HB 7123 Vote on Monday to Take Away Referendum Money

The move to give millions of dollars to charter schools from local referenda will affect Alachua County’s support for our public schools. Let Senator Perry know how you feel. Call his office…352-264-4040. Ask him to vote no on sharing local public school funds with privately owned and managed charter schools.

This bill affects all local districts who have passed funding measures.

Thinking as a Parent about School Grades

Suppose your child is very gifted academically. You would want your child to attend school where there were other bright kids. Should there only be bright kids in the school? Sounds tense and ultra competitive.

If your child struggled to read, should he/she only go to schools with children who have similar difficulties. Perhaps your child scores in the middle academically, with whom should this child attend school?

In a world of school choice, schools tend to get stratified by test scores and school grades. An average kid can choose a school with average kids. Is this what we want for our children?

Here We Go Again: Charter vs. Public School Hype 2019

The annual comparisons of charter vs. public school achievement are out. Can you believe what you see? Hundreds of reports show that high school students enrolled in public schools tend to out perform students in charters while in charter middle schools the reverse is true. Smaller differences in elementary schools favor charters. This is no surprise. The students enrolled in charters are different! The percentage differences in student demographics account for the achievement differences. Here are the data:

Hispanics: charters 42.3% vs. public 32.5%
FRPL: charters 54.9% vs. public 65.0%
SWD: charters 9.6% vs. public 14.6%
Black: charters 20.o% vs public 22.0%

If these numbers do not convince you that the Department of Education (DOE) report is suspect, consider the implications of the difference in school grades. Forty-seven percent of charters earn an ‘A’ grade compared to 28% of public schools. School grades and family income levels are highly correlated.

Charters tend to increase segregation by race and income. Many people do not realize that the majority of charters are located in the Miami area and overwhelmingly serve Hispanic students. Are these students from the same backgrounds as Hispanics located in other areas? The DOE does not provide this information. Another question one might ask is whether students eligible for the Free and Reduced Lunch Program are similar. Do charters serve the same percentage of students who qualify for free lunch as public schools?

Finally, what are the differences in disabilities for students in charters and public schools. Unless you have a child who needs help due to a learning disability, you may not know that disabilities are categorized by level of impairment.

The bottom line as always is to beware of smoke and mirrors. The differences in achievement between charters and public schools are due to student selection. In comparison studies where students are matched by background and prior achievement, the achievement differences disappear.

Need more evidence? Check out previous studies:

Don’t be fooled by the DOE: Charters bomb in Florida cities

CHARTER SCHOOL ACHIEVEMENT: HYPE VS. EVIDENCE

Senate Advances Voucher Bill

Public money for private schools is unconstitutional, but that does not matter to the Senate. The new Parent Empowerment bill has advanced in the Senate Read the back story here. There is no pretense that these vouchers are for low income families. The income eligibility has risen.

A Luddite’s Lament or a Really Scary Idea?

Some ideas have such a strong appeal until they get implemented! Online learning is one of them. It seems like a practical, efficient, and flexible way to approach learning. Give a student a laptop and a series of websites and let them explore. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame came up with Summit Learning. Kansas schools embraced it. Then the students and their parents rebelled. Read why. It is one of those things that brings to mind that there can be too much of a good thing.

IS FTC College Going Rate Really Better?

The Urban Institute published a report showing a six point higher rate of college attendance for students with tax credit scholarships than for ‘comparable’ traditional public school students. There is a serious flaw in the comparison groups. The FTC group included younger and older student groups. The younger group had fifteen percent more advantaged students and the older FTC group had 23 percent more advantaged students than the public school ‘matched’ groups. Given the correlation between achievement and income, it is not surprising that the FTC group entered college at a higher rate. The fact that most of the increase was associated with private and out-of-state colleges is another clue that these students were more advantaged.

NEPC published an evaluation of the Urban Institute study. In a nutshell, the answer to which group attends college at a higher rate is…’who knows?’ The issue, as always, is the validity of the comparison groups. Here are the three concerns raised in the NEPC study.

  1. Selection bias: There were two-three times more public school students than there were private school students in the groups compared. The groups were matched on free and reduced lunch status. There is a known selection bias that can result in advantages for private school students. (This is particularly true in the FTC program because such a relatively small percentage of students remained in the FTC program for four years. The Urban Institute study did acknowledge that students who had the highest college attendance rate were Hispanic and born out of the U.S. )
  2. Higher college attendance rates could be associated with better college matching rates for FTC students.
  3. The higher college entrance rate for FTC students does not indicate college graduation. The low college completion rate for FTC students may signify that the effect of FTC participation may be null or even negative.

It is discouraging to find studies of program results being used as pawns to justify programs instead of improving student achievement.