Uncomfortable Truths about Charter Schools

I was recently accused, at a public meeting, of having an “intense hatred” of charter schools. I do not. Life is too short to harbor such feelings about anything or anyone.

But I am annoyed and aggravated by the charter school movement in Michigan and by the misinformation spread by its proponents. I have these feelings because I believe deeply in the importance of public schools to the success of the American experiment in representative democracy. Free education is the key to opportunity and social mobility, and an educated citizenry is the best support for an effective elected government. Yet the charter school movement is undermining both financial and public support that public schools need to adapt to and to thrive in the 21st Century. It is also resegregating our schools by race, socioeconomic status, and disability.

Oh, sure, charter academies are classified as public schools, and they do receive public funding. But they do not serve the same students. When my state senator asserts that charters “do a better job for less money,” I strongly object. First, are they doing the same job? Second, do they really do a “better job”? Finally, do they have significantly less money to work with?

I will answer these questions in local terms, where I have rich data collected by the state. There are two* charter academies located within the Van Buren Public Schools boundaries: Keystone and Achieve.

Doing the same job? A different population

I assert that they are not doing the same job: (1) they do not serve students from pre-K through twelfth grade; (2) they serve a much lower percentage of economically disadvantaged children, and (3) they serve a vastly lower proportion of special-needs children.

Demographic data released [Feb 2013] on the Fall 2012 MEAP tests lets me demonstrate that. Of students in grades 3–8 in Van Buren Public Schools, 56% are economically disadvantaged and 10.6% have disabilities. Of students in grades 3–8 at Keystone Academy, 31% are economically disadvantaged and less than 3.9% have disabilities. Of students in grades 3–8 at Achieve Charter Academy, less than 13.3% are economically disadvantaged and less than 5.2% have disabilities. I use the qualifier “less than” because, for many grade levels, only “<10” was given (meaning that no statistically valid percentage could be calculated). In my calculations, I assumed the value of “9” for “<10,” although the actual numbers were certainly lower, based upon the numbers for other grade levels. The proportion of students served by charters who are economically disadvantaged and who have disabilities is, therefore, not just significantly lower than in VBPS, but those percentages are also inflated by the assumption that “<10” equals nine.

Why do differences in student population matter? Because all three categories of students under-served by charter schools are more expensive to educate.

Special education students, for example, typically cost much more to educate than per-pupil and special-education funding amounts to; the difference comes from all the other children’s per-pupil funding. They are also, by state law, educated through age 26, so the cost burden on districts will be greater than on K–8 charters.

Economically disadvantaged students, as a group, arrive at school less prepared, have less stability and support in their home lives, and are more likely to be distracted or handicapped by disruptions and traumas. Simply put, they need more intensive and individualized help than students who enjoy more advantages, and so they cost more to educate to their potential. As with special education students, there is additional funding available for “at risk” students, generally based upon poverty measures, but it does not cover the additional costs — which must come from the per-pupil funding for all other students.

Secondary students, with their science labs, career-tech classes, band and other electives, and extensive athletic programs, cost more to educate than elementary students; the difference comes from elementary per-pupil funding. This is why there are so few charter high schools — not as much profit to be made.

Doing a better job? How to evaluate results

It can be very difficult to fairly evaluate the results forming the basis of what we consider a “good job.” Should we use graduation rate or college attendance and completion rates as measures of success? No. These cannot be measured for K–8 charter schools. How about state achievement test (MEAP) scores? That is problematic, as special education students (over-represented in VBPS) cannot be expected to perform as well as students without disabilities. And there is no characteristic more highly correlated with such scores than socioeconomic status so, again, it is unfair to compare VBPS students as a group with charter school groups which have just one-quarter or half as many economically disadvantaged students.

How about growth from year to year for each cohort? That would make some sense, in that it does not penalize or reward based upon differences in starting place. By that, I mean that it would compare rates of progress, even if some student populations are still harder to educate than others. Student growth should also be our primary objective, which is why state law now ties teacher and administrator evaluation to it. The best measure of student growth would involve valid testing of the same students at the beginning and at the end of a school year, since the cohort does not change as much during the year as it does from one year to the next. We have only recently invested in such testing (using NWEA), but it will be interesting to follow the results as this year concludes.

The MEAP tests, given in the fall, presumably test what students learned the previous year. There is good research data showing, however, that advantaged children continue to learn during the summer, while disadvantaged children lose ground over that time. So, again, tests administered in the fall will show better results for charter schools with many fewer disadvantaged students. The real gold standard would be tests aligned with the Common Core Curriculum, as we phase that in, that will allow national as well as state and local comparisons of progress.

For the past two years, we have administered tests from ACT (EXPLORE in grades 8 and 9 and PLAN in grade 10) that are nationally normed and predictive of how well students will do on the actual ACT test as 11th graders. While such data do not exist for K–8 charters, they can show conclusively what kind of job VBPS is doing in fostering student learning. This year’s testing shows edifying growth for both cohorts.

Our students may have started behind the national average, but they are close to or over it now and — more importantly — their growth rate has far exceeded the national rate in every subject area. I believe this is strong evidence that VBPS is doing a good job. I would love to see similar valid data for the charter academies.

Doing it with less? How finances compare

What revenue do you compare? Different comparisons can be made, often depending upon the politics of those doing the comparison. But there is no single, apples-to-apples comparison we can all agree is fair, either.

Should we compare General Fund revenue, the “operating” budget for schools and districts? These contain year-to-year anomalies that can distort data. For example, VBPS must take a several-million-dollar loan every spring, since the per-pupil Foundation Allowance monies from the state are doled out to suit the state’s cash-flow needs, not ours. Thirty-three percent of those funds come to us after school is out for the summer, and 22 percent arrive after our fiscal year ends on June 30. So, more than ten percent of General Fund revenues may be borrowed funds with a liability, including interest, that is even greater. Similarly, we borrow to finance new bus fleets. In the year we take out such a loan, our General Fund will show a notably large increase that does not represent actual extra money for educational purposes. In both such cases, it looks as if we have more money to work with than we do; in fact, we will owe more than we have borrowed.

Some people want to compare just state and local revenue totals, but not a total containing federal revenue. This is because the bulk of federal revenue will be extra funding for English language–learning students, those with disabilities, and those considered at risk due to economic disadvantage. While those grants do constitute extra revenue related to extra educational challenges, they do not come close to covering the additional expenditures necessary to deal adequately with those challenges. Most charter schools have much lower percentages of students in those categories and so receive less federal funding — but they also have a correspondingly smaller burden on their expenditures.

Charter school proponents will be quick to note that they are not able to bond for facilities, which is true. This means that they must pay for their buildings out of their per-pupil operating funds. Most deal with this expense by leasing a building erected by a charter system operator, such as National Heritage Academies. This lease money is both a significant cost to the charter academies and a significant profit center for some operators. (Eighty percent of Michigan's charters are for-profit; the national rate is 35 percent. And just wait until all the newly authorized on-line schools get started next fall!)

Charters also pay a small percentage (3%) of their revenue to the organization that authorized their charter, which is intended to cover some costs of supervision and evaluation by that body.

But there are also large expenses that charters do NOT have:

• Retirement. How huge this is cannot be overstated! Traditional public school employees are, by law, participants in the Michigan Public School Employees Retirement System (MPSERS). Charter employees are not required to participate in MPSERS, and almost none of them do. In a sense, charters have the same economic advantage as transplant auto manufacturers had over the Big Three: General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler had a legacy of retirees stretching back to the 1940s whose pensions and health care were supported by current operations. Similarly, traditional public schools pay about 25 percent of payroll (and rising every year) to support current retirees in the system; nearly all charter schools avoid this significant surcharge. For every employee who works enough hours to qualify for benefits — whether an administrator, teacher, custodian, secretary, bus driver, paraprofessional, or cook — traditional public school districts pay more than $25 for every $100 they earn into MPSERS. This surcharge consumed an average of $1305 per pupil in FY2012.

And the State Senate’s budget proposal for the 2013–14 school year would put increased funding into the per-pupil Foundation Allowance rather than the MPSERS contribution proposed by the Governor. That means charter schools would get a real revenue increase, but public schools would have that “increase” more than eaten up by a raised MPSERS contribution rate. Instead of ameliorating the “unlevel playing field” related to MPSERS, the Senate’s proposal would make it significantly worse.

• Transportation. This is a huge expense in for VBPS, the second largest district in Wayne County (only Detroit is larger); it comes from every child’s per-pupil funding. Charter schools are not required or expected to provide transportation, and districts are not legally allowed to charge for it.

• As noted above, traditional public schools have significantly higher percentages of high school, special education, English language–learning, and economically disadvantaged (including homeless) students than do charter academies. The extra, unreimbursed costs of educating these groups is taken from the per-pupil funding of all other students.

The bottom line is that I have seen no convincing data to show that charter schools have less money to spend in the classroom.

One other difference

While this does not have financial ramifications, I think it important to recognize that charters are resegregating our public schools by race. When I moved to Michigan in 1978, I was startled to discover how racially segregated its communities were. In looking for a place to settle, I deliberately chose the Belleville area because it was both racially and economically integrated, and I wanted that environment for my children. But the same MEAP demographic data cited above also shows racial disparities. I cannot get demographic data for the district’s population but have assembled it for the communities which comprise VBPS.

It is striking how much the percentages of Asian, black, and white students vary from one school system to another and compared to the overall community. These large variations should not exist, and I question whether they do not undermine the mission of public schooling to offer equal educational opportunity.

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“Choice” is described as the panacea for whatever ails public education, when there is absolutely no evidence that choice alone guarantees or even fosters better results. Choice leads to demonizing of unionized teachers and denigration of traditional public schools — after all, choices are framed in terms of relative merits, so the new choice must portray itself as better than the old ones. Thus, traditional public schools that serve increasingly needy students and reach for ever higher performance bars are portrayed as failing, because that serves the narrative that we must have charter schools to rescue children from being trapped within them. Painting traditional public schools as “failing” and their teachers as incompetent weakens community pride and support while demoralizing staff.

This view of our schools and teachers is unwarranted. My children each spent 13 years in VBPS; they also attended college on merit scholarships, earned engineering graduate degrees, and are gainfully employed and contributing to society. Our schools and teachers did very well by them — and I believe those schools and teachers are both significantly better now. They are better despite the fact that state support for traditional public schools has been cut dramatically in recent years, with no relief in sight. So, yes, I get a little hot under the collar when it is alleged, despite evidence to the contrary, that “charter schools do a better job with less money.”

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* This blog entry has been edited to remove references to a third charter school that is no longer located within VBPS boundaries.

How much do YOU know about schools and education?

Diane Ravitch, Research Professor of Education at New York University, Assistant Secretary of Education during the first Bush administration, and author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System, recently wrote an amazingly succinct summary of the state of the national debate about education, entitled "Do Politicians Know Anything About Schools and Education? Anything?" The ironic tone was fully intended. Because it is so inclusive of the actual, research-supported facts relevant to the debate, it deserves to be spread far and wide. She asks pertinent, if leading, questions to make us all think and rethink our positions. Because she summarizes, and her brief answers may not be believed, I will expand upon them.

Charter Schools. Ravitch asks, “Are you aware that studies consistently show that charter schools don’t get better results than regular public schools? ... That some charter schools get high test scores, many more get low scores, but most are no different from regular public schools?”

She is absolutely correct about the research. Pro- and anti-charter school folks will each cite their favored results, often from research sponsored or funded by one side, but the studies with the best research designs, which are most supportive of broader conclusions, show exactly the proportion of “results achievement” Ravitch summarizes. It is vitally important, in drawing conclusions about relative performance, to control for differences in student populations.

Charter schools do not serve the same population as traditional public schools; a larger proportion of high-needs students is left behind. Demographic data released a few days ago on the Fall 2011 MEAP tests lets me demonstrate that. Of students in grades 3–8 in Van Buren Public Schools, 54% are white, 54% are economically disadvantaged, and 9.4% have disabilities. Of students in grades 3–8 at Keystone Academy (within the borders of VBPS), 75% are white, 27.5% are economically disadvantaged, and 1.6% have disabilities. This academy serves only half as many poor children and very few children with disabilities. The charter movement is re-segregating our public schools. Remember this the next time a politician with an agenda tells you that charter schools do better with less money.

Merit Pay for Teachers Based on Test Scores. “Are you aware that merit pay has been tried in the schools again and again since the 1920s and it has never worked? Are you aware of the exhaustive study of merit pay in the Nashville schools, conducted by the National Center for Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt, which found that a bonus of $15,000 per teacher for higher test scores made no difference?”

Again, Ravitch is precisely correct. And the Vanderbilt study was carefully designed to test exactly the question of whether, with important variables controlled for, student achievement would rise with significant pay-for-performance teacher incentives. It did not. Human motivation is just not that simple. Daniel Pink elaborates on why this is so in his book, Drive. As he noted in a Washington Post interview last week, merit pay for teachers just doesn't work.

“Are you aware that there is a large body of research by testing experts warning that it is wrong to judge teacher quality by student test scores? Are you aware that these measures are considered inaccurate and unstable, that a teacher may be labeled effective one year, then ineffective the next one? Are you aware that these measures may be strongly influenced by the composition of a teacher's classroom, over which she or he has no control? Do you think there is a long line of excellent teachers waiting to replace those who are (in many cases, wrongly) fired?”

She's got the evidence on every count above. Follow her links and see for yourself. The demoralization of current teachers is obvious; the effect on the prospective teacher pool is even more worrying. Top-quality potential teachers have many more attractive fields to go into, in terms of prestige, remuneration, working conditions, security, and control over the factors upon which their performance will be judged. The sharp increase in debt for new graduates exacerbates the discouraging effect of poor job security.

Vouchers. “Are you aware that Milwaukee has had vouchers for low-income students since 1990, and now state scores in Wisconsin show that low-income students in voucher schools get no better test scores than low-income students in the Milwaukee public schools? Are you aware that the federal test (the National Assessment of Educational Progress) shows that — after 21 years of vouchers in Milwaukee — black students in the Milwaukee public schools score on par with black students in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana?”

This is the first time the voucher schools have been required to use the same state test as public schools. The voucher students performed worse in both reading and math; controlling for economic disadvantage, low-income voucher students performed about the same as those in public schools. Gov. Scott Walker's response is to propose that voucher kids not have to take that test anymore.

Internet Schools. “Does it concern you that cyber charters and virtual academies make millions for their sponsors yet get terrible results for their students?”

The internet schools do, indeed, have miserable track records. Perhaps the best evidence (in terms of numbers and number of years to show trends) comes from Colorado. An analysis shows that half the thousands of on-line students there leave the virtual schools within a year, often further behind academically than when they started. Colorado’s annual report found that “achievement of online students consistently lags behind those of non-online students, even after controlling for grade levels and various student characteristics,” including poverty, English language ability, and special education status. The limited evidence in Michigan is also not encouraging. Students at the Westwood Cyber High School in Wayne County achieved an ACT composite score of 15.6 (of a possible 36) in 2010 and 16.1 in 2011.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), funded by major corporations and conservative foundations, drafts model bills for state legislatures. The “Private Chair” of ALEC’s Education Task Force is Mickey Revenaugh; he is co-founder and Senior Vice President of Connections Academy — “a leading national provider of virtual public school curriculum, technology and school management services,” which stands to make millions from virtual schools. I wonder where Senator Colbeck got the wording for his bill to allow a huge expansion in virtual schools?

Poverty and How We Rank Internationally. “Did you know that American schools where less than 10% of the students were poor scored above those of Finland, Japan and Korea in the last international assessment? Did you know that American schools where 25% of the students were poor scored the same as the international leaders Finland, Japan and Korea? Did you know that the U.S. is #1 among advanced nations in child poverty? ... Did you know that family income is the single most reliable predictor of student test scores? ... Affluence helps — children in affluent homes have educated parents, more books in the home, more vocabulary spoken around them, better medical care, more access to travel and libraries, more economic security — as compared to students who live in poverty, who are more likely to have poor medical care, poor nutrition, uneducated parents, more instability in their lives. Do you think these things matter?”

The disparity in incomes in the U.S. has been growing exponentially. A full third of all income growth over the past 20 years has gone to the top tenth of one percent. Meanwhile, middle-class wages have stagnated or fallen. Sharply rising child poverty is a frightening correlate to that inequality. All you need do is note the startling change in VBPS demographics in recent years to see the trend. And of course that matters when it comes to academic achievement.

The results are documented in our national results on the international PISA achievement tests. National Association for Secondary School Principals researchers disaggregated the 2010 results by income and issued a report entitled “PISA: It’s Poverty Not Stupid.” When comparing apples to apples — other nations and American schools with equally low poverty rates — our students were first in the world.

Solutions that Aren't. “Do you know of any high-performing nation in the world that got that way by privatizing public schools, closing those with low test scores, and firing teachers? The answer: none.” Nations with the best achievement records have well-trained teachers who enjoy high pay, respect, and prestige. The teachers in the best-performing nations mostly have strong unions, as well. Yet self-styled “reformer” governors all over the country seem determined to destroy unions, especially the teachers unions that did not support their election. One might be justified in questioning their motives, as well as their willingness and ability to base important decisions on real evidence.

Should schools be run more like a business?

You cannot answer that until you define your terms. Before the recent near-collapse of our economy, business did have some sort of cachet that implied efficiency and productivity, likely wrought due to competition. Now, of course, we see the seamy underbelly of what competition and loose oversight can produce: fraud, greed, immoral exploitation, no adherence whatsoever to any kind of social contract.

But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that we are talking about business ideals being applied to public education. Would that work?

My answer would be: only to a point. There are things educators can (and have) learned from business gurus. For example, that there is no perfect model for any operation; rather, efforts should be made to foster continuous improvement. Or, that true leadership helps us face complicated and difficult problems, rather than imposing a simple and/or painless “solution.” Or that real change requires us to internalize our commitment to it so that we don’t slide back into old ways. Or that resistance to change is normal and natural, but it should be dealt with through collaboration and teamwork rather than by bulldozing through or over it. So, yes, “acting like a business” can be good for schools.

But I also believe that the unstated premise behind much mandated “school reform” is that schools should be run like factories. The factory model assumes that all we have to do is fix upon the perfect content (curriculum) and process (teaching) in order to produce perfect, identical products every time. So, if we aren’t getting the right outcomes, it must be because those doltish teachers are messing up the content and process. The answer is ever more detailed prescriptions with, ideally, every teacher teaching the same material the same way on the same day in each grade.

But, folks, any successful manufacturer prizes quality control that begins with accepting only standardized raw materials. In public schools, our suppliers are not sending us uniform raw materials! The children who enter our doors start from different places, they learn differently, they have different advantages and handicaps — so how can this system work? The answer is more individualization, not more regimentation.

A major component of reform efforts like No Child Left Behind is to mandate “highly qualified teachers.” But qualification tends to mean “credential,” because it is so hard to quantify what makes a great teacher. I’d prefer to spend a lot more effort on the process itself. We align and articulate and define and refine our curriculum, but we don’t spend enough time on ways to impart it. Many teachers never see that, just because they give the perfect lecture, that doesn’t mean every- or even anybody “got it.”

The process includes learning as well as teaching — and we all do that differently. In order to get the teaching-learning job done, we have to realize that people often learn better by doing than from lectures; that some people can demonstrate what they know in essays but not on multiple-choice exams; that if we truly prize synthesis of ideas, then maybe we ought to reward that in our assessment systems. Speaking from personal experience (I was a great memorizer!), many of us who did get it long enough to spit something back on a test never really understood or retained it. Valid assessment should indicate whether the student has gained true understanding and the ability to apply knowledge in various contexts.

So, the standardized processes of efficient manufacturing have no place in schooling. Instead of moving raw materials inexorably down a single production line, education should work more like a Choose Your Own Adventure book — branching off in many ways according to individual strengths, weaknesses, and interests.

Nor, if you value the success of every student, can cost-benefit ratios be your standard for how much to spend on each child. Some need more help than others, even if they will never be rocket scientists or particle physicists. Do we value their potential contribution to society or not?

<>And then there is the whole issue of whether or not competition and market discipline will bring out the best in schools and teachers, as it purports to do in the business world. That is the impetus behind the charter school movement — the notion that, if parents can vote with their feet, all schools will improve. In fact, public schools in Michigan are scrambling to market themselves as neighboring districts and charters lure away their students and funding. I’m not sure whether the results are what people were hoping for and, certainly, the playing field is never level.

Competition, and the greed that it motivates, can also inspire fraud and abuse, just as it did on Wall Street. Last week, for example, a U.S. Attorney subpoenaed officials from 13 Philadelphia charter schools in an investigation of various kinds of questionable financial dealings. At minimum, charters should be required to have annual public audits, just as public schools do. Oversight of public funds is important to our collective faith in government.

It is also, dismayingly, true that charter schools appear to be resegregating America — by race, religion, gender, and socioeconomic status. A February 2010 report issued by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, “Choice Without Equity: Charter School Segregation and the Need for Civil Rights Standards,” examined and analyzed federal data and charter schools in 40 states and Washington, DC, finding that “charter schools continue to stratify students by race, class, and possibly language, and are more racially isolated than traditional public schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan area in the country.” Is that kind of resegregation good for society — or for individual children?

We must pay attention to side effects and collateral damage when we radically change an institution (public education) that is so vital to our democracy.