Do Charter Schools Encourage Innovation and Best Practices in TPS?

Do Charter Schools Encourage Innovation and Best Practices in TPS?

The neo-liberal argument that charters will oxygenate the practices of traditional public schools (TPS’s) with new and promising educational innovations and practices thereby raising all boats has been more propaganda than fact. The press repeats it, and the people are beguiled.

Take the study done by Good and Braden in 2000 which found that public school officials did not believe that charter schools were providing new models and programs for best practices to be highlighted; nor did they see anything being done within the charter schools that they and their schools wished to emulate (Good and Braden 2000). And in Arizona, a state where charter schools have witnessed enormous growth and support, over half the administrators polled said their districts had not been affected by charter schools nor did they believe charter schools would improve education (ibid).  As Corwin and Schneider consider, charters are really not doing many things that have not been done some where else at one time or another and frankly, many public school teachers find little in common with experimental charters nor do they have any form of institutional support or mechanisms in place for learning about what they might be doing (Corwin and Schneider 2007).

Currently, when one looks at contemporary neo-liberal arguments for charter schools we find strikingly little talk anymore of innovation and best practices raising the efficacy for all TPS; the opposite seems to be true. On close scrutiny the real issue is can arguably be said to be about going about the business of eliminating TPS in totality and replacing them with large corporate educational retail chains the provide educational franchises as ‘charter schools’. This along with school closures all around the country, exceptionally in Chicago home of Arne Duncan, who was Superintendent of Schools there for seven years where he closed 75 public schools, advances the real intent of the prevaricators of doom. They want to replace public education with privatized retail charter chains, many of them military schools. They want a private option for public schools, but no public option for health care. Lovely. Where’s the logic?

Yes, indeed, while old arguments advancing innovation and best practices in charter schools might have once been the sales pitch employed by many of the early charter advocates, the game plan has shifted as far as the conservative Hoover Institute is concerned. The winter 2008 issue of Education Next, a publication put out by the Hoover Institute was straightforward in rejecting any of the theoretical arguments regarding innovation, raising ‘all boats for TPS’ and providing best practices to create innovation in TPS. In fact, innovation in TPS’s is the last thing these outspoken conservative charter advocates want. The publication is straightforward as to the ‘game plan’ charter advocates must employ to create greater and greater number of new charter schools, nationwide:

Here, in short, is one roadmap for chartering’s way forward: First, commit to drastically increasing the charter market share in a few select communities until it is the dominant system and the district is reduced to a secondary provider. The target should be 75%. Second, choose the target communities wisely. Each should begin with a solid charter base (at least 5 percent market share), a policy environment that will enable growth (fair funding, non-district authorizers, and no legislated caps), and a favorable political climate (friendly elected officials and editorial boards, a positive experience with charters to date, and unorganized opposition)… The solution is not an improved traditional district; it’s an entirely different delivery system… Charter advocates should strive to have every urban public school be a charter (Smarick, 2008). A., Wave of the Future: Why charter schools should replace failing urban schools,” Education Next 8 (Winter 2008) www.hoover.org/publications/ednext/11130241.html

The Hoover Institute’s article went on to identify Washington D.C. as such a location where a ‘corporate takeover’ of charters could proceed. With 27 percent of public school enrollment now in the hands of charter schools, D. C. was labeled a “potential fertile district” for an all out attack on TPS with the intent of replacing them with charter schools. The neo-liberal conservatives are outspoken in their aspirations: they want to completely replace TPS with charter schools. Michelle Rhee, the school chancellor of D.C. openly commented in 2007, when she was asked about the future of charter schools: The corporate world will be our model (Jaffe 2007). Jaffe, H., “Can Michelle Rhee save D.C. Schools” Washingtonian September 1, 2007 www.washingtonian.com/articles/people/5222.html

Now add, New York, New Orleans, Los Angeles, and the list goes on and on.  The plan is in efect, subsidized by the philanthropist pirates like Broad and Gates and is proceeding rapidly.  With cities broke and the federal government bailing out banks, the philanthropists are the only ones with the money to “invest in our children’s future”, for the nation is broke, and they are doing it at exorbitant speeds, aided and abetted by the federal government, the way neo-liberalism works, with Race to the Top being the leveraged seed money.

Jack Buckley and Mark Schneider, notable researchers in the area of charter schools concur in their book, Charter Schools: Hope or Hype, published in 2007, that charter schools offer little in the ways of laboratories for reform: Additionally, even if we assume that one of the prime justifications for charter schools is their role as “laboratories of reform” that are free from the bureaucratic restrictions placed on traditional public schools by teacher unions and administrators (Nathan 1998; Kolderie, 1998), empirical research has found little evidence of this (Rofes, 1998; Teske et al. 2001) and the structure of real charter-school markets may actually act to inhibit programmatic competition (Lubienski, 2003).

Ironically, it may be that parents are risk-averse when it comes to their children’s education—they may choose schools that emphasize traditional values and educational approaches rather than “buy” innovative programs with a high degree of risk. This is quite reasonable from a parent perspective, but may create systemic problems in a system of schools that is designed both to innovate and to respond to parental preferences (Buckley and Schneider, 2007). When no actual systems exist to encourage, catalogue or share ‘innovative practices’ between charters and TPS, the movement towards charters can be seen not as a mechanism by which to inform and improve public education and educational curriculum, but as a vehicle for various constituencies to escape the traditional public school system and therefore the entirety of the public realm itself. This, perhaps, is the greatest tragedy of the charter school experiment; how many charter schools have been commodified as islands of specialties for purposes of segregation and sabotaged from their stated public mission – to improve traditional public education through better practices.

The Rand Report also directly confronts any claims to charter school innovation: There is no evidence in any of the locations that charter schools are negatively affecting the achievement of students in nearby TPSs. But there is also little evidence of a positive competitive impact on nearby TPSs (Rand, 2001)). Again, not all but an increasingly number of conservative charter school proponents have become very clear as the charter school movement has matured: they are not interested in raising student test scores at TPS, instead they want to replace TPS with a new educational retail chain of for-profit charter schools that would operate as educational franchises, and they need the help of elected officials and closely connected politicians to do just that. Just take a look at the new federal policy, No Child Left Behind (see Weil, D. Arne Duncan Gives a History Lesson to the American Federation of Teachers (AFT): “Elevating the Teaching Profession”? dissidentvoice.org)

Take Arizona for example, one of the beacon states that offers a “favorable political climate” for conservative charter advocates to initiate a ‘takeover’ of public schools; this is a state where there has been a phenomenal surge in charter schools and charter school legislation within the last seventeen years. El Dorado High School, a charter school operated by one of the largest for-profit Charter School groups in Arizona, The Leona Group of Arizona, an LLC (limited liability company) that is part of the national Leona Group, an educational management organization (EMO) that operates private schools across the nation was scheduled to receive about $1,151,743.82 from the Arizona Department of Education for fiscal year 2006-2007. El Dorado is listed on publicschoolsreview.com as one of the Top 20 Schools in Arizona (listed in 9th place) with the highest expenditure of money per student of $16,644. Yet according to a 2006 article in the American Chronicle, whose source contributors include The Arizona Department of Education, the US Department of Education and the Arizona Charter School Board: Despite the enormous expenditure of taxpayer dollars at El Dorado High School their performance rate indicates nothing but problems. For school year ending June 2006 the promotion rate at El Dorado High School was only 48%, as opposed to 82% for the entire state. They retained 10% of all students at the same grade, as opposed to only 3% in the state pubic schools. They had a high school drop out rate of 32% as opposed to 6% on a state wide level, and they only graduated 43% of their senior high school senior class as opposed to 79% in the states public schools (Harrington 2006). http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/12648 ARIZONA’S CHARTER SCHOOLS ARE AN ABYSMAL FAILURE THAT SHOULD BE AN EXAMPLE TO THE NATION Randy L. Harrington August 20, 2006 American Chronicle

And according to the in depth investigation of El Dorado: El Dorado’s performance on the AIMS Test – required to test proficiency of school students — was even more frightening. Only 10% of El Dorado High School Students met state proficiency standards in mathematics, as opposed to 49% of all high school students in the State of Arizona. 35% of El Dorado’s students met state standards in reading compared to 63% of all Arizona high school students, and 39% met state standards in writing, compared to 63% of all Arizona High School students (ibid).

School Matters, a public policy watchdog and think tank that investigated Ohio charter schools in 2007, agreed that the school’s record has been more than a little spotty. In 2007, the Ohio state’s school report card gave more than half of Ohio’s 328 charter schools a D or an F. According to the group, with wide open authorization and an explosive gallop towards the charter school concept, they found: some charters are mediocre, and Ohio has a far higher failure rate than most states. Fifty-seven percent of its charter schools, most of which are in cities, are in academic watch or emergency, compared with 43 percent of traditional public schools in Ohio’s big cities (http://schoolsmatter.blogspot.com/2007/11/charter-school-crackdown-in-ohio.html Charter School Crackdown in Ohio November 8, 2007.

Part of the problem, School Matters noted, was that behind the Ohio charter failures are systemic weaknesses that include loopholes in oversight, a law allowing 70 government and private agencies to authorize new charters, and financial incentives that encourage sponsors to let schools stay open regardless of performance (ibid). Governor Ted Strickland of Ohio, commenting on the charter school experiment in his state in 2007, was succinct and clear:

 Perhaps somewhere, charter schools have been implemented in a defensible manner, where they have provided quality. But the way they’ve been implemented in Ohio has been shameful. I think charter schools have been harmful, very harmful, to Ohio students (ibid)

Strickland went even further, telling Time Magazine in 2006:

 About $500 million, I believe, was taken out of our (Ohio’s) public system to fund underperforming charter schools last year. I think that’s a waste of resources — for-profit charter schools trouble me greatly (Pitluk 2006) Time Rethinking Charter Schools in Texas http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1542554,00.html October 4, 2006 ADAM PITLUK/DALLAS

 Texas, another bellwether state for charter schools, is faring no better according to School Matters. According to the Texas Education Agency, one out of every six charter schools in the state is a failure (ibid).  But opposing points of view regarding charter schools achievements abound, as testified to by the Center for Education Reform, a firm charter advocacy organization and distinct and early player in the charter school movement. According to their 2009 report: Performance-based accountability is the hallmark of charter schools. Unlike conventional public schools that remain open year after year despite their inability to manage a school or raise student achievement, charter schools close if they fail to perform according to their charter. And while opponents claim that charter schools are not being held accountable or that only “responsible” charters should remain open, the data on closed charter schools across the states proves that the performance-based accountability inherent in the charter school concept is working—especially in states with strong and clear charter laws (Center for Education Reform Website 2009). The Accountability Report: 2009 Charter Schools http://edreform.com/accountability/ Center for Education Reform).

As of 2008 the Center for Educational Reform cited the fact that charter schools are providing high-quality education options for Massachusetts families. Using data from the 2006-2007 Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS), the report documents the achievement of students in conventional public, pilot schools and charter schools in the Boston area. Among the reports key findings:

• Charter school students in Boston outpace students in pilot schools and conventional public schools on the MCAS. In eighth grade math alone, charter school students outperformed their district peers by as much as 50 percentage points.

• There are no more seats available in these successful charter schools due to the cap established by the legislature. In 2007, there were 5,649 applications for 1,249 spots in Boston charter schools.

• While pilot school programs, which operate similarly but not as independently as charters do, are better than other public schools, the report shows that charter schools are outperforming both pilot schools and conventional schools on eighth and 10th grade MCAS tests. • Boston charter schools enroll a higher percentage of African American students than the district as a whole (61 percent versus 43 percent, respectively). According to Education Week, pilot high schools enroll fewer struggling students, fewer students with severe special needs and fewer students with limited English skills than charters. These data mirror the data nationally. The report goes on to observe that charter schools in Boston receive approximately $5,000 less per pupil than their peers in conventional public schools. Additionally, districts are compensated with “impact” funds for students who move to charter schools. Nevertheless, cites the report, Boston public schools still fall, on average, 37 percentage points below charter students on statewide assessments (Center for Education Reform Website 2008). (http://www.edreform.com/index.cfm?fuseAction=document&documentID=2818§ionID=140&NEWSYEAR=2009 Student Achievement Higher at Boston Charter Schools CER Press Release Boston, MA March 13, 2008

Yet in the past decade, according to a Nightly Business Report interview conducted in 2008, about five percent of the nation’s charter schools have been closed for poor performance. This is a troubling statistic for a movement that stated its goals were to raise educational performance for all students, not just those in charter schools and especially a failure for an idea that has been in “experimentation” phase for close to 20 years.  We’ll get the few “bad apples routine again”, but the whole idea is bankrupt.  (Eastabrook 2008). (http://www.pbs.org/nbr/site/onair/transcripts/080218e/ The New Business of Education-Charter Schools Monday, February 18, 2008 Diana Eastabrook

The fact is, not only do many charter schools nationwide not only close they do so far more rapidly than the public is aware of.  On examination, the reasons why they close seems to have to do with fraud, abuse of taxpayer’s funds, illegitimate business practices, legislative collusion, insufficient oversight, lack of financial transparency, lack of managerial responsibility and a failure of public disclosure. This certainly is troubling, even to the most ardent supporters of charter schools. In their book, Charter Schools: Hope or Hype, authors Jack Buckley and Mark Schneider confront the issue of the actual failure rates of charter schools throughout the nation. They document that:

 While data calculating actual closure rates are hard to find, Hassel and Batdorff (2004) studied decisions to renew school charters throughout the nation. They looked at all 506 nationwide renewal cases through 2001, and then focusing on fifty randomly selected cases they found that 16 percent of charter schools up for renewal were terminated (conversely, 84 percent of the charter schools were renewed). The Center for Education Reform reports that 429 charter schools have closed from the inception of charter schools through 2003. If we set the number of remaining charter schools in the nation at around three thousand, we can estimate a closure rate of approximately 13 percent, not much different than the Hassel and Batdorff finding of 16 percent (also see Teske, Schneider, and Cassese 2005, who look at the politics involved in authorizing and renewing charter schools) (Buckley and Schneider 2007) Charter Schools: Hope or Hype? Jack Buckley & Mark Schneider Princeton University Press 2007).

It is hard to see from the myriad research and conclusions conducted by some of the most prestigious think tanks and educational policy experts, how an argument can be made or sustained that charter schools have raised student achievement at their schools or that they have served as a catalyst for higher student achievement and innovation at traditional public schools. The notion of competition between schools raising innovative levels of instruction, management, student performance, teacher morale and commitment and the host of claims made by charter advocates under the rubric of competition and public choice simply have not been born out by the evidence. And as the Hoover Institute so laconically and candidly stated, the real, rarely spoken of goal is the replacement of all traditional public schools, at least in urban areas, with retail charter chains run for profit, or in the case of non-profits, run by Boards of Directors – stocked with privatizers and entrepreneurs who know little if anything about education. What they do know, is that with education 5.6% of the GDP, twenty years of privatization efforts and economic disaster have provided them with a unique opportunity to make some good money. This is the Race to the Top  Arne Duncan is proposing (Arne Duncan Gives a History Lesson to the American Federation of Teachers (AFT): “Elevating the Teaching Profession”?dissidentvoice.com

Now it is up to citizens, unions and “us”to confront these hucksters and begin to prevent school closures and charterization. For if not, the unions will see they must begin a century old struggle which they are beginning to see now, trying to unionize charter schools one at a time. What a tragedy that would be to turn the historical clock back; wouldn’t it be better to ally with other unions and citizen groups and begin the process of saving public education in America by promoting the alternatives to privatization? Or is there any will?