Falsehoods and misconception of the Far Right - #2. Charter schools are better than public
schools.
When Governor Rick Scott visited Florida International Academy – a charter school - in
Opa Locka, he brought his special
advisor on education, Michelle Rhee, with him.
Rhee, the controversial former superintendent of the Washington DC
school system, is a big believer in spending public money on privately-operated
charter schools. Although her tenure in
the DC schools was in a publicly funded
non-charter scenario, Rhee has
been consistent in her approval of taking public money to send children to
non-public ("charter") schools.
So what exactly is a charter school? A charter
school is an independently run public school granted greater flexibility in its
operations, in return for greater accountability for performance. The
"charter" establishing each school is a performance contract
detailing the school's mission, program, students served, performance goals,
and methods of assessment.
Sound
simple and straightforward? Jeb Bush, former Florida governor and would be
Republican presidential candidate loves them. Of course, Jeb has no basis for a
real comparison, since neither he or his brothers were EVER students in a
public high school. Trust fund brats all, , the four Bush brothers went to
college prep boarding schools, ergo, having absolutely no real world
relationship with public secondary schools. George W. struggled to graduate
Philips Academy, Andover, his exclusive boarding school with an average of 77% (yeah, that's a "C", yet
Harvard accepted him!) Jeb, claiming he
would be the "education governor"
was eager to embrace charter schools and vouchers for private schools in
Florida. So how, you ask, did that work
out?"
The
answer may in fact be that kids in many, if not a majority of charter schools simply
aren’t getting a better education. When
it comes to the failure rate, charter Schools – operated at public expense by
private companies – tanked on the 2011 Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test
(FCAT). The numbers,
are striking and should cause every tax payer concern. Of Florida’s 2,280 public elementary and
middle schools, only 17 scored an “F” on the FCAT. Of the state’s 270 Charter
elementary and middle schools, 15 flunked. Charter schools had a failure rate 740%
higher than that of public schools.
Charter
school boosters immediately began working damage control with the usual
platitudes:
“Traditionally, they (the charters that failed)
were in failing school neighborhoods,” said Representative Erik Fresen, a Miami
Republican who sat on several education committees and is a strong supporter of
charter schools. Fresen further alleged that the real problem was that charter
schools were required to give the FCAT in their first year (you know, like any
public school?)
Fresen went on to say that this requirement, requiring charters to
administer the FCAT in their first year
of operation accounts for most of the failure rate. “They started as an “F”
because they inherited, essentially, “F” performing students,” Fresen said.
Blame the students?
If only Fresen's
statement were true.....but then again, no, it's not. Independent analysis of the 15 charter schools that failed
show at least nine have administered the test for at least two years. Some saw
their grades plunge from an “A” to an
“F.” At least two had back-to-back “F” grades, including Broward
Community Charter Middle School and Lawrence Academy Elementary Charter School
in Miami-Dade.
Why,
you ask would Representative Fresen be such an advocate for Charters in spite
of these mediocre results? Well, Fresen, whose sister and brother-in-law own a
charter school management company, Academica, said he sees no conflict
between that and his leadership role in education in the legislature. “It
certainly provides me a different perspective…that others perhaps don’t have,”
Fresen said. “But it certainly doesn’t influence the politics one way or the
other.”
All that having been said, at least five companies involved in charter school
management contributed the maximum allowable donation to Fresen’s most recent
election campaign.
On a broader, as in national,
scope the point is that after years of studies about charter schools, there is
not really any definitive proof of any “charter magic” they bring to the field.
It is true – and let’s get this straight
from the get go – there are always a few “charter school success stories” that
can be cherry picked from the tree, but that’s not the point. Imagine an advocate for traditional public
schools pleading his case saying, “But look at this great public school over
here.” He’d be mocked in the media and
shamed by politicians, yet that is frequently the first line of rhetoric used
in defense of charters.
This, from a recent study by the non-profit, non-partisan Economic Policy Institute (EPI), is
representative: "Opening the truth telling
about charter schools was a recent study from the Economic Policy Institute on
a call for public schools to be replaced by charter schools in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin." (Milwaukee, it should be noted, has experienced
the nation’s longest running charter experiment, more than 20 years, with charter
schools and vouchers as replacements for traditional public schools) "The
consensus view is that charter schools in Milwaukee do no better than the
public schools they replace, and many of the charter schools that perform the
worst are never held accountable and continue to remain open after years
of failure."
This humble
track record for charters in Milwaukee and other similar data from around the
nation, generated the EPI report entitled,
“Do
Poor Kids Deserve Lower-Quality Education Than Rich Kids? Evaluating School
Privatization Proposals in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,” explores the national
, and in some instances , federal, interest by officials who are enamored with the type of charter school represented
by charter school operators such as the Rocketship chain of schools based in California.
A close
Examination of Rocketship’s practices (not
unique to the chain) found “everything
is built around the tests.” More interesting, however is that tests scores for students in the Rocketship
programs – as measured by California’s Academic Performance Index have declined by just over 10 percent from
2008–2009 to 2012–2013. “Indeed, in 2012–2013, all seven of the
Rocketship schools failed to make adequate yearly progress according to federal
standards.” (EPI report)
Instead of good
education practice, what drives the corporate charter school model is profit. Along with a test-driven instructional method,
many charter models rely heavily on substituting extensive
online instruction for personal instruction from teachers. Software is cheaper than
real bodies in the classroom. This model leads to clear conflicts of
interest when the charter network partners with its own for-profit providers of
curricula, or as in Florida when the responsibility for the first FCAT was allocated
to Jeb Bush's friends in Texas. It is extremely difficult to find charters in
the US without conflicts of interests lurking in the hallways.
Hype!
Another outcome of the push for charter schools is the
circulation and perpetuation of unfounded and unjustified rhetoric to support
them. Demands for more charter schools, and more money for charter schools, are
often justified by suspect information masquerading as “research” and inflated
arguments about their financial needs and performance.
Two recent examples of the hype machine behind charter
schools were, first, a new report arguing for more money for charter schools
and, second, the annual ritual of circulating figures representing a charter
school “waitlist.”
The report calling for more funds for charter schools found
that in 2011, charter schools received $3,059 less per student than traditional
public schools. “Shocking,” wrote one of the report authors on his personal
blog. Closer investigation, however shows that the source of the report, was a study
funded by the Walton (Wal-Mart) Foundation which that aggressively uses its philanthropy to
spur the creation of new charter schools. As it turns
out, and as any special education or
special student needs teacher knows, charter
schools sometimes get less money per student because they don’t provide
many of the services traditional public schools do, in particular, special
education services, speech therapy, hearing impaired instruction and student support services such as counseling
and health, vocational education, and transportation. The real dirty little
secret here is that in many districts, public schools are required to provide
transportation and services to charter students with special needs, even though
the student funding they (the public school) would normally get for such
special needs students is sent to the charter school
In fact, according
to a Western Michigan University study, “Charters have a cost advantage,” especially
when there is a thorough accounting of “considerable money that comes into
charters from private sources.”
In similar
fashion waitlist numbers have been inflated by charter advocates attempting to
extract even more public school money from the education pot . Numbers were released,
showing, supposedly, over a million students champing at the bit to get into
charter schools. Fortunately, just prior to the release, a report from the
National Education Policy Center warned, “While there are undoubtedly many
students who wish to enroll in popular charter schools and are unable, the
overall waitlist numbers are almost certainly much lower than the estimates.” The
report, cautions that the methods for obtaining the waitlist data are not
transparent, there’s no means of verifying the results, and waitlist
record-keeping is chronically unreliable. For example, charters frequently often
count applicants as "waiting"
who apply to enter into grade levels which the charter doesn't provide! Also, a fairly small number of very
popular charters account for the disproportionately
large charter waitlists, while traditional public schools – which are not
allowed to turn away applicants or, as with popular magnet schools, offer
selective enrollment – are not given a “meaningful comparison” in the charter
school data.
Perhaps the most
egregious fallacy here, is that same old tired claim that private business can
do (education) better. When this leads to less oversight and fewer checks and
balances, as it has in the charter
school "business", results are predictable and costly to taxpayers who
foot the bill for their state legislators' folly. A report released by Integrity in Education and
the Center for Popular Democracy revealed, “Fraudulent charter operators in 15 states
are responsible for losing, misusing or wasting over $100 million in taxpayer
money.”
The report, compiled from data from news stories, criminal
records, and other documents revealed hundreds of cases of charter school operators
embezzling funds, using tax dollars to illegally support other, non-educational
businesses, taking public dollars for services they didn’t provide, inflating
their enrollment numbers to boost revenues, and putting children at risk by ignoring
safety regulations or withholding services.
Bill Moyers and Company's Josh Holland
wrote, “The report looks at problems … with dozens of case studies. In some
instances, charter operators used tax dollars to prop up side businesses like
restaurants and health food stores — even a failing apartment complex.”
Washington Post reporter , Valerie Strauss cited some of the
most egregious examples including a Washington, DC-based charter that used
public tax dollars to cover travel-related expenses, membership dues and dinner
tabs at an exclusive club, and slew of bills from sources as diverse as wine
and liquor stores, Victoria’s Secret, and a shop in France frequented by the
charter school operator and his wife. similarly, state auditors in Ohio found nearly $3 million in
unsubstantiated expenses amassed by a charter in that state. Another, in Milwaukee “spent about $200,000 on personal
expenses, including cars, funeral arrangements and home improvement.”
And yet another in California pleaded guilty to “stealing more than $7.2
million worth of computers from a government program.”
Maybe we aren't
asking the right questions here, thereby losing the real issue in the haze of
accusation, falsehoods and political posturing. What seems to fall by the
wayside is acknowledgement of the fact that essentially all charter school students are in those schools
because either they really want to be, or their parents really want them to be. The desire to
be in school, any school, accompanied by strong support at home, is the one
sure guarantor of academic success.
Charter schools cherry pick from those students, most of whom would do as well
or, if special needs, better in a public school.
Of course some charter schools
- well funded, choosing students on the basis of desire, and, in some cases
academic record, outperform public schools. Of course bad behavior can result
from expulsion from the charter and relegation to the public school, where they
can continue disrupting the learning process.
Pour in enough money, talent and
resources coupled with picking only motivated students and success will be
yours. The comparison, however, between
public schools and charters should, all these factors considered, always result
in charters performing better than public schools. But it just isn't so!
On state tests
in Ohio, as in Florida, most charter schools do more poorly than public schools. Some equal
public school performance but few surpass the public schools in test scores. The
real issue here is that all charters should surpass all private schools if
taxpayers are to be expected to fork over tax dollars to private interests. While
test scores do not show everything that schools should be accomplishing with
their students, they do indicate that the promise of charter schools has simply
been grossly exaggerated and has not lived up to the reality.
You have to objectively question the "why?" behind the continued support for charter
schools. Is it a misguided belief that they will better serve students or is it
to pursue a political agenda to destroy anything that the government does, even
if successful?
