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Mysterious pro-charter study supposedly to be announced Jan. 5

Caroline Grannan gives us a good look inside the tangled web of research and spin on charter schools. As to the New York City situation, Steve Koss observes:



At this point, I don't see why Klein doesn't just throw in the towel, declare all of the public school real estate up for grabs, and "auction" it off to whomever wants to run charter schools. That's their consistent message -- it's not about choice, it's just about privatizing and de-unionizing. Then they could close down the DOE entirely and just leave a skeleton crew to oversee buying and selling of the rights to run a 100% charter/privatized school system.




by Caroline Grannan

In an odd new salvo in the food fight over whether charter schools are superior to public schools, a Stanford organization that released a high-profile study [pdf file] last June showing charter schools performing worse than public schools is reportedly about to release a new report showing the opposite about New York City's charter schools.

Because New York is the nation's largest school district and Mayor Michael Bloomberg's school reform policies are so drastic and controversial, this report should get a lot of attention. But there are some strange things about it.

The organization CREDO -- the Center for Research on Education Outcomes -- released its nationwide study in June 2009, showing that (according to the press release on the study) "in the aggregate, students in charter schools [are] not faring as well as students in traditional public schools." The report "found that 17 percent of charter schools reported academic gains that were significantly better than traditional public schools, while 37 percent of charter schools showed gains that were worse than their traditional public school counterparts, with 46 percent of charter schools demonstrating no significant difference."

The study was especially significant because CREDO is part of the Hoover Institution, a so-called "think tank" at Stanford University that is a strong promoter of "free-market solutions" in education, including charter schools and vouchers. So when the CREDO study showed poor results for charters, that must have stung badly. .

Then in August 2009, Stanford professor and longtime charter/privatization advocate Caroline Hoxby published a memo challenging the CREDO study, [pdf file] claiming that a "serious statistical mistake" in CREDO's work led to an inaccurate "negative bias in its estimate of how charter schools affect achievement." CREDO hit back with an October 2009 response [pdf file] calling Hoxby's memo "misleading" and "riddled with serious errors."

Meanwhile, Hoxby was producing her own report, released in September 2009, claiming that students New York City's charter schools performed better on exams that students who had entered enrollment lotteries for those charter schools but had not gotten into the charters.

So against this backdrop, it's weird that a press release was issued New Year's Day announcing that CREDO has now completed a study of New York City charter schools, showing that those schools "are demonstrating significantly better results for their students in reading and in math than their traditional public school counterparts."

The press release announces that CREDO Director Macke Raymond will hold a conference call to announce the findings of the new study on Tuesday, Jan. 5 (11:30 a.m. EST). Odd things about the press release are that it was issued on New Year's Day, a highly unusual day to be doing such business as issuing announcements on education policy research; and that the link in the press release goes to CREDO's page on the charter-deflating June study and the subsequent debate with Hoxby.

It's also news to me that CREDO's PR is done by Sacramento PR/lobbying firm Larson Communications, which is devoted entirely to promoting charter schools and other "free market solutions" in education. (Larson Communications is run by Gary Larson, longtime spokesman for the California Charter Schools Association and its precursor, the California Network of Educational Charters, and the force who promoted the cause of controversial, now-failed for-profit Edison Schools Inc. in Edison's battle with the San Francisco school district in 2001.) I have to say it's interesting that Larson Communications had to do the media outreach on the June study that reflected so poorly on charter schools.

I can only find the Jan. 1 Larson Communications press release reproduced in the Education Notes Online blog out of New York and covered in charter advocate Joanne Jacobs' blog.

It's Saturday evening of a holiday weekend, meaning I can't reach Larson Communications to learn more. Because this is new media, I'm posting what I know and will provide updates as I learn more.

You have to wonder how politicized the situation is when CREDO is funded through the charter-promoting Hoover Institution and its 2009 work so badly tarnished the idol.

— Caroline Grannan
Examiner.com
2009-01-02
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-356-SF-Education-Examiner~y2010m1d2-Mysterious-procharter-study-supposedly-to-be-announced-Jan-5

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