchers should know better. It should come to no surprise to any education researcher that if a school is struggling and underfunded, parents would choose to leave if they have a choice of a seemingly “better” school. But it should stun education researchers if parents who specifically choose a high performing school for its academics would leave for a struggling school.

   I was concerned when I read Fiske and Ladd’s vague and unexplained reference to some unknown portion of attrition being “for reasons signifying a misfit between the student and the school”. “Misfit” covers up a multitude of sins! It is exactly the nature of that “misfit” that education researchers should be closely examining! What accounts for that “misfit”? If an education researcher doesn’t want to know, then why are they even bothering to research as it isn’t doing anyone any good at all.

   Charters were not designed to educate students who “fit” the way they want to teach. They were designed to address the struggles that large urban public school system have when they are serving an extraordinarily high-needs population of students. Public schools don’t need charters to teach the kids that “fit”, they need charters to fit the students with the hardest to address needs!

   Did Fiske and Ladd forget that?

   To their credit, Fiske and Ladd’s report did make an important point about what is “incentivized” with charters:

   “Some charter schools have incentives to operate in ways that may be counter to the public interest and, in particular, that are counter to the needs of disadvantaged students. For example, the organizations may have financial incentives to minimize their intake of disadvantaged students, such as those with disabilities, who are expensive to educate. Others may have incentives to suspend or expel misbehaving students who disrupt the learning of other students, or whose behavior is inconsistent with the educational philosophy of the charter school. In addition, financial pressures may lead them to hire inexperienced and less costly teachers, some of whom may be underprepared to address the educational challenges facing disadvantage students. Such incentives may be exacerbated when charter schools need to show good performance on student tests to renew their charters and to attract students.”

   I would just add one addition to the last sentence in the paragraph above:

   “Such incentives may be exacerbated when charter schools need to show good performance on student tests to get the tens of millions of dollars in donations from billionaires who support charters that will help them undermine and disparage public schools. Such charters can be recognized because they conduct non-stop public relations campaigns (also subsidized by those billionaires) claiming that their ‘good performance’ proves that charters are superior to public schools and even more taxpayer dollars should be taken from public schools and given to them instead.”

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