Hoxby, a Hoover Institution fellow and Stanford professor who has published extensively on charter schools (favorably) and teacher unions (unfavorably), looked at students who won admittance by lottery to certain New York City charters and compared their performance to students who applied but were not admitted.

As Jonathan Gyurko writes in an earlier post, she found an incremental scale-score improvement of 2.4 to 3.6 points (on a 325-point scale) more per year  in reading and math for charter pupils over those who lost the lottery and did not attend a charter. But she then projects that a Harlem student who attended charters from K-8th grade would make the same gains every year and could  narrow his or her achievement gap with Scarsdale students by 86% in math and 66% in ELA.

What Hoxby did was take this point difference, this “charter effect,” and present it as a persistent, undiminishing causal effect that can work educational miracles over eight years on the same student. And it’s unlikely she has test scores for very many students who’ve been continuously enrolled in a charter for eight years.

But she did have a nice construct, one that would make anyone sit up and take notice. Scarsdale is one of the top performing school districts in New York State, even in the United States. Its campus-like schools boast rich electives, high-tech labs and music rooms, green rolling playing fields, helicopter parents and relaxed, highly-paid teachers. Below, the Scarsdale High School library. Under that, a Harlem Charter School.

The gaps between Harlem and Scarsdale students are about far more than test scores, and closing the academic ones will take a lot more than test prep

SOME HARLEM-SCARSDALE GAPS

To perpetuate the fiction that if they could just attend charter schools, Harlem’s struggling students would morph into Scarsdale over-achievers (if indeed they even wanted to) is a disservice.

Hoxby’s study was hailed by the Wall Street Journal on page 2 and greeted at the final word on charter superiority in a Daily News editorial the next day.

But researchers know better. The black-white test score gap has been shown to persist even between middle-class blacks and whites, for deep and complex reasons. Ronald Ferguson, a Harvard professor who studied the racial achievement gap in Shaker Heights, Ohio  (Hoxby’s home town), says it would take at least 25 years to close the racial achievement gap, even between students of from families with similar incomes.

Ferguson found that blacks scored on average nearly 100 points below whites on SATs. Even in Shaker Heights the average grade for a black senior was C+ versus B+ for whites. The gap is not a result of effort — he found blacks studied harder than whites — but of the persistence of poverty’s ills even after incomes had equalized.

So by all means let’s equalize the resource gaps with Scarsdale. But it’s not right to generalize that a few points average gain on a standardized test means high-needs students will continue to make the same gains year after year. Nor that those decimal points are all it takes to close America’s racial achievement gaps.

“Frames are the mental structures that allow human beings to understand reality — sometimes to create what we take to be reality.”
— George Lakoff

Do you believe that the American business model applied to schools will produce better teachers and more qualified students? Then your thought process about public schools is probably mired in the myths fostered by the 1980s report, A Nation at Risk, which claimed that the failure of our public schools would eventually lead to our economic decline and inability to compete in the world market. Those findings were driven by a right wing ideology from the likes of CEO’s and business leaders who posed the idea that we can only keep our competitive position in the world by improving our schools.

Time and our current economic situation have proven that those ideas were pitched to open the door for conservatives to take control of the public school debate. And, they succeeded, as that idea took hold, educators and teacher unions at all levels, ceded their leadership in the field to business moguls who despite public acts of helping schools with funding for charter schools and laptops, secretly professed that they want to ultimately privatize the schools to make a lot of money.

Now, we seem to be stuck in the rhetorical frame that public schools are failing despite the facts that indicate a different reality. That frame is the elephant in the room and no one has been able to change our concept to another reality. Schools are living up to the standards we set for them. Today, according to the 2004 Census, more kids graduate high school than ever before. (We need to improve those numbers for minorities, especially Hispanics, but over all those figures are rising.) Around 28 percent of our national population gets a 4-year college degree and in New York State it’s sits at 30 percent. And, based upon 2006 statistics from G-8 countries, we are scoring very well in most categories of reading and math. (Don’t get me wrong, there is still plenty of room for improvement.)

Yet, because the debate is framed around the idea that our schools are failing, those who call for privatizing schools have gained a foothold with the general public in the public education debate. Even though the general public thinks schools are failing, parents consistently think that the schools their children attend are good. The incongruity of that thinking, however, doesn’t seem to make an impression because the picture of failing public schools is so entrenched in the national mind-set.

We also hear, but not so loudly at this moment in our economic history, that the business model should be applied to schools. The belief is that children are revenue sources and schools should be able to generate a profit. How do you increase profit? Add additional revenue sources, reduce expenditures, cut salaries, break the negotiating strength of unions and, of course, eliminate all regulations and standards of accountability. In addition, these business leaders throw in the concept of merit pay as an incentive to teachers so they will teach to the bottom line–standardized tests. It works for businesses, doesn’t it? Well….

To make this all sound palatable to the general public, conservatives have convinced the public that public education has failed the nation and they design schemes that ultimately and deliberately underfund the school system. (Unfunded mandates in NCLB, vouchers, charter schools, home schooling) With unrealistic and ill conceived demands and continuously diverted resources, schools would become nothing but holding pens festering with failure. That’s because conservative school reform movements are akin to the urban renewal efforts that were the results of landlord-arsonists in the Bronx or the fire-bomb deliberately dropped by police in a Philadelphia residential neighborhood to root out a small band of dissidents. Those efforts had the effect of displacing and silencing a noisy, but ultimately, powerless minority for the profit of the few.

Public schools are doing the job they were meant to do. They are acculturating a diverse population that can unite us as one democratic nation with faith in the possibilities of every individual. This last election gave us a glimpse at what that future would look like. Better schools aren’t about a better economy. Improving schools is about becoming a better country. That’s how we should frame future discussions about public education.

Woman's Christian Temperance Union: Ideological Fore-Mothers of Rick Hess?

The edu-market fundamentalists have been making themselves into quite a spectacle in recent days,  as they respond to the stimulus package that has begun to take shape in Washington DC. Unchastened by the fact that it was the policies that they pushed for the last quarter century — deregulation and privatization, unfettered and uncontrolled markets –  which got us into this  hole, they now proclaim that we need more of “the hair of the dog that bit us” as a remedy to one nasty economic hangover. Who cares that the stimulus package is all that stands between America and a depression? “Bring  it on,” they chant in unison, in an echo of George Bush’s fated approach to Iraq.

Jay Greene [of the United Cherry Pickers] compares the stimulus package to Dorothy clicking her heels in the Wizard of Oz [perhaps he was unduly influenced by the theory that the story was a parable of populism, directed against finance capital]. The acolytes of Milton Friedman at the Cato Institute’s blog are so outraged at the thought that some stimulus package funds might go to public education that they propose burning the money instead. The Fordham Foundati0n’s Mike Petrilli took valuable time away from his all-consuming blog vendetta against Linda Darling-Hammond to proclaim ‘the horror, the horror’ at the idea that stimulus package funds might be used to hold public schools “harmless” from “budget cuts.” Why? Because, in Petrilli’s book, cuts to public schools are a good thing. On a similar note, Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute declares that providing public education with stimulus funds is  “like an alcoholic at the end of the night when the bars close, and the solution is to open the bar for another hour.”

Since we seem to have embarked on drinking metaphors, let us simply say that Hess and his edu-con compatriots are reminiscent of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in the decades after the end of prohibition — true believers unable to reconcile themselves to the fact that their political moment has come and gone. Were it not for the serious economic consequences of failing to enact a stimulus plan, this sort of discourse could be seen as quaint, a Harold Stassenesque moment for the 21st century.  But the stakes are too real.

Now it appears that the term has a literal, as well as a metaphorical, application. The New York Times reports that the Seminole County public school system is sending home report cards in packages covered with Mc Donalds’ advertisements, pictures of Ronald McDonald and photographs of ‘happy meals.’ The district even provides a ‘happy meal’ to fifth graders with good grades.

“I thought this was appalling,” Cathy Pagan, mother of a Seminole County fourth grader, told the Times. “You get a reward for good grades by eating — and eating fast food.” Today’s epidemic of childhood obesity ought to call a program like this into question, Pagan added.

Pagan’s concerns about childhood obesity and health don’t weigh heavy on the mind of Whitney Tilson, one of the Wall Street benefactors of the Democrats for Education Reform [at Edwize, we know them as the People's Democratic Republicans for Education Reform]. The monthly investment magazine, Kiplingers, reports that Tilson is positively bullish on the fast food chain, and that his hedge fund has invested heavily in McDonalds’ stock. Since Tilson writes a blog where he regularly casts summary judgment that various figures in the world of education — especially teacher unionists — don’t really care about what happens to kids, it is interesting to see how he puts his money behind his mouth.

This is an important and essential truth that teacher unionists and other advocates of public education need to grasp. With very real enemies targeting education of, by and for the public, the temptation is to treat every criticism of public schools as a mortal threat, and to rush to the defense of ‘actually existing school systems’ and ‘actually existing schools,’ regardless of the merits of the criticisms. When we do that, too often we become apologists — unwitting apologists perhaps, but apologists nonetheless — for much of what actually harms public education, from dysfunctional bureaucracies and out of control testing to inept district leaderships and tyrannical school leaders.

The real defense of public education is the defense of the democratic educational values and vision which are central to the idea of public education. This is not some Platonic ideal: there are ample illustrations of that idea, those values and vision, in practice, and we should be highlighting and learning from those living examples. Moreover, when school districts and schools fall far short of that idea, we need to understand why, and figure out how they can be changed to realize the full potential of public schooling. In sum, the defense of public education demands of us a vision and a strategy for changing public schools and districts for the better, for the realization of the promise of public education — not an undifferentiated apology for whatever is.

There is a world of difference between that vision and strategy and the models of schooling put forward by the opponents of public education. Both employ the language of change, but the opponents of public education seek to dismantle it through privatization, and to replace education of, by and for the public with the rule of the market and technocratic elites. Our vision is one that seeks the renewal and the deepening of the democratic character of public education, because we understand that the vibrancy and power of what we hold in common as a people is the foundation of our republic [as in res-publica, the matters and concerns of the public]. Without a dynamic public square, centered on public education, the republic can not long survive as a republic.

Given what is at stake, we can not be sparing in our responses to those who would eviscerate the public character of education. But we need to understand that a response which is purely defensive, which only seeks to hold the ground we already have, is a poor and inadequate defense of public education. The best defense is one that articulates a vision of change, of advancing the public essence of public education.

Here at the UFT, we have always recognized the need to articulate a positive vision of change for public education, even before the recent rise to prominence of foes of public education. In a very real way, we emerged — as did our sister teacher unions — as an immanent critique of existing public education run along the lines of factory model schooling in which teachers were denied meaningful voice. From our beginnings as a union, we have proposed and supported efforts to improve public schools, especially for poor and working class students. One of the first proposals the UFT made with the commencement of collective bargaining was the More Effective Schools program, designed to improve the lowest performing schools. That continues to be a central concern of ours today.

The UFT’s sponsorship of its two charter schools, and our partnership with Green Dot Charter Schools, should be understood in this context, as part of our articulation of a positive vision of change for public education. Rather than simply expound a vision, we have taken on the challenge of realizing that vision in practice.

In line with our active engagement with charter schools, we bring to the world of charters the same critical approach that we apply to other public schools — not an uncritical defense of every existing charter school, but a defense of the democratic idea of charter schools and the promotion of the schools that actualize this idea. That demands that we go on the record on failing charter schools and charter schools that deny teacher voice, just as we criticize low-performing public school districts and public schools that deny teacher voice.

This stance puts us at odds with charter school advocates who, for all their willingness to be critical of the failings of district public schools, fall silent on the shortcomings of charter schools. That was the crux of our recent exchange with Eduwonk’s Andy Rotherham. [See here and here.] As a general rule, the world of charter school advocacy approaches every criticism of charter schools with a “we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, and we shall fight in the hills” stance. Criticism of failing Ohio charter schools, of which they are quite a few, and the suggestion that the problem is systemic, rooted in a poorly designed state law which allows virtually any not-for-profit corporation to become an unaccountable authorizer, are treated as attacks on the very idea of charter schools. Rotherham even agrees with us that the Ohio law is flawed, but then suggests that a statement to this effect is an admission of opposition to all charter schools. That is simply not so, and demonstrably not so for the UFT, as our public engagement with charter schools — our own charter schools and our partnership with Green Dot — proves.

But the same stance which we apply to district public schools becomes an occasion for criticism when applied to charter schools, because every criticism is treated as a mortal threat. Charter school partisans like the Charter Blog have become an inverted mirror image of those public school advocates who treat every criticism of public schools as an attack on the very existence of public education. And they are no less misguided.

Consider, by way of an example here, how in the week of our exchange with Eduwonk’s Rotherham, the Charter Blog, DFER’s Joe Williams, and Rotherham himself all made a point of commending Mastery Charters’ Shoemaker Middle School in Philadelphia for improving dramatically its standardized test scores since it was converted from a district school. The turn around of this school is certainly worth celebration, but all three blogs leave out the most noteworthy part of its accomplishments: it is an aberration in the great Philadelphia ‘diverse providers’ experiment. An independent study done by the Rand Corporation, Student Achievement in Privately Managed and District-Managed Schools in Philadelphia Since the State Takeover, and the district’s own internal study, Diverse Provider Model: A Performance Review Based on Quantitative and Qualitative Measure As Described in SRC Resolution 10, have both found that as a group, the Philadelphia district public schools are vastly outperforming the privately managed and charter schools. But if the whole story was told, it would no longer be possible to infer that Shoemaker reflected the larger experiment, so the most remarkable part of its achievements — that it succeeded where the great majority of the Philadelphia charter schools in the experiment did not — is simply not mentioned.

Once one replaces an honest account of what is, in all of its complexity and contradictions, with the sort of boosterism that not only promotes successes, but also ignores shortcomings and failures, one does damage to one’s cause. We defenders of public education need take heed.

Joe Williams, who first entered into the blogging world on behalf of the anti-union New York Charter School Association [NYCSA], has been blogging for DFER. What’s interesting is that despite a steady stream of criticism against Democrats of every conceivable political stripe, including all of the leading Democratic presidential candidates, Williams has yet to find a single Republican worthy of criticism. The sole mentions of Republicans on the blog — Tom Carroll of NYCSA and recently turned independent Michael Bloomberg — have been positive. Perhaps this is what the Sun was getting at in their headline to the story announcing the arrival of DFER, “How New Generation of Reformers Targets Democrats on Education.”

What is more, the DFER criticism of Democrats is, well, a little short on substance. Take today’s comment on a New York Times article which discusses possible changes in a reauthorized No Child Left Behind. There are important issues of educational substance mentioned in the article, such as the length of time an immigrant non-English speaking student should have to learn English before being required to take the same standardized tests as native English speakers. But Williams does not deign to discuss such matters. He simply issues a summary judgment that the Democrats are “destroying” NCLB.

Some educational bloggers think that DFER are not really Democrats. Their use of the term is not, however, entirely without precedent. It seems to us that DFER are Democrats the way that Peoples’ Democratic Republics were democracies: the Peoples’ Democratic Republicans for Education Reform.

UPDATE:

Joe Williams responds here. It’s worth a careful read, because for all of his protests, Joe does not dispute any of the points made above: [1] that after many months, he has yet to find a single Republican worthy of criticism; [2] that on education, he has continually found every Democratic presidential candidate wanting; and [3] that like most of his criticisms of Democrats on education, there was no substantive criticism in his over-the-top charge that the Democrats were destroying NCLB.

It is the right of Joe and DFER to advocate that on matters educational, the Democrats should adopt the policies of Bush and the Republicans. Our point was simply that there should be some truth-in-advertising in that effort. Readers can judge for themselves whether it is simply coincidence that this agenda makes its debut at the very moment that the electoral fortunes of the Republicans began to wane.

It is also the right of others to oppose that advocacy. Some of us think that the problems which our nation’s schools face today do not find their origin in Democrats refusing to adopt the policies of Bush and the Republicans. Unlike Joe, we do not think that NCLB is without flaws that need correction, that the government-made educational disaster in New Orleans is a model that other cities should duplicate or that vouchers are a positive educational reform.

Part of democracy is the contest of ideas, and an essential component of that contest is criticism of government policies by the opposition party. When the two main political parties are an echo of each other, there is no contest. There is nothing wrong with one of our political parties reflecting the interests of the powerful and wealthy on Wall Street, so long as there is another party to represent the interests of ordinary working people on Main Street. Count us among those who think that the Democrats should be that latter party.

At Extra Credit, James Forman Jr. takes apart the Fordham position. For anyone concerned with the intersection of race and education, this is a must read.

There is no question that part of the cause of this tragedy lies in flawed inspections. But it would be a serious mistake to conclude that the explanation ends there. Inspections of the bridge done years ago rated it “structurally deficienct,” at 50% of what it should be. Even if its imminent collapse was not properly forecast, there was ample warning that it was seriously in need of remedial repair. Why was that warning not heeded?

As today’s New York Times editorial and Minnesota commentator Nick Coleman noted, and as Minneapolis Mayor R. T. Rybak stated on Friday’s PBS Newshour, the answer lies in the systematic disinvestment in public works that has been a feature of much of American government for the last quarter century. Democratic government has two primary ends — the guarantee of individual rights and the promotion of the common good. The second of these two ends has fallen victim to a mad rush to lower taxes and to dismantle and privatize the agencies of government which have as their purpose the welfare of us all, the public square. Our national infrastructure is crumbling around us because we have sacrificed the goods we hold in common, again and again, on the altar of private gain.

On occasion, this abandonment of the common good results directly in harm. That was the case in Minneapolis, as it was in New Orleans two years ago. It was not Katrina itself that destroyed much of New Orleans, but the failure of the levies — a man-made disaster that had long been predicted and long been ignored. Lives were lost in both cases as a direct consequence of policies that have abandoned the common good.

On an even more massive scale, lives have been harmed by such policies. When the time came to reconstruct New Orleans, the very same elected officials and bodies that had failed in their responsibility to protect the city have left barren and desolate the neighborhoods where poor African-Americans lived. Public services are virtually non-existent in those areas. Rather than rebuild the city’s public schools, they embarked on widespread privatization. The schools of last resort left under the jurisdiction of the state-run Recovery School District remain in poor repair and without such elementary tools as textbooks — two years after Katrina. The children in those schools are having their futures destroyed, as surely as those who died when the levies broke.

And the elected officials who have promoted these policies refuse all responsibility for their consequences. How long will Americans allow such a dereliction of duty to continue?

At TPMCafe, Stanford University Professor Martin Carnoy, who was written often on education, sparked quite a thread with a commentary deconstructing the case for vouchers. Says Carnoy:

These ideas tap into a widely held view that markets do a better job than the public sector in just about every economic activity. So a lot of people want to believe that sending poor children to private school and increasing competition among schools should make a big difference in places where public school students are not doing well. Yet, there is only very sporadic evidence of any real educational improvement due to vouchers or to any other form of market competition in education.

Much of the discussion in this thread is quite high quality. You will, however, have to work your way through one commentator who opines…

Compulsory attendance at school is child labor. Children work, unpaid, as window-dressing in a massive make-work program for dues-paying members of the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel.

What? You didn’t know it was teacher unions — and not Wal Mart — that was the biggest purveyor of child labor in America? Ban the Math Sweatshop!

Our friend James Forman Jr. has an interesting series of posts on vouchers at Extra Credit, here, here, here and here.