Response to Rob Mattheu’s post under “Lewis vs. Solomon: Does Kentucky need charter schools?”

Lewis and Solomon Picture for Debate Comments

We got a very extensive list of questions from reader Rob Mattheu, who writes the Louisville School Beat Blog, concerning our “Lewis vs. Solomon: Does Kentucky need charter schools?” online debate. Mattheu’s detailed questions deserved more space than a comment would allow, so I am turning this into a separate blog, addressed to Mr. Mattheu but open for all to read. Click the “Read more” link if you want to see this interesting discussion about school choice and our recent debate.

First, Mr. Mattheu, thank you for your comments. They deserve answers. I’ll take your questions in order.

Your first question challenges a large number of charter school supporters such as the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO), Hal Heiner, and the Kentucky Charter Schools Association. Here it is (Note: All the questions will be in bold italics – answers are in standard typeface):

1) What is your background in education? How much experience do you have and in what types of schools with what type of students? Dr. Wayne Lewis, our charter school proponent in our recent online debate, is a Professor of Education at UK.

Members of BAEO come from many walks of life and have good experience in education, as well.

But, I suspect you are really trying to say that only education insiders can know about education and only they can fix it. If you are really implying that only educators can be involved in improving education, I must strongly disagree.

For example, I have been looking at public education for two decades from the vantage point of a former Air Force Instructor who was programming the first generation of automated teaching machines ever used for pilot training well before most of our working teachers today were even born. The Air Force doesn’t turn Instructor Pilots loose on students before giving them some serious training on how to teach, and that training was expanded when I got into the instructional machine programming business. Do you really think I have absolutely nothing to offer public education?

The truth is, while we have some great people in public education, it is also clear that the research in this area is terribly deficient and badly needs some help from other individuals who are not cast in the lock step mindset too often found in this area of our society.

So, let me make this very clear – education badly needs outside help from business and industry and many other individuals (think: doctors, lawyers, scientists, nurses, skilled construction workers and laboratory technicians, etc.) who really understand what it takes to survive and thrive in this world. Education can use such outside expertise to reinvigorate, perhaps even reinvent, itself.

2) What problems (both inside and outside of education) currently exist that keep our children from learning or achieving to their potential in schools.

People are writing books and papers about this; so, I’ll list just a couple of reports that deal with the preparation of teachers and the preparation of those doing education research today to show that the K to 12 community isn’t very good at answering this question themselves. Check out “Educating School Teachers” and “Educating Researchers,” two reports from former president of Columbia Teachers College Arthur Levine. He provides plenty of ideas about what is wrong in our school system from the vantage point of one truly in a position to know. Levine points to many issues that prevent our current school system from functioning at the level we need. He also mentions something very disappointing: when he circulated his report drafts for comment, some in the education community wanted him to suppress the truth. That public education attitude must change.

3) What evidence do you have that replacing existing schools with an externally run charter school will fix this problem in a way that similar changes within the existing public school system cannot? Charter schools came into existence when those – some inside, some outside – the education community got fed up with the low performance and resistance to change in the nation’s traditional public schools. Those individuals started to create charters about 22 years ago.

Initially, the charters operated in the dark due to the lousy quality of education research I already mentioned. Over time, those teething pains are being overcome in charters, and there are plenty of examples today of charter systems like KIPP academies and charters in New York City and Boston that take kids who are years behind grade level and raise them up to be college ready.

Also, all the reports from the CREDO team at Stanford University – even the very first one – note how students in charters significantly outperform their traditional public school counterparts once they spend long enough in charters (about 2 to 3 years) to overcome the weak education they brought with them from the traditional system.

Now, let’s put the shoe on your foot. Absent some very strong external pressures created by things like charter schools, what evidence do you have that union-dominated traditional schools will widely adopt things that charter schools are now starting to show work best for kids?

4) How will you guarantee that charter schools create success for those among the worst performing children? As previously mentioned, CREDO shows that charters – given enough time to impact students – produce notably better results than the traditional public schools. As far as actual guarantees, those are included in good charter school laws. If charters don’t perform, they get closed.

Once again, let’s put the shoe on the other foot. What guarantee can you provide that anything close to this sort of accountability will ever be present in traditional public schools? Kentucky has lived through KIRIS and CATS assessments, and both failed to create effective accountability for schools.

5) How will charter schools fix the external factors (poverty, homelessness, poor homelife [sic], etc.) that play a large factor in educational outcomes for most students?

You have this backwards. We are not going to fix these problems if the schools don’t step up to the plate and educate kids despite these challenges. More to the point, charter schools are providing better educations to disadvantaged kids right now. What can you offer, besides excuses, that this will widely happen in the traditional system without some major, external shakeup?

By the way, in our “Bang for the Buck 2012” report, we do identify a few public school systems that are stepping up to the plate despite modest budgets and above average poverty rates for Kentucky. But, there are far too few of those systems. What are you going to do to fix that?

6) How will you ensure that charter schools don’t find ways of filtering out students who are underachieving, or otherwise skewing their populations to help secure more positive results than existing schools?

OK, moment of truth time. This isn’t ten years ago.

The NAEP Data Explorer tool says in 2013 testing with the National Assessment of Educational Progress Grade 8 Math assessment, across the nation 59 percent of charter school students were eligible for the federal school lunch program but only 49 percent of traditional public school kids were. So, charters face more challenges with the poor already. However, despite their much higher poverty rate, charter schools tied traditional public schools on this math test. In other words, charters did at least as well for a notably higher proportion of poor students.

Now, I am going to really water your eyes.

In that same NAEP assessment, the percentage of students who had learning disabilities was exactly the same – 12 percent – in both traditional and charter schools. But, the charter school learning disabled kids actually scored three points higher than the traditional public school students with disabilities, though the sampling error in the scores is too large to declare a definite charter school victory.

Overall, this very recent data argues against much, if any, cherry picking in today’s charter schools.

7) How will you guarantee that achievement is measured honestly and we don’t see the widespread cheating we’ve seen in many “success” stories of school reform (see Flanner House, DC, etc.). Let’s go right to the-shoe-on-the-other-foot on this one. How do you stop the cheating in the traditional public school system like the ACT scandal in Perry County, Kentucky in 2010 and the current scandal in Louisville Male High?

How do you stop the obvious inflation in scoring that we saw with Kentucky’s KIRIS and CATS assessments for the traditional public school system?

The fact is, you know about charter problems because charter school miscreants are being caught and punished. Too often, problems are hidden in the ingrown, self-protective traditional public school system.

8) If a school is closed, what guarantees will be in the law to ensure that students who are in the closed school get the transitional help they need to move to a better one?

Great point. I agree that Kentucky’s charter school law will need to specify this, but there is no reason to suspect such provisions would not be in a good bill. We will welcome your voice to insure this provision is included.

9) What are the financial/religious/political ties of Charter School advocates? How do they play into their support and their plans?All sorts of people support charter schools, just like you will find people of every race, color and creed and economic situation in traditional schools. Charter schools are public schools and are subject to all restrictions in this area of equal opportunity that traditional public schools must observe, so this question really isn’t very meaningful.

10) Where do the charter school supporter’s (sic) children go to school? Where did they go to school?

I don’t think there is any research on this, but I don’t see where this matters in a properly crafted charter school bill. Charter schools are public schools and cannot discriminate on the basis of race or creed, etc., and they cannot legally push religion, either. Actually, as I previously pointed out, the majority of charter school students come from homes with modest incomes. I suspect many parents who are major charter supporters come from modest educational backgrounds, as well.

11) How do we guarantee that charter and traditional public schools are compared on equal footing to measure success? Great question.

It is indeed tough to find fair comparisons, which is why most reports that don’t show a charter school advantage (including some earlier reports from the NAEP) don’t meet this fair comparison requirement.

For example, many such reports lump even first year charter school students into their comparisons. That puts the charters at a great disadvantage based on the CREDO research that shows charters cannot reverse years of educational neglect in a single school term. It takes kids about 2 – 3 years to benefit from the transfer to a good charter, and reports that don’t recognize this will undervalue charter performance.

However, some recent reports from CREDO and the NAEP data cited above show charters are pulling ahead despite the disadvantage of having their entire first year student data included. And, when we look at reports that do a better comparison by only looking at students who spent enough time in charters to benefit, the charter advantage becomes more obvious, still.

12) How do we guarantee that science and other educational standards are maintained and that charter schools aren’t an attempt to bring religious education into the systems? Again, it is against the law to introduce religion into charters. This is mostly a red herring argument. If charters stray into religion, they should get slapped just like any other public school.

As far as standards go, charter schools must participate in all state testing, so the degree of accountability -- science included -- is no different from traditional public schools.

In closing, you also wrote: “Simply experimenting for experiments sake might be fine for a product in the free market, but it’s not great when trying to educate a child over the case (sic) of 12 plus years.”

Why do you think traditional schools are immune to experimenting? The truth is that all sorts of experiments are launched on kids in traditional schools all the time (think “Fuzzy Math” and “Whole Language Reading” – both failures).The difference between experiments run in traditional schools and those run in charter schools is that parents can opt out of a charter school if they don’t like the experiment. Parents have no choice when public schools foist some untried idea on their students.

So, charters are actually far fairer when it comes to doing research on what really works for kids.

I hope this answers your questions, and thank you again for taking the time to ask them.