Charter Schools

The NYTimes has been on a tear against charter schools. On Tuesday, they printed what the American Federation of Teachers handed them. Nice job of carrying water, guys. Rod Paige replied on the Dept of Ed website. The Times reporter who had handled the AFT folder two days ago responded with some misleading quotes.

Eduwonk has posted on the subject, observing, "most of the charters are new" and "charters tend to serve the most at-risk and struggling students." New schools need a shake-down, "so this data is better considered as baseline data rather than some sort of final evaluation." Serving the most at-risk and struggling students has two effects. One the one hand, shedding some of the toughest students will bouy the public school numbers, on the other hand, the charters are producing comparable numbers with those students. Though the Times claims there is a difference, and highlights that with a chart, the AFT analysis of the Dept of Ed data admits, "when one controls the grade 4 data for race it turns out there is no statistically significant difference between charter schools and other public schools." The Times intentionally states the opposite, and does so wrongly.

I detect a sleeper issue here that was mentioned almost in passing by Bill Bennett on his radio show this morning. The Times notes that charter schools are "hailed as a free-market solution ... to moribund public schools." They later note, as if its a bad thing, "Around the country, more than 80 charter schools were forced to close, largely because of questionable financial dealings and poor performance." Put out a hurrah. When charter schools fail, they get shut down. When public schools fail they blame someone else and demand more money. This is what free market solutions means. Not that a privatly run school is better (I'm not a fan of corporate schools, I'd prefer committed principals and teachers who share a vision to hang out a shingle) but that in a market place, success succeeds and failure fails.

Hardly surprising, the Center for Education reform has a different take on the data compared to the American Federation of Teachers and the faculty of teacher's colleges.