Hat tip to the Schools Matter blog for noticing this article at the WSJ.
Ten Things Charter Schools Won't Tell You, and All Ten You Never Expected to Read in the Wall Street JournalHow this piece by Sarah Morgan ever got past the corporate ed cheerleaders on the WSJ editorial board, we probably will never know. But somehow it did, and here it is presented, with only brief interruptions:
1. We're no better than public schools.
For all the hype about a few standout schools, charter schools in general aren’t producing better results than traditional public schools. A national study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford found that while 17% of charter schools produced better results than neighborhood public schools, 37% were significantly worse, and the rest were no different. (Not that public schools are perfect, as many parents know. See our earlier story, “10 Things Your School District Won’t Tell You,” for more.)
Here are some more of the 10 things they won't tell you from the WSJ.
10 Things Charter Schools Won't Tell You2. Our teachers aren’t certified.
According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, charter-school teachers are, on average, younger and less likely to hold state certification than teachers in traditional public schools. In a 2000 survey, 92% of public school teachers held state certification, compared to 79% of charter school teachers. A 2008 survey found that 32% of charter school teachers were under 30, compared to 17% of traditional public school teachers. Charter schools often recruit from organizations like Teach for America that provide non-traditional paths into the profession, and more-experienced teachers who already have jobs in traditional public schools may have little incentive to give up the protection of tenure.
Two points to make. Soon there will be no "protection of tenure" for experienced teachers. Also KIPP school leaders actually are tied to TFA in many ways. In fact the
head of KIPP schools is married to one of the leaders of TFA...its founder Wendy Kopp.
In fact as Barth points out, two of the KIPP leaders started out as TFA teachers.
Philanthropy News Digest: What is KIPP and why was it created?
Richard Barth: KIPP is a national network of open-enrollment public schools that prepares children for success in college and in life. It was created in 1994 by two teachers, Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, who launched a fifth-grade public school program in inner-city Houston after completing their Teach For America commitment. The following year, Feinberg remained in Houston to lead KIPP Academy Middle School, and Levin returned home to New York City to establish KIPP Academy in the South Bronx.
KIPP NewsNow to thing #3 that charter schools don't tell.
3. Plus, they keep quitting.
As many as one in four charter school teachers leave every year, according to a 2007 study by Gary Miron, a professor of education at Western Michigan University, and other researchers at the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice. That’s about double the typical teacher turnover rate in traditional public schools. Charter schools typically pay teachers less than traditional public schools do, and require longer hours, Miron says. Meanwhile, charter school administrators earn more than their school-district counterparts, which can also make teachers feel underpaid, he says. The odds of a teacher leaving the profession altogether are 130% higher at charter schools than traditional public schools, according to a 2010 study by the National Center on School Choice at Vanderbilt University. That study also found that much of this teacher attrition was related to dissatisfaction with working conditions.
The article mentions that children with disabilities are often short-changed in charter schools, paraphrasing.
Also mentioned is the blurring of the lines separating church and state in charter schools, while the line is clarified in public schools.
This #6 very much should concern all of us, but too many Democrats won't admit it is happening because the charter school movement is a Democratic movement as well as a Republican one.
6. We don’t need to tell you where your tax dollars are going.
An investigation by Philadelphia’s City Controller earlier this year uncovered widespread financial mismanagement among the city’s charter schools, including undisclosed “related party” transactions where friends and family of school management were paid for various services, people listed as working full time at more than one school, individuals writing checks to themselves, and even a $30,000 bill from a beach resort charged to a school.
Financial scandals have come to light in schools around the country, but what’s more troubling, says advocate Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters in New York City, is that charter schools have opposed state audits of their finances.
Number 10 is about blaming teachers for everything, and they give a quote by Diane Ravitch: "The narrative that blames teachers for problems that are rooted in poverty “is demoralizing teachers by the thousands,” Ravitch says. “And you don’t improve education by demoralizing the people who have to do the work every day.”
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