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Here are some comments about how charter schools harm public education. The following excerpts are from the introduction to the March 2008 book Keeping the Promise? The debate over charter schools, a collection of essays published by Rethinking Schools in collaboration with the Center for Community Change. The introduction was written by education researcher/commentators Leigh Dingerson, Barbara Miner, Bob Peterson and Stephanie Walters.

“… [T]here are those who view charters as a way to get rid of public schools altogether.

“… The elixir of an individualized bailout from a struggling system has serious side effects. … It can create a painful wedge in many communities, especially among African-Americans. It can weaken the political will for a collective solution to the problems in public education; and it can promote the deterioration of traditional schools. As highly motivated and engaged families pull their children from traditional public schools, urban districts have fewer resources – both financial and human – to address their many problems. The worse the schools get, the more appealing the escape to charters and private schools, all of which feeds into the conservative dream of replacing public education with a free-market system of everyone for themselves, the common good be damned.

“… One cannot deny that the charter school concept, as a movement, has been hijacked by individuals, groups, and corporations who are guided by free-market principles, often with a hostility to unions, and who do not necessarily embrace core values of equity, access, public purpose, and public ownership.”

Charter schools “too often … prefer, in practice if not in rhetoric, to educate “the deserving poor.” There is far less inclination to serve students whose parents are absent or uninvolved, or who have severe physical or emotional educational needs, or who have run afoul of the juvenile justice system, or who don’t speak English as their first language. Perhaps the most glaring example involves students with special education needs. Such students are increasingly overrepresented in traditional public schools.”

(Caroline here: To clarify, this means that charters disproportionately dump the more-challenging students on public schools. It should be self-evident that that harms the schools that disproportionately accept the more-challenging students, while also being bashed as inferior while charters tout themselves as superior.)

In addition, teachers at charter schools like KIPP — disproportionately inexperienced beginners, including Teach for America members on short-time commitments — are very often touted as superior, while veteran teachers are bashed — in fact, bashed for being experienced. Charter teachers are often praised for their “willingness” to work crushingly long hours — while veteran teachers are disparaged. Here’s what the Rethinking Schools book says about that:

“Reforms are bound to fail if they rely on the voluntarism of idealistic, overworked teachers who burn out and leave the school once they decide to have a family or want any semblance of a meaningful personal life.”

All of these practices harm public schools, the children in public schools and all of public education.

What’s wrong with Eva Moskowitz? Well, she’s one of those politicians who will quickly find her way to any camera, and woe to anyone who is in her way.

Is that a bad thing? Well, it depends on whether her ultimate goal is her own interests, or those of others.

I am quite troubled, for example, by how much money she is making in her charter school efforts. She bring home a lot of salary and consulting fee from her schools and organization, money that is not going into classrooms or activities. I do not mean to suggest that she should take vows of poverty, but it is not clear to me why she should make more than a high school principal — as opposed to more than twice as much.

When she left the city council, I think that it was because she was term limited, not because she though she could do more good elsewhere. She ran for borough president, a truly toothless position.

She makes sure that she get a lot of attention. But it’s never been clear to me that she does a lot of good.

Excellent points, especiallyon the tracking issue ceolaf. I posted it on ed notes with this comment.

What’s wrong with charter schools?
This recent comment at Gotham Schools by Ceolaf is worth repeating in a main line post. And yes, Ceolaf, we want more, especially on the tracking issue raised. I’ve been thinking along those lines too. We used to track kids by reading scores and that policy changed – I hear. Though the talented and gifted programs seem to get around some of that. We used to have 600 schools to segregate kids who were troubled. Ceolaf makes the great point that charters can pick off the top performing and least troubled kids – I heard stories in LA, especially from Candi in DC, about how charters make sure NOT to have a special ed teacher on board so they can steer parents away. Thus we are heading towards a dual school system where the public schools, often in the same building as a charter, ultimately end up with the tougher kids to work with. If that is what our leaders intend then say it instead of playing the stealth game.

moskowitz is moving into the classroom space of ps 241 next year. HSA is taking over so many classrooms that PS 241 students and staff will be conducting classes in the basement. The PS 241 community was told it was a failure by moskowitz and the HSA families that attended the public hearing in the PS 241 building. The HSA community stated that they deserved the building because 241 was a failure. Moskowitz good buddy Klein agreed and attempted to close PS 241 early in 2009. When Klein was stopped because he was breaking the law he resorted to a smear campaign. He writes families in schools where he wants to put a charter and tells them they should leave. By the end of the 2008-2009 school year PS 241 was one of the city’s top 10 schools with improved test scores. This is not the first time thst Klein has closed a school early in the year only to see it improve greatly. Check out the history of PS 220 in the Bronx. Will Ps 241 now be considered an A school? If so, will PS 241 get their classrooms back? Can Klein undo the damage he has inflicted upon the PS 241 community?

Jeff,

Parents DO have a choice. It’s called private school. It’s called parochial school. It’s called home schooling.

And that’s true anywhere.

In NYC, and this is widely debated: public charters hurt the public non-charters. So in NYC, if you accept the prior premise, to some degree, it’s a “zero-sum game.”

Worse, because the Chancellor is championing charters, he has a conflict of interest in seeing its public-public competitors improve. In fact, he’s either closing them or allowing charters to abscond with their space. (Some parts of your and ceolaf’s point 4, I know.)

As I’ve written before, if I were a parent faced with what I perceive to be a better charter than a non-charter, I’d pick the charter too. Same as if my family were on the Titanic, I’d be fighting for a lifeboat seat for the wife and kids.

But that’s not the basis for sound public policy or the allocation of finite public resources — space or money.

(Mind you, it’s the POSH crowd whose kids go to private school (aka have private lifeboats) encouraging this spat in steerage.)

Jeff,

If you are interested in a honest debate, I am happy to participate:

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On diverting reform energy:

No improvement? NAEP scores have gone up and kids stay in school longer? What more evidence do you need? Do you mean that we are not yet at the point where all schools are great and every child is well educated? It’s incremental progress, and surely too slow. But there is no strong evidence that charters speed this process up. They are not new, and they do not improve the system. Even if you are motivated by the slow pace of systemic reform in this country, charters do not help in that regard.

Frankly, I don’t care how many new people are brought to education. That’s a means, one that hasn’t made an ounce of difference. If charters — a decades old idea — were going to make a difference, we’d see it. Combine the recent *huge* study by CREDO that showed that charters are on average significantly worse than comparable non-charter public schools and the lack of any positive impact on non-charter public schools and we see a reform that makes this worse.

It ain’t working. If they are really concerned with improving education, move on already.

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Improving the educational landscape:

You can find low quality studies that show that students in charters are doing better, no question. But if you control for demographics, home effects and peer effects, charters do not do better than non-charter public schools. It’s like saying that there’s something about Stuvessant that makes student there taller than students at P.S. 321, and not controlling for age.

But then we get to the actual landscape issue. You asked about the impact of charters on the system, not why it matter.

But I’m happy to answer why it matters. If charter success comes at the expense of other schools or other students — even simply an opportunity cost — then there is something immoral there. Education is such a fundamental right — or at least educational opportunity — that it is not acceptable to ignore the impact of such a small number of charter schools on a far larger number of non-charter public schools. If charters did not hurt the rest of the system, you might have an argument. But there is a big difference between “not harming” and “hurting.”

As for public school choice, we have plenty of it in NYC. That’s not the issue. It is clearly not about choice, and choice for its own sake is not a good enough reason, anyway. It should be about quality. Parents don’t need a array of choice, they need a single high quality option. Choice is no panacea, nor should it even be a goal.

As for quick google searches, that’s fine for price shopping or comparing political candidates positions, or any number of things. But it’s a really crappy way to find educational research. At least try Google scholar. And given the importance of these issue, and their technical nature, quick is not the way to go. Intentional and careful would be a better approach.

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Creaming & tracking:

I’ve actually not seen research that shows that tracking helps high achieving kids. Can you share that with me? I know that there are claims based on truthiness, of course.

Of course, there is a always the issue of special needs, both at the low end and the high end. But charters are not aimed at students like that. They are aimed at kids with high SES or high cultural capital. What is your moral argument for favoring kids with high SES or cultural capital over those that are not lucky enough to be born into such families, especially considering the negative impacts of charter schools on the system?

As for giving parents choice, that might be an OK argument if their choices did not negative impact other children. However, once they do, we’ve got a problem. And the CREDO study showed that there are more than twice as many substandard charter schools as superior charter school. That means that a lot of parents are making harmful choices for their children. Is that OK, simply because we have the parents’ consent? Don’t we owe children more than that?

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Attacks on union:

I think you miss my point. I am not defending the unions for their own sakes. I am defending public education.

It is clearly a goal of the Political Right to undermine public education, public support for public education and even government support for public education. In fact, it is generally a goal of the Right to undermine support for any number of government services that benefit the middle and lower classes. They don’t like medicare and medicaid, progressive taxes, work protections, food inspection, effort to ensure drug safety, etc.. They don’t like the social contract.

Teachers unions stand in their way, particularly when it comes to protecting and improving public education — something that is more important for the middle and lower classes than the upper class. Teachers unions, in being reliable supporters of the Democratic Party, help to defend the New Deal and the Great Society. Are you so anti-union that you are willing to forgo the limited social safety net we have in this country to punish unions?

Jeff,

You likely won’t find anyone more willing than me to argue something out, carefully addressing my opponent’s points, respectfully and with the assumption of good will on everyone’s part.

However, I am not sure what you are looking for here. Your very first line accuses me of dishonestly. That’s not a basis for discussion. Your second line says that you are not equipped to engage in a real discussion. And then you go on and picking choice quote that support your pre-determined assumptions without engaging with my arguments. Of course, later you go and accuse me of misstating my real concerns about charter schools.

The fact is that you you did not ask for any evidence, and so I did not offer a large amount of it. You asked what the issue are, and so I let you know. When you want someone to cite studies, you should let them know. And you if you want to discuss methodology, I’m usually happy to do that, too. (Heck, look at the history of my comments on this site or elsewhere.) However, I did cite CREDO and NAEP data. How much evidence are you asking for? How closely do you want me to spell it out for you, or summarize it for you?

I’m sorry, but you are factually challenged to the degree that I find it hard figure out how to engage with you. Shanker proposed charter schools over 20 years ago. By 15 years ago, there were multiple states with charter school laws. I believe that New York has had charter schools for something like 10 years. They may be new to you, or your neighborhood, but they are not so new that we cannot evaluate them or their impacts. (In fact, NAEP improvement in NYC has slowed since charters have expanded so greatly. By your reasoning, flawed though it may be, we should blame charters for that.)

Then, you also are confusing/conflating different issues. The DC Opportunity program is not about charter schools. Why would you bring it up in this context? (And if you want to debate that program, say so. But it’s not about charter schools at all.)

It appears that you are a choice advocate who believes that government is incapable of providing solutions. If that is your fervent belief, fine. But don’t disingenuously ask other people to discuss things with you, and demand evidence from that that you will ignore because it contradicts your predetermined beliefs. That’s dishonest and disrespectful.

But the fact is that charters are not just about choice. There are many ways to provide choice, and charters are just one of them. Charters are also about radical decentralization and moving towards privatization. The laws and policies that most charter proponents — or at least their organizations — favor are about deregulation, too. Resorting to “choice is a panacea” as your ultimate argument to support charters is a refusal to acknowledge the reality of charters schools and multiple ways that they are different from the traditional model described in One Best System (Tyack, 1974).

If you are happy with your views, and don’t want to really engage with others in an open-minded fashion, that’s your right. But don’t ask others to waste their time sharing the fruit of their years or decades of concern, work and research with you if that is going to be your stance.

ceolaf,

I am not sure how my first line accused you of dishonesty. You suggested an honest debate and I proposed an honest discussion. I thought I was using honest the same way you were. Perhaps you were using “honest” to question my honest but I was not using it to question yours. I did not intent to imply that you were dishonest and am sorry that you took it that way.

I do not understand how you can say that I have not engaged your arguments. I have but you have failed to defend them. You say that I have not asked for any evidence and that if I want someone to cite studies I should let them know. I am sorry I did not think that was necessary. Usually when one proposes a debate it is taken for granted that presenting evidence is part of the debate/discussion process. This accusation hints at the problem we lay people have with the education experts. We are supposed to accept it just because they say it.

You did cite CREDO and NAEP. NAEP does not deal directly with charter schools. CREDO is a mixed bag for charter schools and there is nothing in the summary about whether charter schools negatively impact traditional charter schools which seems to be your main educational concern. So to answer your questions as to how much evidence am I a looking for that charter schools hurt TPS. Any evidence would be helpful especially since the RAND study concludes that they do not.

I don’t think I am factually challenge but perhaps I am in other ways. The disagreement is not over the facts about how long charter schools have been around but whether ten years should be considered a long or short period of time when evaluating charter schools. In NYS they have not been around long enough for a single student to go from K to graduation in a charter school. In addition, to lengthen of time is the number of charter schools in existence. I saw a report dated January 2009 that there are 115 charter schools in NYS. I don’t think that is enough to impact the educational landscape yet especially since most of the already small number of charters are just a couple of years old. It is not a fact issue but an opinion issue. You think ten years is long. I don’t. But you are the education expert so I am supposed to just accept your opinion and if I don’t accept your opinion I am factually challenged.

I realize the DC Opportunity program is a voucher program not a charter school. It is relevant because it is an example of educational choice, bureaucratic self-interest motivated opposition to change, and whether it is moral to provide some children with a better education even when all cannot be provided a better education.

It is a pretty big jump from saying that I am a choice advocate to saying that I believe that the government is incapable of providing solutions. Public charter schools are a government solution. Actually, charter schools seem to strike a nice balance between choice and governmental oversight. Advocating choice within a government system is neither dishonest nor disrespectful. Do you think that everyone who disagrees with you is disrespectful? How is it that I am ignoring evidence that contradicts my predetermined beliefs but you are not? You are ignoring the RAND study.

Again your concern about larger issues seem to drive your discussion and make it hard for you to discuss the issue with objective detachment. Here is your statement “Charters are also about radical decentralization and moving towards privatization.” Although I both doubt it would ever happen and am not convinced that it would be a good thing, I think you would oppose it even if it were shown to provide students with a superior education. It would be too big of a challenge to your preferred world. Thus, you are part of the let’s crush it before we can see if it works crowd because you don’t like what would happen if it did work.

What exactly is the traditional model as described by Tyack? My cursory reading of Tyack’s “One Best System,” is that it describes the historical transition from rural community based education to urban government run education. It was a transfer of control from the community to the government. It was a movement to make schools centralized, standardized, and more efficient, like factories of education. It was an attempt to create “one best system” run by experts and a board of directors. My take, and correct me if I am wrong, is the Tyack did not find that to be an especially good thing and many others did not either. Thus they launched a new era of reform to replace the “one best system” with . . . well a “reformed one best system” and that is what we have right now. Personally, I see charter schools as an attempt to return schools to the community rather than trying once again to improve the “reformed one best system” with a “new and improved one best system.”

I am happy with my view but not so tied to it that I am not open to changing my mind. Can you say the same? However, I am not ready to change my mind just because one person regardless of how many years or decades of concern and research they have tells me to because I can find someone else with just as much concern etc. that holds the opposite position. I try to base my conclusion on evidence which by your own admission you have “not offered a large amount of.” This is not to say that you cannot but that you have not. You may not feel that it is worth the trouble given that I am factually and I can accept that.

Jeff,

My first argument, and always my biggest, argument for how charter schools hurt the larger system, was “This charter issue, and those who perpetuate it, [demand] such so much reform attention and energy that we are not investigating or furthering the kinds of reforms that have even a theory of action for how they will improve children’s educational experiences.” You never responded to that. Subordinate to that point was the issue that charterness is not a pedagogical or instructional issue, that it is merely a governance issue. You didn’t respond to that, either. My second big point was lack of a credible theory for how charters will improve the wider system, and the shifting rationales offered each time another bogus theory is shows less than valid. My last point was that charters are — in part — a politically motivated attack, rather than fully an educational reform. You clearly did not address any of these. I don’t think that you really engaged with what I was saying on the others — in my view just offered countervailing arguments without engaging with mine. You’d see that differently of course.

I tried to follow your arguments, out of respect, rather than point out that you were missing that point. You can call that a failure to defend my arguments, but I was trying to engage with what you were saying. That was one-sided, though.

NAEP did a charter school study. It does deal directly with charters. Furthermore, you asked “What do charter schools do to the rest of the system?” Moreover, even if the NAEP just measures the rest of the system, isn’t that relevant to the topic of discussion?

You suggest that charter schools should not be evaluated for until more than ten years have passed — conveniently ignoring that fact that they’ve existed for more than 15 years in other states — but that violates the basic idea of the charter school model that they can be evaluated and closed relatively quickly. If you think that ten years is too long, I’m not the one your should be arguing with.

As for 115 charter schools not being enough, how many school districts in this country have more than 115 schools? How many students in this country go to school district with less than 115 schools? Sure, that’s only like 8% of all public schools in New York, but you asked about the impact on the larger system, in the present tense. Do you suggest that we wait to evaluate the impact until there are more? How many more? Why bother even to ask the question if you’re not going to any credence to evaluations made at this time? That seems disingenuous to me.

DC Opportunity Scholarships are a different topic. What does that program have to do with the impact of charter schools on the wider system?

You wrote, “You believe that a group of experts are wise enough to create the policies and implement the program that will result in high quality education for all. I don’t. The nature of large bureaucracies with multiple and competing interest make difficult if not impossible for well mean people to be wise enough or skilled enough to accomplish that.” And then you imply that you believe that government is capable of “providing solutions,” and then shift to “government oversight” (rather than government *provided*).

Are you aware that “radical decentralization” is a technical and objective term, not an emotional one?

When you suggested that that CREDO might also include an analysis that excluded first year students at charter schools, that was a methodological argument. Which analyses are done, how samples are selected, what criteria are used for inclusion/exclusion are are methodological/study design issues. That’s a methodological argument. Therefore, I did *not* accuse you of saying anything that you did not say.

I am not interested in in analysis that distort what is going on in charter schools, private schools or non-charter public schools. I am not curious about the results of any analytical strategy that distracts from what is really happening. I don’t really see why I should be.

Thank you for giving me that last word. I hope your wife tries to make her school something better than a factory and views her faculty as serious professionals committed to their work.

If Moskowitz is accurately quoted, then she has a poor command of English.  No one who cannot speakEnglish well should hold the job she does hold.

i just saw the documentary regarding Eva Markowitz and Charter schools. Now i’m not from new York, but what was very clear was the parents who protested against her charter probably couldn’t pass a 4th grade math class. The problem with education and poverty lies squarely with the parents. If they want control over their childrens education, then they should acquire one themselves. and fast. because they are the root cause of ignorance regarding poverty and race.

Go EVA.