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August 19, 2004
Charter schools, NAEP, AFT, and the Feds: The you-know-what hits the fanGood grief! BoardBuzz respectfully encourages all those who are in paroxysms over The New York Times' explosive front-page Tuesday story about charter schools to take a deep breath. Take several, actually. The story, based on what amounts to an investigative report by the American Federation of Teachers, has sparked fierce debate. A lot of it is your garden-variety, over-the-top rhetoric that just causes most people to stick their fingers in their ears, roll their eyes, and move on. In other words, completely unhelpful and a waste of energy.
On the other hand, a closer look at what the AFT has said, and what many others have said in response, actually opens a debate that true education advocates of all kinds should welcome. Namely: How do we fairly and more accurately judge the performance of our schools? Now that's a debate worth having.
The results
First things first. We'll try to thumbnail it all for you. The new AFT report essentially questions why the federal government has delayed, allegedly twice, the release of the NAEP Charter School Report. The report is to be based on 2003 NAEP scores, which, for the first time ever offer a nationally representative sample of charter school student achievement. This is a legitimate question, and to date we've yet to hear an explanation from the feds as to the delay. (And, at this stage, what actually will happen when the report does come out? We shudder.)
AFT researchers decided to comb through the NAEP website themselves to find the data, which were available but not yet packaged. Their conclusion? Fourth-graders in charter schools are performing worse academically than their peers in traditional public schools. "The scores are low, dismayingly low," said Chester E. "Checker" Finn Jr., of the Fordham Foundation. A Times editorial opined that this calls into question the No Child Left Behind Act's (NCLB) reliance on charter schools as a remedy for failure to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).
The Sound and the Fury
The response was immediate and impressive: a breathtaking torrent of comments, critiques, and screeds, including from the Center for Education Reform, the folks at Eduwonk, Howard Fuller of the Charter School Leadership Council (via EducationNews.org), U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige, and others. Fordham's Checker Finn issued an "expanded statement."
They're pretty much all making the same arguments, some of them quite legitimate. For instance, NAEP scores are not the be-all and end-all of academic success, they tell us. Some suggest the results are essentially baseline data, while others note that the results are merely a "snapshot" of charter school performance. In other words, a single test at a single point in time.
Indeed. Since these are the first ever NAEP data on charter student performance, it does make sense to take the results with a grain of salt. But it doesn't follow that the data ought to be discounted, as some seem to be suggesting. Secretary Paige, for example, blasted the 'analysis,' saying it "used faulty methodology to come up with a flawed conclusion. In other words, it was wrong." That prompted this reply from the chair of the national board that oversees NAEP: "The data is probably what it is," Darvin Winnick said. "NAEP is pretty accurate. There shouldn't be any question about the results." Well, that's a relief, since NAEP is widely called the "nation's report card" and plays a role as a guidepost under NCLB.
We should also say that it is perfectly legitimate to discuss these NAEP scores, particularly since the mantra of the "choice" crowd is that kids get a better education when their parents "choose" the school they attend. As we've noted before, there's plenty of evidence to say otherwise. And Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute, in this NPR interview, agreed with Jack Jennings of the Center on Education Policy that there's no inherent magic in charter status.
Secretary Paige cautioned against thinking of charter schools as a monolith. "There are schools for dropouts, schools for students who've been expelled, schools serving the most economically disadvantaged families." Really. We will magnanimously refrain from accusing charter school cheerleaders of an aversion to accountability or of harboring doubts that all children can learn. That is, of course, the rote reaction of many of these same folks whenever supporters of "traditional" public schools attempt to explain or provide realistic context to test scores, be they NAEP, the SATs, or state assessments.
"Charters are as diverse as the children they educate," the Secretary said. Ah. And so are traditional public schools, if not more so. What's the point? Again, when school board members or superintendents say something like that about their schools, the critics jump all over them for "making excuses." What we're saying is let's find some consistency when it comes to judging the success or challenges of all schools.
Some delicate observations
Back to the point about the data merely being a "snapshot" and not telling the whole story. Fuller, Finn, and others argue that a more accurate picture can be presented by examining how students do from year to year. This is referred to as "value-added" gain. The National Association of Charter School Authorizers endorses this, too. In other words, tracking the progress of students in a school can tell us a lot more about the success of that school, as opposed to comparing cold, hard test scores across schools, especially when their student populations change so much annually. After all, no two schools anywhere in America are educating exactly the same students. An all-or-nothing measurement of success is simplistic.
Golly! Why didn't that ever occur to us? Oh, that's right: It did. In fact, NSBA has been saying that this is one of the flaws with AYP under NCLB. We have recommended that the feds provide states the flexibility to adopt "gain score" or "value added measures" as the principle means for determining AYP rather than cut-scores. And we've suggested the inclusion within AYP calculations of the progress of students as they move from "below proficient" levels to "proficient."
"A little more tough love is needed for these schools," Mr. Finn tells us. "Somebody needs to be watching over their shoulders." Again, we agree. Local school boards that are accountable to their communities sometimes are the ones to authorize charter schools in their districts, and some state school boards associations are providing services to charter schools. On the other hand, when a local board evaluates local needs and decides they are not best served by chartering a school—or, heaven forefend, when a board revokes a charter for a school's failure to live up to its obligations—the board routinely is vilified with the usual hackneyed cheap shots. Charter advocates frequently respond by making an end run around local control and having charters imposed from on high through state action, sometimes in the very same communities that already considered the option and decided against it.
Going forward
And so we conclude, for now at least, with this thought. A wish, actually. Let this debate that has exploded over fair and more accurate assessments of the performance of charter schools extend to all publicly funded schools. That means traditional public schools, charter schools, and yes, private schools taking taxpayer-funded vouchers. We're pretty confident that in a true apples-to-apples comparison, public schools will come out looking good.
We know. Maybe it's too much to ask for, especially in a heated election year where EVERYTHING it seems is tinged with politics. But maybe enough cooler heads will prevail and a real dialogue can begin. And with that, fire away. Tell us we're talking sense. Tell us we're out to lunch. Click here, and have your say on all this.
Posted August 19, 2004 12:00 AM
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