Casting Doubt on The Fordham Institute's Flypaper

The Fordham Institute has a study out today that is so full of shit I can smell it through my computer. They looked at Charter vs. District School turn arounds of federally titled "failing schools." They concluded (of course) that charter schools were more successful and that the federal government should be spending more on charter schools. The findings did come with an asterisk. They mentioned a caveat noting that, "because of the small sample size, the results cannot be deemed statistically significant."

Below is the comment I left:

What was the average percentage of teachers and administrators remaining in district schools vs. charter schools?

I know in NYC, most district turn around models keep the same school personal. Perhaps it has less to do with the district vs. charter status and more to do with the #of school personal remaining. In that case closing down public schools and replacing them with new public schools would work just as well. I am not sure why you are obsessed with the proliferation of charter schools.
You said there had to be “No more than a 10 percentage point difference in their subsidized lunch and minority enrollments” for your comparison.

I would like to know what the average difference in the enrollment of ELLS, SPED, Disabled, Homeless and High Poverty was. An 8 percent difference in one of those categories might not be a big deal, but an increase in all of them would represent a pretty different type of school.
The reality is not that Charter schools can’t scale up. The reality is that they don’t want to turn around failing schools. In NYC (a city where charter schools go to court to fight for building space) only one of the many charter chains submitted an application to turn around a failing school this year.
http://gothamschools.org/2011/03/22/in-a-first-a-charter-operator-will-try-to-turn-around-a-failing-charter/

They don’t want to turn around those schools because the best predictor of success in turn around schools is the percentage of same students (not similar population) that remain at the school. (Is that true? My guess is yes, but we don’t know. It seems like a fundamental question to answer in your research.

On average, charter schools nationally have recognized that the best way to keep the “high performing label” is to not enroll the same students as district schools and if they do enroll, push them out in higher numbers. Turning around failing schools, keeping the same students, is not in charter schools’ business plans.
http://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/the-offensively-defensive-ideology-of-charter-schooling/

It wasn’t in Arny Duncan’s business plans in Chicago either.
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/restrict.asp?path=archive/23_03/arne233.shtml

JUST FOR FUN: EDUCATION DEFORMER LOOK A LIKE CONTEST

Michael Bloomberg                                              Tony Blair

                                               













            Chris Christie                                                              Tony Soprano

                                                                                                                         


Arne Duncan                                                                 Michael Phelps

Joel Klein                                                                           Mr. Burns

Eliminating Seat Time helps the Regents Commissioner's Family

Up for consideration by the board of regents is the issue of eliminating seat time as a requirement for a student to receive credit in a class. You don't need to be an genius to know that students who could not meet standards state standards with a teacher in the classroom will not be able to meet the standards without a teacher in the classroom. So why is the board of regents really interested in eliminating the seat time requirement?

Replacing teachers with software is cheap and makes it look as though students are learning something even if the students take the same computerized test enough times to memorize the answers rather than learning concepts.

The less obvious answer is that it opens the door to companies peddling online courses in lieu of classroom instruction. One such company, k12.com, ($384 million in sales last year) is run by Andrew Tisch, brother-in-law to NY State Board of Regents Chair Merryl Tisch. Watch K12's stock when the helpful sister-in-law eliminates the seat time requirement next month.

Recently the city has promoted the use of value added scores to evaluate teachers. It will be interesting to see the value added score for each of these online classes.

EDUWONK + School of Thought = Spokesman for the Charter School Industry

Andrew J. Rotherham writes a column for Time.com called School of Thought.  Each of his articles has a decidedly pro charter school, pro privatization slant. There is a disclosure at the bottom of each article that reads, "Andrew J. Rotherham... is a co-founder of and partner at Bellwether Education, a nonprofit working to improve educational outcomes for low-income students." But, is imporving educational outcomes Bellwether's only mission?

I decided to dig a little deeper in to Bellwether's finances to see if there was a connection to charter school operators or other entities which seek to privatize public education which Rotherham often praises. Not surprisingly privatization proponents make up a disproportionate share of Bellwether's revenue stream.

If we go a step further and look at Bellwether Education Tax filing 2009 we find that of the $1.8 million in operational expenses that Bellwether had in 2009, $585,654 went to the top two salaried employees and one contractor. Rotherham's share -$115,000. With over a 30 percent of Bellweather's revenue going to three people I think their mission statement should be clarified. They seek to improve educational outcomes for low income students and to enrich their executives. When we understand that personal financial gain is a major part of Bellwether's mission it is hard to view any of Rotherham's articles as anything other than a paid advertisements for his clients - the charter school industry.

One glaring inaccuracy came in a recent article Rotherham wrote in defense of Mayor Bloomberg (another charter school advocate.) Writing about the failed leadership of NYC public school chancellor Cathie Black. Rotherham wrote in his time.com column, “The Mayor of New York made a bad decision for the schools — and to his credit owned up to it, and addressed it.”. Unfortunately, this is far from the truth. In reality Bloomberg refused to address any aspect of his appointment of Cathie Black or her tenure as chancellor. Here is what actually happened.

“At the press conference, Bloomberg emphasized that he would not answer questions about Black’s brief time as Chancellor, and repeatedly said that it was important to look forward.”

http://theforumnewsgroup.com/2...

Rotherham and his clients stand to gain hundreds of millions of dollars from Bloomberg's pro privatization and pro charter school agenda. His defense of the the mayor is an all too predictable example how Rotherham uses his position at Time.com to create financial gains for his clients, Bellwether education and ultimately himself.

Is legend helping the kids, or are the kids helping legend

Philanthropy or Advertising?

Philanthropy is great, but at what point does philanthropy become another way to advertise? John Legend is walking a fine line with the “Philanthrotisement” below.  The images above appeared on the internet radio website, Pandora.  Singer John Legend is pictured here with students from Harlem Village Academy where he is a major financial supporter and sits on the Board (with new school Chancellor Cathie Black.) 

It is commendable that Legend is taking an interest in education and making financial contributions to schools, however, philanthropy is not the first word that comes to mind when looking the image above with a caption that reads, “CLICK HERE TO ADD THE JOHN LEGEND MIXTAPE.” It looks like John Legend is using the school and its students to bolster his image, sell more records and ultimately collect more royalties. To be fair, a donation is made to his charitable organization every time you forward the mix tape to one of your friends. On the other hand, Pandora pays Legend royalties each time you play his track.

DOE Waste?

Is it really possible that the DOE is spending 30 million dollars on home instruction for 183 students?

This can't be correct, I hope someone corrects me.

The Economist: Wrong About Money

An article in the Economist states, "Education spending in America has increased to $9,000 per student today, versus $4,300 in 1971 (adjusted for inflation), yet math and reading scores in the country have both flatlined."


It interesting to cite this fact then point to the Harlem Children's Zone charter school as an example of a school that works. HCZ charter school spends far more per student than any traditional public school. There are two certified teachers in most classrooms. Class sizes are very small and students have access to an incredible network of social services through HCZ. If you are trying to make the point that money will not solve the problem's in education, this charter school actually proves the opposite.

Before you can educate poor urban youth, you need to address basic needs. Do they have food, clean clothes, health care and a safe home? School and learning doesn't happen until those basic needs are addressed. Geoffrey Canada recognizes this and provides those services to the children living in the HCZ. Its a great model, but who is going to pay for it? Goldman Sachs doesn't fund everyone's school. 

The Case Against Merit Pay

By all accounts, even my own, merit pay seems to make sense. If someone has better performance than someone else, pay them more. Unfortunately, the research doesn't support merrit pay as a tool to increase performance. Below is a great video about the use of money as an incentive and here is one of my favorite blogs addressing the same question.

Charter School Agenda

Below is an excerpt of an email conversation between NYC School Chancellor Joel Klein and Harlem Success Academy CEO Eva Mustquit.

Just in case there were any doubts that charter schools are specifically designed to union bust/replace traditional public schools, here is what she wrote to pal Joel Klien.

"We plan to open our last 3 in Harlem in august 2010 and then move to Bronx,"... "With 27 charters in Harlem [counting other non-Harlem Success charter schools] we will have market share and will have fundamentally changed the rules of the game."

The Post's First Negative Article about Charter Schools

This morning hell froze over and pigs were flying.

The NY Post owned by charter school proponent Rupert Murdoch, wrote its first negative artilce about charter schools.

The focus was on the DOE progress reports which is an attempt by the New York City Department of education to assign each school a letter grade based on student performance. According to the article in the Post, public schools scored 10 percent higher on average than charter schools.

This puts Joel Klien, New York City public school chancellor and charter school proponent in a difficult situation. Either admit that your scoring system doesn't work and you have wasted millions of dollars, or admit that chater schools are not the answer to education reform.

Joel did what anybody in that position would do - he left town.

A Heartless Lottery

"My own particular, narrow wrath was focused on the ritual at the heart of the movie, where parents and kids sit nervously in an auditorium, holding their lottery numbers while somebody pulls out balls and announces the lucky winners of seats in next fall’s charter school class. The lucky families jump up and down and scream with joy while the losing parents and kids cry. In some of the lotteries, there are 20 heartbroken children for every happy one.

Charter schools, please, stop. I had no idea you selected your kids with a piece of performance art that makes the losers go home feeling like they’re on a Train to Failure at age 6. You can do better. Use the postal system."

-Gail Collins New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/30/opinion/30collins.html

Why do hedge funds support charter schools?

Why do charter schools enjoy the support of hedge funds, Walmart, and Rupert Murdoch?


At first I thought the only reason was the ideology of privatization, but an article by Juan Gonzalez makes more sinister connections.

Some investment banks are using tax credits for school construction to double there money in 7 years.


http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2010/05/07/2010-05-07_albany_charter_cash_cow_big_banks_making_a_bundle_on_new_construction_as_schools.html

Why focus on problems with Charter Schools

Why focus on problems with Charter Schools when the focus should be on how to fix education in our country?

With so much “reform” focused on expanding charter schools it is important to realize that they are not the magic bullet many have made them out to be. You can’t compare Public and Charter schools in NYC, because the charters are playing by different rules with different students.

Several high performing charter schools have changed the threshold for grade promotion from 65 to 80. Its not hard to have a 100% passing rate on standardized tests when only students that have 80’s in the class take the test. If a student has less than an 80, it is likely they will be transferring out of the charter to a public school, rather than being left back. That’s why the charter schools with high standardized test scores are also the ones with 30% attrition.

In addition, we know that the charter schools that are enrolling fewer ELL’s and SPED students.

Charter schools are also investing big money on PR and advertising. As a result we hear about the success of Harlem Success Academy or Harlem Village academy, but we don’t hear about the great work P.S. 83 is doing in the same district.

The PR campaign has worked. Reform to many now means, expanding charter schools and providing them with huge (multi million dollar) donations. We can’t address the current reform movement unless we also address the fact that CHARTER SCHOOLS ARE NOT PROVIDING PUBLIC EDUCTION, but education for the top 2/3 of students. If we listen to their PR firms long enough we will forget that the bottom 1/3, the group of students our reform movement should focused on, are left out. I guess not all of them are left out. Some of them will attend P.S. 83 a high performing public schools that is humbly doing the job they were meant to do - Educating all children.

If we were to sit down with Geoffrey Canada for a drink he would tell us what reform really means. “Keep the kids that make your test scores and graduation rates look great. Create policies that ensure the low performing students transfer back to a public school. Once your numbers look good hire a PR firm to get you on Oprah.”

Charter School ≠ Better School

I can't tell you how many times after I describe the fantastic school I work at someone says, "that sounds great, is it a charter school?"

Why is it that charter schools are equated with better schools even though all the research says that they are no better than traditional public schools. (see a great article about reasearch on Charter vs. Traditional Public Schools)

That is a rhetorical question, I have my own ideas. How much money was spent on the Harlem Village Academy, or KIPP websites? Sure the DOE has its own fancy website, but spread over a million students the cost is nominal. Spread over a thousand students the PR and advertising expenses of charter schools mean real sacrifices on instructional materials in order to create the illusion of a functioning school put the best face on a school. If the DOE spent per student what the charter school operators do for advertising and PR it would cost, (real data is not available because charter schools are not required to report it) for lack of a more precise figure, a lot.

At some point people who were supposed to be journalists caught whiff of the charter school PR and jumped on the bandwagon. There were feel good stories about students in poor communities with low high school graduation rates breaking the mold and going to college. These stories focused almost exclusively on high achieving charter schools even though we could hand pick a proportionate number of high achieving public schools doing the same things for students. We could have also picked a number of charter schools and public schools completely failing their students.

I get really upset when "real journalists" buy into PR sound bites and start producing biased writing. Winnie Hu wrote an article for the NY times the other day about an idea I don't think will be very effective - completely teacher run schools. It is interesting that most of her articles about charter schools are success stories, and the articles about traditional schools depict them as struggling or searching for answers, but I digress. In this article she casually writes that public schools are scrambling to come up with answers to catch up with charter schools. She writes,

"Teacher-run schools are spreading as many districts seek new ways to raise student achievement and compete more effectively against charter schools."

Why do traditional public schools need to compete more effectively against charter schools? What is it we are competing for? We already know that charter schools are not more effective than public schools. (See Searching for Superguy in Gotham).

The article by Bob Herbert is another example of the New York Times painting the story of a successful charter school and failing public schools. Later this month a movie called "Waiting for Superman" by the same director as an inconvenient truth will open. In it he picks looks at the Harlem Children Zone Charter school which has done well for its population of students (which doesn't include a proportionate number English Language Learners or Special Ed students.) Why did the director choose a high performing charter school and not a high performing public school?

Unfortunately with the focus only on successful charter schools and failing public schools, public perception will remain the same. I will have to continue explaining that I work in a high achieving public school and that they exists in an equal proportion to high achieving charter schools.