{"id":426,"date":"2012-10-10T09:45:32","date_gmt":"2012-10-10T13:45:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/10\/chicago-charter-schools-do-no-better-than-unionized-public-schools.html"},"modified":"2012-10-10T09:45:32","modified_gmt":"2012-10-10T13:45:32","slug":"chicago-charter-schools-do-no-better-than-unionized-public-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/10\/chicago-charter-schools-do-no-better-than-unionized-public-schools.html","title":{"rendered":"Chicago charter schools do no better than unionized public schools"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nThe Georgia “charter school” amendment isn’t really about charter\nschools (which any school district in Georgia can already approve,\nand many have): it’s about\n\ngiving an unelected committee in Atlanta\npower to force us to pay extra local taxes to fund charter schools we don’t want.<\/a>\nHowever, since the pushers of that amendment say it’s about charter schools,\nit’s worth reviewing that charter schools actually on average perform\nno better or even worse than traditional public schools.\nLet’s look at what the pushers hate most,\nunionized public schools in Chicago.\nand then let’s look at Georgia’s non-unionized public schools.\n<\/p>\n

\nBen Joravsky wrote for chichagoreader.com 3 October 2012,\n\nToday’s lesson: charters do not outperform unionized schools:\nConfronting the anti-teachers’ union myth with, you know, facts<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nBut as I was saying, the foes of the teachers’ union declare that we\nshould pay close attention to the all-important standardized test\nscores. So let’s take a look.\n<\/p>\n

\n\n\"Chicago<\/a>\nThere are 541 elementary schools in Chicago. Based on the composite\nISAT scores for 2011\u2014the last full set available\u2014none of\nthe top ten are charters. None of the top 20, 30, or 40 either.\n<\/p>\n

\nIn fact, you’ve got to go to 41 to find a charter. Take a bow, CICS\nIrving Park!\n<\/p>\n

\nMost of the 49 charters on the list are clustered near the great\nmiddle, alongside most of their unionized neighborhood schools.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe top scorers are public schools with unionized teachers who are\nmembers of the Chicago Teachers Union.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nUNO is\n\na charter school operator.<\/a> Joravsky compares one of its schools side-by-side with a unionized public school.\n<\/p>\n\n\n

\n

\nThe highest ranking UNO campus, Marquez, came in at 99. UNO’s\n\n\"Fuentes<\/a>\nFuentes campus\u2014the one the Tribune highlighted\u2014ranks\n128. That’s two positions behind Linne, the unionized public school\nin the neighborhood. I hope it’s not too late for the Tribune to\nrewrite that editorial.\n<\/p>\n

\nFor the record, Linne’s student body consists largely of low-income\nHispanic kids, as does Fuentes’s. I mention that because charter\nsupporters usually whine that it’s unfair to compare them with\nhigher-scoring schools whose students come from wealthier families.\nWhich is the exact argument they disdain when public school backers\nuse it. “The soft bigotry of low expectations,” as the\naforementioned President Bush put it.\n<\/p>\n

\n\n\"Linne<\/a>\nWhen they’re calculating their rankings, the charter backers like to\nrule out comparisons with unionized middle-class neighborhood\nschools, magnet schools, selective enrollment schools, baccalaureate\nschools, and schools that don’t serve fish sticks for lunch. By the\ntime they’re finished playing with the test scores, they somehow\nmanage to have the charters ranked near the top. Using this logic, I\nam the world’s greatest basketball player.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nAnd this is despite a big advantage charter schools do have:\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nWhat the charter backers don’t say is that their schools actually\nhave a big advantage over their regular neighborhood counterparts\nbecause the charters limit enrollment to students whose parents\napply. They don’t have to take in every John, Paul, George, and\nRingo who shows up at the front door.\n<\/p>\n

\nThis advantage was a central point in a recent New York Times\narticle in which one north side parent said she’d enrolled her son\nin a charter because he wasn’t being “challenged” in the local\nneighborhood school, where teachers had to spend “too much time\ndisciplining troubled students.”\n<\/p>\n

\nAt the charter school, “you have a different group because of what\nwe have to go through to get our children into a charter school,”\nthe parent told the Times. “You have more involved parents here.”\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n\n\"Vote<\/a>\nSo why doesn’t that charter school next to the unionized public school\nperform better?\nMaybe being a charter school isn’t magic?\n<\/p>\n

\nBesides, local school boards already can, and often do,\nauthorize charter schools in Georgia.\nWe don’t need an unelected board in Atlanta to force charters on us\nwhile sucking up our local taxes.\nVote No on the charter school amendment in November.\n<\/p>\n

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