The article below has created quite a commotion because the author is a respected journalist. However, Ms. Schemo seems to have slipped up on her reporting of charter schools...is she in the grips of teacher-union-fever, a fatal disease for journalists?

CHARTER SCHOOLS TRAIL IN RESULTS, U.S. DATA REVEALS
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO, NY TIMES, August 17, 2004

WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 -- The first national comparison of test scores among children in charter schools and regular public schools shows charter school students often doing worse than comparable students in regular public schools.
The findings, buried in mountains of data the Education Department released without public announcement, dealt a blow to supporters of the charter school movement, including the Bush administration.

The data shows fourth graders attending charter schools performing about half a year behind students in other public schools in both reading and math. Put another way, only 25 percent of the fourth graders attending charters were proficient in reading and math, against 30 percent who were proficient in reading, and 32 percent in math, at traditional public schools.

Because charter schools are concentrated in cities, often in poor neighborhoods, the researchers also compared urban charters to traditional schools in cities. They looked at low-income children in both settings, and broke down the results by race and ethnicity as well. In virtually all instances, the charter students did worse than their counterparts in regular public schools.

Charters are expected to grow exponentially under the new federal education law, No Child Left Behind, which holds out conversion to charter schools as one solution for chronically failing traditional schools.

''The scores are low, dismayingly low,'' said Chester E. Finn Jr., a supporter of charters and president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, who was among those who asked the administration to do the comparison.

Mr. Finn, an assistant secretary of education in the Reagan administration, said the quality of charter schools across the country varied widely, and he predicted that the results would make those overseeing charters demand more in the way of performance.

''A little more tough love is needed for these schools,'' Mr. Finn said. ''Somebody needs to be watching over their shoulders.''

Mr. Finn and other backers of charter schools contended, however, that the findings should be considered as ''baseline data,'' and could reflect the predominance of children in these schools who turned to charters after having had severe problems at their neighborhood schools.

The results, based on the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly known as the nation's report card, were unearthed from online data by researchers at the American Federation of Teachers, which provided them to The New York Times. The organization has historically supported charter schools but has produced research in recent years raising doubts about the expansion of charter schools.

Charters are self-governing public schools, often run by private companies, which operate outside the authority of local school boards, and have greater flexibility than traditional public schools in areas of policy, hiring and teaching techniques.

Federal officials said they did not intend to hide the performance of charter schools, and denied any political motivation for failing to publicly disclose that the data were available. ''I guess that was poor publicity on our part,'' said Robert Lerner, the federal commissioner for education statistics. Mr. Lerner said further analysis was needed to put the data in its proper context.

But others were skeptical, saying the results proved that such schools were not a cure-all. ''There's just a huge distance between the sunny claims of the charter school advocates and the reality,'' said Bella Rosenberg, an special assistant to the president of the American Federation of Teachers. ''There's a very strong accountability issue here.''

Of the nation's 88,000 public schools, 3,000 are charters, educating more than 600,000 students. But their ranks are expected to grow as No Child Left Behind identifies thousands of schools for possible closing because of poor test scores.

Once hailed as a kind of free-market solution offering parents an escape from moribund public schools, elements of the charter school movement have prompted growing concern in recent years. Around the country, more than 80 charter schools were forced to close, largely because of questionable financial dealings and poor performance, said Luis Huerta, a professor at Columbia University Teachers College. In California, the state's largest charter school operator has just announced the closing of at least 60 campuses, The Los Angeles Times reported on Monday, stranding 10,000 children just weeks before the start of the school year.

The math and reading tests were given to a nationally representative sample of about 6,000 fourth graders at 167 charter schools in February 2003. Some 3,200 eighth graders at charter schools also took the exams, an insufficient number to make national comparisons.

The results are not out of line with earlier local and state studies of charter school performance, which generally have shown charters doing no better than traditional public schools. But they offered the first nationally representative comparison of children attending both types of schools, and are expected influence public debate.

Amy Stuart Wells, a sociology professor at Columbia University Teachers College, called the new data ''really, really important.''

''It confirms what a lot of people who study charter schools have been worried about,'' she said. ''There is a lack of accountability. They're really uneven in terms of quality.''

Detractors have historically accused charters of skimming the best students, those whose parents are most committed, from the poorest schools. But supporters of charter schools said the data confirmed earlier research suggesting that charters take on children who were already performing below average. ''We're doing so much to help kids that are so much farther behind, and who typically weren't even continuing in school,'' said Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform, in Washington, which represents charter schools. She said the results reflect only ''a point in time,'' and said nothing about the progress of students in charter schools.

That, she said, could be measured only by tracking the performance of charters in future tests. For the moment, however, the National Assessment Governing Board has no plans to survey charters again.

One previous study, however, suggests that tracking students over time might present findings more favorable to the charter movement. Tom Loveless, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, who conducted a two-year study of 569 charter schools in 10 states found that while charter school students typically score lower on state tests, over time they progress at faster rates than students in traditional public schools.

The new test scores on charter schools went online last November, along with state-by-state results from the national assessment. Though other results were announced at a news conference, with a report highlighting the findings, federal officials never mentioned that the charter school data were publicly available.

Researchers at the American Federation of Teachers were able to gain access to the scores from the national assessment's Web site only indirectly: by gathering results based on how schools identified themselves in response to a question.

In a significant departure from earlier releases of test scores, Mr. Lerner said the charter school findings would be formally shown only as part of a larger analysis that would adjust results for the characteristics of charter schools and their students.

In the 1990's, the National Assessment Governing Board had rejected requests from states for such analyses, with Mr. Finn, then a member of the board, contending that explanatory reports would compromise the credibility of the assessment results by trying to blame demographic and other outside factors for poor performance.

But Mr. Lerner said he thought such an analysis was necessary to put the charter school test scores in context. He called the raw comparison of test scores ''the beginning of something important,'' and said, ''What one has to do is adjust for many different variables to get a sense of what the effects of charter schools are.''

CAPTIONS: Chart: ''Charter School Scores''
In almost every racial, economic and geographic category, fourth graders attending charter schools are outperformed by their peers in traditional public schools.

PERCENT OF 4TH GRADERS AT OR ABOVE BASIC LEVEL IN:MATH

RACE
White
Charter schools: 84
Other public: 87

Black
Charter schools: 50
Other public: 54

Hispanic
Charter schools: 58
Other public: 62

INCOME
Eligible for public lunch
Charter schools: 53
Other public: 62

Not Eligible
Charter schools: 80
Other public: 88

LOCATION
Central city
Charter schools: 58
Other public: 68

Urban fringe/large town
Charter schools: 78
Other public: 80

Rural/small town
Charter schools: 84
Other public: 80

PERCENT OF 4TH GRADERS AT OR ABOVE BASIC LEVEL IN: READING

RACE
White
Charter schools: 71
Other public: 74

Black
Charter schools: 37
Other public: 40

Hispanic
Charter schools: 45
Other public: 43

INCOME
Eligible for public lunch
Charter schools: 38
Other public: 45

Not Eligible
Charter schools: 70
Other public: 76

LOCATION
Central city
Charter schools: 50
Other public: 52

Urban fringe/large town
Charter schools: 64
Other public: 66

Rural/small town
Charter schools: 64
Other public: 67

(Source by National Center for Education Statistics, as compiled by American Federation of Teachers)(pg. A19)

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Classes of Last Resort
By FLOYD H. FLAKE, NY TIMES, August 19, 2004

The United States Olympic basketball team's gold medal hopes would be significantly diminished if it were forced to shoot at a rim that was 11 feet high rather than 10 feet like its competition's. The gold might well end up in Lithuania - but would this mean that the winning team from Vilnius was better on the court than the Americans? Of course not. Rather, it would establish that in an unfair competitive environment, people and institutions with real advantages will normally win.

This is precisely the standard that critics apply in comparing public education's two main forms: traditional schools and charter schools. The most recent example is a number-crunching exercise of federal school statistics by the largest teachers' union, the American Federation of Teachers.

While the analysis showed charter schools lagging somewhat behind traditional schools in reading and math, it did not contain any explanation of the structural inequities between the two that leave charter schools at a permanent disadvantage. Given time and a level playing field, I have no doubt that for many students, especially those in impoverished urban neighborhoods, charter schools will prove to be an academic lifeline.

So how to explain the current statistics? First, while charter schools often receive the same per-student financing as traditional schools, their student body is typically not the same. The federal statistics show that charter students are much more likely to be non-white, eligible for free lunch programs and residents of central cities. Critics will point out that when the statistics are adjusted for race and income level, the traditional schools still have a slight edge in most statistics - but this line of thinking ignores how much harder it is for schools with vastly higher percentages of poor and minority students to succeed.

Second, charter schools have to be built up from scratch; at the time the statistics were gathered most were only a few years old. Think about it: in addition to the normal challenges facing all schools, charter school administrators are forced to become finance wizards, real estate gurus and city building-code specialists. What they do not know about they have to contract out, which costs money that in turn never makes it to classrooms. In most traditional public school models, principals are primarily concerned about building conditions; charter school principals have to worry about whether a building even exists at all. This will change in time.

In addition, principals are their own "downtown," or central board of education. They must negotiate contracts with bus companies, food service vendors, textbook publishers and after-school providers. Again, as time passes, many will become more adept at these peripheral issues.

Another reason for charter schools' struggles is that many of their students have already been badly damaged by traditional public schools. They are the option of last resort: families that have left traditional public education did so because they watched firsthand as their children lost ground. Should schools dealing with these most fragile students be compared to public schools as a whole?

And in the end, are these statistics really so damning? After 100 years, and with all of the conveniences and advantages they enjoy, the teachers' unions and traditional schools have only 30 percent of 4th graders reading and doing math at grade level. After just a few years, charter school students are slightly worse, at 25 percent. No, neither standard is acceptable - but the first number is a strong argument for allowing parents to sample charter schools and other innovative options.

Unfortunately, the professional advocates for public education are trying to block that choice. They send lobbyists to Washington and their state capitals to ask for levels of funding for charter schools that they would find intolerable in other areas of public education.

I applaud the Education Department's bureaucratic fervor in assessing charter school performance. All schools should be held to high standards and face severe punishment for failing to make the grade. Charter schools ushered in an era of higher accountability: low-performing charters face ultimate judgment, including being closed. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for all traditional schools yet.

The next time critics want to examine data, they should ask the 600,000 families that have conducted their own studies - ones in which their children's futures are on the line. When they chose charter schools they might not have had access to scholarly research, but they chose what they believed was best for their children. That ought to count for more than the expertise of some dispassionate researchers and union bosses trying desperately to preserve their monopoly.


Floyd H. Flake, a former Democratic member of Congress, is the pastor of the Allen A.M.E. Church in Queens.

Goldwater Institute:
AFT Charter School Report Fails to 'Measure Up'
July 17, 2002

Phoenix, AZIn a report released today, Do Charter Schools Measure Up? the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) calls for a moratorium on charter schools. However, the AFT report itself fails to measure up to sound standards of research and should be dismissed. Robert Maranto, a Goldwater Institute Associate Scholar who has published dozens of articles and books on charter schools, including School Choice in the Real World: Lessons from Arizona Charter Schools, offers these observations:

1) The AFT ignores parent, student, and teacher satisfaction. This is a telling flaw. Imagine publishing a comparative study of the automobile industry without including safety ratings or customer appraisals. According to the National Study of Charter Schools published by the U.S. Department of Education, students and parents who went from district schools to charters found the charters safer, friendlier, and more effective academically. Teachers in charter schools report greater job satisfaction than do their peers in district schools.

2) The AFT says charter-school students generally score no better (and often do worse) on student achievement tests than other comparable public school students. This claim is true in some states, but test score data from Arizona, which has the nations largest charter-school marketplace, show children enrolled in charters improve with each passing year. Lew Solmon, author of a landmark Goldwater Institute study on academic results in charter schools, reports, Students enrolled in charter schools for two and three consecutive years have an advantage over students staying in traditional public schools for the same periods of time. The Goldwater Institute study remains the most comprehensive study of achievement in Arizona charter schools.

3) The AFT ignores key research on the impact of charter schools on district schools. Peer-reviewed research published by Columbia and Harvard Universities finds that where strong charter laws exist, districts respond to competition by working harder to please parents with leadership changes, more program options, and better customer service.

The AFT report has also been dismissed by six leading national education organizations, including the Black Alliance for Educational Options, the Center for Education Reform, the Education Leaders Council, and the National Association of Charter School Authorizers.

For more information on the AFT study, contact Dr. Maranto at (610) 519-7142, or write to: Robert.Maranto@villanova.edu. For further information on the Goldwater Institute study, contact Dr. Solmon at (310) 998-2610. For a copy of the Goldwater study, contact Tom Jenney at (602) 744-9603, or write to tjenney@goldwaterinstitute.org.

The Debunking Politics of Charter Schools
Editorial from the Seattle Times
Washington, D.C.
August 20, 2004

Once again, charter-school opponents are doing everything they can to debunk the charter process except give it a fair chance.

The results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress report add nothing to the debate on charter schools. The study, a nationwide snapshot of the schools, does a disservice on many fronts. It measures the performance of students, some of whom have only been in their new schools for a matter of months. Pronouncements regarding their academic performance are more telling about the schools the children came from than about the charter schools they're in.

Charter schools are concentrated in urban, often poor, areas. Many students were unsuccessful in the public schools. After years of being academically behind, they are now playing catch-up. Yet, the study compares their achievement with their public-school counterparts. It is an unfair, premature comparison.


The Center For Education Reform:
Newswire - August 24, 2004

LINK

Vol. 6, No. 33

CHARTERS

A RALLY OF BIPARTISAN SUPPORT. Amidst the controversy surrounding The New York Times report, influential lawmakers from both sides of the aisle stepped up to demonstrate their support for charter schools. Within hours of the storys release, Chicago Mayor John Daley hosted a press conference outlining Chicagos charter successes and describing the AFT report as bureaucracy fighting new concepts. Marylands Governor Ehrlich called charters the wave of the future at a press event in Ocean City and announced that Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele would lead a new commission aimed at encouraging the growth of charter schools in the state. Democratic Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson, the only mayor in the nation who can authorize charter schools, put his charter director up front with the media to dispute the findings.

Meanwhile, U.S. Senator Judd Gregg (Rep.-New Hampshire) and Cong. John Boehner (Rep.-Ohio), both of the Congressional Education Committees, challenged the findings of the report inside the Beltway. Former Democratic New York Congressman Floyd Flake demonstrated his support in a New York Times column. And while the AFT was conducting a media tour in Washington, District of Columbia Mayor Anthony Williams and U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) were only a few blocks away announcing a $1 million grant program aimed at attracting more charters to the District.

Lawmakers response to the recent New York Times article:

Motivated by last weeks widely reported analysis on charter schools, over 30 of the nations leading academic researchers came together this week to voice their concerns in a full-page advertisement in Section A of the New York Times. Researchers from premiere institutions such Harvard, Stanford and Duke were among the academics who outlined major problems with AFT's analysis of NAEP data. The group called for higher quality research before "jumping to conclusions about the merits of one of the nation's most prominent education reform strategies."

CHARTERS IN THE NEWS. Its no new news that charter schools were front-and-center in last weeks New York Times. But did you know that close to 30 daily newspapers across the country also ran reporter Diana Jean Schemos story? More than 23 million Americans in two-dozen states woke up to find the story in their local morning paper.

Charter proponents sprung into action to ensure that both local and national media told the real charter story. Talk radio in most media markets devoted hours to the subject. More than a dozen of nations most influential newspapers editorialized in favor of charter schools in light of the coverage, such as the The Chicago Tribune, The Seattle Times, The Houston Chronicle, The New York Post, The San Jose Mercury News, The Denver Post and the Delaware News Journal. Less than five newspapers chose to editorialize against charter schools. To date, at least 10 major newspapers have also printed pro-charter letters and opinion-editorials by leading lawmakers, academics, school leaders and activists. And charter proponents went head-to-head with union representatives on broadcast giants such as CNN and National Public Radio.

For a closer look at the extensive media battle surrounding last weeks report, visit our homepage (which has many articles including):

AFT at It Again: NAEP numbers didn't 'just appear' at The New York Times this week. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has been working on their plan for months to twist NAEP data and attack the nation's unsuspecting 3,000 charter schools with a full-force media blitz. It's not the first time AFT has resorted to such schemes.

Dog Eats AFT Homework
By William G. Howell, Paul E. Peterson and Martin R. West , Opinion Journal from the Wall Street Journal's Editorial Page , New York, NY , August 18, 2004
Harvard researchers expose teachers union's dishonest study of charter schools. http://www.opinionjournal.com (free registration required).
Smoke and Mirrors: AFT's History of Charter Bashing
CER Newswire , July 13, 2004

Educational leaders stand ready -- the curtain will surely rise on another AFT charter charade at their annual convention this year, if past performance is any indication.
Charter Leaders Dismiss AFT Report: Teachers Union Deliberately Skews Data Against Charters
CER Pres Release , Washington, D.C. , July 16, 2002
Leaders of six leading national education organizations dismissed a new American Federation of Teachers report for tired and dated misrepresentation of charter schools. An AFT study on charter schools has about as much credibility as a Philip Morris study on smoking, says Lawrence Patrick, president of the Black Alliance for Educational Options.
10 Questions to Ask the NEA
Do the NEA and school employee unions represent the best interests of teachers, parents, and children?

Understanding and taking on the Big Learning Organization Bureaucracies, or BLOB.

Who's In Charge: The Education Establishment
From The School Reform Handbook: How to Improve Your Schools
Published by The Center for Education Reform

Education is an industry. Like most major industries that grew out of the industrial revolution, it has its factory workers and their unions, its managers, its special interests and consumers. Over time, a productive business, whether the local bank or a large national corporation, downsizes to stay afloat. Not so with education. Education is bigger than ever. It has lost its friendliness and ability to respond. It has grown out-of-control; not because consumer satisfaction has allowed it to, but because of laws and regulations that stop schools from working.

Since 1945, the number of school districts has been consolidated from over 100,000 to just 15,173 school districts in 1992. Instead of locally run, the public school system has become more and more centralized, with power in the bureaucracy, not the community. State and federal education dollars carry layers of regulation and conditions. For example, the California State Education Code is over 6,000 pages long. In Indiana, a much smaller state, all state education codes amount to 1,250 pages. In the first half of 1994, the federal government passed nine new laws mandating how dollars are spent and how schooling should occur.

How did this happen? How did the business of schooling get so out of hand? The American tradition of schooling rests with the states, where it is delegated to individual communities. State Boards of Education and legislators are supposed to set the broad goals, and those closest to our children are supposed to decide and carry out what really happens. But as the layers of bureaucracy have increased, parents have been able less and less to make a dent in their schools in any basic way. Yes, a parent can volunteer in a classroom or library in some cases. And, she can probably help the teacher design a plan for her child's progress through history class  sometimes. At one time, that parent could have influenced the character of the school  its teaching methods, curriculum, and special programming  through her votes for the school board. Things are no longer that easy.

Why They Call it "The Blob"

Parents say they have little power to affect good things in their schools. They feel that no matter where they turn, they cannot get through the maze of bureaucratic rules. In some cases, even school personnel can be hostile to their concerns. And with the government dictating what they do, the schools are powerless to respond and build real partnerships with parents. Much of this has happened by sheer momentum. Much has been caused also by the very groups whose stated mission is to "better" our schools. These groups are the education establishment -- the blob. As a testament to their position, the National Education Association (NEA) president boasted to his board of directors in 1993: "NEA had unprecedented input into several key education issues including education reform legislation... NEA also played a major role as President Clinton began forming his cabinet and senior staff. NEA was directly involved in helping to build the best team possible for the U.S. Department of Education."

Including the NEA, the education establishment has over 200 groups with a vested interest in a particular aspect of the education industry. From the National Alliance of Business to the National School Public Relations Administrators, the blob now runs the schools because it is so influential in politics  both in school board races and lobbying state leaders and Washington. They have the money, the power and have been a political fixture for years. They not only have secured a safe haven for their own agenda but have severely limited the ability of individual communities to maintain input, much less control, over the schooling their children receive.

At the local level, parents are often paid lip service, and parents who ask a lot of questions are considered troublemakers. Administrators are now accountable to other administrators, not to the people. Parental involvement is often just window dressing. When a complaint or suggestion is voiced that is not consistent with the views of the education establishment, the parents are branded as "difficult" or worse. This has set up a situation that frustrates even the most enthusiastic supporters of public education.

The picture is bleak. Even the best spirit of cooperation in the most unified community will yield few results if those active in that community do not know the right questions to ask and what the obstacles are. As people's satisfaction with their schools has declined, the groups claiming to defend the schools cling tighter to the status quo and lobby harder and louder for more of those programs  many non-education in scope  that will protect their position. Sadly, the rank and file of any of these education groups are helpless to do anything about it. Teachers, the most important people in our schools, next to our children, have been left out in the cold.

Next: The Teacher Unions

See also:

The School District

The State

The Federal Level

Charter Leaders Dismiss AFT Report: Teachers Union Deliberately Skews Data Against Charters

CHOICE

ANNUAL MISCHARACTERIZATION. Phi Delta Kappa (PDK) has once again teamed up with Gallup to gauge the American publics views on education. And it comes as no surprise that this years version of their annual poll, released at a press event this morning, again uses leading questions to skew the publics view of school choice.
PDK touts that the public doesnt like vouchers or the political candidates who support them. But multiples surveys conducted over the last two years, coupled with results from PDKs own polls (that they continue to, conveniently, bury in their press announcements), reveal that Americans value educational options. In fact, the Friedman Foundation discovered in their survey earlier this month that a whopping 64 percent of Americans support using tax dollars already allocated to a school district for education to be used to help parents pay for the school of their choice.

and from CNN.com:
"Charter Schools Remain Subject of Debate" CNN.com, August 13, 2004