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NCSL Education Committee Votes to Reject Obama Charter School/Stimuls Dollars Mandate
What lawmakers took away from the discussion was that charters haven't performed and states shouldn't be forced by the federal government to implement them.
If a medicine were discovered that helps 17 percent of people, doesn’t do anything for 46 percent and hurts 37 percent, would the Food and Drug Administration approve and encourage that medicine for all?
by Harvey Kronberg
Lawmakers at the National Conference of State Legislatures have passed a committee resolution that rejects Education Secretary Arne Duncan's call to lift the cap on charter schools as a condition of additional stimulus funding.
The resolution, which passed out of a committee luncheon yesterday with little discussion, extensively cited the recent CREDO report out of Stanford University that offered a mixed review of current charter schools in 16 states, including Texas.
Texas has one of the largest charter school networks in the country and also some of the weakest laws in the nation governing charters, according to researchers. The result? The performance of charters in Texas echo researcher Frederick Hess’ assessment of charter schools across the country: Some charters are competitive with the best schools in the country, but the vast majority of charters created in the last two decades are largely undifferentiated from district schools.
“There is a difference between charter schools and charter schooling,” Hess said in his remarks to the NCSL Education Committee. Hess is with the American Enterprise Institute out of Washington, DC. “Of the charter schools that have opened up, for the most part, most of them don’t look any different than any other school. They staff in the same way, they still use people who do the job of teacher the way we defined it a century ago. Most still use some form of a school leader.”
Charter schools that succeed use elbow grease and talent and focus on discipline, hardly a radical breakthrough in schooling, Hess said. Hess estimated no more than 500 of the 4,000 charter schools in the country are “really doing stuff well.” On the other hand, those charters that do charter schooling well are as good as the best schools in the country, Hess said.
What lawmakers took away from the discussion was that charters haven't performed and states shouldn't be forced by the federal government to implement them. The NCSL resolution noted CREDO's findings that 17 percent of the charter schools reviewed by CREDO did better than their counterparts, with 37 percent doing worse and 47 percent about the same as their counterparts.
"The Department of Education’s emphasis on charter schools as a means to improve struggling schools is a regulatory step that goes beyond the legislative intent of Congress," lawmakers wrote in the resolution.
"This action could have the effect of usurping state chartering authority and preempting state constitutions. It is also beyond the limits of the language creating the Department, but for what end? If a medicine were discovered that helps 17 percent of people, doesn’t do anything for 46 percent and hurts 37 percent, would the Food and Drug Administration approve and encourage that medicine for all?"
Of course, that interpretation puts a particular slant on the findings of the CREDO study that weren’t necessarily shared by Hess and Columbia University Professor Luis Huerta, both of whom have studied charter schools extensively.
Lawmakers were stuck on the issue of preemption. The researchers' message was more subtle: Charter schools haven't gone far enough to differentiate themselves from traditional instruction. And, given that, public schools should take advantage of using those strategies that have worked for charters, such as extended school days.
Huerta noted a number of facts he has uncovered in his studies: Charters typically are funded 10 to 15 percent less than traditional schools. Costs that benefit from economies of scale, such as liability insurance, have high price tags for charters. As opposed to individuals, it has been private non-profit and for-profit companies that have accounted for almost all of the new charters in states like California.
"California lifted its cap, and in the last two years, 18 schools have been approved for charters," Huerta said. "Each one of those came in with a partner. In some ways, it's an escape valve to have these organizations involved, because authorizers see these partners as additional funding. Policy makers are more inclined to charter these type of schools."
It's only been in the last five years that enough data has been available to gauge the impact of various charter school models, both individually and in their impact on surrounding traditional schools. Huerta urged the policy makers in the room to make more of an effort on collect a broad range of data so researchers have the data sets available to determine what elements of charter schools work.
Even the federal government has failed to properly release charter data. Back in 2006, the Department of Education was supposed to release a second round of data on school-level indicators on school choice and its effect on education. The plug was pulled at the last minute, saying the indicators could not be released.
"That data exists, but it was never formatted and never made available," Huerta said. "It would have provided us with a second wave of production of school-level indicators around the issues of choice. That's why data is important."
The lesson for policy makers out of current research is that charter schools are not the silver bullet, Huerta said. It's simply one more type of reform that is part of the overall student achievement puzzle. He urged lawmakers to be better consumers of research, and acknowledged that researchers need to become better disseminators of their findings on charter schools.
The benefit of the charter school model is that it can, in the right circumstances, drive dramatic and focused achievement, Hess said. A school district relies on a random draw of people in the community to hire who may or may not agree on the best way to drive student achievement. School staffs are not constituted that way.
A charter school, on the other hand, is created around a shared vision, Hess said. In the Philadelphia school district, Superintendent Arlene Ackerman must track 20 different high school models intent on reform. She has to coach and encourage teachers to buy into the system. In a charter school, it’s one leader, one mission and one goal. It goes where traditional schools can't go.
"That's what a charter school lets us do," Hess said. "It allows us to move beyond the governance structure of the 1800s."
The charter school resolution will go to the full NCSL house of delegates for approval.
— Harvey Kronberg
2009-07-22
http://www.quorumreport.com/
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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