The Things That Charter Schools And Their Supporters Don't Want The General Public To Know.

Now that the unqualified Cathie Black is expected to become Chancellor on January 3rd we can expect her to follow in the footsteps of Joel Klein and be a strong supporter of the ever increasing Charter Schools as an alternative to the local public schools. This means more neighborhood schools will have reduced funding as Tweed allocates more of their scarce resources to the Charter Schools at the Public school's expense. What is very interesting are that Charter Schools have very serious problems that they hide from the general public. Some quite serious and are ignored by the pro-Charter School education reformers. Let's look at some of these issues closeup. A must read is what Smart Money published, an Article called "10 Things Charter Schools Won't Tell You". Many of the statistics come from the article.

Many Teachers Are Inexperienced And Not Certified:

Believe it or not, many teachers who are offered teaching positions in Charter Schools are not certified. Furthermore, once they achieve certification they leave for the local school district teaching positions.

According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, charter school teachers are, on average, younger and less likely to hold state certification than teachers in traditional public schools. In a 2000 survey, 92% of public school teachers held state certification, compared to 79% of charter school teachers. A 2008 survey found that 32% of charter school teachers were under the age of 30, compared to 17% of traditional public school teachers. Charter schools often recruit from organizations like Teach for America that provide non-traditional paths into the profession and are known as the "two year wonders" because they do their two year obligation and leave., More-experienced teachers who already have jobs in traditional public schools may have little incentive to give up the protection of tenure, pension, and health benefits to work in a Charter School.

Relying on relatively untrained, inexperienced staff may have a real impact in the classroom. “A lot of them don’t have classroom management skills,” says May Taliaferrow, a charter-school parent.

Large And Constant Teacher Turnover:

Another fact deliberately ignored by the pro-Charter School reformers is the high teacher turnover in most Charter Schools. In some cases the entire teaching staff could turnover within a five year period!

As many as one in four charter school teachers leave every year, according to a 2007 study by Gary Miron, a professor of education at Western Michigan University, and other researchers at the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice. That’s about double the typical teacher turnover rate in traditional public schools. Charter schools typically pay teachers less than traditional public schools do, and require longer hours, Miron says. Meanwhile, charter school administrators earn more than their school-district counterparts, which can also make teachers feel underpaid, he says. The odds of a teacher leaving the profession altogether are 130% higher at charter schools than traditional public schools, according to a 2010 study by the National Center on School Choice at Vanderbilt University. That study also found that much of this teacher attrition was related to dissatisfaction with working conditions.

Charter Schools Are Always Trying To Skim The Best Students And Will Advertise For These Students:

The Charter Schools will do just about anything to get "good students" to go to their school and will send out flyers to the parents of these students to get them to attend their school.

Walking around New York City, it’s impossible to miss the ads on buses and subways for the Harlem Success academies, Haimson says. The school is legally required to reach out to at-risk students, and it has been opening new schools over the past couple of years. However, some schools elsewhere have gone beyond marketing. A charter school in Colorado gave out gift cards to families that recruited new students, and another school in Louisiana gave out cash.

Charter Schools Discourage Students With Disabilities & English Language Learners From Applying:

Another well-kept secret is that the Charter Schools don't want students with disabilities, discipline problems, attendance issues, or English language learners.

Six-year-old Makala was throwing regular tantrums in school, so her mother, Latrina Miley, took her for a psychiatric evaluation, eventually ending up with a district-mandated plan that stated the girl should be taught in a smaller class where half the students have special needs. The charter school’s response, Miley says, was to tell her she could either change her daughter’s educational plan, or change schools. She moved Makala to a nearby public school – where, she says, teachers have been more effective at managing her daughter’s behavior issues. The school says it can’t talk about specific cases.

Critics say charter schools commonly “counsel out” children with disabilities. While a few charter schools are specifically designed to serve students with special needs, the rest tend to have lower proportions of students with special needs than nearby public schools, according to a review of multiple studies conducted by the University of Colorado’s Education and the Public Interest Center. Charter schools also appear to end up with students whose disabilities are less expensive to manage than those of public school students. A Boston study, conducted by the Massachusetts Teachers Association, found that 91% of students with disabilities in the city’s charter schools were able to be fully included in standard classrooms, compared to only 33% of students with disabilities in the traditional public schools.

The Charter Schools counsel out students who struggle Academically:

To keep up with the propaganda that Charter Schools have a greater percentage of graduates than the local public school, the Charter Schools counsel out low-preforming students so that they do not count in the percentages.

For all the hype about a few standout schools, charter schools in general are not producing better results than traditional public schools. A national study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford found that while 17% of charter schools produced better results than neighborhood public schools, 37% were significantly worse, and the rest were no different. (Not that public schools are perfect, as many parents know.

A host of other studies on charter school outcomes have come up with sometimes contradictory results. As with traditional public schools, there are great charters – and some that are not so great. “There’s a lot of variation within charter schools,” points out Katrina Bulkley, an associate professor of education at Montclair State University who studies issues related to school governance. “In fairness to organizations that are running high-performing schools, many of them are very frustrated with the range of quality, because they feel that it taints charter schools as a whole,” Bulkley says.

Charter Schools Do Not Preform Any Better Than Public Schools:

Despite the propaganda by the pro-Charter School supporters that the Charter Schools provides better educational opportunities, the reality is quite different.

For all the hype about a few standout schools, charter schools in general are not producing better results than traditional public schools. A national study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford found that while 17% of charter schools produced better results than neighborhood public schools, 37% were significantly worse, and the rest were no different. (Not that public schools are perfect, as many parents know.

A host of other studies on charter school outcomes have come up with sometimes contradictory results. As with traditional public schools, there are great charters – and some that are not so great. “There’s a lot of variation within charter schools,” points out Katrina Bulkley, an associate professor of education at Montclair State University who studies issues related to school governance. “In fairness to organizations that are running high-performing schools, many of them are very frustrated with the range of quality, because they feel that it taints charter schools as a whole,” Bulkley says.

Where Does The Money Come & Go?:

Unlike public schools where all the money has to be accounted for, the Charter School funding can be a mystery.

An investigation by Philadelphia’s City Controller earlier this year uncovered widespread financial mismanagement among the city’s charter schools, including undisclosed “related party” transactions where friends and family of school management were paid for various services, people listed as working full time at more than one school, individuals writing checks to themselves, and even a $30,000 bill from a beach resort charged to a school.

Financial scandals have come to light in schools around the country, but what’s more troubling, says advocate Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters in New York City, is that charter schools have opposed state audits of their finances. The New York Charter School Association won a lawsuit against the state comptroller last year, with the court ruling that the legislature had violated the state constitution when it directed the comptroller to audit charter schools. Charter schools in the state are already overseen and audited by at least two other agencies, Murphy says. “We have never objected to being audited, being overseen, and being held accountable. In fact, this organization has come out in favor of closing low-performing charter schools,” he says.

Walking around New York City, it’s impossible to miss the ads on buses and subways for the Harlem Success academies, Haimson says. The school is legally required to reach out to at-risk students, and it has been opening new schools over the past couple of years. However, some schools elsewhere have gone beyond marketing. A charter school in Colorado gave out gift cards to families that recruited new students, and another school in Louisiana gave out cash. Talking about bribing?

Are Charter Schools really better than the neighborhood public schools? No they are not.

Published December 6, 2010