Charter Schools Work (Providence
Journal, Metro section, page 5, 8/27/04)
by Howard Schulman, MD
A front page New York Times article
by Diana Jean Schemo, reporting that, nationwide,
fourth grade charter school students are performing
at a half grade level behind their public district
peers caused a national stir in the education community.
And because the article appeared on the front page
of the New York Times and the Providence Journal
in a shortened version (8/17/04: “Charter
School Students Come up Short on Education Report
Card”), the authors’ conclusions were
given immediate gravitas.
Schemo implied that charter schools
don’t work as advertised and needed more
regulation. She challenged President Bush’s
plan to expand charter schools under No Child Left
Behind. She also implied that the Bush administration
(of which I’m no enthusiast) purposely hid
the data, until researchers at the American Federation
of Teachers (AFT) “unearthed” it (half
a year after it was posted on the internet).
A flurry of rebuttals ensued,
including one by the Wall Street Journal entitled: “Dog
Eats AFT’s Homework—A teachers union’s
dishonest study of charter schools”. The
main problem is that charter schools frequently
go after underperforming students and school systems,
so it is no surprise that test scores are lower.
What’s more important, however, is that once
a child is in a charter school, he or she tends
to do better than if he or she remained in a district
school.
Tom Loveless, director of the
Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings
Institute, studied 569 charter schools from 2000-2002.
He found that although students enter with lower
test scores, they advance more rapidly than their
public district school peers. He also found that
it takes a newly established charter school roughly
two years until it starts producing superior results.
Furthermore, charter schools managed by for-profit
Education Management Organizations (EMO’s),
a common entity in Michigan, made the most dramatic
advances. Typically, though, EMO’s only became
involved in the most hopeless situations.
One further criticism of the
AFT’s conclusion is that their study sampled
only 1 percent of charter school students in 7
states. The Loveless study focused on the ten states
with the most charter schools, and included all
schools that had three years of testing data: 569
charter schools. Many other studies have shown
charter schools to be succeeding (www.edreform.com).
Roughly 3000 charter schools exist nationally,
now.
Lastly, even though Schemo
stated that results were a setback for President
Bush, Democratic contender John Kerry is on record
as a strong charter school supporter, stating in
1998 that all schools in Massachusetts should be
charter schools. The newest Democratic hopeful,
Barak Obama, is also a supporter. As a state senator
he sponsored legislation that allied education
reformers, the Chicago Board of Education, and
the Chicago Teacher’s Union in creating more
charter schools.
Locally, Providence’s four
charter schools (www.RICharterSchools.com/testscores.html)
outperform the district schools in every category
and every grade, except 0.65% lower scores in 10th
grade math. At the Paul Cuffee Charter School,
which I visited this summer, there is a wait list
of 200 kids to get in.
At the moment, there is a statewide
moratorium on the establishment of new charter
schools and a cap of four for Providence (currently
full). One percent of the Providence public school
population currently attends charter schools. Given
the disappointing news we have been receiving regarding
public education in Providence, I believe we should
lift the cap and moratorium here in Providence.
The public system isn’t working. We’re
wasting good intentions and money. We need to explore
new ways of educating our diverse population.
Dr. Howard Schulman is running
in a Democratic Primary for State Representative
from District 3, College Hill and the East Side
of Providence. His campaign website is www.GoTellHoward.com.
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