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