
Do charter schools work? A new study of Boston schools says yes. - jseliger
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_dismal_science/2013/05/do_charter_schools_work_a_new_study_of_boston_schools_says_yes.single.html
======
dopamean
My problem with the charter school discussion is that it is frequently framed
in the context of "this charter school is better than this public school."
Frankly, these comparisons are bullshit. Public schools are given a task that
charter schools would never have to even imagine. Public schools must educate
ALL children in their districts. Charter schools have the luxury of choosing
who attends their schools and who stays after they have been admitted. It is
an apples to oranges comparison.

Take any single "successful" or "highly rated" charter school in the country
and then tell them they must educate all of the kids in the public school
district in which their school resides and I doubt we would see the same
results. To get into charter schools parents must fill out applications. Right
off the bat you have created a pool of potential students who at the very
least have parents at home who are active in their children's education.
Children like that typically perform better in school regardless of the type
of school.

So yeah charters can work. But they work not because they schools are better.
They work because the students going to them are better.

~~~
stevesearer
If educating the masses at a public school is so much more difficult, then why
do we even try that?

Shouldn't we work to break up the student population into smaller, more
manageable chunks? That way you can target the specific needs of a smaller
group and work to make each succeed rather than doing a mediocre job of trying
to meet the incredibly diverse needs of a much larger group.

~~~
betterunix
"If educating the masses at a public school is so much more difficult, then
why do we even try that?"

We do not want to have a society where an elite, educated aristocracy rules
over an uneducated serf class. That means we need to educate _everyone_ ,
including people who have less potential.

"Shouldn't we work to break up the student population into smaller, more
manageable chunks?"

1\. Who is going to pay for it? You will need more teachers, and you will need
to pay for a system for dividing students.

2\. Politics will come into play. The moment you divide students by anything
other than their age, you face accusations of bias. Education is highly
political; here is an example that should resonate with the HN crowd:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/nyregion/software-
enginee...](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/nyregion/software-engineering-
school-was-teachers-idea-but-its-been-done-citys-way.html?pagewanted=all)

~~~
tokenadult
_We do not want to have a society where an elite, educated aristocracy rules
over an uneducated serf class. That means we need to educate everyone,
including people who have less potential._

I agree with that goal. And that is why I support public policies that allow
more learner choice in education, so that everyone can shop for a good fit,
and all providers of education are on notice that they can lose revenue if
they don't meet learner needs.

My basis of knowledge: I have lived in more than one country, and see that
learner power to shop is an important incentive to improved education. I live
in the state of the United States that had charter schools the earliest,

[http://www.amazon.com/Zero-Chance-Passage-Pioneering-
Charter...](http://www.amazon.com/Zero-Chance-Passage-Pioneering-
Charter/dp/1592984762/)

and that had statewide open enrollment first,

[http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/EnrollChoice/index.h...](http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/EnrollChoice/index.html)

so I have a direct experience base with living in a state with a moderate
degree of learner choice, and that is not harmful to learners.

~~~
betterunix
"all providers of education are on notice that they can lose revenue if they
don't meet learner needs."

By which you mean, "If they don't meet the expectations of parents, school
board members, and politicians." By what criteria will schools be judged?

Right now, we have a serious problem in education in America: we focus on
standardized tests. Schools do "better" if students get high test scores; they
do "worse" if students get low test scores. Nobody is asking, "Can the
students think for themselves? Can they solve problems they have not seen
before?" Is that what you want schools to do -- to just train students to
score high on tests?

Politicians love tests, because they are single-dimensional numbers that are
easy to point to. Parents like tests because that is what colleges use to
filter applicants. School boards like tests because they can point to them
when they need to ask the government for money. _Nobody cares_ if students are
learning anything other than test taking skills, except for dedicated teachers
who actually want to teach. There are exceptions, but such people are, well,
exceptional.

The real issue here is that the results of education are long-term, but these
"market based" or "accountability based" approaches to school focus entirely
on the short-term. You need to look at what the graduates of a particular
school are doing 10 or 20 years later. Are they curing cancer? Did they
overthrow a corrupt government? Are they working an honest job? Test scores do
not tell you these things. It makes sense to shut down a school whose
graduates are more likely to wind up in prison than to live a good life. It
does not make sense to shut down a school based on standardized tests or
college admissions (which is not independent from standardized test scores).

It is not an easy problem. It means taking risks. Yet right now, we are not
even trying; we just point to test scores, talk about how terrible unions are,
and continue to pretend that "the market" will find a good answer for us.

------
beat
My twin children spent seven years in Minnesota charter schools - one at one
school, six at another, ultimately graduating high school. Overall, the
experience was extremely positive. The reason is obvious to me... there is no
single "right" way to educate a child. Every child is different, and has
different needs. Techniques that work well for one student can work poorly for
another, or even be counterproductive. Charters allow more technique
flexibility and focus than mainstream schools.

The first charter my kids attended, in sixth grade, was awful for them. They
were miserable and got bad grades. Does that mean it was a bad school? No,
it's a great school! But it was a bad school _for my children_. The rigid,
Catholic-like environment of that first school is great for regular kids who
could use a more disciplined environment, but for neuroatypicals, it sucked.

The second school we tried was absolutely wonderful. It followed a project-
based learning curriculum that gave children a lot of control over their own
learning, but also demanded a lot of responsibility. My oddball children (and
the herd of aspies, ADD cases, and queers that accompanied them) thrived in
this environment. But frankly, I think it would be a bad school for most kids.
It's too demanding.

Charters are in part about experimentation. And some experiments will fail.
It's not a good idea to conduct large-scale, risky educational experiments on
involuntary subjects - mainstream schools. But for parents and kids who CHOOSE
to try new things, the opportunities are fantastic.

Sadly, most people's opinions of charters are knee-jerk political reflex,
rationalized with "results" that have nothing to do with how parents or kids
feel about their education.

------
btilly
Are there other possible confounding factors?

They picked 6 schools that were known to have done well by other measures, and
then analyzed a new statistic over the same time period. But the fact that
they had done well by other measures could be explained if they had been lucky
in the students they got in the lottery, which would also explain their doing
well by a new measure.

The simplest way to solve this is to select schools by how well they did with
one cohort, and analyze them by how well they do with another. For instance
you can select them based on performance during people who entered in even
years on one exam, then analyze them by people who entered in odd years on the
other exam. Yes, this cuts your sample size in half. But it avoids this
particular bias.

(This does not, unfortunately, avoid the possible bias from getting lucky with
who they hired as teachers. Yes, the school may work. But was it by design or
chance? The school will always think by design, but unless some charter school
can start pumping out successful franchisees, it will be hard to find proof.)

~~~
beat
Charter schools that have a specific educational approach will attract a
certain kind of teacher. At the charter my kids attended, teachers would
either come and be gone in a year (they didn't get it), or they would become
totally devoted to the cause, to the point where it would be difficult for
another school to lure them away even if they tried.

Moreover, charters with a clearly-defined academic approach attract a certain
kind of student, and a certain kind of parent. So you're not getting a flat,
level field of either teachers or students (what I call a "perfectly spherical
cow"). You're getting a selective subset of both teachers and students, which
will bias the results right there.

~~~
btilly
Only looking at schools with lotteries can let you control for the student
bias.

But you have an excellent point that a certain charter may be an excellent fit
for some subset of teachers/parents, but not be appropriate for the broader
population.

~~~
beat
That gets into state-by-state law. In Minnesota, all charters have lotteries
(and those that can't "sell out" and completely fill their classrooms will
probably have financial problems).

States that allow charters to be selective are on a bad path, imho. Like
public schools, charters should be required to accept any students who apply
and get through the lottery.

~~~
yummyfajitas
What's wrong with creating schools that serve one group of students well, and
don't serve other students? It seems like a win for some, and neutral for
everyone else.

Market segmentation is a good thing. Lenovo builds great laptops for me and
other linux geeks. Apple builds great laptops for hipsters and their moms. And
both Apple and Lenovo (together with their customers) can segment the market.
Does that mean the computer industry is on a "bad path"?

~~~
beat
Allow the students and parents to be selective, not the schools. This supports
market segmentation (a good way to look at it), but doesn't introduce actual
unfairness.

What you're talking about is more like the case of Abercrombie and Fitch
refusing to make clothes for people that they don't find attractive size-wise.
That's fine for private business, but not appropriate for publicly-funded
systems like schools.

~~~
yummyfajitas
The publicly-funded system doesn't segment the market. Individual pieces of it
do. The public schools will continue to service all segments, but some
segments will have other options.

How is this not a pareto win (for students)?

~~~
btilly
If you're satisfied with a pareto win, why don't we go back to an absolute
monarchy? After all no other system could be better for the monarch!

Back in the real world, when you create one system for relatively well-off
people and another for the rest, the tendency is to see the privileged system
constantly improved and the fallback languish into a horrible state. This has
certainly happened in education. If you create charter schools and allow them
to choose who can attend, it is inevitable that successful ones will
cherrypick children who start with intellectual abilities and the
financial/educational family background to back that up. This creates the kind
of two-tiered system that has lead to problems in the past.

That result may be pareto optimal, but it is a social injustice of the kind
that many don't on principle want supported by tax dollars. (Of course in
practice, if you're personally benefitting, protests tend to be much more
muted...)

~~~
yummyfajitas
If a monarchy were better for the monarch and equally good for everyone else,
I would favor a monarchy.

 _...the tendency is to see the privileged system constantly improved and the
fallback languish into a horrible state._

I'm don't understand - how does the existence of alternatives prevent
improvement? Could you clarify this point?

If Lenovo's customers were superior (in any relevant sense) to Apple's
customers, would that cause apple to "languish into a horrible state"?

~~~
btilly
_I'm don't understand - how does the existence of alternatives prevent
improvement? Could you clarify this point?_

It is very simple. If there are two somewhat separable programs, but one is
much more heavily used by the constituents that politicians care about, the
privileged one will consistently enjoy an advantage in resource allocation
decisions. This eventually will cause them to be very unequal alternatives.

Also schools are in the habit of raising money from parents in a variety of
ways. If all of the well-off parents go to one school, then that school will
naturally enjoy a significant funding advantage. If this is what the parents
want to do, then fine. But that should be a private school, rather than a
charter school that received public funds on top.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Sweden has solved this problem. Resources are equal and follow the student.

~~~
btilly
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Sweden#Free_school...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Sweden#Free_schools)
says that Swedish free schools (the equivalent of charter schools) are not
allowed to discriminate among students, or require any sort of admission exam.
How does this fit with what you were saying?

Furthermore while the amount of state money that follows students may be the
same, when schools raise money from parents, having parents with money helps a
lot.

~~~
yummyfajitas
What I'm saying is that allowing money to follow students (which Sweden does)
prevents politically favored schools from being allocated a disproportionate
amount of resources.

Thus, your first concern "the privileged one will consistently enjoy an
advantage in resource allocation decisions" is invalid with this simple
system.

As for your second concern, it seems as if you want to prevent people from
investing in their own children's education. Should children who attend
publicly funded schools also be prevented from attending Kumon, and should the
hiring of private tutors by their parents be banned? If not, why not?

------
adolph
Toward the end, there is an interesting passage--maybe questions like "do
charter schools work" or "are charter schools better" are missing the point.
Maybe the existence of charter schools is about freedom to choose.

 _Charter schools can be set up for any purpose. Some focus on the arts,
others emphasize cultural heritage (there are multiple Hmong charter schools
in the Twin Cities alone); some are vocational, others rigorously academic. As
Rockoff puts it, asking whether a particular school is good based on test
scores or college placement is in many cases the wrong question: “To extend
the restaurant metaphor, some people like Italian, others like Thai food.
Similarly, many [charter] schools focus on tested subjects, while others might
emphasize creative writing or the arts.” Not every charter school is right for
every kid._

------
msglenn
As we fight to improve the quality of education in urban areas, it is critical
that we pay attention to the results we're getting. That is the point, after
all.

That said, this article fails to mention one of the most salient arguments in
favor of charter schools: If education is the primary path for upward social
mobility, then every parent should have some choice in where their child goes
to school. And that choice should not be wholly dependent on current
socioeconomic status.

Some schools may not do better according to traditional measurements, but
creating a system where schools more transparently market their strengths and
weaknesses to parents doesn't just give them more decision making power, over
time it also creates a more informed parent class. Eventually leading to even
better schools.

~~~
mbetter
> If education is the primary path for upward social mobility, then every
> parent should have some choice in where their child goes to school.

I don't see how this follows.

~~~
msglenn
Access to quality education is not a right in this country, but attendance is
required for a variety of reasons. Most of them related to creating and
maintaining a functioning society. The more lofty goals of compulsory public
education are about giving every child the skills to have a chance at a decent
life.

So, if the government is going to force people to send their children to
school, but isn't going to MANDATE a minimum quality level, they should at
least give people a choice in deciding what's best for their kids. Because as
it is now, the government is forcing people to send their kids to schools we
all know are terrible.

~~~
scarecrowbob
I generally agree with your point.

However, I live in a small Texas town and my wife's business deals with two
private school. If these schools are typical, it is entirely possible for
parents to put their children into a worse-by-design school that teaches
young-earth creationism and inculcates habits and an anti-social orientation
and which breeds awkward, dysfunctional people.

On one hand, the state and local governing bodies do mandate a level of
quality that can be avoided by parochial schools and on the other hand it is
entirely possible for people to actively choose standards poorer than the
public ones.

------
rollo_tommasi
Test scores and college-acceptance rates seem like odd metrics for judging the
success of K-12 education - surely the goal is loftier than just slotting kids
into a college. You can optimize a process for "winning" college admissions
much more easily than you can optimize a process for developing a basic
intellectual toolkit and the organizational skills and self-discipline
required to apply it.

Maybe charter schools haven't been widely operating long enough for this, but
is anyone aware of any studies - either completed or in progress - that
compare charter/standard public/private school student life-outcomes on a
longer time-scale?

------
Glyptodon
I can't help but view charter schools as a means to further the social and
class stratification of America.

I certainly agree that the same shoe can't fit every person, but systems that
allow self-selection and the stranding of the downtrodden in hopeless and
ineffective environments can't be good for the health of a nation which relies
on elections and by proxy the ability of each citizen to think and reason
their way through the ballot box.

I tend to think that forcing everyone to use public education would coerce the
parents who send their kids to charter and private schools to instead push for
improvements in public education that all students would benefit from, rather
than being able to ignore large segments of society and having strong
incentives to make public education worse at the expense of the country as a
whole.

~~~
TheCowboy
"Warren Buffett framed the problem for me once in a way that clarified how
basic our most stubborn obstacles are. He said it would be easy to solve
today's problems in urban education. 'Make private schools illegal,' he said,
'and assign every child to a public school by random lottery.' "

------
tmzt
A good word to inject into article titles like these is "some."

Do some charter schools work? A new study of Boston schools says yes.

------
betterunix
Another "better test scores!" result...

------
tokenadult
I have seen some examples of helpful reforms where I live. Minnesota, where I
now live and where I grew up, has had largely equal per-capita funding for
public school pupils statewide since the 1970s. The state law change that made
most school funding come from general state appropriations rather than from
local property taxes was called the "Minnesota miracle."

[http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/18public.htm...](http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/18public.html)

Today most funding for schools is distributed by the state government on a
per-pupil enrollment basis.

<http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/mnschfin.pdf>

<http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/SchSup/SchFin/index.html>

The funding reform in the 1970s was followed up by two further reforms in the
1980s. First, the former compulsory instruction statute in Minnesota was ruled
unconstitutional in a court case involving a homeschooling family, and a new
compulsory instruction statute explicitly allows more nonpublic school
alternatives for families who seek those. Second, the Legislature, pushed by
the then Governor, set up statewide open enrollment

[http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/EnrollChoice/index.h...](http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/EnrollChoice/index.html)

and the opportunity for advanced learners to attend up to two years of college
while still high school students on the state's dime.

[http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/CollReadi/PSEO/index...](http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/CollReadi/PSEO/index.html)

And Minnesota also has the oldest charter school statute in the United States.

[http://www.amazon.com/Zero-Chance-Passage-Pioneering-
Charter...](http://www.amazon.com/Zero-Chance-Passage-Pioneering-
Charter/dp/1592984762/)

Parents in Minnesota now have more power to shop than parents in most states.
That gets closer to the ideal of detect the optimum education environment for
each student (by parents observing what works for each of their differing
children) and give it to them by open-enrolling in another school district (my
school district has inbound open-enrollment students from forty-one other
school districts of residence) or by homeschooling, or by postsecondary study
at high school age, or by exercising other choices.

The educational results of Minnesota schools are well above the meager results
of most United States schools, and almost competitive (but not fully
competitive) with the better schools in the newly industrialized countries of
east Asia and southeast Asia. It's a start. More choices would be even better.

------
jedberg
Who funded the study? Is it some organization that would benefit from more
charter schools existing? $10 says it is.

~~~
omni
The article states that the study was released by The Boston Foundation [1]
and MIT's School Effectiveness and Inequality Initiative [2].

That said, your comment basically amounts to an ad hominem attack against an
article and related study that you clearly didn't even read, as the
information you were asking for was provided in the article. Your post does
nothing to further intelligent discussion. It's bad, and you should feel bad.

[1]: <http://www.tbf.org/> [2]: <http://seii.mit.edu/>

~~~
jedberg
I don't feel bad because I did read the article and I did see who funded it,
and I still don't know the answer to my question. What does "The Boston
Foundation" actually do?

~~~
boston-tm
The Boston Foundation is a community foundation, so they basically fund a lot
of nonprofits in health, education, housing and other areas. They actually
fund a lot of good nonprofits in the community and do a number of projects
working with the public schools - their CEO argues that charters provide an
external source of pressure to improve all schools.

