According to the Louisville Courier-Journal, a new report on charter schools says these parental choice schools are not making much difference. The article cites some biased Indiana legislators claims that the report is excellent ammunition to reign in Indiana’s charter school growth.
At the same time, another newspaper says that a new report claims “Indiana's charter schools growing at fast pace.”
This report also says that charters in the state have high parent satisfaction. In fact, lotteries have had to be used in some schools due to high demand in order to comply with fairness of access requirements. Also, charters are strongest in urban areas in Indiana, which generally would indicate they recruit from lower performing students.
What makes this all more remarkable is that Indiana law is set up to hobble charters – they don’t get money for student transportation or facilities – but they still draw heavily.
By now, you must think the newspapers are talking about different reports. WRONG!
Both papers are talking about one recent report from the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University.
I’ll let you decide which paper has the more open mind about charter schools.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Media Muddle on Charters
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2 comments:
How can urban schools with 70% minorities scoring within a point or two of the state average be considered "no practical difference"?
How about comparing the score a student receives versus the score of the school they would have gone to.
Anonymous Dec 16/9:51PM asks a good question.
I have not read the Indiana University report, but a report that did exactly what Anonymous suggests was created several years ago by Harvard Professor Caroline Hoxby. Her conclusion – charters clearly outperformed their closest public school competition.
One problem for charters is outlined in the second news article I cited in the main blog. Charters are often hobbled by such things as unequal funding. Clearly, if the Indiana charters aren't getting any transportation or facilities support, how fair is it to compare their performance to public schools that get both?
And, if charters draw primarily from inner cities, which many do, how fair is it to compare their performance to overall state averages based on a majority of students who come from homes with much better financial support?
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