Well, it's another week and there's
another study showing once again that charter schools fail to perform better than the traditional public schools they are being touted to replace. Of course the whole premise behind comparing and rating large categories of schools, based on a selected group of standardized test scores makes no sense and needs more debunking.
This
latest study, coming out of Stanford's CREDO group finds:
56 percent of the charters produced no significant difference in reading and 19 percent had worse results than traditional public schools. In math, 40 percent produced no significant difference and 31 percent were significantly worse than regular public schools.
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| Pearson |
Charters actually come out slightly better in this year's CREDO study then they did in 2009. But charter school cheerleaders like
Scott Pearson, are downright giddy over
reportedly (I always add in that word when talking about D.C. test scores in the
post-Rhee era) improved charter reading and math scores in the District. Pearson, who comes out of
Arne Duncan's Dept. of Education, gets paid $180,000/year to say stuff like this:
“We’re popping the champagne corks here,” said Scott Pearson, executive director of the D.C. Public Charter School Board. “We think it’s a very strong affirmation of the power of charter schools when they’re done right.”
Yes, Mr. Pearson. All schools do better when "done right". Such are the research-based inanities of the champagne-popping charter hustlers.
Side note about Pearson -- he's a former executive at
Mitt Romney's Bain Capital. Perfect!
I liked your piece on the CREDO study, Joe. I especially like this great analogy:
ReplyDeleteCan we compare gas mileage of leased and rented cars? No, it’s meaningless because cars in both categories vary widely. The same applies to district and charters. We should be learning from district and charters whose students make significant progress – and not just on tests.
In this sense, the CREDO study is also meaningless and there's no sense giving credence to it's claim that charters are "making progress" when comparing them as a group to traditional public schools, based on test scores.