Oh, wait. MI will not compare charter schools with public schools. Really?

[madfloridian]

I can not imagine why they would say they will only compare charters with charters? A note of sarcasm there.

Public schools are compared with each other, pressured to do better even when funding is being taken from them. In our area their scores are published, bad or good, and they are permitted zero tolerance on poor scoring.

Read this about Michigan's new policy.

Are charters' students doing better? New way of grading schools will tell

The latest report on Michigan's charter schools, to be presented to the state Board of Education today, does not compare the performance of charter students to those in traditional public schools -- a controversial practice done in past years.

A controversial practice? Why would it be controversial to expect the scores of charter schools to be compared with public schools?

In previous years, the annual report compared test scores in all charter schools with the average score of 20 traditional (and mostly low-performing) districts in which about 75% of Michigan charter schools are located. By that measure, charter schools do better.

Comparing scores of all charter schools with the average of "20 traditional (and mostly low-performing) districts"...and they do better? Goodness I hope so.

The new 33-page annual report, created by the Michigan Department of Education and Michigan State University, explores topics including student performance and profiles. The report also recommends giving the department more authority over charter schools and a small increase in funding to pay for that.

But when it comes to how charter school students are faring academically, the report focuses only on charter school performance, stating in this year's report, "Performance growth is measured as it should be: not against any other school, but against the PSA's (Public School Academy's) own track record of achievement."

A PSA is a charter school.

Here is the telling statement:

The report shows charter student performance improving on the MEAP exam. In math, for instance, 73% of student met or exceeded expectations in 2008, compared with 67.1% the year prior.

However, when the report was released last year, a Free Press analysis comparing charters with other schools in their host district found that almost three out of five charter schools score worse on the MEAP than the traditional schools.

State education department officials acknowledged that their analysis was flawed and promised to change their methodology this year.

Problem: "almost three out of five charter schools score worse on the MEAP than the traditional schools"

Solution: Don't compare charter schools with public schools.

Oh, yeah, that will solve the problem.

[Grand Taurean]

1. One of the greatest propaganda campaigns of this decade

is the "OMG! the public school system is failing", as to imply that every public school is failing. The schools in the affluent areas are doing fine.
Many city schools are going well too.

[madfloridian]

3. It is truly propaganda.

But it is effective because there are no politicians on our side speaking out for teachers.

[Riley18]

2. Just watching a show about the Nazi party and their propaganda. The man

leading the discussion said something that I think applies to charter schools. He said that education without morality leads to a ruined society. What these politicians are doing to free public education in this country will not be repairable. Once the system is destroyed completely only the rich and powerful will be educated. The rest will have mediocre charter schools for awhile and then they will no longer be free either. After all, the politicians from both parties have sold out most of the jobs so why educate the population? To what end? Best to keep people down.

[madfloridian]

4. Correct you are. Once done, this will not be repairable.

And we are letting it happen so easily.

[dotymed]

12. And of course

the "charter schools" pay teachers sub-standard wages and allow no union representation. Not much of an incentive for a bright new teacher.

[madfloridian]

5. What a bizarre comment in the article. The opposite of how public schools are treated.

"Performance growth is measured as it should be: not against any other school, but against the PSA's (Public School Academy's) own track record of achievement."

Only if you are a public school, it's okay to measure against other schools.

Dual standard.

[n.michigan]

6. But GRANHOLM'S MDE doesn't mind comparing teachers/student test scores-

if it will fail some more public schools and get some more money from teachers. Granholm forced Race To The Bottom despite MEA nonsupport. She must dig Obama. We don't.

Good catch MadFloridian!

Granholms "retirement" bills will meet their fate tomorrow- SB1227. Victimizing teachers for politics. Nice.

[madfloridian]

21. It's despicable how she used pensions to force retirements.

Has that gone through yet for sure?

MI Dem governor Granholm using pensions to force retirement of experienced teachers.

And this part is outrageous:

"The last year’s tentative three-year contract between Detroit Public Schools and its teachers union included the district essentially getting up to $10,000 in interest-free and un-secured loans to be funded by each of Detroit’s educators for forty weeks. The Detroit News reported teachers were being asked to agree to a $250 pre-tax deduction from 40 biweekly paychecks starting in January to fund the loan. Teachers would get the $10,000 back once they leave. It’s called the grotesquely labeled, Termination Incentive Plan (Associated Press, December 6, 2009)"

[n.michigan]

24. Yes and worse-using pensions with R's to make up budget failures of theirs.

Today Senate Bill 1227 passed- proffered by Granholm and R's in the majority.

You can see the editing on it here:http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(l1mnjbiofsbrq53xbvrzf2yt))/mileg.aspx?page=GetObject&objectname=2010-SB-1227
Select the "As passed by the Senate" button
and also the Senate Fiscal Agency button below it which is today's floor summary.

I am looking for more info now. MEA worthless. Sent out advisings early Wed. morning to respond to the threat of todays vote. Awful for teachers....

[lostnfound]

7. Kick. nt

[JDPriestly]

8. Charter schools are about capital seeking opportunity.

It's supposed to be the other way around. First there should be a good idea. The inventors or creators of the good idea either become entrepreneurs and seek capital to fund their enterprise, those inventors or creators seek entrepreneurs to help them develop and fund the enterprise.

Charter schools are the idea of people with money who create a non-profit that they hope at some time in the future will become profitable. It's money looking for something to do.

If the people putting their money into the charter school start-ups simply paid their taxes, our public schools could perform far better than charter schools. Our public school system is great. We just need to trust our teachers more and let them teach. They are, when all is said and done, better trained than most teachers in other systems.

My children went to school in the U.S. and in Austria. The Austrian kindergarten teachers were much better trained than the American ones. The concept of Austrian kindergarten was far superior to ours. Children in Austria do not learn to read until they are 6 and in the first grade for starts. The emphasis in kindergarten is to prepare children for the social environment of the school. to teach them to keep things neat and clean and, through play, story-telling and songs, to give the children the basic skills that make learning to read and do arithmetic easier.

In my experience, American post-kindergarten teachers may lack some of the intellectual training and factual knowledge of their Austrian counterparts, but the Americans know far more about how to teach and what makes children tick, about educational and child psychology than their European counterparts. Granted, European teacher training may have improved in the past 20 years or so, but I seriously doubt it.

Our public schools have the best teachers anywhere. Our families do not have the support systems, the safety nets, that European families have. That is why our children may not learn as well. Home life is very stressful for many American children.

That is why student performance is better in schools in wealthy communities where families are economically more secure than in lower income areas where the lack of a safety net for families puts stress on the children as well as the parents.

[madfloridian]

23. Once upon a time kindergarten here was about preparation and skills

Suddenly before I retired they started the pressure that the little ones must read before 1st grade. It was like out of the blue.

My first years were in first grade, and the reading was built on a foundation like building blocks.

You are right, students here do not have the needed safety nets.

[Hannah Bell]

9. seems like the original comparison was rigged to get the result they wanted, some newsies did an

alternate comparison, & now they found a new way to rig the results so it can't happen again!

the whole thing = rigged from jump street, in every possible way, from the propaganda assault that convinced the population most schools were "failing" to the foundation bribes, to the "comparisons" rigged in favor of charters.

[Starry Messenger]

10. All that tough talk about competition was just hot air?

Color me surprised.

[madfloridian]

20. Sure looks that way.

All talk.

[Solly Mack]

11. k/r

[Jakes Progress]

13. What a legacy for Democrats

and Obama. This is the one that the history books will have.....whoops. Not the history books used at WalMart Middle School or Exxon High. Those will be in-house written by the corporations. Just think of the new jobs to be available. You can go to work for Monsanto as a text book writer. Think of Winston's job in 1984. I bet the pay will be double plus good.

[liberation]

16. Your newspeak is lacking citizen! Doubleplusgood is a single word...

... don't make me report you to the thought police!

:-)

[Jakes Progress]

19. Want some chocolate?

[Nederland]

14. I agree with you

I disagree with you on many things regarding education, but I agree with you here. The whole point of charter schools is to allow parents choice, and have those choices create a competitive environment that results in better schools. Not being able to compare charter schools to public schools defeats the whole purpose.

[denverbill]

15. OK, I'm no fan of charter schools, but....

Charter schools typically 'outperform' their public counterparts because the parents that opt to send their kids to charters tend to be more educated and wealthier. The schools pull the cream of the crop from public schools, and drag down the public schools for the same reason.

If you compare them to public schools, the public schools are almost always going to lose. While comparing them to each other may not be a great idea either, at least the worst charters would get weeded out.

A better comparison would be to compare individual student achievement across schools. Or to arbitrarily assign public school students to charters so that instead of just teaching the cream of the crop, they are teaching the entire spectrum of students. Neither of those will ever happen though.

[tonysam]

17. There is NO evidence charter schools "outperform" at all.

The same argument has been made for outright private schools, which of course can cherry pick whoever they want to attend those schools. Taking that into account, they don't do any better, either, than public schools.

Private schools are basically a waste of money, but there are people out there who believe that because they pay extra for them, they MUST be better. They aren't.

[madfloridian]

18. That is correct.

There is no evidence they outperform public schools, and if there is evidence public schools do better, they do like MI and try to fudge the results.

[goclark]

22. There are some excellent Public Schools in Michigan

and the Charters there could not hold a candle to them,

Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, G. Point, Farmington etc.


Many/most Charters can put out any students they want to and send them back to the Public School ~ my theory is "You took them You Keep them" but Charters are not held to that standard, unless that changed recently.

As most here know, I am no fan of Charters in general -- there are exceptions- excellence should be their standard and I didn't see that in Michigan and the last time I checked, not in CA either.

[Nederland]

25. Charter Schools rarely outperform public schools

There is no easy, black and white answer to the question of whether charter schools outperform public schools. Over the years there have been numerous studies with extremely poor methodologies trying to answer the question, and the answer you got from those studies largely reflected the political biases of the groups funding the study. In 2009 however, Stanford University authored the CREDO study that has become the benchmark for how to properly compare schools. Along with many other carefully chosen metrics, the CREDO methodology tracks student improvement over the course of an academic year, thereby eliminating selection biases. This study also included an extremely large sample size, looking at 2403 charter schools in 16 different states. Nationally, these were the results:

Charter schools that did worse than public schools: 37%
Charter schools that did the same as public schools: 46%
Charter schools that did better than public schools: 17%

These are not very impressive results to say the least. However, the results vary considerably on a state by state basis. Some places, such as NYC, have seen excellent results. The most recent study showed that 51% of NYC charter schools show significantly larger academic gains in math than traditional public schools. The obvious conclusion is that there is a right way and a wrong way to implement charters, and implementing charters the wrong way can have disastrous effects.

You can read the whole thing for yourself here: http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/MULTIPLE_CHOICE_CREDO.pdf