Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
In a recent New York Times article titled At Charter Schools, Short Careers by Choice, Mitoko Rich wrote of how charter schools seem to be developing something of a “youth cult” in their teaching ranks. She reported that in the charter network “teaching for two to five years is seen as acceptable and, at times, even desirable.”
Teachers in the thirteen YES Prep Schools, which are located throughout Greater Houston, have a reported average of two and a half years of experience. The teachers who work for Achievement First—which has 25 schools in Connecticut, Brooklyn, and Providence, R.I.— “spend an average of 2.3 years in the classroom.” And the individuals who teach in the KIPP schools and the Success Academy Charter Schools stay in the classroom for an average of four years. This youth culture—or culture in which most classroom practitioners have little teaching experience— differs from that of our country’s traditional public schools where teachers average nearly fourteen years of experience…and where public school leaders have made it “a priority to reduce teacher turnover.”
In the NYT article, Jennifer Hines, senior vice president of people and programs at YES Prep, was quoted as saying, “We have this highly motivated, highly driven work force who are now wondering, ‘O.K., I’ve got this, what’s the next thing?’ There is a certain comfort level that we have with people who are perhaps going to come into YES Prep and not stay forever.” (Note: New teachers at the YES Prep schools receive just two and a half weeks of training over the summer before arriving in the classroom.)
Rich says it was Teach for America (TFA) that was mostly responsible for introducing the idea of a “foreshortened teaching career.” TFA is an organization that recruits “high-achieving” college graduates and places them in some of our neediest schools. In a piece for Policymic, Benjamin Cosman wrote about TFA recruits. He said that after just five weeks of training, “Teach for America participants lead a classroom for two years, slap it on their resume, and leave the school with a bevy of opportunities.”
Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach for America, contends that “strong schools can withstand the turnover of their teachers. The strongest schools develop their teachers tremendously so they become great in the classroom even in their first and second years.” (Question for Wendy Kopp: Are you sending your teaching recruits into the “strongest” schools?)
Mark Naison, a professor of African American Studies and History at Fordham University and a man who once viewed Teach for America as a positive program, has a difference of opinion regarding teacher turnover. He has been disappointed that TFA doesn’t instill a commitment to teaching in its program participants. In fact, Naison no longer allows TFA to recruit his college students.
Naison said the following about Kopp’s organization:
Until Teach For America becomes committed to training lifetime educators and raises the length of service to five years rather than two, I will not allow TFA to recruit in my classes. The idea of sending talented students into schools in impoverished areas, and then after two years encouraging them to pursue careers in finance, law, and business in the hope that they will then advocate for educational equity really rubs me the wrong way.
He added:
Never, in its recruiting literature, has Teach For America described teaching as the most valuable professional choice that an idealistic, socially conscious person can make. Nor do they encourage the brightest students to make teaching their permanent career; indeed, the organization goes out of its way to make joining TFA seem a like a great pathway to success in other, higher-paying professions.
Several years ago, a TFA recruiter plastered the Fordham campus with flyers that said “Learn how joining TFA can help you gain admission to Stanford Business School.” The message of that flyer was: “use teaching in high-poverty areas as a stepping stone to a career in business.” It was not only disrespectful to every person who chooses to commit their life to the teaching profession, it effectively advocated using students in high-poverty areas as guinea pigs for an experiment in “resume-padding” for ambitious young people.
After reading Rich’s article about the high turnover rate of teachers in charter schools, Catherine M. Ionata responded in a letter to the editor. She wrote:
The charter school representatives in your article defend the rapid turnover of teachers. Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America, even says that teachers can become great in one or two years! Would we expand this idea to other professions? Do we think the best lawyers are those fresh out of law school? Should we choose a rookie physician for complex surgery, because this surgeon is more “enthusiastic” than veteran surgeons?
Ronald Thorpe, president of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, said, “To become a master plumber you have to work for five years. Shouldn’t we have some kind of analog to that with the people we are entrusting our children to?”
Education expert Diane Ravitch also weighed in on the subject after reading Rich’s article:
Can you imagine that a “teacher” who graduated college in June is already “a great teacher” by September?
Why do we expect entrants to every other profession to spend years honing their craft but a brand-new teacher, with no experience, can be considered “great” in only one or two years, then leave to do something else?
This is a recipe to destroy the teaching profession.
How can anyone say they are education “reformers” if their goal is to destroy the profession?
What other nation is doing this?
This is not innovative. In fact, it returns us to the early nineteenth century, when the general belief was that “anyone can teach, no training needed.” Teaching then was a job for itinerants, widow ladies, young girls without a high school degree, and anyone who couldn’t do anything else. It took over a century to create a teaching profession, with qualifications and credentials needed before one could be certified to stand in front of a classroom of young children. We are rapidly going backwards.
Henry Seton, a humanities teacher at Community Charter School of Cambridge in Massachusetts, was another educator who responded to Rich’s article. He wrote:
The high teacher turnover at charter schools leaves these institutions fragile and ill equipped to support their most vulnerable students. It takes far more than a year or two in the classroom to develop that elusive set of skills needed to serve our nation’s neediest cohorts of students — young men of color, English language learners and so on. And I have seen some of the most well-regarded charters here in Massachusetts left reeling and in danger of closing after extensive teacher departures.
Benjamin Cosman (Policymic) wrote that young teachers in charter schools “are supposed to save education in the United States.” He thinks, however, that there is a “very real danger in valuing inexperience in the teaching field…” He believes this “supposed remedy” may possibly be hastening the “demise of public education.”
In his article titled It’s Harder for Charter Schools to Keep Teachers, Francisco Vara-Orta wrote about information provided in data collected by the Texas Education Agency. The data, taken from 47 local school districts from 2006 to 2011, showed that the “average teacher turnover rate for charter school districts was 46 percent, compared with 13 percent for traditional school districts.” Vara-Orta wrote that analysis of the data showed that teachers leave charter schools in Bexar County nearly three times more often than teachers in traditional public schools, “which generally pay more and perform better academically.” He continued, “Of the 10 districts rated academically unacceptable by the state in Bexar County last year, all were charters, with turnover ranging from 38 percent to 65 percent…”
Researchers from Vanderbilt University found that the teacher turnover rate in charter schools was nearly twice as high as that of traditional public schools. In addition, the researchers found that teachers in charter schools were also more likely to leave the profession.
Excerpt from the Vanderbilt report titled Teacher Turnover in Charter Schools:
Our analysis confirms that much of the explanation of this “turnover gap” lies in the differences in the types of teachers that charter schools and traditional public schools hire. The data lend minimal support to the claim that turnover is higher in charter schools because they are leveraging their flexibility in personnel policies to get rid of underperforming teachers. Rather, we found most of the turnover in charter schools is voluntary and dysfunctional as compared to that of traditional public schools.
A second reason is that attrition is highest among teachers that are new to the profession. Past research found teachers make important gains in effectiveness in their first three years and smaller gains over the next few years (McCaffrey, Koretz, Lockwood, and Hamilton, 2003; Hanushek, Kain, & Rivkin, 2005). Given that almost 50% of teachers leave the profession within their first five years (Ingersoll & Smith, 2003), many teachers are leaving the classroom before they have developed into optimally effective practitioners. Moreover, exiting new teachers are often replaced by similarly inexperienced teachers and consequently students in schools with high turnover may rarely be exposed to experienced teachers.
Third, turnover affects many of the organizational conditions important to effective schooling, such as instructional cohesion and staff trust. Effective schools hold shared beliefs in similar instructional goals and practices (Fuller & Izu, 1986; Bryk & Driscoll, 1988). Schools with high turnover are challenged to develop a shared commitment towards the same goals, pedagogy, and curriculum. The constant churning of teaching staff makes it difficult to collaborate, develop standard norms of practice, and maintain progress towards common goals. This can lead to fragmented instructional programs and professional development plans that must be adapted each year to meet the needs of a teaching staff in constant flux (Guin, 2004). High turnover also makes it difficult for teachers to build relational trust, which is critical towards productive collaboration in schools (Bryk & Schneider, 2002; Guin, 2004).
Critics of charter schools argue that students and schools need stability. “When you stay in a school or community, you build relationships,” said Andrea Giunta, a senior policy analyst for teacher recruitment, retention and diversity at the National Education Association.
As might be expected, studies have shown that teacher turnover often “diminishes student achievement” and has a negative impact on “the overall school environment because it creates instability and a loss of institutional knowledge.”
Matthew Ronfeldt, an assistant professor of educational studies at the University of Michigan—along with colleagues Susanna Loeb and James Wyckoff—conducted a study on teacher turnover. Their report was titled How Teacher Turnover Harms Student Achievement. Loeb, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, said that the problem of teacher turnover had been well-documented. She noted, “One in three teachers leaves the profession within five years.” In their study, the three researchers sought to find out if students “do worse in the year after there is high turnover.” They discovered that high teacher turnover hurt student achievement in English and math—and that the negative impact was as “significant as the effect of free lunch eligibility (a standard measure of poverty) on test scores.” They also found the negative impact to be strongest “among schools with more low-performing and black students. “
In a Texas Tribune article dated January 27, 2010, Brian Temple wrote that at some charter schools in the state “it’s the teachers who can’t wait to clear out at the end of the school year.”
Temple reported that according to data that had been released at the time, 79 percent of the faculty of Accelerated Intermediate Academy in Houston turned over before the 2008-09 school year. At Peak Preparatory in Dallas, 71 percent of teachers did not return…and at Harmony Science Academy in College Station, “69 percent of teachers split.”
Temple continued:
In all, more than 40 of nearly 200 charter operators the state tracked — some which oversee multiple schools — had to replace more than half their teaching staffs before the last school year. Even more established and successful operators, including KIPP and YES Prep in Houston, lose nearly a third of their teachers annually. In contrast, just six of more than 1,000 non-charter school districts statewide had more than half their teachers leave, and none of the 20 largest school districts had a turnover rate higher than 16 percent.
The financial cost of teacher turnover is high. According to a study conducted by the National Commission on Teaching & America’s Future, teacher attrition costs approximately $7.3 billion per year. Since teacher attrition is so costly and has been shown to have a negative effect on student performance, Benjamin Cosman wonders why TFA and charter organizations like the Yes Prep schools encourage teachers to have a “get out while you can” mentality.
Cosman argued:
We should be cultivating teachers who are in it for the long haul, who build steady careers based on longevity, who become the wizened old stalwarts who’ve been around the block a few times. Yes, there are problems with tenure and bad teachers sticking around too long, and those issues need to be addressed. But the exact opposite — getting teachers in and out as fast as we can — is certainly not the solution.
Excerpt from Teacher Attrition: A Costly Loss to the Nation and to the States, an issue brief released by the National Commission on Teaching & America’s Future (NCTAF) in August 2005:
There is a growing consensus among researchers and educators that the single most important factor in determining student performance is the quality of his or her teachers. Therefore, if the national goal of providing an equitable education to children across the nation is to be met, it is critical that efforts be concentrated on developing and retaining high-quality teachers in every community and at every grade level…
According to the National Center for Education Statistics’ 1999–2000 “Public School Teacher Survey,” 47 percent of public school teachers worked with a mentor teacher in the same subject area.12 Sixty-six percent of teachers who were formally mentored by another teacher reported that it “improved their classroom teaching a lot.”13
Mentors are an important factor in providing support for new teachers as they enter the real world of the classroom, but mentoring alone is not enough. Comprehensive induction proves most effective at keeping good teachers in the classroom. Studies demonstrate that new teacher turnover rates can be cut in half through comprehensive induction—a combination of high-quality mentoring, professional development and support, scheduled interaction with other teachers in the school and in the larger community, and formal assessments for new teachers during at least their first two years of teaching.14
I can speak from experience. Mentor teachers can prove invaluable in helping young and inexperienced teachers by providing them with advice, insight, educational ideas and materials that have proved successful in the classroom, and by being a sounding board for them when they feel a need to express their frustrations, insecurities, and fears. Experienced teachers helped me when I was a teaching “ingénue.” Later, when I was a seasoned professional, I helped guide and advise young teachers. I shared books and teaching materials with them. I also listened to their new ideas. Other experienced educators at my school and I found that mentoring new teachers helped us to bond with them and to become a close-knit educational community.
Older teachers provide wisdom. Young teachers bring in a “breath of fresh air.” I think the healthiest school communities have teachers with different perspectives and levels of classroom experience—new teachers, teachers in mid career, and the old sages who have been around the block more than a few times.
One has to wonder how difficult it must be for young and inexperienced teachers to find mentors in their schools if most of the classroom practitioners have little more experience than they. One has to wonder how schools where teachers stay for just two or three years can develop their own culture and institutional memory—as well as a sense of stability and community. One has to wonder how children feel when their teachers come and go so frequently and rarely show evidence of a commitment to their schools and the student population.
It saddens me to think that there are “school reformers” in our country who encourage “foreshortened careers” in education…who think that youth trumps experience…who don’t instill a commitment to education in the young people they recruit for their teaching programs.
SOURCES
At Charter Schools, Short Careers by Choice (New York Times)
The High Turnover at Charter Schools (New York Times)
Charter schools are developing teachers with short tenure (Examiner)
Teacher Attrition in Charter vs. District Schools (CRPE–Center on Reinventing Public Education)
High teacher turnover in charters: Does student achievement suffer? (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
A Revolving Door (Chicago Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff)
Teacher Turnover in Charter Schools (Vanderbilt University)
It’s harder for charter schools to keep teachers (My San Antonio)
Teacher Attrition in Charter Schools 2007 (NEPC–National Education Policy Center)
Professor: Why Teach For America can’t recruit in my classroom (Washington Post)
Teacher Turnover Negatively Impacts Student Achievement in Math and English (The Journal)
Teacher turnover harms student learning (University of Michigan)
Teacher turnover affects all students’ achievement, study indicates (Stanford University)
Churn, Churn, Churn, Is Not Good for Kids or the Teaching Profession (Diane Ravitch)
LA students more true to their charter schools than teachers, studies say (UC Berkeley)
Charter Schools Battle High Teacher Turnover (Texas Tribune)
Teach For America: Let’s Stop Encouraging Teachers to Leave After Two Years, Maybe? (Policymic)
Guest Post: Teacher turnover – who stays and who leaves (Stanford University)
High Teacher Turnover Rates are a Big Problem for America’s Public Schools (Forbes)
Teacher Attrition: A Costly Loss to the Nation and to the States (NCTAF-National Commission on Teaching & America’s Future)
NCTAF Study: Teacher Attrition Costs U.S. Over $7 Billion Annually (American Association of Colleges for Teacher education)
LJM,
Everything is political.
I don’t think one can compare the US to Denmark or Iceland or Norway or the Netherlands or Finland or South Korea–or many other countries.
Who are the “so many” people who are not happy with the education being offered to their children? There are parents who are unhappy. There are also many parents who are happy with the education that their children are receiving. One shouldn’t paint all public schools with the broad brushstroke of “failing”–as many school reformers have–when so many schools provide their students with an excellent education. We should look at the troubled schools and try to discover the causes of their problems. Unless we address those problems, we will always have some schools that are troubled/failing. After all, our schools are a reflection of our society.
Gene,
We agree 100% that the goal is “best education for all.”
We disagree on how to achieve that. The “rising tide” concept works in many areas, I’m sure. But it hasn’t worked in education. It can’t because you cannot create a single system that works equally well for all kids everywhere. People, kids, are different. They learn in different ways, at different stages. There is no evidence that all children develop learning skills similarly enough to design a single system that will let all children learn at their highest potential.
As a matter of fact, the things that kids tend to hate about school, the things that I hated about school, the things that lots and lots of successful, happy people hated about school are the most uniform things about school.
People who like school the way it is should be free to choose that form of education. People who enjoy and thrive in other forms of edification, should be as free to choose that form, no matter how little money they have. Rich people already get to choose. Poor people don’t.
The idea of “rendering choice a moot point,” is not egalitarian. It certainly isn’t liberal. It may treat everyone equally as a subject of the state who is mostly powerless to make personal decisions about how they will be educated, but it’s simply wrong to tell a poor family who want to go to a school they know is better for them, that they have no choice, because every school has to be equal (as if that’s possible), and that makes their freedom to choose their own destiny “moot” in the eyes of people who know better than they do of what’s in their own interest.
Government has had a monopoly on education for poor people for a hundred and fifty years. That’s been great for many people. It’s been bad for many people, too. It’s time to try something other than what we’ve been doing for over a century, so that it can be great for more people.
We want the same thing. It’s just time to try something new, that will keep the satisfied people satisfied, while making the unsatisfied, newly satisfied.
I don’t know what can do that, other than that thing which is a pillar of liberal freedom: personal choice in personal matters.
Elaine,
I’m trying to figure out what we’re arguing about, we agree on so much.
I think our core difference here is our opinion on what the problems with schools really are.
If someone says, what’s wrong with public schooling in the U.S.? Why are there so many people who are not happy with the education being offered to them? When the U.S. spends more per-pupil than, say, Canada or Denmark or Iceland or Sweden or Germany or France or South Korea or Japan or Norway or Netherlands or Australia or Great Britain or lots of other countries, why is the U.S. always talking about what’s wrong with education?
If someone asks those questions, nowhere near my list of answers is, “charter schools.”
For me, it’s management and philosophy. It’s not really political, but politics always seems to get tangled up in it.
LJM,
But don’t you see the inherent contradiction in “one school is more equal than others”? The goal shouldn’t the best education for select schools. It should be the best education for all schools rendering choice a moot point. A rising tide lifts all ships.
rafflaw,
You detected just a “hint” of sarcasm???
LJM,
I would have no objection to charter schools if they had to live by EXACTLY the same rules as traditional public schools (TPS). TPS are required to take every student who lives in their districts. Charters should be required to provide all the services that special needs students require. Their teachers should be certified–as are the teachers in TPS.
I believe that there are some people involved in the charter movement who really do care about children and education. Unfortunately, there also some who have ulterior motives. I think all charter schools should be “not for profit.” No one should be making money and getting rich from running charter schools. People who are earnest about school reform aren’t “in it” for the money.
I don’t think it’s wise/best for children to close down neighborhood schools in poor districts…and then spend the money saved by closing them to establish charter schools. Check out what’s been going on in Chicago and Philadelphia–to name just two cities where this is happening.
Gene,
That’s something I completely believe in. That’s why I believe that students and parents should be allowed to choose the school they utilize to get that education.
Not to speak for Elaine, but an egalitarian access to public education was precisely what Jefferson was advocating as both good for society and necessary – even essential – for democracy to flourish.
Elaine,
Is it fair to say that you think charter schools should not exist?
Or do you think that they should just do more to enforce rules about serving all the students?
Let me add that the worst problems in education cannot be solved with charters or better teachers or more money.
Only when education is unforced and completely individualized will things change. And that can only come from giving students and parents more choices.
Elaine,
I detect a hint of sarcasm in your writing? 🙂
Don’t forget that there was no education “industry” until relatively recently.
nick,
Care to provide some factual information and/or longitudinal studies to back up your accusation that the “educational industry took the best educational system 50 years ago and turned it into a third world disaster that has failed students, parents, and our culture?”
First, you should provide information that shows that the United States had the best educational system in the world in 1963. Then you’ll have to show/explain how the “education industry” turned the best educational system into a “third world disaster.” And, please, don’t just post links to opinion pieces that back up your opinion!
God, and look at all the typos! Sorry!
I’m repeating a post above, where I put too many links and so is waiting moderation. I’ll get rid of one here so it can be read sooner. Anyway, sorry for the double post!
———————
Mike, so sorry, that was poorly phrased. You’ve “caused me” a lot of pondering with your essays and comments over the months. It was meant to be compliment, I promise.
(Though your last sentence above, hurt a little. 🙁 )
Here are a study, which, hopefully will be more satisfactory.
http://www.usc.edu/dept/education/cegov/focus/charter-schools/publications/journals/Charter%20Schools%20and%20Customer%20Satisfaction%20-%20Lessons%20from%20Fie.pdf
As to the question of satisfaction, I think it’s quite likely that a kind of bias plays a role. But my (perhaps radical) reaction to that is that it doesn’t matter.
None of the studies I’m showing you or that Elaine posts matter as much as the opinions of students and parents.
I think we have to start with the agreement that education on an individual level, the act of learning, is profoundly personal. As conscious beings, learning is as personal as faith, sex, health, parenting, etc.
Now, as personal as it is, there are larger social consequences to how people are educated. If people are “well educated,” then the consequences will, obviously, be positive.
We might have to find a way to agree on what “well educated” means. Maybe we should avoid it! (For instance, compared to Henry Kissinger, for instance, I am not “well educated,” but, despite my self-esteem issues, I know I’m a more valuable human being than he is. So, you see how tricky the term is.)
Anyway, my belief is that learning takes place in an environment, a situation, where coercion is completely absent. This is a school of thought that I first encountered through John Holt and most recently via the studies and essays of Dr. Peter Gray.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn
If a family says, “We’re satisfied with our school,” and the student in the family agrees, then, for me, that’s the end of the conversation. That’s all the evidence one needs. Even if the student is scoring lower on recent tests, it doesn’t matter. Even if we didn’t know that standardized tests don’t measure real, deep learning, it wouldn’t matter. Whether or not teachers are retained doesn’t matter. All that matters is that the student is in an environment that suits his or her needs.
Charter schools satisfy some students and parents more than their local schools. So, what to do? Do we tell these people that their satisfaction is less important than teacher and principal retention?
Either poor families deserve more choices in their education, the kind that non-poor families have, or they don’t.
Who is going to argue that poor people don’t deserve choices in this essential matter?
Pat,
Much appreciated and no worries at all. Regular teachers face completely different kinds of stresses (frequently more frustrating) than we did, and I hope I didn’t imply that I was some kind of “super teacher” or that reg-ed teachers weren’t.
I was neck deep in education philosophy when I saw your first post and probably took it more seriously than I should of.
Plus, this is the internet. If we were all sitting at a table, maybe enjoying a meal and drinks, we would all probably disagree just as strongly, but we’d be smiling and laughing and learning while we did it!
LJM, Are you seeing the drill here? As you know, in the real world politicians have finally gotten it. The educational industry took the best educational system 50 years ago and turned it into a third world disaster that has failed students, parents, and our culture. In one of the best initiatives taken by Obama, he has made positive changes to put kids first. Democrats have seen the light and know the status quo is unacceptable. But, the debate here will continue, ignoring the fact that the real world is making changes w/ kids in mind, not the education industry. Missionary zeal like this is a shame to waste on a settled issue.
http://www.educationnews.org/parenting/rand-study-charter-school-parents-are-happier/
LJM,
Your second source for parental news satisfaction came from an article at EducationNews.org. The editor and chief of this site is one Jimmy Kilpatrick, a Texas advocate for alternative schooling to public schools. A less than unbiased source. He provides no link to the “Rand Report” and the one link he provides to an article describing the report is to a reporter for the Washington Examiner and the link Education News provides doesn’t work. I think ALL of Elaine’s links work and one can find out much information reading them. Now I could do further research on the original “Rand Report” quoted because I guess that would be as unfruitful proving you statement as the first link, but I won’t. If you lack the urge to actually provide viable sources backing up your premises, why should I when Elaine has provided such a rich font of information? But fear not Nick loves you not for your perspicacity, but because he feels you share his own famed pre-judgments pulled from who knows where.
LJM,
Late last night or early this morning I realized that what I accused you of was in fact what I was doing and I am sorry. So, please know that I am sincere in apologizing to you.
It seems that you have a problem with a comment made between brothers deeming some students as “little shits.” I thought, when I posted that, people would find some humor in it as I did. Obviously you didn’t. Sorry about that, it was not meant to be a grand point of argument on such a fine thread that Elaine M. started and continues. You can, if you want, continue to ride that pony but I am checking out of this thread. Just know this: three of the four are or were teachers and I have heard my fair share of horror stories as well as witnessed them in classes. With the exception of school and church I was and continue to be a professional “little shit.”
LJM, You are a gem and a hero in my book. I thank you for your service.
“Anyway, a quick google search turned up things like this:
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/schoolchoice/downloads/articles/pje-buckleyschneider2006.pdf ”
LJM,
As I told you I would ponder your links that you feel support your statement that ““so many families find them [charter schools] satisfactory”. By ponder I was of course referring to the fact that I would actually take the time to read the studies you’ve linked to to understand what they found. As for the link above I found this initially:
“One of the factors that must be controlled for may be less evident than
the standard SES-type indicators noted previously, but it is embedded in
the very nature of charter schools as schools of choice. Enrolling in a
charter school is a two-step process, in which parents first “choose to choose”
and only then choose a school. Given the nature of this process, the parents
who choose to choose are self-selecting into the charter school system and
may not be representative of the entire population of parents. In turn, the
characteristics that are motivating them to choose may affect their
subsequent behavior and attitudes toward the schools.
To the extent this is true, a self-selection bias may enter into the data,
and simple comparisons of choosers and nonchoosers will be affected by
these parental characteristics independent of the quality of the charter
schools themselves. That is, higher evaluations of charter schools may be a
function of the factors that lead charter school parents to choose in the first
place.”
So the authors correctly state that there is difficulty in determining parent satisfaction in charter school choice because there is the well known “self-selection” bias which must be controlled for. When one reaches the concluding segments of this 22 page report we see how this bias has played out vis-a-vis parental satisfaction:
“Depends on How You Look at Things:
Satisfaction May Be Higher With Charter Schools—or Not
Using cross-sectional data, we find that charter parents are more
satisfied with their children’s schools, and we showed those differences are
remarkably robust to correction for self-selection. Given the strength of these findings, our results add weight to a growing body of research that shows charter school parents are likely to be more satisfied than parents with children in traditional public schools. This, of course, is congruent with
theories of choice and with the claims of charter school proponents (Chubb & Moe, 1990; Goldring & Shapira, 1993; Hassel, 1999; Raywid, 1989).
However, the results of our longitudinal analyses are more complex and
less indicative of any long-term beneficial effects of charter schools.
Making reasonable assumptions about how to handle missing data through imputation, we find that any charter school advantage found in
cross-sectional analysis is wiped out across all measures of satisfaction.
Of course one could argue (and some no doubt will) that these results
are themselves remarkable. Given that charter schools are new, given the
birth pains of launching these schools in the highly fractious and charged
world of educational policy and school choice, and given the possibility
that parents with hard-to-educate children often choose charter schools,
the fact that charter school parents are on par with traditional-school
parents may be viewed by some as a success.
This is a plausible and perhaps even justifiable position. However, it is a
far cry from the claims that were behind the original (and no doubt
exaggerated) promises of the charter school movement that choice and charter schools would be a panacea or a “silver bullet” to solve the problems of urban education. If charter schools are a magical cure, the parents who constitute one of the prime stakeholders in schooling do not seem to know it”
Now I don’t know how you see researching a subject, but from my perspective I’ve always found it helpful to read everything that I quote authoritatively. Usually, call me picky if you will, I find that just finding quotes from Google that agree with my pre-judgments often can leave me misstating things. Perhaps you see it differently. Knowing Elaine as a friend and colleague guest blogger for some years I know that whatever links she provides she first peruses.
Now as for your first link above it seems on closer inspection that the report quoted was establishing a different parameter regarding parental satisfaction than you supposed. It also must be noted that as the quotes from the report stated it was written in the early years of the charter school movement circa 2004 and it further noted with some healthy skepticism that despite initial parental satisfaction, the “satisfaction” claimed by the movement seemed ephemeral. I will ponder the next link you provided when I have time.
“Thanks, Mike. I owed you some pondering for all that you’ve caused me!”
By the way LJM what do you mean by “all you caused me!”? I felt my question to you was rather a mild and expected one.
Elaine,
As well as LJM….
I still have connections with NEA…. And that is one thing that they’d stated is the real objection to charter schools…. One, they may have an open enrollment…. But once the count day has passed…. They ask them to find another school….
If a child get kicked out of a public school… The district has to meet the child’s needs…. Not so with charter schools….
They are not in for a penny, in for a pound approach…. Betsy DeVos and Richatd…. I can’t think of his last name….would be very happy…. As well as the Gates Fiundation…