Setting the Record Straight

More misleading propaganda on charter schools

By Rob Schofield

The debate over the benefits and drawbacks of charter schools continues. Proponents continue to advance charters (and the notion of “school choice”) as the be-all and end-all solution to everything that ails or has ever ailed the public schools. Skeptics worry that charters and “choice” have a lot more to do with re-segregating and privatizing the schools and, ultimately, transforming one of the most important unifying public institutions in our democracy into a consumer commodity than they do with improving it.

At present, the debate really centers around two questions:

1) Have charters been successful in bolstering North Carolina public education system? 

2) Should the state expand its commitment to the controversial experiment?

To charter supporters, of course, the answer to both of these questions in an unequivocal “yes.” These groups and individuals have done their utmost over the past decade to spin every development in the charter school world as grounds for lifting or even doing away with the state’s current “cap” of 100 charters. If students at a charter school do well, this is proof of the genius of the initiative. If students at a school do poorly, there’s no need to worry: the failure can simply be chalked up to the natural ebbs and flows of the “market.”

State sanctioned cheerleaders

A case in point is the so-called “Blue Ribbon Commission on Charter Schools.” The Commission was established by the State Board of Education in 2007 with the ostensible purpose of answering some of the hard questions about charters. Unfortunately, either through oversight or design, the group was ultimately stacked with charter supporters and has become an almost embarrassingly biased and unapologetic charter cheerleader. 

This week, for example, the group presented a report to the General Assembly’s Joint Education Oversight Committee that amounted to little more than a commercial for charters.

According to the Commission’s chair (who, in real life is the Superintendent of Raleigh’s Catholic School system), charters have been so successful that the cap of 100 should be dramatically increased. This recommendation was made notwithstanding the group’s finding that charters were “over-represented” amongst the best and worst performing schools in the state.

Under the group’s proposal, the cap of 100 should be raised by six schools per year. In addition, neither “high performing” charters nor those that are “the first charter school in a county that currently does not have one” should not count toward the cap. As a practical matter, such a change could raise the cap by as many as 36 schools in the first year.

“Think” tank spin

As with the “Blue Ribbon Commission,” far right think tanks have seldom met an education report, statistic or comparison that didn’t prove the need for more charters – even if it means a little selective listening and reporting to get the results they want.

This week, for example, the John Locke Foundation released a special “Carolina Journal Exclusive” that touted new statewide school violence data as indicative that charters are safer than traditional public schools (“Charters Fare Better in Violence Reports: Report shows public schools have more acts of crime and violence”). The “exclusive,” which is couched as a news story, features the following lead paragraph:

“RALEIGH — Charter schools in major metropolitan areas across North Carolina reported fewer acts of crime and violence during the 2006-07 school year than many traditional public schools in the same regions, according to statistics from the Department of Public Instruction.”

The article goes on to note the dramatic difference between the violence reports at Wake County’s 14 charters and those of traditional schools. It notes that “Longview School in Raleigh was one of the worst per student offenders in the state with the equivalent of 461 acts per 1,000 students among its small enrollment, including 24 acts of assault on school personnel.”

Setting the Record Straight

Both the Commission report and the Locke Foundation article are classic examples of advocates dressing up propaganda and “apples to oranges” comparisons as dispassionate, “just the facts” analysis.

Despite its headline and opening paragraph, even the Locke article itself quotes a Department of Public Instruction spokeswoman as cautioning against the very conclusion the article draws.

“Vanessa Jeter, director of communications and information for DPI, cautioned against comparing the report’s results for charter schools with those of traditional public schools. ‘Charter schools are usually a little smaller and more heavily in the K through 5 student breakout, which happens to be the group with the lowest number of reported acts,’ she said.”

In other words, as common sense confirms, the charter and traditional school populations are very different. Charters, on the whole, have younger kids. Moreover, while many charters are small, self-selecting institutions that, in many instances, feature large proportions of highly involved parents and high achieving and motivated students, traditional schools are generally much larger and must take all comers – whatever their status and needs. Given such circumstances, it would be shocking if traditional schools (especially schools like Longview, which is an alternative school designed to take in troubled kids) didn’t have more incidents of violence.

This critical distinction (that charters, by definition, have the inherent and dramatic built-in advantage over traditional public schools by virtue of who they do and don’t admit) was also absent from the findings and recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Commission.

As Senator Martin Nesbitt pointed out during the Education Oversight Committee meeting, “the number one problem” in the public schools is “lack of family involvement.” Nesbitt noted that if a child’s parents are not involved in their education, “they won’t make it to the charter schools. By the very nature, the sample is skewed. You’re left with kids whose parents who aren’t involved.”

The best and most thorough independent report yet conducted in North Carolina on the topic of charter schools was released last year by the North Carolina Center for Public Policy Research. As reported in this space last June, that report concluded that, notwithstanding their inherent advantages, charters have produced, at best, mixed results. This is true both with respect to academic performance (the graduation rate compares unfavorably to traditional schools) and integration (charters do not, in general, reflect the racial diversity of their communities).

Unfortunately, the Commission did not even see fit to hear from the authors of the Center’s report or, for that matter, anyone else who might have had something critical to say about charters. Instead, the group chose to focus on data which showed the outstanding performance of the relatively small group of top performing charters and use that data as the grounds for essentially eliminating the cap.  

Going Forward

As was noted by both Senator Nesbitt and Representative Susan Fisher at this week’s meeting, the ultimate purpose of the charter school experiment was to spur and spread innovations that would lift up North Carolina’s entire public school system. Before North Carolina goes any further which such a controversial experiment, it is essential that lawmakers make two basic findings: 1) that the success enjoyed by some charters is truly the result of such innovations and not just a byproduct of who attends the schools, and 2) that there is a system in place for cataloging these innovations and determining whether and how they might be replicated in the traditional schools. To make this happen will require something more than merely highlighting charter successes and comparing them, like apples and oranges, to the general public school system.      

 

 

 

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 11th, 2008 at 7:12 pm and is filed under Setting the Record Straight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.