How many more of these studies do we really need?

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.

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!

Romney's version of corporate socialism

Anthony Gardner, writing for Bloomberg, reports that Mitt Romney's specialty during his years at Bain Capital, was privatizing gains and socializing investment losses. 

What’s clear from a review of the public record during his management of the private-equity firm Bain Capital from 1985 to 1999 is that Romney was fabulously successful in generating high returns for its investors. He did so, in large part, through heavy use of tax-deductible debt, usually to finance outsized dividends for the firm’s partners and investors. When some of the investments went bad, workers and creditors felt most of the pain. Romney privatized the gains and socialized the losses.

The report describes Romney's style of "casino capitalism" that produced quick profits for big investors but led to the destruction and bankruptcy of companies like Accuride, Ampad and Dade with thousands of workers losing their jobs and whole communities, including schools and public services being destroyed. When Bain's investment's went south, which they did about 40% of the time, the big losers were often public pensions, including teachers pension funds, whose boards, according to another Bloomberg report, had  "political ties and sensitivities."

According to Gardner:

While Bain Capital wasn’t alone in using financial engineering to turbo-charge its returns, it was among the most aggressive under Romney’s leadership. Enriching investors by taking leveraged bets isn’t a qualification for a job requiring long-term vision and concern for public welfare. It is appropriate to point that out to voters.

Romney and Bain Capital knee-deep in corporate-style reform.

Romney with Wm. Bain, Jr.

One of the few good things that came out of last night's Republican debate was the further exposure of Mitt Romney as founder of the notorious Bain Capital investment firm. In his 2010 book The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Is Destroying Jobs and Killing the American Economy, Josh Kosman described Bain Capital as "notorious for its failure to plow profits back into its businesses."

But what wasn't mentioned was Bain's connection to the world of corporate-style school reform and privately-managed charter schools -- namely KIPP.  Among those I listed in my post, on the corporate muscle behind KIPP, back in April, was Bain's managing director, Mark Nunnely. 

Nunnely is director of the KIPP Foundation. He also directs New Profit, Inc, a group of "social entrepreneurs" dominated by Bain execs like Josh Blankenstein and Paul Edgerley. 

According to Forbes, 

New Profit investors get scorecards on all organizations once every quarter. They're usually familiar with them already but, at a glance, they can tell if their money is being put to good use. Poor performers are washed out by well-run operations. 

New Profit also operates the Pathways Fund. These two groups are part of a larger network of "investors" who provide millions in funding to private operators of charter schools as well as to Michelle Rhee's Children First, Stand for Children, Teach For America and other corporate "school reformers."

Vanessa Kirsch is the founder and president of New Profit and Romney served on the board of City Year, a nonprofit co-founded by Kirsch's husband.

The firm Romney once ran, Bain Capital, has deep ties to City Year and the new America Forward coalition. "Our business is backing strong management teams with creative solutions to hard problems," explained Mark Nunnelly, managing director of Bain Capital. "I think a lot of us like the idea that you can take this same approach and apply it to not-for-profits." -- AP Wire, December 10, 2007