I am addressing the following statements and questions made
by Diane
Ravitch in an article
called “Do Politicians Know Anything About Schools and Education? Anything?” criticizing President
Obama:
“1. Both
Republican candidates and President Obama are enamored of charter schools -
that is, schools that are privately managed and deregulated. Are you aware that
studies consistently show that charter schools don't get better results than
regular public schools? Are you aware that studies show that, like any
deregulated sector, some charter schools get high test scores, many more get
low scores, but most are no different from regular public schools? Do you
recognize the danger in handing public schools and public monies over to
private entities with weak oversight? Didn't we learn some lessons from the
stock collapse of 2008 about the risk of deregulation?
2. Both
Republican candidates and President Obama are enamored of merit pay for
teachers based on test scores. Are you aware that merit pay has been tried in
the schools again and again since the 1920s and it has never worked? Are you
aware of the exhaustive study of merit pay in the Nashville schools, conducted
by the National Center for Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt, which found
that a bonus of $15,000 per teacher for higher test scores made no difference?”
The Obama Administration does “not
favor one kind of school over another.” The Administration favors “educational quality and accountability for all
schools.” While charter schools provide
an alternative to other public schools, they are still part of the public
education system. Although some school districts permit their
charter schools to be privately managed the schools themselves are still
non-profit, in the same way that traditional public schools may be
managed by a for-profit corporation. Ms. Ravitch used the word “consistently” to describe the studies
pertaining to the lack of success for charter schools. Consistently is the adverb of the adjective
consistent which means to be free from
variation or contradiction. I have read 9
different study summaries and the results are sporadic but definitely not consistent. Several local evaluations have found urban
charter schools to significantly outperform their school district peers. The following are excerpts from 4 of the 9
studies:
1. When evaluating New Orleans’ schools against
the 200 point index called the State Performance Index (SPI), 19 of the 20 highest performing non-selective
schools were charter schools.
2. In its Evaluation of the Public Charter
Schools Program: Final Report released in 2003, the U.S. Department of
Education found that, in the five case study states, charter schools were
out-performed by traditional public schools in meeting state performance
standards, but noted: “It is impossible to
know from this study whether that is because of the performance of the schools,
the prior achievement of the students, or some other factor.
3. In 2004, the National Bureau of Economic
Research found data that suggested Charter Schools increase competition in a given jurisdiction, thus improving the quality
of traditional public schools (noncharters) in the area.
4.
A common approach in peer
reviewed academic journals is to compare the learning gains of individual
students in charter schools to their gains when they were in traditional public
schools. Thus, in effect, each student acts as his/her own control to assess
the impact of charter schools. A few selected examples of this work find that charter schools on average outperform
the traditional public schools that supplied students; at least after the
charter school had been in operation for a few years.
Charter schools are attended by choice and parents may have reasons other than test scores for wanting
their child to attend a public charter school instead of a traditional public
school. If the switch does not work out
the parent can always place their child back in a traditional public
schools. President Obama supports the expansion
of high-quality charter schools (high-quality
not the charter schools that perform
poorly); according to the White House education
guiding principles, President Obama “…has encouraged rigorous accountability for all charter schools.” For Ms. Ravitch to compare humans in the
education system to nonhuman stock in the stock market is like comparing apples
and oranges. Stock is the proprietorship
element in a corporation usually divided
into shares and represented by transferable certificates. Also, what is wrong with rewarding excellence
in teaching with extra pay (merit pay)?
To answer Ms. Ravitch’s question, politicians know a lot about education
(most politicians including The President have a college degree so they would
not only understand education they have succeeded in life using their education).
