Washington is ground zero in the fight for education reform

This week's New York Times ran an article that badly misreported a teacher union study comparing charter public schools with traditional public schools. This article is of special interest to Washington State residents, as we will be voting in November on Referendum 55 to authorize charter schools in our state.

The Times article was headlined "Nation's Charter Schools Lagging Behind, U.S. Test Scores Reveal". An abbreviated version appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer under the headline: "Charter school kids are doing poorly", subtitle: "Scores are lower than for public schools, data show".

Fortunately for charter schools, but unfortunately for the truth, the study does not show that charter schools are "lagging behind", only that charter schools have lower test scores because they enroll a higher percentage of disadvantaged students than other public schools. In fact, other studies show that students in charter schools make faster progress than students in traditional public schools. Naturally, the AFT teacher union, whose study served as the basis for the NYT report, is biased against charter schools -- charter schools, whose workforce is typically not unionized, are frequently a more successful alternative to the unionized traditional public schools. As Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), Chairman of the House Education Committee noted in his response to the New York Times and AFT:

Not all charter schools are perfect, but many are doing exceptional work,” Boehner said. “These schools serve an unusually large number of disadvantaged and minority students – and contrary to this report, federal data gives no indication charter schools are lagging behind other, more traditional public schools who serve similar student populations. The data shows charter schools are producing results that are on par with those seen at regular public schools serving high numbers of disadvantaged minority students.”
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“Like many public schools, some charter schools need improvement, too. Thanks to the No Child Left Behind Act, parents and taxpayers know where these schools are, and all of these schools are being challenged to meet high standards,” said Boehner. “It’s interesting that the teachers unions oppose making traditional public schools subject to this kind of scrutiny, but favor applying it to charter schools they don’t run.”

But it should be no surprise that the Washington Education Association, which has vowed to defeat Referendum 55 and "Repeal charter schools … for good", is misusing the NYT article as propaganda in its campaign.

A number of news articles and editorials have come out in the last few days to correct the record and blast the NYT's mischaracterization of the charter school record:

Seattle Times article, Aug. 19

"It was one of the most unsophisticated, low-level analyses I've ever seen," said Mary Beth Celio, a statistician at the University of Washington's Center on Reinventing Public Education.

Collin Levey, Seattle Times op-ed, Aug. 19 "Big picture doesn't justify charter-school foes' glee".

Seattle Times editorial, Aug. 20:

Once again, charter-school opponents are doing everything they can to debunk the charter process except give it a fair chance.

Rocky Mountain News editorial, Aug. 19

What the Times failed to acknowledge, however, was that the charters enroll nearly twice as many black students as the other public schools with which they were compared. As the left-leaning Progressive Policy Institute pointed out, even the AFT conceded that after accounting for race and ethnicity, there is no significant difference in performance. Yet the nation's newspaper of record did not think that was news fit to print.

A Seattle Post-Intelligencer editorial, Aug. 19, also says nice things about charter schools, even though it fails to correct the flaws in the article that it published earlier.

Washington is a battleground state for education reform. The national teacher unions will try to defeat our charter school law in order to reverse the momentum for charter schools and preserve the unions' underperforming monopoly on public education. Expect the unions to bombard us with more anti-charter school propaganda in the weeks ahead.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at August 20, 2004 11:32 AM | Email This