Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Measuring Charter Schools
In this interesting article, Marshall and Johnson at National Review consider two recent studies that appear to contradict each other regarding how charter schools are doing vs. public schools. One of the studies, the one that shows charter schools doing better, used a method called "matching," in which charter schools are compared to public schools with comparable populations. This approach is intended to be more accurate than the types of studies that are usually cited by opponents of charter schools which tend to rely on "blind comparisons," i.e. comparing the performance of all charter school students vs. all public school students.
The problems with the blind comparison approach are fairly obvious. Charter school students tend to come from worse neighborhoods. They may also have had significant academic and behavioral problems in public school, helping to drive their parents to seek alternatives.
The question of charter schools runs wide and deep. I think it is difficult for many in my generation to understand the weight that earlier generations gave to public education because of the race issue. Is it time to rethink the model now?
I know this. My wife has taught at a number of public schools and a single charter school. In many ways I would say that the charter school better served its students. It attracted highly motivated, bright, excited young teachers, most of whom got to work early and stayed very late. It allowed administrators and student the opportunity to experiment a great deal more than is possible in any public school setting. Because parents had to work to get their kids into the charter school, the overall parent population was far more engaged than it would be in a comparable public school, and, in fact, there was a great sense of community.
On the downside, the union-less teachers at the charter school had essentially no recourse to deal with an arbitrary and largely unqualified principal. There were indications of some pretty serious financial hanky panky, but the board was ill equipped to perform any sort of investigation and, existing outside of the board of ed structure, had no resources to support them. Perhaps worst of all, some teachers, even ones with good intentions, exercised absurdly bad judgment in the classroom, with no one in place to guide, correct or replace them.
Anyway, take a look at the article: Grading Schools - National Review
- posted by Simon Marcus @ Wednesday, January 12, 2005
