(NY Times)
I'll be the first to say that test scores do not tell the whole story. I'm sure most parents who send their children to charter schools will continue to do so in spite of theses studies that show academic performance in charter schools is no better or even lags performance in comparable public schools as measured on standardized tests. A lot of intangibles make a school desirable, such as small size, low discipline problems and/or crime, special programs, feelings of community, and a willingness to keep parents informed and involved. As reported a while back, charter schools tend to have a young, energized, idealistic staff that work ungodly hours. Parents and students tend to respond positively to this Herculean effort but it is ultimately unsustainable before the eventual family demands, burnout, and turnover. This alone may account for some of the discrepancy in test scores. Few people have the instinctive talent to walk into a school the first year and be highly effective. Teaching has its own learning curve, regardless of how smart, energetic, or idealistic you are. A high turnover rate means a school on average has a high percentage of new teachers, meaning a high percentage of students are getting less than optimal instruction.
So why should it matter if their scores on standardized assessments are slightly lower? That seems to be the question on the mind of Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform:
Why do we need to have the government give us data when the most important data is what we get locally, looking at the school and how it does in meeting the state standards to which they have to be held under No Child Left Behind?
It's because standardized test scores are the only criteria that really matter in terms of NCLB. Individual states have radically different standards. Attendance, crime, graduation rates and any other peripheral items tend to correlate with test scores. It's the test scores that lead schools to be labeled as "failing." It is test scores that merit pay enthusiasts want to use as criteria for differential salaries. And the key point to remember when considering this study is that test scores are used by advocates of charter schools and other privatization schemes to discredit public schools and advance their cause.
Keep in mind that the two obvious groups who have an interest in a particular outcome for studies comparing charter/private schools and regular public schools are the alternative schools themselves, and the Bush administration, including his Department of Education, which funded this study. The irony, then, of this statement is hard to ignore:
This is one of the most contentious issues with regard to the charter school research debate, Mr. Schneider (federal commissioner of statistics) said. He said the department should not put its stamp on research comparing public and charter schools but should leave individual researchers to use the data to compete in the "marketplace of ideas."
Well sure. It's hard to sit back and throw stones at your own study - better to let private groups do the studies, then sit back and blast away at the ones you don't like while citing the ones you do like to support your ideological agenda. How transparently disingenuous can they get? "Marketplace of ideas?" What the heck does that mean?
A legitimate response to undesirable data is to try to explain it, not explain it away. I've speculated above on a possible reason why charter school scores lag (on average high percentage of new teachers due to teacher turnover), but I don't have the tools, resources, or time to actually test that hypothesis. I would think charter school advocates would in fact want to find out. I suspect they know what many of us have been saying for a long time, that test scores are neither the only nor necessarily the most important criterion in determining how well a school (or teacher for that matter) is performing. But they aren't willing just yet to give up on standardized tests as a weapon against public schools.
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