Bluegrass Beacon: Charter-school opponents need to turn the page

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National Fun at Work Day. National Kazoo Day. National Blueberry Pancake Day. They all occurred on Wed., Jan. 28 (during the week that this column was sent to newspapers.)Who knew so much could happen on a single “Hump Day?”

A more-important event that week – the fifth annual National School Choice Week (Jan. 25-31) – raises another question: Who knew that charter schools nationwide could produce such great results that are so effectively maligned by elitist academicians, failing bureaucrats and teachers’-union bosses committed to defending a status quo that lets too many of our neediest students down?

By opposing charter schools for Kentucky families, uninformed political dinosaurs in Frankfort diminish the chance that many children with two strikes against them in life will succeed in the fiercely competitive global marketplace into which they soon will be cast.

Even the Lexington Herald-Leader’s Merlene Davis – a black columnist who’s anything but a flag bearer for right-wing causes – is calling for a fresh look at how charter schools can serve those public-school students most likely to get left behind. (Check out Davis’s column here. It’s unfortunate that the Lexington Herald-Leader’s copy desk did such a poor job on the headline here; nevertheless, the column is worth the read.)Davis recognizes that “the achievement gap for black, Hispanic and poor kids is growing” in traditional public schools, and that “black and poor kids tend to do better academically in charter schools.”

She gets a gold medal for the single-most important skill in the ring of education-research gymnastics: turning pages.

This is in contrast to most charter-school critics, whose favorite tactic is cherry picking the numbers to fit their ideology. An egregious example of this practice is when detractors point to the early part of a 2009 study by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO), which concludes that only 17 percent of charter schools outperform traditional public schools.

However, opponents show their utter foolishness when bounding down the political aisles in Frankfort waving that report in their hands while ridiculing the notion that we return decisions about where children are educated to parents rather than continuing to have them made by impersonal student-assignment plans.

It’s lunacy that some school-choice opponents in our state actually believe Kentucky’s opposition to charters represents the smartest position while political leaders in 42 other states and Washington, D.C., who offer families the option of enrolling children in charter schools, have all been duped.

When comparing their academic performance to students in traditional public schools, the CREDO report makes a critical distinction between charter-school students in their first year and those who have been enrolled in a charter for at least three years.

The early part of the report indicating that only 17 percent of charters achieve better academic results than their traditional counterparts is based on the performance of students completing only their first year in a charter school. But turn a few pages in that same report and you will discover that the longer most students attend charters, the more likely they are to outperform their peers in traditional schools.

The best research confirms what common sense already told us: most students entering charter schools already lag far behind in their studies. Most parents won’t remove a child who’s already doing well in one kind of public school and enroll him or her in a charter school.

There’s no magic wand available for fixing a child’s failing educational history; it can take a great amount of time, even years. But give charter schools that time and most will get the job done – particularly with minority, low-income children who comprise a majority of their enrollees.

Page 79 of a 2013 update of that CREDO report reports that, on average, in charter schools: “Once a student is enrolled for four or more years, their learning gains outpace TPS (traditional public schools) by 50 days in reading and 43 days in math per year.”

Put that in your kazoo and blow it on any day of your choosing.

Jim Waters is president of the Bluegrass Institute, Kentucky’s free-market think tank. Reach him at jwaters@freedomkentucky.com. Read previously published columns at www.bipps.org.