Falsehood #2 - re: Charter schools

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?