Two Minute Hate-Florida Science Edition in Hillbilly 3-D Satanovision!!!!!!!!!!

June 8, 2018

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Orlando Sentinel columnist Lauren Ritchie displays double-plus good duck-speaking two-minute hate in what has to be one of the most impressive displays of over-confident bias I’ve seen in many, many moons. In fact, this column is nominated for the Two-Minute Hate Hall of Fame! Some of Florida’s media have grown suspicious of science in instruction in Florida’s private choice program. Oh dear. Here’s a couple of excerpts:

Some of these schools — 80 percent describe themselves as “Christian” — use textbooks that claim people lived with dinosaurs. Heck, Noah had a couple in the ark. Some say God saved North America from Catholics and gave them South America instead. Others teach that slaves who “knew Christ” had “more freedom” than nonbelievers who weren’t captive. Babble. Just sheer babble.

The only reason these fringe “Christian schools” are getting away with sucking up millions in education funding is that Florida legislators are afraid of offending them. Elected types are so terrified of the instant howling about “Christians” being “persecuted” that they never seriously considered demanding the course of study in voucher schools meet the same standards taught in public school. They’re just happy to buy votes with millions in cash. Your tax dollars.

Folks, these are neither real schools nor, scholars will argue, are they Christian. They’re just money-making little engines for benighted fraudsters whose only other chance at a paying job is the Sears hardware department.

Do fundamentalists want their kids to learn a bunch of hillbilly science? Handle venomous snakes? Learn that God looks down on Catholics, that America would still have slavery except “some power-hungry individuals stirred up the people”? Knock yourself out. Just don’t expect anyone else to pay for it, and stop calling it “education.” It’s not. It’s more like a 12-year sentence to some anamorphic Sunday school class from hell with no time off for good behavior.

So, there is a problem with all of this. Despite a fog of name-calling (hillbilly from hell!) and questioning of motives (profiteering hillbillies from hell!) Ritchie does not present a whit of evidence that private school students learn less science than public school students.

Fortunately, the National Center for Education Statistics runs a project known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) which can shed light on this subject. Also known as the “Nation’s Report Card” this source has a huge amount of highly respected academic data, including some on Science, in private schools, among parents without college degrees.

NAEP does not provide private school science scores by individual state, but it does by region. We will therefore focus on the South, and the private school scores of students whose parents did not graduate from college. If you are going to find flat-earther profiteering red-neck science with Dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark, or whatever it is Ritchie imagines, this ought to be the place to look.

NAEP tracks four types of Science achievement: Earth Science, Physical Science, Life Science and Overall Science. The 2009 8th grade science exam allowed us to look exactly at what Ritchie denounces: students whose parents did not graduate from college, who attend private schools located in Southern states. How did these kids perform in the various NAEP Science categories compared to their public school peers?

 

You see the same pattern by the way if you compare southern scores for students whose parents did graduate from college in public and private schools in the South. Or if you do these comparisons in Western, Northeast, or Midwestern students. Across four measures of science and four regions of the country and separately for non-college and college educated parents (32 comparisons in all) private school students demonstrated a higher score a mere 32 times out of 32. Most relevant to our present discussion however are the four comparisons in the above chart, among southern students without college educated parents.

Since the author brought up Protestant schools (snake-handling!!!!) it is worth noting that only 15% of Florida tax credit students attend Catholic schools. Unlike other regions of the country, the denominational distribution in American southern states does not lend itself the private school sectors dominated by Catholic schools to the extent seen in other parts of the country. It’s also worth noting that as the state with the (by far) the nation’s largest tax credit program, the nation’s largest voucher program when these data were generated (2009) we can safely assume that Florida kids are over-represented in the Southern sample. Back in 2009, southern private choice programs were few and far between in number and small in size outside of Florida.

In recent years changes in the federal free and reduced lunch program has made it increasingly unreliable as a proxy for family income. This is all the worse among private schools, who often have difficulty accessing the program. We will therefore make use of parental education as an imperfect proxy for family income. Nevertheless, when hunting for hillbilly kids with snake-handling parents suckered by profiteering private school swindlers being taught that the Sun rotates around the Earth in science class, you would be hard-pressed to find a better place to look.

NAEP has private school scores for 8th grade Science from 2011, 2009, 2000 and 1996. The 2011 figures provide no numbers for students whose parents did not college graduate parents attending private school by region, but did provide numbers for college graduate parents in both public and private schools. Private school students had higher scores in three of four regions (one point advantage for public schools in the Northeast). The 2000 and 1996 data do not include a regional variable, but in the national comparisons both students whose parents did not graduate from college attending private schools and college grad private school parents had higher scores than their public school peers in both 2000 and 1996. So I think this basically puts the score at 39 to 1.

Comparisons like the one above do not prove that private schools are better at teaching science than public schools in any way, shape or form. They do however cast substantial doubt on the notion that they do a hugely worse job at teaching science than public schools. If private schools are running profiteering-hillbilly-from-hell science classes, what pray-tell is going on in the public schools?

1 Comment | NAEP, tax-credit scholarships | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Texas Charter Schools Enroll 85% Minority Students and they CRUSHED the 2017 NAEP

June 4, 2018

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

The Nation’s Report Card (aka the National Assessment of Educational Progress or NAEP) released new student achievement data in April for Math and Reading exams given in 2017. Nationwide, the news was not good, and the same was generally true for scores in Texas. Figure 1 shows NAEP math and reading gains for 8th grade students since 2009 for states.

Texas 8th graders were scoring three points higher on math than 8th graders in 2009, but five points lower in reading. On these tests, 10 points is approximately equal to a grade level worth of average academic progress. Overall, Texas students failed to show much academic improvement during this period.

While Texas districts have floundered, Texas charter schools have flourished academically. Figure 2 presents the same information from states but includes the progress for Texas charter school students along with the statewide averages. At 315,200 students during the 2016-17 school year, Texas charter schools serves more students than 13 state public education systems.

The improvement in scores among Texas charter school students greatly exceed those of any state. Gains however are not the only consideration. Some states like Massachusetts failed to show large academic gains but had high scores in both 2009 and 2017. International comparisons show Massachusetts compares favorably to the top European and Asian school systems, so there is no shame in holding your mud with high scores. The next chart therefore plots 8th grade math gains (from 2009 to 2017) with overall scores (in 2017) for states and Texas charter students to take both improvement over time and overall level of achievement into account:

Texas charter students not only had higher gains than any state, they also demonstrated higher overall scores than most states. Each NAEP exam utilizes a new random sample of students, and the “sampling error” for subgroups exceeds that for states. Such sampling error however should be randomly distributed, meaning that Texas charter scores/gains could be either larger or smaller. The Reading exam however provides an entirely separate sample of students from the math exam, presented in Figure 4 below:

Texas charter students again show both larger gains than any state, and relatively impressive scores, especially when considering student demographics-leading us to our next subject.

Scores and gains this impressive naturally lead to the question of whether changes in student composition drive them. Only a random assignment study can definitively isolate the role of school quality in driving scores and gains, and such studies are impractical for statewide assessments. A Stanford University study utilizing state academic data from 2011 to 2015 using a student matching strategy found evidence of stronger academic growth for Hispanic students attending Texas charters after controlling for a variety of factors.

The demographic distribution of Texas charter schools stood at more than 85% minority in 2016-17 after having become increasingly majority-minority over the previous decade. Hispanics constituted 60 percent of Texas charter students in 2016-17. A comparison of Hispanic 8th grade math scores that accounted for both parental education and special program status (English Language Learners and Special Education) found that Hispanic students attending Texas charter schools outscored all statewide averages for Hispanic students.

This would have to be the case in order to make this happen:

NAEP can’t isolate the role of average school quality in these impressive scores. When however an 85% minority school sector out scores Vermont I’m cautiously optimistic that school quality had something to do with it.  Texas adds ~90,000 new K-12 students per year and the districts seem to be struggling both academically and financially in keeping up with the growth. Expanded opportunities for families to choose the sort of education to suit their needs and aspirations could help address both concerns.

2 Comments | charter schools, NAEP, Tejas Uber Alles | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Valerie Strauss Throws Her Shoe at the Telescreen

May 30, 2018

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

The never ending two minute hate over at the Answer Sheet blog prints a long write up regarding the parental choice movement by Joanne Barkan. It is generally a color-by-numbers case for the evils of education reform, although I approve of her quoting of Rick Hess, who makes an important point.

Omitted from the saga is the part where school district elections often involve single digit rates for turnout, the decades of steadily increasing spending per pupil without substantially improved student learning outcomes, gigantic equity concerns, etc. These sort of concerns are artfully dodged with a simple “Over time, many Americans came to regard public education as a mainstay of democracy.”

The Emmanuel Goldstein of this story are the various villains supporting charter schools, private school choice, and standardized testing. Draining money, creating a terrible false impression of a non-existent academic crisis, etc.

In response, I offer the following chart from the NAEP. Florida started all of this nasty and brutish testing and choice business around about 1999. They did both of these things with relative gusto. If it is as terrible as all of that, we does NAEP show the percentage of Florida 4th graders unable to make heads or tails of 4th grade math and reading in sharp decline?

The last math NAEP given before the neo-liberal legion of darkness Jeb Bush and company instituted their reforms was 1996. The last reading pre-Jeb reading exam was 1998.

The lost golden age of late 1990s Florida K-12 involved almost half of students scoring below basic on both 4th grade math and reading. Sure Florida may have a much more diverse student body today than in 1998, and more of them seem to be learning, but ah, well, maybe it would have been even more progress if not for any of that nasty reform business, but color me skeptical.

 

1 Comment | charter schools | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

AZ and TX Charter Sectors Tops in 2017 NAEP 8th Grade Math for Hispanic Students

May 22, 2018

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

“The Force is with you young Charter Tejanos but you are not a mathematics Jedi yet. We would be honored if you would join us in CeleNAEPing good times!”

-Darth Cactus

3 Comments | charter schools, NAEP | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

The Two-Minute Hate or Race to the Tap?

May 22, 2018

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Oceania of Orwell’s 1984 made use of a daily “two-minute hate” to whip people into a frenzy against enemies of the state. As wikipedia explains:

Within the book, the purpose of the Two Minutes Hate is said to satisfy the citizens’ subdued feelings of angst and hatred from leading such a wretched, controlled existence. By re-directing these subconscious feelings away from the Oceanian government and toward external enemies (which may not even exist), the Party minimizes subversive thought and behaviour.

So about now you are wondering to yourself “why are you flashing me back to junior year English class?” Good question- I guess it came to mind because of things like this and this.

Jonathan Haidt describes the mind as an elephant (instinct) and a rider that serves the elephant (reason). The rider serves the elephant by seeking out information that confirms pre-existing beliefs, and avoids contradictory information. Individuals are thus not trustworthy in reasoning in support of their beliefs, but are pretty good at knocking down the theories of others. If however you find yourself isolated in an ideologically homogeneous tribe no one is likely to point out glaring flaws in your thinking as they either cannot or don’t want to see them any more than you do.

The problems with the above pieces seem entirely obvious to me, but apparently were invisible to the Republic. I knew this article was heading in a bad direction when I saw a former campaign manager for David Garcia described as “former BASIS parent.” Both of these descriptions are true…but one is incomplete without the other. The reporter’s effort in establishing whether the CMO management fee was reasonable given the services provided more or less ended with an assurance from a professional charter skeptic that it wasn’t. Well, can’t much argue with that…

Now for the record I don’t know the percentage of K-12 funds typically spent on the services provided by the BASIS CMO either. Given the outputs BASIS produces, I’ll confess to being broadly indifferent as to whether districts spend more or less. The Reporter’s elephant wanted to believe it was high, and sure enough he found someone to make this claim. Neither of them produced any evidence, or a rationale as to why we should care.

The two-minute hate moves into throw your shoe territory when our intrepid reporter reveals that the founders of the CMO put down a down payment on a condo in New York City…which is near private schools they operate…which charge approximately four times the amount provided by Arizona taxpayers to provide the same education that Arizona children receive free of charge. In an organization including charter schools in Arizona, Texas and D.C. and private schools in China, Silicon Valley and NYC that the highest ROI part of the operation would be in the modestly funded but very high performing AZ charter schools. The Republic reporter’s elephant lumbered off in the opposite direction however, with his rider helping to raise a vague concern that somehow Arizona taxpayers were being short-changed er somehow. In other pieces we see assertions that BASIS gets more funding per pupil than district schools in Arizona. A quick trip to the JLBC however reveals this to be false- charter schools get less total public funding per pupil than district schools in Arizona.

It is also common to see an organization critical of charter schools, the Grand Canyon Institute, described as “non-partisan” in the pages of the Republic. Having spent a few minutes on their website, I could detect no overt attachment to any political party, but the philosophical leanings of the group are entirely obvious (left of center).

I spent a number of years at the Goldwater Institute, and we spent years in public disputes and filed lawsuits challenging both Republicans and Democrats. Perhaps the memory fades, but I don’t recall the Republic referring to GI as “non-partisan.” When the GCI put out a report critical of charters, one of the paper’s columnists wrote that GCI “supports charter schools.” Things had just become soooo bad that they had no choice but to offer sharp but constructive criticism you see. GCI is run by a former official of the Janet Napolitano administration, and when I asked one of his former Napolitano colleagues about this assertion the reaction I received was “That’s absurd. George has always hated charter schools.” Again I assume that someone from GCI claimed to support charter schools, and it fit into what the columnist wanted to believe, but it isn’t terrible hard to check up on such things.

Now to be fair, the Republic does have some ideological diversity on the opinion page, which is approximately evenly split between a hard-left wing and an assortment of writers varying degrees to the right of Bernie Sanders. Center-right columnist Bob Robb has supported increased K-12 funding for years, but is an equal opportunity offender taking everyone from RedforEd to Governor Ducey to task. Centrist Joanna Allhands very helpfully noted for instance that er, guys, all schools raise money from parents, not just BASIS.

It’s not like the non-Bernie columnists challenge everything questionable put out by Team Bernie. If they did, they wouldn’t have much time to do anything else. The worst of it is that the news page seems be serving the elephant of the Bernie wing of the opinion pages: investigative pieces translate effortlessly into two-minute hate type opinion pieces.

For instance, when the Republic published a giant nothing-burger of a front page above the Sunday fold story about FOIAed emails between the Goldwater Institute and the Arizona Department of Education concerning the administration of the ESA program. Now if any of these emails were any more exciting than Jonathan Butcher writing to the Department to say “Guys there are ESA parents out here who haven’t had their accounts funded on time and they are getting very upset about it” I assume the Republic would have shared them with us. Gleefully. Instead, the Reporter’s elephant went in search of someone who would confirm that there was something very naughty going on:

“This is almost an iron grip-level of influence from the beginning of the process on,” said Thomas Holyoke, an associate professor of political science at California State University-Fresno, who studies interest groups and lobbying.

“This sounds like a full-service operation; it wasn’t just writing the legislation,” he added. “You have elected officials, who are supposed to be repositories of the public’s trust, who are pushing legislation and probably building careers off of big, high-profile bills that have some potentially extremely far-reaching effects.”

I won’t rehash the glaring flaws in this story here, but will ask a very basic question: if the Goldwater Institute had an “iron grip” on the administration of the program, isn’t it reasonable to think that accounts would be funded on time, proper records kept, etc?

Team Bernie on the opinion pages lapped it up. Worse still, when the Goldwater Institute asked to publish a response, the Republic chose not to publish it.  This sort of thing has led to a large number of right of center Arizonans to angrily mutter about how they cancelled their subscriptions years ago, that the Republic is hopelessly biased, they only hung on for as long as they did to read Robb, etc.

I wouldn’t be writing this post if I were willing to join this line of thinking. I believe that keeping some common institutions to be of unspeakable importance. Checking out to entomb oneself in a comfortable echo chamber is a path to hopeless polarization. A few years ago the Arizona Chamber of Commerce began a “Race to the Tap” event with the hope of getting people from different K-12 silos at least occasionally talking to each other.

I’m pretty sure that Geoff Esposito pictured here with yours-truly makes Laurie Roberts look like a second coming of Barry Goldwater. I’m fairly confident that Geoff helped to draft the catastrophic mistake of a soak the rich tax initiative the Invest in Ed ballot initiative that would raise Arizona incomes taxes to New Jersey levels. Geoff and I don’t agree on much related to K-12, but we do listen to each other, which is an art that Americans are losing much to our detriment. Arizona could use a good deal more tap and less two-minute hates.

 

4 Comments | charter schools, Education Savings Accounts | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

DCPS: Still the Achievement Gap Capital of the 2017 NAEP

May 8, 2018

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Look ma! DCPS reform is working great as long as your parents graduated from college. The below charts are district schools only:


That’s a two point decline compared to a 17 point (!) improvement for those scoring at home. What about math?

That is a 10 point improvement for students whose parents did not finish college compared to a 25 point (!) improvement for students whose parents did finish college. You see a similar pattern if you break the numbers down by race/ethnicity. Here is how DCPS looks (absent charter students) compared to the TUDA districts (also district only) for Black students in NAEP 8th grade reading:

Here is how it looks for Hispanic students:

And…here is how it looks for White students:

6 Comments | NAEP | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

I Bless the Schools Down in Michigan

May 2, 2018

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Neerav Kingsland has written a response to posts by Jay and yours truly on Louisiana charters generally and the Recovery School District specifically. I will begin by confessing a sin- Neerav is correct that I go a bit over the top at times. The “Prime Directive” of JPGB has always been first and foremost for the authors to entertain ourselves. We do occasionally take ideas seriously, but we try to keep things light around here, which often involves reasoning by pop-culture analogy. Maybe some gratuitous use of an animated gif here or there, or an occasional musical interlude. All in moderation of course…

Like Leo Moracchioli we try not to take ourselves too seriously, but one idea that I do take very seriously is the one quoted in the original post from Jonathan Haidt, which merits repetition:

In the same way, each individual reasoner is really good at one thing: finding evidence to support the position that he or she already holds, usually for intuitive reasons. We should not expect individuals to produce good, open-minded, truth-seeking reasoning, particularly when self-interest or reputational concerns are in play. 

But if you put individuals together in the right way, such that some individuals can use their reasoning powers to disconfirm the claims of others, and all individuals feel some common bond or shared fate that allows them to interact civilly, you can create a group that ends up producing good reasoning as an emergent property of the social system. This is why it is so important to have intellectual and ideological diversity within any group or institution whose goal is to find truth (such as an intelligence agency or community of scientists) or to produce good public policy (such as a legislature or an advisory board).

I do not wish to allow even the JPGB Prime Directive to interfere in this. I appreciate that David Osborne offered some comments, and that Neerav also took the time to respond in a civil fashion. I offer an apology if my bombast lacked civility as it must not interfere in the free exchange of evidence and ideas.

On the substance, I’ll offer the following comments in the spirit of the Haidt quote:

My preexisting bias before the release of the 2017 NAEP was that the Louisiana RSD was a clever policy innovation given the circumstances of post-Katrina New Orleans, but that the concept employed enormous amounts of financial and human capital. Perhaps too much of both to be of general interest.

David Osborne noted in a comment that only 43% of Louisiana charters are New Orleans RSD charters, which is a fair point to make. This however is about 43% more than the typical state, and a portion of the rest Louisiana’s charters are RSD charters operating outside New Orleans. Osborne noted in a comment that those charters aren’t going so well. In my preexisting frame, I interpret this as RSD not being able to make the trip down the Atchafalaya Bridge from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, much less to other states. This seems like confirmatory evidence to me, but maybe not. If not, why not?

NAEP data is still indeed inexact on this point, but state testing data for New Orleans specifically has also been in decline. NAEP shows large statewide declines in charter scores since 2013, and the state’s own testing data pointing in the same direction specifically for New Orleans. 

What sort of evidence would lead a reasonable person to conclude that the RSD model is very difficult to replicate and to sustain?  We all have theories of change, but is this one falsifiable? I believe that the combination of statewide NAEP scores and the decline of state test scores in New Orleans is an issue. I’m in favor of RSD continuing in New Orleans, but nothing about the evidence produced last few years is giving me the itch to replicate it in my home town.

Speaking of Phoenix, Neerav (correctly) noted a Credo multivariate study showing meh charter results in Arizona. Harvard’s Marty West found similar results, but both Credo and West used data that ended in 2012. I won’t go into the details here but I believe Credo, West, recent NAEP and recent AZMerit can all be correct. The 2012 Philadelphia Eagles went 4-12 but they won the Superbowl last season. Between lots of openings, closings, and schools maturing past their training wheels stage, AZ charters turned over their roster like a pro-sports team.

RSD advocates have a theory of change largely based upon increased state test scores in New Orleans. The more recent state data and NAEP however both seem to be signalling a warning sign. If this is just my preconceived notions getting the better of me, please help me out. Nevermind Arizona, based on anything and everything we can gather from Credo, NAEP, recent state scores and even random assignment studies, why should Louisiana charter policies be touted in preference to Michigan’s based upon the available results?

 

 

 

 

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Posted by matthewladner

Crash Go the Harbormasters?

April 23, 2018

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

When I was a kid in the 1970s someone wrote a book about UFOs having visited earth in the past called Chariots of the Gods. The only thing I remember about this book was a photo of an ancient stone staircase and a caption that read “Staircase going down-to a spaceport?” Someone else wrote a book called “Crash Go the Chariots.” I never examined this book, but I imagine that it was a bit like shooting fish in a barrel.

I am in the midst of reading Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion and found the following passage quite striking. The book summarizes a great deal of psychological research to reach this point which I cannot do justice to, but roll with this in any case:

In the same way, each individual reasoner is really good at one thing: finding evidence to support the position that he or she already holds, usually for intuitive reasons. We should not expect individuals to produce good, open-minded, truth-seeking reasoning, particularly when self-interest or reputational concerns are in play. 

Sounds dismal so far, but fortunately he goes on…

But if you put individuals together in the right way, such that some individuals can use their reasoning powers to disconfirm the claims of others, and all individuals feel some common bond or shared fate that allows them to interact civilly, you can create a group that ends up producing good reasoning as an emergent property of the social system. This is why it is so important to have intellectual and ideological diversity within any group or institution whose goal is to find truth (such as an intelligence agency or community of scientists) or to produce good public policy (such as a legislature or an advisory board).

Again, I can’t summarize the research that lead to this conclusion (read the book and see what you think) but basically Haidt lays out a case that says if you believe that you are some sort of scientist guided solely by sweet reason and evidence, you are the victim of self-delusion. Good reasoning happens through a social challenge process over time.

In that spirit of civil challenge, I’ll offer the following two charts. The first a scatterplot of the 8th grade reading 2017 scores by gains (2017 minus 2009 scores) for all 50 states and all 16 state charter sectors with scores in both 2017 and 2009.

There is a huge amount of success to celebrate in this chart for multiple state charter sectors, most of which have either unusually large gains, or unusually high scores, or else unusually high scores and gains.

Do however take note of Louisiana’s charter sector position in the above chart. Now let’s look at the same chart for mathematics:

Again, there is a great deal to like here- multiple charter sectors with large gains (MI, WI, GA, MD, TX) or high scores (CO, ID) or both high scores and gains. Arizona, this one is for you:

Again however take a look at Louisiana’s charter sector-again low scores and low gains. A quick trip to the NAEP data explorer will demonstrate that this same trend is evident in 4th grade NAEP scores, and state scores have been trending in a negative fashion in recent years as well.

In recent years a school of thought arose in our space that a centralized authority or “harbor-master” could produce better outcomes by carefully controlling both the entrance and the exit of schools from charter sectors, primarily on the basis of standardized test scores. In the case of the Recovery School District in Louisiana, there was a period of strong gains in state test scores to buttress this belief. State test scores however have repeatedly shown themselves vulnerable to gaming and manipulation, especially when large consequences ride on them. Soviet steel makers reported non-stop prodigious growth in steel production for decades when facing such incentives as well. How much steel was actually made-who knows? Educators however have neither the incentive or ability to “teach to” or otherwise game the NAEP exams, which is why they have long stood as an external audit on state testing.

In this case, NAEP and state tests are both pointing in the same direction.

My preexisting belief, laid out previously on this blog, is that RSD was a very clever policy innovation for a district that at one point had little more than empty buildings to leverage. I’ve also however long suspected that the notion was over-hyped and ignored some very basic political realities. When for instance Denver announced that yeah, well, about that whole making facilities available thing, we’ve kind of discovered that we are a school district and that our dominant special interests don’t really like this idea after all. The reaction in my tribe was something along the lines of “duh- what did you think was going to happen?”

I’ll go further and say that RSD has a false allure for many of our technocratic friends: things can get better, but only if someone is in charge. Someone like me. True relinquishment means letting go: let operators develop new models, let parents respond to them, let the primordial soup bubble and bake. Don’t assume that you know what constitutes a “high quality education,” don’t aim a narrow vision of quality at a single type of community, allow the interplay of different choice programs to flourish.

Now, having fully confessed my preexisting beliefs, I have offered evidence that I believe confirms them. If someone has countervailing evidence to present, the comment section awaits your thoughtful challenge. If you buy into the harbor-master system, come and defend it.

 

7 Comments | charter schools | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Arizona Charters: I’m Not Left Handed Either

April 18, 2018

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

So Arizona charter schools rocked the 2017 NAEP again. In 8th grade math, Arizona charter students narrowly scored below the top scoring state (Massachusetts) in 2015 and above them in 2017. Arizona charter schools educate a majority minority student body, both overall and specifically in 2017’s 8th grade class. It’s really quite extraordinary to see them in the same academic neighborhood as MA, given their majority-Anglo, high income, spend twice as much per pupil combo status. If MA is a good sport, they would fight left handed- what chance does a majority-minority school system with half the spending per pupil have against the highest performing state education system in the nation many years running?

I decided to dig into the details.

The Free and Reduced Price lunch definition has become fairly sketchy, so in the below comparisons I will make use of parental education as a proxy for socio-economic status. Another source for variation between states and sectors involves special program students, so the below comparisons will focus on general education students (neither ELL nor SPED). The first set of scores are for students whose parents did not finish college and are in the general education program:

Massachusetts is still winning the duel, but not comfortably-switch to the right hand? Note for the record that 10 out of 10 of the top performing states have a majority Anglo student population. In fact you don’t spot a majority minority student population state until Texas pulls in at #19. Did I mention before that Arizona charter schools are majority minority? Oh, yes, well good that again then.

Now let’s run the same numbers for general education students with college graduate parents. This should be the MA right handed fighting btw- far more fancy degrees in Massachusetts than Arizona after all, more graduate degrees as well. Well, Arizona charter kids are not left-handed either:

 

14 Comments | charter schools, NAEP | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

NAEP Trends for Students with Disabilities

April 17, 2018

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Last week I showed you the above chart on the math and reading trends for students with disabilities. As you can see, a plurality of states land in the quadrant showing declines in scores on both math and reading. Arizona landed as one of the few bright spots, and when I ran Arizona trends on all six NAEP exams since 2009 (when NAEP reconfigured the Science exams, the national economy collapsed and shortly into the then new Obama administration):

In both the AZ and the USA cases, these are the NAEP trends of students attending public schools. Just think of how much higher those Arizona gains might have been if these poor families had not been distracted by the opportunity to attend a private school or to customize the education of their child through the ESA program…

5 Comments | Education Savings Accounts | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

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