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BACK TO TOP

Activist teacher's handbook

Organizing against Teach for America

THE ROAD TO LITERACY IS PAVED WITH WORDS, NOT TESTS

A STANDARDIZED TEST

FOR YOUR SCHOOL

SCHOOL 'REFORM' IS ABOUT CLASS, NOT CLASSROOMS

HOW TEST OBSESSION HURTS LEARNING

Media

NOT WAITING FOR SUPERMAN

SUSAN OHANIAN

RETHINKING SCHOOLS

SUBSTANCE NEWS

WIRETAP

Charter schools

Charter school scandals

Groups

Bad Ass Teachers Assn

PARENTS ACROSS AMERICA

YOUTH RIGHTS ASSOCIATION

RETHINKING SCHOOLS

SAVE OUR SCHOOLS



Testing

ERASE

FAIR TEST

PENCILS DOWN

STUDENTS AGAINST TESTING

TIME OUT FROM TESTING

Infographic on the for-profit education scam

POCKET PARADIGMS

SAM SMITH

BACK TO TOP

Barack Obama and Arne Duncan are to public education as the right is to climate. The right thinks the climate is all about last week's snow storm; Obama and Duncan think public education is all about last week's test.

To suggest that sports, drama, art, politics or community service are external to the curriculum of an educated person borders on yahooism. Absent these elements, education becomes a brutish parody of what it says it is, a motley collection of facts without context, without integration either with one's own body and soul or with any human community.

To judge schools by how demanding they are is rather like judging an opera on the basis of how many notes it contains that are hard for singers to hit. In other words, it leaves out most of what matters." - John Dewey

Everytime you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. - Mark Twain

Mandatory testing is just one part of a more vexing problem facing parents: At an alarming rate, people who never have laid eyes on our kids are deciding what's best for them. And all too often, they're getting it wrong. - Bruce Kluger

I've found that a very inflexible , rule-oriented, quasi-conservative philosophy, which is not conservative at all but basically laziness and reliance on rules, may be easier, but it doesn't do any good. It doesn't ultimately prove that you're really a teacher at all, but just somebody trying to make it easy. - Peter Sturdevant, former head of Maret School, Washington DC

For some reason, first the Bush people and now the Obama people believe they know exactly how to fix American education. (Chicago, their model, is one of the lowest-performing cities in the nation on national tests, and Texas was never a national model for academic excellence.) Their answer starts with testing and ends with data and more testing. If children were widgets, they might be right; but children are not widgets, they are individuals. If reading and math were all that mattered in school, they might be right, but basic skills are not the be-all and end-all of being educated. -Diane Ravitch, Huffington Post, 6/13/09

Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry. An insider's look at his nearly fifteen years of test scoring.

The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education by Diane Ravitch

Race to Nowhere: The true effects of the NCLB war on public education

New films take on the myths of "Waiting for Superman"

The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman

MICHELLE RHEE

2014

The Michelle Rhee con continues, thanks to the media

The facts vs. Michaelle Rhee

The real Michelle Rhee

2013

Now Michele Rhee is fouling up Tennessee education

Diane Ravitch on Michelle Rhee

2012

Husband of Michelle Rhee Scrutinized for Financial Malpractice

Report: Michelle Rhee a complete flop in DC

Michelle Rhee's rightwing connections

Washington's Rhee wreck

Arne Duncan & Michelle Rhee would fire Miss Snug

Would you want Michelle Rhee teaching your child?

80 teachers illegally fired by Michelle Rhee get reinstated

Michelle Rhee runs from media as her myth disintegrates

Why U.S. schools aren't as bad as Duncan & Rhee want you to believe

WHY RHEE, GATES & GUGGENHEIM ARE FULL OF IT

In the annual Quality Counts rankings of Ed Week. DC came in second from the bottom compared to the fifty states.

THE REAL STORY ABOUT MICHELLE RHEE

2009

HOW RHEE GETS IT WRONG

Dean Shareski, Ideas & Thoughts - [Jay Matthews] article features Washington's chancellor of education, Michelle Rhee and her relentless efforts to improve schools. I admire her passion. I'm not all that impressed with her perspectives.

"'The thing that kills me about education is that it's so touchy-feely,' she tells me one afternoon in her office. . . People say, 'Well, you know, test scores don't take into account creativity and the love of learning,' she says with a drippy, grating voice, lowering her eyelids halfway. Then she snaps back to herself. 'I'm like, 'You know what? I don't give a crap.' Don't get me wrong. Creativity is good and whatever. But if the children don't know how to read, I don't care how creative you are. You're not doing your job.'". . .

I've been in a number of schools of late and seen students whose reading scores are the least of their problems. If you've been in schools lately you know what I mean. 15 year olds, living on their own, coming to school high, 1st graders so full of anger they threaten classmates lives and the list goes on. These students do not need to see their reading scores meet or exceed grade level by the end of the year, they need "touch-feely" teachers. By "touchy-feely", I mean teachers that have time, expertise and passion to help them function as human beings, never mind reading. Reading is priority number 236 in their list of needs. I spent a few hours watching these at risk students building a canoe from scratch. Students who, for a change, were attending school, interacting politely with adults, finding a purpose. No standardized test in the world could measure this. But the gains made by these students because of "touch-feely" teachers is unquestionable. These teachers deserve a raise.

I've also been in schools with students who are so far above reading level and ability that the curriculum and classroom activities are laughable. They sit in their desks and hate it when teachers ask them to consider how they learn or what they want to learn; they just want to be told what to do because they're good at it and have had years of success playing that game and are upset when a teacher wants to change the rules. They need opportunity to show their creative side. They need to be teaching others. They might ace a standardized test and the teacher might be seen as successful. I'm not sure the teachers or students have done anything worthwhile.

These two diverse groups of students are the reason standardized tests and Rhee-like one-size-fits-all education isn't valuable. . .

Every education system on earth has the same hierarchy of subjects. Every one, doesn't matter where you go, you'd think it would be otherwise but it isn't. At the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and the bottom are the arts. Everywhere on earth.

2008

BRITISH STUDY SUGGESTS FENTY & RHEE MAY BE DUMBING DOWN STUDENTS

Laura Clark, Daily Mail UK - Bright teenagers are a disappearing breed, an alarming new study has revealed. The intellectual ability of the country's cleverest youngsters has declined radically, almost certainly due to the rise of TV and computer games and over-testing in schools. The 'high-level thinking' skills of 14-year-olds are now on a par with those of 12-year-olds in 1976. The findings contradict national results which have shown a growth in top grades in SATs at 14, GCSEs and A-levels.

The intelligence of Britain's youth is being dumbed down, which experts say is down to television and video games. Posed by model. But Michael Shayer, the professor of applied psychology who led the study, believes that is the result of exam standards 'edging down'.

His team of researchers at London's King's College tested 800 13 and 14-year-olds and compared the results with a similar exercise in 1976.

The tests were intended to measure understanding of abstract scientific concepts such as volume, density, quantity and weight, which set pupils up for success not only in maths and science but also in English and history.

One test asked pupils to study a pendulum swinging on a string and investigate the factors that cause it to change speed. A second involved weights on a beam.

In the pendulum test, average achievement was much the same as in 1976.

But the proportion of teenagers reaching top grades, demanding a 'higher level of thinking', slumped dramatically.

Just over one in ten were at that level, down from one in four in 1976.

In the second test, assessing mathematical thinking skills, just one in 20 pupils were achieving the high grades - down from one in five in 1976.

Professor Shayer said: 'The pendulum test does not require any knowledge of science at all. 'It looks at how people can deal with complex information and sort it out for themselves.'

He believes most of the downturn has occurred over the last ten to 15 years.

It may have been hastened by the introduction of national curriculum testing and accompanying targets, which have cut the time available for teaching which develops more advanced skills.

Critics say schools concentrate instead on drilling children for the tests.

'The moment you introduce targets, people will find the most economical strategies to achieve them,' said Professor Shayer.

A study found the high-level thinking skills of 14-year-olds are now on par with a 12-year-old in 1976. . .

Professor Shayer believes the decline in brainpower is also linked to changes in children's leisure activities.

The advent of multi-channel TV has encouraged passive viewing while computer games, particularly for boys, are feared to have supplanted time spent playing with tools, gadgets and other mechanisms. . .

Previous research by Professor Shayer has shown that 11-year-olds' grasp of concepts such as volume, density, quantity and weight appears to have declined over the last 30 years.

Their mental abilities were up to three years behind youngsters tested in in 1975.

His latest findings, due to appear in the British Journal of Educational Psychology, come in the wake of a report by Dr Aric Sigman which linked the decline in intellectual ability to a shift away from art and craft skills in both schools and the home.

Dr Sigman said practical activities such as building models and sandcastles, making dens, using tools, playing with building blocks, knitting, sewing and woodwork were being neglected.

Yet they helped develop vital skills such as understanding dimension, volume and density.

Last month an Ofsted report said millions of teenagers were finishing compulsory education with a weak grasp of maths because half of the country's schools fail to teach the subject as well as they could. Inspectors said teachers were increasingly drilling pupils to pass exams instead of encouraging them to understand crucial concepts.

RHEE THINKS REPUBLICANS ARE BETTER THAN DEMOCRATS

DC Wire, Washington Post - She's said it before, but Michelle Rhee keeps hammering away at the Democratic Party for being weak on education accountability and reform. Last night, Rhee appeared before the Ward 4 Democrats at Emery Recreation Center and explained that she appeared on an education panel discussion in Denver during the Democratic National Convention to "make a statement to the Democratic Party" about why it needs to get tougher on unions and other "political interests." Rhee stressed that she has been a lifelong Democrat, but then she lit into the Party. "Republicans are much better at education policy than Democrats," she said. "Democrats are soft on accountability and they're anti-NCLB [No Child Left Behind], they don't want to test anyone. This attitude in my mind does nothing for the neediest students who need help the most." To Rhee, Democratic leaders pander to unions and other interest groups who are "driving the agenda on school reform. Everyone thinks Republicans are for the rich, white oil guys to whom they give tax breaks and Democrats are for kids and the underclass. I don't think the Democratic Party operates that way. So we were there [in Denver] speaking out and pushing the Party to move in a different direction."



TEACHING OUR CHILDREN TO BE DYSFUNCTIONAL

WASHINGTON BUSINESS JOURNAL Rhee wants nonprofits to take over a dozen of the city's most failing high schools. A new tax-exempt group, formed by former Fenty bullpen official Sarah Lasner, will receive donations from businesses eager to contribute to school reform. And Rhee wants businesses to pony up their human capital by adopting schools and helping students on Saturdays and in summer school with legions of off-hours tutors and mentors.

Many in the business community wonder why it has taken her so long to ask for their help. Foundations and corporations have complained for months that they can't get meetings with Rhee. In a meeting with members of The Philanthropy Roundtable on April 1, she repeated Fenty's blunt request that they contribute $75 million every year for the next five years - while adding that most of the money would probably go toward teachers' salary incentives. Some business leaders at the meeting bristled: Why should they be asked to pitch in for overhead when the system was wasting so much money? Shouldn't they be contributing like businesses usually do: building playgrounds, buying computers and painting hallways on the weekends?. . .

Rhee explains her approach to business and nonprofit involvement in D.C. schools. Her bottom line: If you're a business and you want to contribute, you will do what the school system needs, not necessarily what you want to do. And however you contribute, your business's role will be evaluated by a single criteria: Did it lead to an improvement in students' standardized test scores

CITY DESK - Rhee's approach to education is deeply anti-educational. To use standardized tests as the sole criteria of someone's achievement ignores matters such as wisdom, judgment, social factors and morality. If you educate kids in such a manner you basically end up with adults - not unlike Rhee and Fenty - able to absorb a large amount of data but often incapable of using it sensibly in a social situation. There is a name for this; it's called Asperger's Syndrome. The last thing we want to do is to train our children to be as socially dysfunctional as some of our leaders.

Let's say we have a standardized test on the city budget. Rhee and Fenty would probably pass it with flying colors. Now let's ask a different sort of question: given the data, what is the best amount of money we should spend on education as opposed to locking up minor drug offenders a thousand miles from home? There's no way you can standardize the answer because it is ultimately a matter of wisdom and morality.

Now let's ask another question. If we are spending too much on prisons, how do we convince people to do otherwise? Again, there is no way to standardize the answers.

Yet the success of our society is based on education young people to be able to answer such questions and thousands of others that won't fit in the blank on the test sheet.

There is nothing wrong with tests when they are used with the sort of wisdom, judgment and conscience that standardized tests can't teach you. If we want our children to have the latter traits, then we must educate them and not reduce learning to the primitive logic of slot machine.

RHEE-ALITY CHECK

CANDI PETERSON On Saturday, May 3, Mr. Jesus Aguirre from the Office of the Chancellor told some local DC public school restructuring teams in a citywide meeting that DCPS elementary school counselor positions will not be funded in DCPS elementary schools that do not have a minimum of six hundred students. . .

As if this weren't enough, DCPS literacy and math coach teachers were advised last Friday that they too will have to reapply for their newly reclassified jobs under new position titles, Literacy Professional Developer and Mathematics Professional Developer, at the DCPS teacher transfer fair next Saturday. . .

Like their mentor, Chancellor Joel Klein of New York public schools, it appears that Mayor Fenty and Chancellor Rhee believe that the way to reform public education is by firing the bottom half of public school employees. As Randi Weingarten, President of United Federation of Teachers, reported about Chancellor Joel Klein's similar tactics, "And if you can't fire them, make their lives miserable." Instead of proposing creative solutions that would reform our public schools, Chancellor Rhee and Mayor Fenty continue down their path of destruction of our educational landscape which is counterproductive, destroys employee morale, wastes valuable talent, tarnishes future teacher recruitment efforts, and lacks a long-term educational strategic plan. After all, what competent, certified and experienced employees will be attracted to work in a system that regularly devalues and disrespects teachers, and fails to retain their existing pool of talented and certified educators?

RHEE BACKS RIGHTWING ATTACK ON PUBLIC EDUCATION

LOOSE LIPS, CITY PAPER Mayor Adrian M. Fenty might be a Barack Obama supporter, but his hand-picked education czar is opting for a different approach, at least when it comes to improving schools. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, in comments at a gathering of the Korean-American Coalition's D.C. chapter, endorsed the education plan of Arizona Republican John McCain "far and away" over those of either Obama or Hillary Clinton.

Rhee, in a speech at Tony Cheng's Restaurant in Chinatown, referred to herself as a "card-carrying Democrat" (LL forgot to ask to see the card), yet endorsed McCain's approach based on his willingness to reauthorize the controversial "No Child Left Behind" legislation. Both Clinton and Obama have been highly critical of the law and its effects. "I think they're pandering, quite frankly, to the teachers' unions and other folks," she said.

In comments after the speech, Rhee . . . called herself as a "huge proponent" of the federal law and said she was "incredibly disappointed" with the lack of Democratic support . . . though she did say she had a "laundry list" of things she would change with the statute.



RHEE ADMITS SHE'S OUT TO KILL THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM

Harry Jaffe in the DC Examiner reports this exchange between David Catania and Michelle Rhee during a recent city council hearing:

Catania, one of Rhee's best buddies on the legislature, suggested the Council put a cap on charter schools, the better to stem the tide of these fast-multiplying schools that are independent of the school bureaucracy yet rely on public funds.

Catania was expecting Rhee to take the path of least resistance and thank him for saving her public schools from competition. But Rhee doesn't walk in the same worn-out shoes of her predecessors.

No thanks, Rhee responded. This is about educating children rather than dividing up turf.

"The problem is not capping charter schools," she told me, "it's about asking how do we make sure we get as many kids into great charter schools as possible.

"I would fight to the death for a real good charter school," she says.

Have no doubt about it. Fenty and Rhee are out to kill public education and replace it with charter schools run by educational mercenaries. There is no proof that this is educationally preferable and there is clear evidence that the public will lose control over education at every level. The school board has already been emasculated and every public school replaced by a charter is one more central piece of a functioning community destroyed.

ARNE DUNCAN

2015

Arne Duncan's successor a big problem, too

Arne Duncan leaves with one final foul up

Parents and teachers don't see what Arne Duncan claims he does

Arne Duncan flunks again

Duncan uses federal greenmail to bully Washington state's educational system

Obama's war on public education

Drone schooler Duncan would screw poor California kids to get his way

Arnie Duncan pushes militarization of schools

What Arne Duncan left behind

HOW ARNE DUNCAN THINKS ABOUT CHILDREN I am not a manager of 600 schools. I'm a portfolio manager of 600 schools and I'm trying to improve the portfolio. - Arne Duncan, the new education secretary, speaking of the Chicago schools he ran.

Obama & Duncan reviving the pauper schools that public education got rid of

Putting Duncan to the test: he flunks

Duncan's chief of staff admits test tyranny is designed for testing and textbook industry

Arne Duncan & Michelle Rhee would fire Miss Snug

Flunking Arnie Duncan

Obama doesn't seem to understand his own education program

Arne Duncan flunks again

A Texas school superintendent takes on Arne Duncan & Obama

Let me ask you a simple question: Where is adequate yearly progress for the politician? Will we have 100 percent employment by 2014? Will all the children have decent health care and roofs over their heads by their deadline? But wait. They don't have a deadline. They aren't racing anywhere, are they? Congressmen, politicians, if you want children that are lush, stop firing the gardeners and start paying the water bill. Politicians, your fingerprints are on these children. What have you done to help them pass their tests?

Arne Duncan bullies Washington's mayor on school chancellor appointment

Why Arne Duncan, Michell Rhee and the other test tryants flunk in math

How Duncan & NCLB are breaking teachers

ARNE DUNCAN'S WAR AGAINST PARENTS

COURT BACKS TEACHERS AGAINST ARNE DUNCAN'S MASS FIRING

DUNCAN'S WAR ON PUBLIC EDUCATION HITS RHODE ISLAND

ARNE DUNCAN'S PHONY REFORM STRIKES AGAIN: 200 FIRED AT GEORGIA SCHOOL

WHAT DUNCAN REALLY DID TO CHICAGO SCHOOLS

FLUNKIN' DUNCAN: THE TEST RESULTS

FOXES IN THE CHICKEN COOP: ARNE DUNCAN

OBAMA SIDES WITH WAR ON PUBLIC SCHOOLS

WHY ARNE DUNCAN IS A TERRIBLE CHOICE FOR EDUCATION SECRETAR y

FINNISH SCHOOLS

Finland uses just one major test

2012

Why America can't learn from Finnish schools

2011

A Finnish educator explains how his country does it

2009

DUMP DUNCAN, RHEE & KLEIN AND LET THE FINNS TEACH US HOW TO RUN OUR SCHOOLS

2008

FINLAND: WHERE THEY REALLY LEAVE NO CHILD BEHIND

ELLEN GAMERMAN, WALL STREET JOURNAL - Finnish teenagers are among the smartest in the world. They earned some of the top scores by 15-year-old students who were tested in 57 countries. American teens finished among the world's C students even as U.S. educators piled on more homework, standards and rules. Finnish youth, like their U.S. counterparts, also waste hours online. They dye their hair, love sarcasm and listen to rap and heavy metal. But by ninth grade they're way ahead in math, science and reading -- on track to keeping Finns among the world's most productive workers. Finland's students are the brightest in the world, according to an international test. Teachers say extra playtime is one reason for the students' success. WSJ's Ellen Gamerman reports.. . . .

The academic prowess of Finland's students has lured educators from more than 50 countries in recent years to learn the country's secret, including an official from the U.S. Department of Education. What they find is simple but not easy: well-trained teachers and responsible children. Early on, kids do a lot without adults hovering. And teachers create lessons to fit their students. "We don't have oil or other riches. Knowledge is the thing Finnish people have," says Hannele Frantsi, a school principal. . .

Finnish teachers pick books and customize lessons as they shape students to national standards. "In most countries, education feels like a car factory. In Finland, the teachers are the entrepreneurs," says Mr. Schleicher, of the Paris-based OECD, which began the international student test in 2000.

TEACH FOR AMERICA

2014

Teach for America flopping

The backlash against Teach for America

What happens when you criticize Teach for America?

The Teacher for America con

Education professor challenges Teach for America's claims

Reality Check: Teach for America

NEA head calls Teach for America educational malpractice

2011

Matt Damon and mother turn down award from union tied to Teach for America

2009

THE UNDERSIDE OF TEACH FOR AMERICA

THE MEDIA MUDDLED STORY OF TEACH FOR AMERICA

2017

Word: The educational failures of the Gates Foundation

2014

Bill Gates compares America's students to electric plugs and railroad tracks

If Bill Gates bought every home in Boston -- he'd still have $1 billion left.

What they teach where Bill Gates and his family went and go to school

If your kids follow Bill Gates too carefully, they'll learn to lie

Obamadmin (with help from Gates) takes its spying into the classroom

Infrequently asked questions : How come the former governor of Virginia can be indicted for taking over $100k from a campaign backer in return for favors, while Bill Gates gets away with giving city governments millions in return for the things (aka "policies") that he wants?

2013

Now Gates Foundation is out to wreck higher education

Warren Buffet gives $2 billion in stock to public education killer Gates Foundation

Gates Foundation making huge investment in prison industry

Parents irate over Gates funded spy file on country's children

An award winning principal runs into Gates Foundation child (and teacher) abuse

Another anti-teacher crazy idea from Bill Gates (and it only costs $5 billion)

Gates foundation behind massive invasion of student privacy

Bill Gates' war on education takes a wacky turn

Child abuse: Diane Ravitch dumped by Gates-backed Brookings Institution

Bill Gates's cover blown; his foundation gives big grant to right wing foe of public education

Get Bill Gates out of the classroom

WHY RHEE, GATES & GUGGENHEIM ARE FULL OF IT

How three foundations are damaging public education

How did Bill Gates get to decide what's good for our children

The Gates Foundation  the Koch brothers of schools  to spend millions to rig education system

GATES FOUNDATION BEHIND ABUSE OF SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS BY SCHOOL SYSTEMS

IS THE GATES FOUNDATION ENGAGED IN BRIBERY?

2009

BILL GATES WANTS BIG BROTHER IN THE CLASSROOM

2017

For profit charter schools do worse

Detroit charter schools closing

Report charts failure of Chicago's over 100 charter schools

Some facts about charter schools

2016

NAACP demands charter schools have same civil rights protections as public schools

Fight against charter schools growing

Why charter schools are a problem

Are charter schools a pending fiscal crisis?

2015

Another charter school scam

New report on charter school fraud

The collapse of the nation's first all charter district

2014

Charter schools' roots in segregation

How charter schools rip off public funds

Behind the great charter school rip-off

Chicago public schools outpace city's charters

Charter school fraudsters get off with a promise not to do it again

What's behind the hedge fund charter school scam

The role of charter schools in school resegregation

Obamadmin finally tells charter schools they have obey civil rights laws

The charter school cons

"Sit and stare" child abuse by charter schools

The segregated staircase to the charter school

Word: The charter school con

How Walmart is behind the charter school game

Word: Charter schools

Charter schools increase segregation

The NYC charter school con

The charter school con the media ignores

Texas charter schools teaching creationism

2013

Charter schools were born in segregation and still create it

Charter schools suceeding in hurting public education, but not much else

Who's profiting from charter schools?

C harter schools were a dictator's idea

Charter schools: Counseling out to keep public funds coming in

How charter schools rig the game

Child Abuse: The charter school con hits Philadelphia

Pennsylvania charters bomb compared to public schools

Another way charter schools rip off the public

Charter school con: dumping problem students

Oregon goes after charter school scam

National Labor Relations Board blows whistle on fake "public" charter school

National Labor Relations Board blows whistle on fake "public" charter school

2012 ..

Philadelphia charter school expansion crushing public schools

Detroit Charter School Could Go Union

Unionize charter schools?

Tax supported charter school closes six weeks into year

Corporatized schools vs. public education

The charter school myth blown up

Another blow to the charter school myth

How the charter school scam works

Charter schools aren't working well in South Carolina, either

Chinese investors see charter schools as profit centers

Investment firm plans to harvest your kids for big bucks

How corporations are ripping off the public school system

The failure of publicly funded private schools (aka charters )

Charter schools are right up there with megaplex movie theaters as profit centers

Recovered history: Albert Shanker and charter schools

Charter school lobby exposed as ALEC front

Washington state says no to charter schools

The death of public education in Philadelphia

How school vouchers are used to push rightwing evangelism

Study finds charter schools waste money on administration

How charter schools manipulate their problems

Top ten reasons for one percenters to support charter schools

Why charter schools don't work

More on charter schools

The charter school myth

One school voucher group admits its goal is to end public education

A third of charter schools run by management corporations

Maine falling for charter school myth

Charter school results fudged by attrition rate, hidden government money

2010

Catalyst Magazine - Chicago] charter schools expelled 146 students in 2009, or 5 of every 1,000a higher rate of expulsion than traditional schools, which posted an expulsion rate of 1.5 for every 1,000 students. (See chart.) In 85 percent of charter school cases, students were expelled for less serious offenses that are not eligible for expulsion under CPS rules. Once expelled, charter students are sent back to their neighborhood school by the districts Office of Adjudication.

GOLDMAN SACHS SEES GOLD IN CHARTER SCHOOLS

LIB DEMS CHALLENGE BRITISH VERSION OF CHARTER SCHOOLS

CHARTER SCHOOLS PAYING STUDENTS TO FIND NEW CLASSMATES

MAJOR FINANCING SCAM BEHIND CHARTER SCHOOLS UNCOVERED

PHILADELPHIA WATCHDOG FINDS CHARTER SCHOOLS

"EXTREMELY VULENERABLE TO FRAUD, WASTE, AND ABUSE."

NEW ORLEANS CHARTER SCHOOLS: CAPITALIZING ON DISASTER

CHARTER SCHOOL CHEATING SCANDAL

WHO'S BEHIND THE CHARTER SCHOOL HYPE?

CHARTER SCHOOLS RIGGING GAME

STUDY: CHARTERS NOT AS GOOD AS PUBLIC SCHOOLS

HIDDEN TRUTHS ABOUT CHARTER SCHOOLS

EVEN THE RIGHT IS FINDING CHARTERS & VOUCHERS TO BE SUBPRIME

QUESTIONS TO ASK ABOUT CHARTER SCHOOLS

HOW SOME CHARTER SCHOOLS MAKE IT TO THE TOP

EVEN THE RIGHT IS FINDING CHARTERS & VOUCHERS TO BE SUBPRIME

Frederick M Hess, American Enterprise Institute - Milwaukee's voucher program initially allowed a few hundred students to attend local private schools with public scholarships. When it was launched, advocates voiced expansive claims on behalf of "choice." In 1990, scholars John Chubb and Terry Moe argued in their seminal volume Politics, Markets, and America's Schools, "Without being too literal about it, we think reformers would do well to entertain the notion that choice is a panacea. . . . It has the capacity all by itself to bring about the kind of transformation that, for years, reformers have been seeking to engineer in myriad other ways."

The record of markets in advancing prosperity, opportunity, and innovation is compelling. It seemed almost axiomatic that market reforms would deliver similar results in schooling, spurring the emergence of good schools and pushing traditional districts to improve.

Yet things have not worked out as intended. Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a champion of choice-based reform since the 1980s, has voiced "growing sympathy" with choice skeptics and warned against "too much trust in market forces. . .

Even staunch proponents of school choice are conceding disappointment. Earlier this year, Weekly Standard contributor Daniel Casse reported, "The two most recent studies show that, since the implementation of the voucher program, reading scores across all Milwaukee schools are falling." Howard Fuller, patron saint of the voucher program, has wryly acknowledged, "I think that any honest assessment would have to say that there hasn't been the deep, wholesale improvement in MPS [Milwaukee Public Schools] that we would have thought." Manhattan Institute scholar Sol Stern, one-time choice enthusiast and author of Breaking Free: Public School Lessons and the Imperative of School Choice, brought the concerns to a boiling point earlier this year when he declared, "Fifteen years into the most expansive school choice program tried in any urban school district [there is] . . . no 'Milwaukee miracle,' no transformation of the public schools has taken place.". . .

Today, the Milwaukee voucher program enrolls nearly twenty thousand students in more than one hundred schools, yet this growing marketplace has yielded little innovation or excellence. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel recently described 10 percent of voucher schools as having "alarming deficiencies." These include Alex's Academics of Excellence, which was launched by a convicted rapist, and the Mandella School of Science and Math, whose director overreported its voucher enrollment and used the funds to purchase two Mercedes-Benzes. Veteran Journal Sentinel writer Alan Borsuk has opined, "[The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program] has preserved the status quo in terms of schooling options in the city more than it has offered a range of new, innovative, or distinctive schools."

Wisconsin headline writers have had a field day, with the Capital Times and Milwaukee Magazine featuring the likes of "The Failure of School Choice," and "Whoops, We Goofed: School Choice Doesn't Work Like Its Supporters Promised. Gulp. Now What?" . . .

While research suggests that some participating students benefit from private school vouchers, these results may largely reflect the ability of students in places like New York City or Washington, D.C., to find empty seats in established parochial schools. There is little evidence that voucher or choice programs have succeeded in fostering the emergence or expansion of high-quality options.

Similar concerns plague the charter movement nationally, even as the number of charter schools has surged above four thousand and charter enrollment has passed the one million mark. The U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics has compared the performance of students in district and charter schools, reporting, "After adjusting for student characteristics, charter school mean scores in reading and mathematics were lower, on average, than those for public noncharter schools." . . .

Stig Leschly, executive director of the Newark Charter School Fund, has observed that only about two hundred of the thousands of existing charter schools "really close the achievement gap." . . .

Among the eight cities where charter schools enroll 20 percent or more of students are Detroit, Michigan; Youngstown, Ohio; and Washington, D.C. In 2007, Education Week reported that, despite a substantial charter presence, Detroit had the highest dropout rate among the nation's large school systems. A 2007 analysis found that just 57 percent of Youngstown's charter schools, and just 38 percent of its district schools, met Ohio's growth targets for student improvement in reading and math.

In a study of Washington, D.C., which has one of the nation's highest rates of charter school enrollment, researchers Margaret Sullivan, Dean Campbell, and Brian Kisida found no evidence of improvement in D.C. public schools even as they lost nearly a third of their students to charter school competition. They traced inaction to a district "hampered by political dynamics and burdensome regulations." . . .

REFORMING CHARTER SCHOOLS. . . MAKING THEM WHAT THEY WERE MEAN TO BE

The charter school movement was created to "reform" the public schools. So far, it hasn't proved its merit and contains some dangerous and damaging elements. Those fighting for good public schools might turn the battle around by a drive to reform charter schools, exposing their flaws and weaknesses while adopting some of their benefits, the primary one being decentralization. The following was written for our local DC news page but many of the things mentioned apply elsewhere.

SAM SMITH, DC CITY DESK This sounds weird, I know, but I find myself wondering whether one way to battle Mayor Fenty's plan to close more than a score of public schools - a strange approach to improving anything, especially education - is to investigate the possibility of turning some of them into charter schools.

Not any old charter schools, but ones run by the community in which they sit - with a board including teachers, parents, appointees of the ANC and so forth - rather than vague and alien gifts dropped on the neighborhood by the Fenty and business crowd. Not schools modeled on 7-11 franchises but organic institutions growing out of the community they are to serve. With new rules and new goals. And new designs, based on ways to make spare building space bring income to local education rather than be used as a mayoral giveaway to friends and contributors.

There may not be time, there may not be the energy, but a campaign for real, public, neighborhood charter schools might substantially alter the debate, putting politicians and the developers on the defensive for a change. After all, if charter schools are as good as they say, why can't communities run them, too?

The goal would be to create a new model that, unlike the present charter system, is not in competition with the public school system - heading it towards a revival of its early 19th century pauper school status. The goal would to combine the best of charter schools - their decentralization - with a structure that revives the democratic control that vested interests are trying so hard to eliminate. In DC they have been remarkably successful, even eviscerating the first icon of home rule - the elected school board.

The big problem with charter schools right now is that if they aren't better than existing schools - and there is no convincing evidence that they are - then there is no reason for them. And if they are - or become - better than existing public schools, a two tier system will have been created no matter how much the charter crowd insists that they're just as open to everyone as the regular system. For example, I've heard charter advocates brag about how their schools are enticing public school teachers, which is great for them, but not good for the old system. Further, in order to get into one of the charter schools you have to apply. This may not seem like much, but it is precisely the sort of factor that creates a cultural gap. The determined, the knowledgeable, the brave apply. The weak, the beaten down, the confused don't. And you end up with a two tier system.

In fact, there is no way current charter schools can be better than the regular system without the latter being the second best place to send your kids. It is, as it now stands, a subtle but extremely effective attack on public education.

Obviously, there are some advantages to charter schools, but they may not be as mysterious or as unique as their advocates think. Some years back a Virginia school system experimented with small sub schools featuring different educational approaches. When they studied the results they found that students in each of the sub schools did better, regardless of the approach taken. The conclusion: it was the sense that they were going to a school that mattered and that cared about them that made the difference.

So why not throw a Hail Mary pass before the Fenty fusillade is successful, as it presently appears it will be? Demand that some of the schools be recreated in a modified charter school model with extensive community control - a new approach that is not in opposition to the public schools, but is a prototype towards which the rest of the system might move. For example, I have long urged a group of mini systems based on each high school and its feeder schools, led by a board of teachers, parents and other citizens.

What the wheeler dealers ignore in this battle is that most of what happens in school goes on in a classroom in which the bureaucracy and the system are for that hour irrelevant. The point is to find the best teachers and to give them the best support. For over two centuries, America did this well based on decentralized, community controlled education. The answer is not to turn the system over to educational hustlers - as encouraged by Fenty, the business lobby and the editorialists at the Washington-Kaplan Post - but to rediscover a system that worked.

After the above appeared we got this note from the co-founder of Save our Schools, a parent of three

GINA ARLOT, SAVE OUR SCHOOLS - What you describe in City Desk is very similar to what Albert Shanker, the man who first used the term "charter school", hoped would happen if a group of parents, teachers and others got together to start a charter school. It was hoped that by having a school fully invested in by the community, with some innovative idea, we would be able to determine quickly what worked and what didn't in public education and with feedback loops back into the overall system, everyone would benefit. Education Week had a fairly big commentary on the back page recently written by a man who has written a bio on Shanker. What happened is that after the neo-cons stopped criticizing the concept, they realized that it would help them achieve their dearest dream-privatizing a sacred government function, and as a bonus, the teachers and other school workers unions would be destroyed. It was a pretty interesting commentary about how the whole idea of charter schools has been taken over and totally corrupted.

What follows is a collection of information that may be useful to those interested in pursuing the approach suggested above. Included are some of the things wrong with the current undemocratic charter school system.

NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION - Nearly 40 percent of newer charter school teachers flee for other jobs, according to a recently released study. Charter school students do no better than their public school counterparts on math and reading assessments, and in some cases score lower, according to this national study. . .

In 2004, the National Assessment Governing Board released an analysis of charter school performance on the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as "The Nation's Report Card." The report found that charter school students, on average, score lower than students in traditional public schools. While there was no measurable difference between charter school students and students in traditional public schools in the same racial/ethnic subgroup, charter school students who were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch scored lower than their peers in traditional public schools, and charter school students in central cities scored lower than their peers in math in 4th grade.

Students taught by certified teachers had roughly comparable scores whether they attended charter schools or traditional public schools, but the scores of students taught by uncertified teachers in charter schools were significantly lower than those of charter school students with certified teachers.

Students taught by teachers with at least five years' experience outperformed students with less experienced teachers, regardless of the type of school attended, but charter school students with inexperienced teachers did significantly worse than students in traditional public schools with less experienced teachers.

In a study that followed North Carolina students for several years, professors Robert Bifulco and Helen Ladd found that students in charter schools actually made considerably smaller achievement gains in charter schools than they would have in traditional public schools.

From a guide to converting public to charter schools

Why should we consider converting our school to a public charter school?

Converting to public charter school status permits parents, teachers, and administrators to create the kind of school they want for the children who attend. They can do this because public charter school status confers independence, control, and significantly increased funding at the school level.

Each charter school is an autonomous public school organized as a non-profit corporation governed by its own board of trustees. The trustees have exclusive control over the school's budget, instructional methods, personnel, and administration. Charter schools hire whom they please, spend their funding as they see fit, and, within the bounds of their charter, control their own curriculum and instructional methods.

Because charter schools are not connected to DCPS, their funding comes directly from the D.C. government. The amount of funding is prescribed by the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula.

What are the risks?

Unlike traditional public schools, public charter schools can be closed down if they do not perform well. Charter schools that mismanage funds or break the law can be closed down at any time. Schools whose students do not improve academically can be closed down after five years. A conversion school that is closed down for any reason is likely to revert to a school-system school.

What happens to our current students if we convert?

Under the School Reform Act (D.C.'s charter school law), students enrolled in a converting DCPS school receive preference in admission to the charter school, as do their siblings. All students within the neighborhood boundaries of the converting school also receive preference. Any remaining seats are filled by students from around the District.

What about teachers and staff?

Conversion requires the endorsement of 2/3 of the school's full-time teachers. After conversion, the board of trustees determines who works at the charter school. Former DCPS teachers who work at a charter school receive "creditable service" under the District's retirement system for the entire period of their employment at the charter school. These teachers may elect to remain in the District's system or to transfer into the charter school's retirement system once it establishes one.

How do we get started?

The first step is to study the petition form and become thoroughly familiar with the application process. Next, you should begin educating your teachers, parents, and the community in which your school sits about the pros and cons of conversion. Once there is general agreement about moving forward, you should pull together a steering committee or founding board to begin the process of developing a shared vision and mission for your new school and to prepare the petition.

This summary points to some of the changes needed in the charter school law.

SAVE OUR SCHOOLS - Charter schools were supposed to be laboratories of innovation to improve public education in DC, but instead are laboratories of privatization that are destroying public education and draining our public resources. Since being imposed by a Republican Congress in 1996, it has become obvious that charters are the false promise of reform in DC public schools.

Charter schools are not performing any better than the public schools. In 2006-07, only 9 out of the 43 schools chartered by the Public Charter School Board reached testing benchmarks established by the No Child Left Behind law.

Only 1 out of the 3 "highly touted" KIPP schools met AYP in 06-07

When kids fall through the cracks, the results can be tragic, but charter overseers don't care:

Charters do not have to provide access to all students.

Since charters don¡¦t have neighborhood boundaries, no one is entitled to go to a charter school as a right. However, by law DCPS has to educate all students.

Many charter schools require parents to sign contracts that include mandatory meetings, "volunteering", and "activity fees."

Students are frequently "counseled out" if they are not meeting discipline and academic expectations. This usually occurs after October when charters receive funding for students. Money does not follow the students out of the charters and into DCPS.

The constant movement of students in and out of charter schools is disruptive both to the students and the receiving schools. Students can easily fall through the cracks because there is no uniform tracking system or truancy policy in charter schools.

Charters are costing the city millions of dollars and spend more per capita than DCPS:

Many heads of charter schools make excessive salaries. The Chairman and CEO of Friendship Public Charter School made $260,000 in 2006.

Charters are using DCPS buildings and resources and not putting anything back in the system: Maya Angelou Charter School pays DCPS around $200 per student each year to rent Evans MS despite receiving around $3,000 per student each year in facilities allotment - that's $450,000.

Charter Schools are not public All are owned by non-profit corporations and are only accountable to their boards of trustees.

Even if a charter closes, its non-profit foundation can keep the building.

Three of the 7 Charter Board members live in Maryland or Virginia. "

Kaplan is the education corporation owned by the Washington Post that is helping it stay afloat.

EDUCATION WORLD, 2004 Increased accountability demands on educators have led to more districts and teachers turning to outside resources for help. Among those resources is Kaplan, Inc., a company traditionally known for its test-preparation programs. Kaplan now also offers after-school education centers, as well as programs for K-12 schools, post-secondary education, and professional training. Seppy Basili

As Kaplan's vice president of learning and assessment, Guiseppe (Seppy) Basili guides strategy and product development for Kaplan K12 Learning Services. He has helped Kaplan K12 Learning Services design and deliver instructional programs to more than 1,000 schools nationwide. He also oversees in-house professional development programs. . .

EW: Since the passage of No Child Left Behind, in what areas are schools seeking the most assistance from Kaplan?

Basili: NCLB really is creating enormous change in schools - districts are connecting data to faces in ways they haven't before. Those districts are turning to Kaplan for a range of services - from intervention services for students with the greatest need to professional development for teachers. Districts also are turning to Kaplan for solutions, such as the Achievement Planner learning platform - a comprehensive solution that includes formative assessment, state testing analysis, and targeted lesson plans.

EW: How do you respond to some educators' concerns that they are being forced to "teach to the test" more than ever now, and that it is adversely impacting education?

Basili: While traditional thinking is that teachers shouldn't "teach to the test," the educational landscape has changed during the past several years. Today, we live in a world of criterion-referenced tests, which establishes a proficiency baseline that every student should be able to perform at. State tests are based on state standards. There's no problem whatsoever in having tests that are standards-based and standards-driven.

DC WATCH, 2004 In 2002, Michael Sherer at The Columbia Journalism Review reported that the Washington Post Company had paid lobbyists $80,000 to monitor the No Child Left Behind legislation in 2001. Sherer overlooked the fact that the Post Company has journalists at not only its namesake newspaper the Washington Post, but at Newsweek and many other media outlets who could "monitor" and report on the legislation. But Sherer was getting at a point regarding the journalistic integrity of the Post Company and its media outfit because of a certain conflict of interest. The Washington Post Company is not only a family newspaper but is a company with a very profitable non-media subsidiary called Kaplan Educational Services.

Not surprisingly, DC's "failing" schools or schools with stagnant standardized test scores have been a lead story over the last week at the Washington Post. Two reports outlined the initial announcement of "failing" schools and questioned whether or not money was available to pay for the tutoring that was due to the students in those schools. For those owning stock in the Washington Post Company, this was good news both locally and nationally. But for those outside of the Post's corporate lair, doubts linger as to whether or not this will be a continuation of bad public policy.

The Washington Post Company's 2003 Annual Report breaks Kaplan down into two divisions: Supplemental Education and Higher Education. The more profitable of the two is Supplemental Education, which has a long history as a test prep provider. Sherer infers that the Post lobbied Congress to get legislation into NCLB that would further the profits of Kaplan and therefore the Post Company and its shareholders. Sherer goes on to state " Overall, the newspaper's editorials have supported [NCLB's] interests, calling for higher school standards, the use of vouchers, and further exploration of online education."

The Post Company's Kaplan is one of nineteen approved NCLB supplemental service providers on the District of Columbia Public Schools' list from which parents have been able to choose. By 2003, Kaplan had already received at least one $90,000 contract for services from DCPS or $10,000 more than the Post Company reportedly paid a firm to lobby Congress on NCLB in 2001

CHARTER SCHOOL FAQ

Congress imposed charters on DC in 1996.When they proved unpopular, Congress created a special Public Charter School Board to encourage the creation and expansion of charter schools. Charter schools are an example of Congress's disrespect for home rule and their undemocratic meddling in local affairs.

But aren't charter schools well meaning?

Charters were pitched as innovative models of reform that would help DCPS improve. There are some good and well-intentioned charter schools, but as a whole charters are part of a national movement to privatize all of our public institutions and services.

Aren't charter schools public?

Charter schools use public money, but every charter school is owned, operated, and governed by a private corporation and Board of Trustees. Many charters receive additional funding from private foundations and wealthy individuals, further weakening public accountability. Also, charters don't have to follow the rules and regulations of DCPS for enrollment and retention of students or for the hiring and firing of teachers and other school workers.

But can't anyone go to a charter school?

Charters are not neighborhood schools. Prospective students must fill out applications and are selected by citywide lottery. Often parents must attend meetings and agree to volunteer time or pay "activity fees" before their children can register. By selective outreach, specialized curriculum and niche marketing, charters can target specific types of students and ignore others. Once accepted, students can be expelled or encouraged to withdraw for social, disciplinary, or academic reasons.

Aren't parents just "voting with their feet" when they send their children to charters?

Not necessarily. DCPS buildings have been neglected and the school system overall has lost resources, staff, and programs. Most parents would choose the neighborhood school down the street if it was clean, modern, well-staffed, and well-maintained.

But aren't charter schools improving educational opportunities for students in the District?

No. Even charter advocates agree that "quality" remains a problem in charter schools, and public schools continue to outperform charters. Even worse, charter schools are creating a dual and unequal education system DC-charters enjoy political support, get large amounts of money from private corporations, and can decide who they want to remain in their school and who they don't. DCPS has to accept everyone, including students put out of charters. Far from fixing decades of political neglect and underfunding of our public schools charters have only made the situation worse.

Do charter schools contribute to segregation, displacement, and gentrification?

Segregation: A study by the Project for Civil Rights at Harvard University shows that charter schools contribute to segregation by race and class. Charters can purposefully attract a certain type of student through targeted recruitment and niche marketing. Being a parent of a charter student generally requires far more resources (for transportation, system navigation, student fees and parent volunteering), which further discriminates against lower-income families. Also, if students do not fit in with the school's mission for disciplinary, academic, or social reasons, they can be dismissed midyear or asked not to return the next year. With this kind of subjective student selection, charter schools are clearly achieving a separate and unequal education based on race and class.

Privatization: Charters are an important step towards systematic privatization in which corporations and wealthy individuals make decisions for everyone else about how students are educated, what communities need, and what happens to available space. Because charters operate outside DCPS and the city government, their ownership of a school building takes the building out of the public domain and makes it private property. Even if the Charter fails, the private owners keep the building and land, rather than returning it to public ownership. Once this transition is made, the public has no access or decision-making power. They are cut out of the picture.

Gentrification: As segregators and privatizers, unaccountable to the people or the democratic process, charter schools are fundamental to the process of gentrification. How better to drive poor people of color out than to undercut access to public education, to sell off public property as "surplus" and hand it off to gentrifiers? This is not only racist and greedy, it shows an utter lack of respect for the people of Washington DC.

Are all charter schools bad?

Individual charter schools may provide a wonderful educational experience for students who attend them, and may perform well and have high retention rates. However, all charter schools are part of a system that threatens equality and justice in public education and the local community. Unless a charter school actively works to protect the community in which it is located and the DC public school system, it is a part of the problem

RICHARD D. KAHLENBERG, EDUCATION WEEK Twenty years ago this month, in a landmark address to the National Press Club in Washington, American Federation of Teachers President Albert Shanker first proposed the creation of "charter schools"-publicly funded institutions that would be given greater flexibility to experiment with new ways of educating students. At the time, some conservative education reformers opposed the idea, saying we already knew what worked in education. Today, the positions are reversed: Conservatives largely embrace charters, while teachers' unions are mostly opposed. How did the notion of charter schools evolve over 20 years? And might a return to Al Shanker's original idea improve the educational and political fortunes of the charter school movement?

In Shanker's vision, small groups of teachers and parents would submit research-based proposals outlining plans to educate kids in innovative ways. A panel consisting of the local school board and teachers' union officials would review proposals. Once given a "charter," a term first used by the Massachusetts educator Ray Budde, a school would be left alone for a period of five to 10 years. Schools would be freed from certain collective bargaining provisions; for example, class-size limitations might be waived to merge two classes and allow team-teaching. Shanker's core notion was to tap into teacher expertise to try new things. Building on the practices at the Saturn auto plant in Nashville, Tenn., he envisioned teams of teachers making suggestions on how best to accomplish the job at hand. Part of the appeal of charter schools to Shanker and many Democrats was that they offered a publicly run alternative to private-school-voucher proposals, which they feared would undermine teacher collective bargaining rights and Balkanize students by race, religion, and economic status. A charter school, Shanker said, "would not be a school where all the advantaged kids or all the white kids or any other group is segregated."

In the early 1990s, Minnesota legislators, working with Shanker, adopted the nation's first charter school legislation. However, as the idea spread (eventually to 40 states and the District of Columbia), the father of charter schools expressed increasing alarm that his idea of teacher-led institutions had morphed into something quite different. Many conservative advocates saw charters as a way to make an end run around teachers' unions, and the vast majority of charter schools today lack collective bargaining agreements. Likewise, states disregarded Shanker's admonition that charter schools should be diverse, as individual charter schools often appealed to specialized ethnic, religious, or racial groups, raising the very concerns Shanker had about private school vouchers.

Shanker argued that in charter schools, rigid collective bargaining rules could be bent, but that teachers still needed union representation. Only when teachers felt secure could they take risks, he said. "You don't see these creative things happening where teachers don't have voice or power or influence." Not surprisingly, lacking a collective voice, teachers in charter schools turn over at almost twice the rate of public school teachers. And while right-wingers assumed that eliminating union influence would make test scores skyrocket, a number of independent studies have found that charter schools do no better than unionized public schools. Moreover, as a practical political matter, as charter schools became a vehicle for anti-union activists, powerful education unions naturally opposed their expansion and effectively limited the ultimate growth of the experiment.

THE MYTH OF CHARTER SCHOOLS

TEXAS STATS SHOWS FAILURE OF CHARTER SCHOOLS

2008

MAJOR CHARTER SCHOOL SCANDAL IN DC

THE SECRET THE HUCKSTERS DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW: PUBLIC EDUCATION WORKS

ROBERT FREEMAN, DC TEACHER BLOG - Part of the problem [with our schools] is that over the last two decades an intense lobby has emerged that wants to turn public education over to private industry, make McStudents of the nation's youth. It has operated a not-so-stealth campaign to disparage public education and to try to convince Americans that it isn't working. This campaign has mounted a relentless, mantra-like vilification of public schools: schools are failing; teachers are lazy; education bureaucracies are unresponsive; students are being cheated; America is at risk. Sound familiar?

Some of this lobby's motivation is ideological: they dislike anything that smacks of government control, the more so if the service is effective, for such examples repudiate the theological superiority of all things private. Some of its motivation is directed toward right-wing social engineering: they want to control the curriculum that future generations of American students must absorb. And much of it is simply economic: these "prophets of profit" want to get their hands on the $500+ billion that is spent every year in the U.S. on public K-12 education. . .

How would we know if public education is working or not? Probably the most reliable, broad-based, long-term tool for measuring the quality of public education is the Scholastic Aptitude Test. . . Because of its long history, its nationwide reach, and its comprehensive nature, SAT results transcend the negative one-off anecdotes commonly bandied about to disparage public education. No other instrument even comes close to equaling these strengths as a singular measure of national educational progress. So what do the SAT's tell us about the performance of public education in America?

Last year's SAT scores were the highest in 30 years. English scores were the highest in 28 years. Math scores were the highest in 36 years. The scores were at record levels for all ethic groups: whites; Asian-Americans; African-Americans; Native Americans; and Latinos. And they were achieved by the broadest test-taking pool in testing history. Forty-eight per cent of the nation's 2.9 million high school seniors took the test--a record. Thirty-six percent of the test takers were minorities, another record.

Thirty years ago, only the most elite 15 percent of students took the test. And remember, elites usually test better than averages. So the fact that scores have gone up while the test-taking pool has gotten both larger and more diverse may be the most powerful performance indicator of all. . .

Against this record, those who would "privatize" public education have virtually nothing to show for their decades of hucksterish claims. In trial after trial, experiments with educational vouchers (the most popular form of school privatization) have proven a bust. Voucher programs in Milwaukee, New York, Washington D.C., and in Dayton and Cleveland, Ohio have shown no long-term gains in student achievement. . .

Nor do "charter schools" fare any better than voucher schools. . . In August, after the most extensive examination in the history of the country, the Department of Education published data showing charter school students lag public schools students in almost every category of performance. In math, fourth graders were a full half year behind public school students. . .