A new piece on ReDefined Ed talks about how school districts across the nation are cooperating with charter schools. Not only was it an embarrassing mixture of cherry picked stats and lacked context but it made me think the victims of muggings often cooperate with their muggers too.
Patrick Gibbons wrote, a new report by Will Dobbie of Princeton and Roland Fryer of Harvard, shows significant achievement gains for low-income students in Harlem attending charter schools –
Well by new he meant December 2011 and what he doesn’t mention is these schools spend significantly more per pupil than the typical public school does. The real lesson here is money does matter. I personally find it disingenuous when these corporate reformers cherry pick a few charter schools doing well and don’t mention how much more they spend per pupil.
Next he talks about how the Stanford CREDO study says, on balance, provide a slightly higher quality education.
First the study does say Charter Schools have improved but that is the result of hundreds of poorly performing charter schools closing across the nation. From the Washington Post: The nation’s public charter schools are growing more effective but most don’t produce better academic results when compared with traditional public schools, according to a report released Tuesday. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/charters-not-outperforming-nations-
He also doesn’t mention how selection bias, counseling out poor performers and behavior problems, lower numbers of ESOL and ESE students, how the best charter schools typically spend more money, and that they can put conditions of parents benefit charter schools. The truth is charter schools should be killing public schools but they are not and that should be very alarming to people.
Finally he sites a new report in EducationNext, by researchers at the Walton Family Foundation and the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas.
I didn’t even look it up because anything the Walton Foundation puts out should be considered suspect. Their agenda not what is best for kids dictate their motives.
He finishes by writing; School districts should always put students first, whether or not they educate the child. -
To which I respond, if only the school reform movement would put children instead of their privatization agenda first, we would be doing much better.
To read REDefined Ed’s latest self-serving and factually inaccurate piece, click the link: http://www.redefinedonline.org/2013/08/latest-finding-districts-are-increasingly-
