Dead-trees journalists drink the charter school Kool-Aid

December 22, 12:16 PMSF Education ExaminerCaroline Grannan

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 Today's Post might take his side.

Gushing about charter schools is, unfortunately, a temptation that lures journalists who don't normally cover education and who thus fail to grasp the confounding factors, asterisks and caveats. Today’s dead-trees San Francisco Examiner gets sucked in with a puff-piece editorial that also endorses vouchers without using the actual word (which has apparently become toxic).

The Examiner op-ed is based on a Washington Post series on charter schools in Washington, D.C., which concludes that D.C.’s charter schools overall are showing higher achievement than its traditional public schools, and also that they are riddled with some outrageous conflicts of financial interest. The Post’s editorial writers responded to the news coverage with an editorial eagerly endorsing charter schools and downplaying the conflicts-of-interest findings. (This week the Post also covered the death of Mark Felt, aka “Deep Throat,” the iconic secret source for Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's Watergate investigations. If the attitude behind the charter-school gushing had pervaded the Post's editorial staff at the time, perhaps the editorial page would have been backing up Nixon’s claim that Watergate was a “third-rate burglary.”)

Back to the San Francisco Examiner, though. The editorial presumes that the results found in the D.C. schools are replicated nationwide, which repeated studies show is not the case. Overall, charter schools do not show higher achievement than traditional public schools. And more significantly, the editorial fails to mention the fact that charter schools in San Francisco don’t outperform other schools at all, with the exception of the controversial KIPP middle schools, whose student attrition is so high that it confounds any attempt to compare them to other schools. (If your lower-performing students stampede out the exit at a rapid rate and aren’t replaced, which is the case at the San Francisco KIPP schools, you can’t compare those schools to schools where that doesn’t happen – at least not if you care about an honest and sound comparison.)

Here are San Francisco’s regular-education high schools ranked by the most recent Academic Performance Index, the state’s official gauge of student achievement.

1. Lowell (admits based on academic criteria)
2. Washington (lottery admission, non-charter)
3. Lincoln (lottery admission, non-charter)
4. School of the Arts (admits based on artistic audition)
5. Galileo (lottery admission, non-charter)
6. Balboa (lottery admission, non-charter)
7. Gateway Charter
8. Wallenberg (lottery admission, non-charter)
9. Burton (lottery admission, non-charter)
10. Leadership Charter
11. City Arts & Tech Charter
12. Metro Arts & Tech Charter
13. Thurgood Marshall (lottery admission, non-charter)

14. John O'Connell (lottery admission, non-charter)
15. Mission (lottery admission, non-charter)
16. June Jordan (lottery admission, non-charter)

San Francisco has two charter elementary schools, Creative Arts (a K-8) and Edison Charter (a K-6). Out of San Francisco's total 70 elementary schools, Creative Arts ranks 43rd and Edison 49th in API.

The two KIPP schools are the only middle school charters; of 16 middle schools, KIPP San Francisco Bay ranks third and KIPP Bayview ranks eighth. The KIPP schools do indeed stand out for serving a low-income, high-need population, but conversely, they also stand out for their astoundingly high student attrition. And an academic study showed that it's consistently the low-performing students who leave. Also, it's important to note that KIPP does not replace the students who leave, unlike traditional public schools. 

And here are some of the confounding factors that those not versed in education issues don’t grasp about charter schools’ achievement:

• All charter school admissions (in all cases nationwide) are by specific request, so all charter school students had parents who gave a **** about their kids' education. That gives charter schools a staggering advantage right there over traditional public schools.
• Charter schools are free to create any admissions hurdles they want – for example, San Francisco’s Gateway requires a lengthy multi-part enrollment application, including an essay, teacher recommendations, transcripts and signed commitments to parent volunteerism. Such requirements inherently screen for motivated applicants.
• Charter schools’ admissions processes get no oversight, so they are free to pick and choose and reject tough students if they want, whether or not they claim to admit by “blind lottery.”
• Charter schools are free to expel as they choose. If a traditional public school expels a student, the school district still must deal with the student, while if a charter school expels a student, the charter school never has to give that student anther thought. Just last week it was reported that Chicago charter schools are expelling students for poor academic achievement, something that even charter supporters acknowledge.
• Charter schools famously underserve special-education students, especially higher-need special-education students who require costlier, more challenging accommodations. This is an overwhelming, consistent pattern with charter schools nationwide.

And those are just for starters. My guess is that the Examiner editorial writer is blissfully unaware of any of these issues, but blissful lack of awareness is not a solid basis for voicing an editorial opinion. And gushing is just not sound journalism. For better and worse, it's sharp-eyed investigation, not puffery, that wins acclaim and awards.

If the Pulitzers were to try to change that by adding a category for "best gushing," though, these editorial writers would certainly be in the running.