Marcus on Tenure & Test Scores

December 2, 2009

HT Education Week

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

On NRO today, Marcus soldiers on through the endless New York test score tenure wars, reporting on a gutsball move by Mayor Bloomberg:

New York’s state legislature gave teachers a gift last year by banning the use of student test-score data in tenure decisions. Many expect the legislature to allow the law to expire next year, but Mayor Bloomberg refuses to wait. Last week, he ordered schools chancellor Joel Klein to use the data anyway, arguing that the teachers up for tenure this year were hired in 2007, and a careful reading of the law suggests it applies only to teachers hired after July 1, 2008.

I’m not a Bloomberg fan on any other issue, but on education he’s a cut above most mayors. And remember, he does this in a town with a City Council so thoroughly corrupted by the unions that legislators actually read from union cue cards during hearings.

4 Comments | school accountability, teacher quality | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Coulson Schools LA Times on Charters

December 2, 2009

Andrew Coulson teaches the LA Times a thing or two about charter schools in his post on the Cato blog.  Here’s the meat of it:

Yesterday’s LA Times editorial on charter schools combined errors of fact and omission with a misrepresentation of the economic research on public school spending. First, the Times claims that KIPP charter public schools spend “significantly more per student than the public school system.” Not so, says the KIPP website. But why rely on KIPP’s testimony, when we can look at the raw data? LA’s KIPP Academy of Opportunity, for instance, spent just over $3 million in 2007-08, for 345 students, for a total per pupil expenditure of $8,917. The most recent Dept. of Ed. data for LAUSD (2006-07) put that district’s comparable figure at $13,481 (which, as Cato’s Adam Schaeffer will show in a forthcoming paper, is far below what it currently spends). Nationwide, the median school district spends 24 percent more than the median charter school, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Next, in summarizing the charter research, the Times’ editors omitted the most recent and sophisticated study, by Stanford professor Caroline Hoxby. It finds a significant academic advantage to charters using a randomized assignment experimental model that blows the methodological doors off most of the earlier charter research. The Times also neglects to mention Hoxby’s damning critique of the CREDO study it does cite….

There are certainly reasons to lament the performance of the charter sector, and the Times’ editors even came close to citing one of them: its inability to scale up excellence as rapidly and routinely as is the case in virtually every field outside of education. Before getting into such policy issues, however, the Times should make a greater effort to marshal the basic facts.

Leave a Comment » | charter schools | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Mid-Riffs on Arkansas Charters

December 1, 2009

Brian Kisida and Josh McGee, who blog at Mid-Riffs, had an op-ed in the Sunday Arkansas Democrat Gazette on the State Board of Education’s rejection of all six new charter applications.  Here is the money quote:

The Board often cited the same tired reason for denying charter applicants: The proposed charter wasn’t innovative enough. Arkansas Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell echoed this sentiment after the Board’s meeting, summarizing that he thought the Board was looking for “something different and innovative that students can’t get in a normal public school.” Likewise, a Springdale representative in attendance said that “if a charter school is going to go in, it should offer something better or do something we can’t.” Board member Brenda Gullett, at a Democratic luncheon last week, confirmed that demonstrating innovation was the standard to which she held charter applicants. Some version of this reasoning seems to show up in state and local school board discussions every time a charter school is opposed in Arkansas.

It is an undue burden to force charter applicants to demonstrate radically new techniques before they open their doors. Imagine that Taco Bueno had to get permission from Taco Bell to open a store in the same town. You might hear the same anti-competitive argument from Taco Bell: “Why should Taco Bueno be allowed to open? They’re just going to offer the same things that we do. They have tacos; we have tacos. They have burritos; we have burritos.” But of course, the whole point of choice and competition is that a competitor will offer essentially the same goods or services. If the goods or services are too different, it isn’t really competition after all. It’s up to the customer-not Taco Bell-to decide whose tacos are, in fact, “better.”

Moreover, the question regarding whether charter applicants must demonstrate innovation is a legal one. The state legislature has the power to make laws. The Board, as an arm of the executive branch, has a duty to execute the law. And nothing in Arkansas’ charter school law can reasonably be construed to empower the Board to reject charter applicants solely for not demonstrating innovation. The word “innovation” doesn’t even appear in the Arkansas Department ofEducation’s rules and regulations that govern the requirements for charter school applicants.

2 Comments | charter schools | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Next Entries »