

The Myth of Charter Schools - Alex3917
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter-schools/

======
tptacek
I'm undecided on this issue but slightly biased towards public schools (my mom
is a public school teacher, I send my kids to public schools --- but because
of where I live, my kids are going to de facto private school). I found this
critique pretty devastating, and would be interested in seeing if any HN'ers
can knock it down.

Here are (I believe all) of the factual arguments presented in the article:

* The film admits only 20% of charter schools gets "amazing results". In reality, the huge study that stat comes from says only 17% of charters beat public schools, 46% generate comparable results, and 37% are worse.

* The film higlights successes but ignores chains of charters with newsworthy mismanagement scandals (real estate scams, embezzlement, religious indoctrination, $300-400k salaries to teach small student bodies).

* Since test scores are what determines the perceived value of a charter, some charters expel students just before testing days or have high student turnover, particularly with low-performing students.

* The NAEP test the movie relies on for the claim that 70% of 8th graders can't read at grade level says nothing of the sort; the movie distorts the results so that any student scoring less than a B is "below grade level", when in fact only 25% are below C, not 70%. The author of the article was a member of the NAEP governing board.

* One of the film's heroes, Geoffrey Canada, runs a organization managing two (2) charter schools that is funded to the tune of $200MM, and is paid $400,000; the author of the article is an admirer, but implies that no public school system is similarly well equipped.

* In 2010 state tests, 60% of Canada's 4th graders were below "proficient". Canada also expelled his entire first middle school class because their scores were too low, which the movie didn't note.

* Another charter the movie celebrates, Green Dot's Locke High, took $15MM in funding and got only tiny improvements; only 15% of its students are now proficient in English, up from 13.7%; math rose from 4 to 6.7%.

* Another charter, SEED in DC, is successful, but spends 3 times what the average public school spends ($35,000 per student).

* Studies appear to show that teacher quality --- while the most important factor within a school --- accounts for only 10-20% of outcomes, while non-school factors account for almost 60% of the outcome.

* Americans are dissatisfied with the quality of schools in general, but 77% of them rate their own school A or B.

* Finland, the movie's model school system, is entirely unionized, has much lower poverty, and has a stronger social safety net than the US.

* While the movie points out that only 0.04% of teachers ever lose their certificate, it omits the fact that 50% of new teachers leave the profession within 5 years, mostly because of working conditions.

~~~
anamax
> * The film admits only 20% of charter schools gets "amazing results". In
> reality, the huge study that stat comes from says only 17% of charters beat
> public schools, 46% generate comparable results, and 37% are worse.

One difference - you can close the failing charters. Failing public schools
are virtually immortal.

Another difference - choice is also valuable.

> * Finland, the movie's model school system, is entirely unionized, has much
> lower poverty, and has a stronger social safety net than the US.

Finland is less populous than LA, almost all interactions involve relatives
and long-term acquaintances, and it's all proto-Scandanavians.

The last point is important - anything works if you just have to deal with
Scandanavians (or Mormons).

> * While the movie points out that only 0.04% of teachers ever lose their
> certificate, it omits the fact that 50% of new teachers leave the profession
> within 5 years, mostly because of working conditions.

Apples and Oranges. Bad working conditions drive out both good and bad
teachers. (Conditions might be more of a issue for folks who have other
options, which might be disproportionatly the good teachers.) Certificate
revocation is likely to be dominated by bad teachers.

~~~
tptacek
Failing public schools are routinely closed. Do you want them to be closed
more rapidly? Me too. What does that have to do with charter schools?

You've restated the article author's point regarding Finland.

You also may have restated the author's point about the 50% of new teachers
who don't stick it out 5 years.

~~~
anamax
> Failing public schools are routinely closed.

Actually, it's not routine. It's a long drawn out struggle. Charters get
closed much faster.

> You've restated the article author's point regarding Finland.

The person whom I was responding to seemed to be suggesting that Finland's
experience tells us something important about the US. My point is that it
doesn't.

> You also may have restated the author's point about the 50% of new teachers
> who don't stick it out 5 years.

Again, the person to whom I was responding suggested that certificate loss
rates and the percentage of teachers leaving the profession because of work
conditions have something to do with one another. They don't.

~~~
tptacek
You really ought to read the article before arguing about it.

~~~
anamax
I'm not discussing the article. I'm discussing the message about the article.
I'm responding to the claims and arguments of that message. The relationship
between my responses and the article are irrelevant.

------
maxawaytoolong
Charter schools are more for the adults who start the school rather than the
children. I grew up in a state that had charter school mania, and it was
always something like, some weird guy with a master's degree had a boner for
Medieval Literature and his interpretation of the Origins of the University,
so he'd start a charter school focused on Rhetoric, Sums and Figures,
Swordsmanship, and Court Jesting (NO JOKE.). Or, some muslim elders from
Somalia would start a somalian school catering to the special needs of
somalian students, while simultaneously catering to the special employment
needs of the school administrator's family who just arrived from Mogadishu.
Or, a guy in the midwest who couldn't get a job as a final cut pro editor (no
kidding?) so he'd start the "Media Sciences" charter school, etc etc. The
actual kids attending these schools were a total afterthought.

~~~
Alex3917
"I grew up in a state that had charter school mania, and it was always
something like, some weird guy with a master's degree had a boner for Medieval
Literature and his interpretation of the Origins of the University, so he'd
start a charter school focused on Rhetoric, Sums and Figures, Swordsmanship,
and Court Jesting."

I'm laughing because that sentence instantly reminded me of pg because of
this:

<http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html>

(Which is actually one of my favorite pg essays, but it's still kind of
funny.)

------
jaxn
I used to teach at a charter school in DC (<http://seeforever.org>)

Our student body was made up solely of court-involved truants. These were kids
who refused to go to school. They attended from 8am until 8pm and worked on
regular course work as well as vocational training (I worked in the tech
vocational program teaching design / web development / and Cisco networking).

The school had a graduation rate over 90% and over 75% went on to college.

Charter schools do tend to be thematic and some may seem frivolous, but the
good ones are designed to help a poorly served segment to excel. It doesn't
always work, but when it does it is remarkable.

Charter schools cannot fix the entire system, but I do feel they are an
important cog.

~~~
ktsmith
I really like the idea of thematic schools. Locally we have a charter school
that is college prep with a focus on science (<http://coralacademy.org/>) and
it's a great school. We also have two charter schools that focus on bilingual
instruction that have produced really good results as the students receive
each lesson twice. Once in their native language and once in english.
Unfortunately it turns out that one of those schools is being investigated for
test score manipulation so the results may be misleading.

If you have students that aren't willing or able to perform in a standard
school having alternatives available for them is a great thing. There's no
reason that students that have no desire to go to college or what not should
not have the option of a school that also offers vocational programs.

------
RyanMcGreal
From the studies I've seen, once you take into account the risk selection
practices of charter schools, the advantages disappear.

~~~
kiba
Why is this so? Does the charter school do the same thing as public school?

~~~
ZachPruckowski
Part of it is demographics, and part of it is the fact that non-school factors
play a HUGE role in achievement. If you have parents who are trying to get you
into a charter school, you have parents who are making sure you're doing your
homework and who care about your education, which already puts you in a
higher-achieving sub-set.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_...part of it is the fact that non-school factors play a HUGE role in
achievement._

If this is true (I believe this is likely to be the case), we should invest
vastly less in education than we currently do. Rather than trying to find good
teachers, we should just aim for the cheapest warm bodies we can find, not to
mention speeding up the process (e.g., graduate at 14).

This belief lies behind the signalling model of education - education adds
little value but signals to employers that value was already present.

~~~
tptacek
Or, the opposite is true, and we need to spend wildly more to offset the fact
that public policy can't fix the non-school factors at play. The average
school apparently spends ~100k per student from k - 8. What's the lifetime
dollar value of having someone complete high school with grade-level
performance, as opposed to having the system give up on them? The average cost
per year of keeping someone in prison is apparently $22000.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
The billion-dollar policy question is whether it makes more sense to spend
that money through the school system per se or through a broader social policy
that aims more directly to ameliorate the socioeconomic factors affecting
school performance.

~~~
skorgu
Which of course leads to the questions of what that social policy would look
like, how we could evaluate it and of course how to ensure that demand meets
supply if it does work.

------
Poiesis
Not sure if this is a terribly relevant article, but I'll note that we
actually homeschool throughout a charter school with minimal oversight. What
this means is that we're enrolled in the school, they send a teacher out every
week to evaluate progress, we do the teaching, and--critically--we get
hundreds of dollars a year to use on curriculum. If it weren't for the last
point we'd just do it alone; it's solely for the money that we stay in the
school.

------
niels_olson
I think Ravitch should be applauded for arguing an unpopular position with
vigor. I also commend HN readers for reading critically. I hope we can point
out her strengths as well as weaknesses, and I hope someone can provide some
insight on the content of _Waiting for Superman_.

~~~
Alex3917
"I think Ravitch should be applauded for arguing an unpopular position with
vigor."

Technically her position is actually the more popular one, it's just that
you'd never know it because the media has teamed up with silicon valley and
wall street to push charter schools and standardized testing. Anyway there is
some more analysis on the previous thread linked below, but the fact is that
though both Ravitch and the movie make a lot of valid points, neither is fully
correct and you're never really going to understand why without reading books.
Hacker News is fun and all, but there's no way you're going to understand the
last 50 years of educational research after reading a few dozen comments.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1774156>

------
egabrielova
The article mentions the school systems in Finland as a potential model for
our public school system, though there are economic differences. I was
curious, so here are a couple of relevant links.

This article from BBC summarizes the basics, plus a couple videos.
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8601207.stm> This focuses in particular on student
age, school structure, and respect for the teaching profession.

An longer article about Finland's school reforms since the 1970s.
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/3098447>

------
jimwise
This seems central to Ravitch's argument:

``For many people, these arguments require a willing suspension of disbelief.
Most Americans graduated from public schools, and most went from school to
college or the workplace without thinking that their school had limited their
life chances.''

In other words, her argument seems at least in part based on the assumption
that the public schools of today are equivalent in quality with the public
schools in which most adults today were themselves educated.

It's not clear to me that this is correct...

~~~
ZachPruckowski
That's not central to the argument at all. The article's first argument is
"only 17% of charter schools out-perform matched public schools, so it's
unrealistic to expect them to be a silver bullet".

The schools in "Waiting for 'Superman'" are the rare few that are getting
exceptional results. Yes, we as a country would be smarter if every public
school was a charter school with exceptional results, but that's like saying
we'd be smarter if every public college was replaced with Harvard or MIT.

And that's just the first argument. Then it breaks into several more about
non-school factors being responsible for the majority of achievement variance
among students, and about charter school selection effects[1], as well as a
lot of discussion of relevant omissions and factual errors in the movie.

I'm not saying I agree absolutely with the article (I haven't seen WfS yet),
but if you're dismissing it based on a fact-free first impression of a throw-
away line halfway through it, you're doing yourself a disservice.

[1] - Since only students with parents who are deeply involved in their
education even apply to charter schools, those students are at an inherent
advantage whether or not they get in.

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vinhboy
One thing I didn't like about the WFS is they did not give enough credit to
"good" public school teachers. I thought they swiped everyone with one brush
and made it seem like it's their fault.

------
futuremint
Single page link: [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-
ch...](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter-
schools/?pagination=false)

