Charter School Students Lagging
Charter school students nationally performed worse
than their regular public school counterparts on a key national assessment,
according to a report released Monday (August 16, 2004) by the American
Federation of Teachers.
The AFT said the Bush administration repeatedly delayed
public reporting of the charter school achievement results from the
2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in math and
reading. The results are not scheduled for release until after the November
election.
The AFT analysis of the NAEP charter school achievement
data (which is presented in the same way NAEP results are typically
reported) shows that charter school students mostly underperform and
sometimes score about as well as regular public school students. Researchers
at the AFT were able to unearth the NAEP charter school achievement
data by using the Web-based NAEP Data Tool.
In a news release, the AFT said repeated delays in
releasing NAEP charter school achievement data "are especially
disturbing" because one of the sanctions for regular public schools
that persistently fail to make "adequate yearly progress"
(AYP) under the strict new federal education law is restructuring as
a charter school. Many schools across the country are already in this
predicament presented by the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
(ESEA), which the Bush administration refers to as the "No Child
Left Behind" (NCLB) law.
"Being transformed into a charter school is being held out as
a solution for struggling public schools," said F. Howard Nelson,
lead author of the AFT report. "But these NAEP data reinforce years
of independent research that show charter schools do no better and often
underperform comparable, regular public schools."
According to a New York Times review, the AFT study data show 4th graders
attending charter schools perform about a half a year behind students
in other public schools in both reading and math. The Times quotes prominent
charter school advocate Chester Finn, president of the Thomas B. Fordham
Foundation, as saying, "The scores are low, dismally low."
Charters are self-governing public schools, often run by private companies,
and are free from many of the laws and rules that govern other public
schools. There are 134 charter schools operating in Wisconsin, according
to the Department of Public Instruction. Most are operated by school
districts, but some are under the jurisdiction of other public agencies,
which sometimes contract the operation out to a private company. For
example, the City of Milwaukee, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
and the UW-Parkside operate charter schools. (Read
about one teacher's experience at a privately run Milwaukee charter
school.)
WEAC supports charter schools as long as they are "instrumentalities"
of public school boards, employ teachers licensed by the Department
of Public Instruction, and are held accountable through testing. WEAC
opposes charter schools run by agencies other than public school boards.
The AFT sharply criticized the administration's delays in releasing
the charter school data from the NAEP results. NAEP is administered
by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which is part
of the U.S. Department of Education. The National Assessment Governing
Board (NAGB) sets the overall policy direction for NAEP. NAGB board
members direct NAEP policy and are appointed by the U.S. secretary of
education.
The AFT said the NAGB approved a plan from NCES to accompany the delayed
charter school data with an analysis that adjusts the results. "Not
only is this unprecedented in NAEP’s 35-year history, it also violates
a 1989 NAGB resolution prohibiting officially reporting NAEP with "adjusted"
or "predicted" results," the AFT said.
Posted August 18, 2004