Bobbi Nicholson: Costly parallel system not needed to deregulate schools
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- It is disappointing that substantive issues regarding charter schools legislation were relegated to the margins so a relative non-issue like the potential for nepotism could be discussed (Phil Kabler's Feb. 28 column "Debate becomes heated.")
Specifically, it would be refreshing if advocates and opponents alike could focus their considerable energies on students and student learning rather than engineering "gotcha moments" of the sort detailed in Kabler's article. There is a substantial amount of legitimate research (i.e., peer-reviewed studies conducted by trained researchers) that should be part of any fair discussion of whether to enable the establishment of charter schools in West Virginia.
It is equally disappointing to read Kabler's criticism of the WVAFT's attempt to provide data (37 percent of charter schools underperform their public school peers) as "disingenuous." To the contrary, bringing peer-reviewed data to discussions of education policy is what education policymakers ask us to do: use scientifically based research.
The push for charter schools grew out of the perceived mediocre performance of public schools on international tests. Charter school advocates promised better performance, primarily because their schools would not be held to Department of Education regulations and policies in such areas as curriculum, instruction and operations - areas in which public schools have little if any autonomy.
Allow us to operate outside of existing policies and laws, charter proponents argued, and we'll improve student learning. Where public schools are held accountable by compliance with state- mandated policies, we'll be held accountable by student performance. That being the case, it would seem altogether appropriate, as opposed to "disingenuous," for WVAFT to bring data on charter schools' student performance to the discussion - and the data they brought can be found on the Web site of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).
NCES is the primary federal data collection and analysis agency for issues related to public education in the United States, and what they found concerning charter schools is that their students performed several points lower on reading and math scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress - the often-cited "nation's report card." In fact, they found that charters underperformed public schools on 20 of 22 outcomes.
Another study released last summer by Stanford University (and sponsored by charter advocates such as the Walton Family and Susan Dell Foundations), studying charter schools in 15 states and DC published these findings:
·80 percent of charter schools performed the same or worse than traditional public schools; 37 percent did significantly worse (WVAFT's figure).
·African-American and Hispanic students were found to do worse in charter schools in math and reading scores.
·In Florida, a state with 389 charter schools, black students, bottom-tier students and top-tier students in Florida charter schools all performed "significantly worse" in reading and math than their peers in other public schools.
There is a growing body of evidence that charter schools perform similarly to demographically matched traditional public schools on standardized tests. This is so despite the few exceptions that can always be found.
There is also increasing evidence that while charters may accept some low-SES or minority students, they balk at accepting two kinds of students whose academic performance tends to bring down test scores: those for whom English is not the primary language and special education students. If charters' students perform no better than those in public schools - who do teach English language learners and special education students - it would seem fair to ask whether money should be taken out of public schools to support them.
And speaking of funding, it is difficult to see how the limited success of a few charter schools can be replicated on a system-wide basis. The budget for Harlem's four Promise Schools, for instance, requires $36 million a year, much of it private funding. In the Washington, DC charter schools, private funding accounts for $780 per student and, combined with public funding, resulted in considerably higher funding for students in charters than those in comparable public schools.
Both examples reflect the finding of Arizona State University researchers that charters in economically depressed areas typically receive more funding than the traditional public schools that surround them. Taking money out of public schools in order to fund charters necessarily places public schools at a financial disadvantage.
What Harlem's Promise Schools have shown, however, funding notwithstanding, is something education researchers have known for more than 40 years: that lowering class size improves student learning - and that should be the goal for every student, not only for those lucky enough to win a charter's admission lottery.
If, in fact, we believe that charter schools can succeed where public schools have allegedly failed, how do we then reconcile consigning some students to public schools while allowing others to leave for the perceived greener pastures of charter schools? How does that conform to our obligation to provide a fair and equitable education to all of the state's students?
The questions we should be asking are these: Are there better uses for public resources than creating a parallel school system that underperforms its public school equivalent? How about smaller class sizes and hiring more teachers to allow for those smaller classes, or better support for struggling schools? Can funding formulae be revised to ensure that public schools serving the neediest students receive sufficient resources to teach those who are more costly to educate?
Charter advocates' pleas for deregulation remain ideological for the most part (i.e., anything is better than a publicly-operated system) and unsupported by the evidence.
If we think can we create better schools through deregulation, there's a simpler way than crafting a new piece of legislation to which all affected parties will agree. Just abolish Chapter 18-A of the state code.
Nicholson is an education professor at the Marshall Graduate College in South Charleston.