Checking up on Charters

Abstract

CAN YOU remember when single piece of educational research led to full-page ad in the New York Times? Me neither. But that is what happened in August 2004. A chronicle follows. It would be kind to say that the U.S. Department of Education was dawdling in its analysis of the data on charter schools that were collected by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). ED collected the data with the regular NAEP assessment in 2003 and placed the regular data on its website in the fall of 2003. American Federation of Teachers found the charter school data, though, and analyzed them. New York Times reported the AFT's findings in front-page story on 17 August 2004. Charter schools did not come off well when compared to regular public schools, even when the analysis controlled for family income and location. There were no ethnic differences between the student populations of the regular public schools and the charters, but the white/minority achievement gap was large in charters it was in regular public schools. To say that the appearance of this article caused the Right to go ballistic is to practice understatement. August 18 saw an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal titled Dog Eats AFT's Homework, by Harvard's William Howell, Paul Peterson, and Martin West. Secretary of Education Rod Paige inveigled the Times to do another article and allow him to defend charters. Newsday's editorial page said that the jury was still out on charters. op-ed page of the Chicago Tribune said that the AFT's findings were as new lava lamp, revelatory an old sock, and significant belch (thereby indicating need for remedial simile instruction). editorial in the Times claimed that the findings were bad news for No Child Left Behind because the low performance of charters meant that it made no sense for chronically failing public schools to convert to charter status. On August 19, the Rev. Floyd Flake defended charters in New York Times op-ed. (In its credit line, the Times failed to point out that Flake is the president of the Charter Schools Division of Edison Schools, Inc.) In his New York Post op-ed, Defaming Charters, Chester Finn, Jr., labeled the analysis a mischief-bearing grenade, hand delivered by the charter-hating American Federation of Teachers. (Historical note: the Washington Times once called Finn himself bomb-thrower.) Finn's piece overlooked the fact that, without longtime AFT President Albert Shanker's backing of charters, there probably wouldn't be any. Shanker later became disillusioned and saw charters frivolous and divisive. Also on August 19, Jay Greene, Manhattan Institute fellow, published an op-ed in the New York Sun; the Center for Education Reform's Jeanne Allen appeared on NPR's Tavis Smiley Show; and ED's Nina Shokraii Rees showed up on The News- Hour with Jim Lehrer. But about that ad. It appeared on August 25, its $125,000 cost borne by Allen and her Center for Education Reform. ad, signed by 31 professors, scolded the AFT for its analysis and the New York Times for reporting the story. ad said, in part, The study in question does not meet current professional research It then described the standards that the AFT and the Times had violated. There is nothing wrong with those standards except that they constitute massive exercise in hypocrisy, because many of the signatories violate them regularly. signatories guilty of such violations include Paul Peterson and his group at Harvard; Caroline Hoxby, whose work was sharply criticized by Laurence Mishel in American Prospect; Howard Fuller, propagandist whose work does not approach being research; and Jay Greene, all of whose seven extant working papers from the Manhattan Institute violate one or more of the listed standards. ad appeared few weeks later in Education Week, minus two signers who told me they didn't know what they were getting into. …