> Charter schools are often founded by people with an
> ideological mission, or by local empire-builders and interest groups.
And yet often they are not. So you're for better oversight, which the CREDO study calls for.
> <http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/MULTIPLE_CHOICE_EXECUTIVE%20SUMMARY.pdf>
>
> "And yet, this study reveals in unmistakable terms that, in the
> aggregate, charter students are not faring as well as their TPS
> [traditional public school] counterparts. Further, tremendous
> variation in academic quality among charters is the norm, not the
> exception. The problem of quality is the most pressing issue that
> charter schools and their supporters face."
It shouldn't be surprising that charter schools have wide variation, since it's uncharted territory. And *difference* is one of the main selling points of most charter schools.
But a closer reading of the report seems to indicate two strong elements of these numbers: 1) the results of DC seem to be an outlier; 2) their criticism that underperforming schools are not being closed by the authorizers hurts the averages.
That's hardly what I would call "doesn't work" ...
I'm also suspicious of this idea that you can pair charter students with "virtual twins" in TPS: a big reason for the founding of some charter schools is that the school of choice *isn't available* to the students. So projecting that they "would have performed better had they stayed in TPS" seems wildly unrealistic to me.
If you have a magnet school that has a waiting list, and the waiting list starts a charter school instead of going to the next school down the line, how can you compare the student who got in to the student who didn't?
But my bigger question for Doug is: how long should parents wait for their city schools to get fixed in some "egalitarian funding and income redistribution" manner?
/jordan