illumination from the charter debate

(On the train to Worcester, MA) I am going to Clark University to join Jeffrey Henig on a panel about his new book, Spin Cycle: How Research is Used in Policy Debates: The Case of Charter Schools. I found this great book in the section of the library devoted to charter schools and vouchers. It does include a helpful and nuanced summary of the current research on charter schools. But it had much broader implications. It’s really about the ways that social science, the mass media, advocacy groups, and democratic institutions interrelate in our era.

Charter schools provide a fascinating case, because the debate about them has been passionate and ideologically polarized. It has played out in think tanks, Congress, and the front pages of national newspapers. But it did not have to develop that way. Charter schools could have been seen as a modest way of tweaking management systems in public education. There are many old public schools (Boston Latin, Stuyvesant) that essentially operate with their own charters or special exemptions. There has always been a continuum between centralized control and autonomy within public school systems. Several European social democracies–usually, and rightly, seen as left of the United States–manage schools in ways that resemble our charters more than our unified systems. So chartering could have been introduced without a lot of fanfare, without especially high expectations, and not as a test of larger social theories.

Instead, charters were promoted as experiments with several grand political theories. Conservative foundations and intellectuals favored them as tests of the market-choice hypothesis. If conservatives were right that government monopolies guarantees poor results, then charters (which increased choice) should perform better than regular schools. A successful experiment with charters would open the door to competition and deregulation across education and other sectors, including postal services and national parks.

But conservatives were not the only proponents of charter schools. One of their intellectual parents was the union leader Alebert Shanker, whose vision could be described as professionalism for teachers. His idea was that teachers should form their own charter schools, thus becoming more like white-collar professionals and less like bureaucratic pawns. There were also moderate Democrats who saw charters as a way of fending off vouchers. They hoped that success with charters would blunt demands for real privatization.

Under these circumstances, everybody seemed to want and expect the “killer study” that would vindicate or repudiate the charter model. Certain preliminary studies did get massive attention, especially a study by the American Federation of Teachers that appeared on page 1 of the New York Times. Each significant study was scrutinized for ideological bias and denounced by opponents. The coverage of each study was also subjected to intense scrutiny for bias. Some observers threw up their hands, concluding that education research was just a food fight that offered no illumination.

The model that Jeff Henig offers as an alternative is research as cumulative, incremental, and pragmatic. While unions and conservative think tanks exchanged studies and accusations, a much subtler and more nuanced literature was developing that found–as one might expect–a range of effects by different charters on various outcomes for various student populations. That range was itself a refutation of the very simple libertarian theory that any extra degree of parential choice will cause huge improvements in all outcomes. But no one should have expected a simple and universal causal theory in such a complex area as education. The emerging research is policy-relevant. It doesn’t support either a massive expansion or a termination of the charter experiment, but various tweaks and reforms to improve quality.

Henig recommends, among other points, that the federal government should concentrate on collecting excellent public data for scholars to dissect, and that scholars should be rewarded for painstaking, cumulative research and not pressed to be overly “timely” or “relevant.” I am a proponent of the Engaged University idea, but I actually admire careful, low-profile engagement in communities much more than participation in the “Spin Cycle.” So I can endorse Henig’s recommendations. I also support his call to push the charter debate back down to the local level, where it is typically less ideological and more pragmatic.

I will, however, put in a word for ideology. We citizens cannot assess the pros and cons of each policy tweak. Yet we should be involved in setting policy. One powerful shortcut is to think in ideological terms, as long as one is alert to complications and exceptions and open to serious reevaluation. I, for instance, know very little about environmental issues. But I must vote and make consumer choices. I could try to master all the science and social science on the issue, but that’s quite unrealistic. Instead, I go through life with some ideological presumptions–generally friendly to science and to regulation when it seems to be informed by science; generally skeptical of big business. But I pride myself on being alert to contradictions.

If that’s how most people should think about education, then it seems fairly natural and maybe even desirable for ideological groups to promote their views in public debate. They will and probably should seize on examples like charter schools to make their points. There are definitely costs: simplification and polarization. But there are also advantages. It’s possible that when the dust finally settles on the charter-school debate, we will have learned something.

3 thoughts on “illumination from the charter debate

  1. Peter Levine

    From Joe Nathan, by email:

    Having helped write Minnesota’s charter legislation, having been invited by more than 20 state legislatures and several Congressional Committees to testify on this and other school reform issues, I was disappointed by not surprised by the many questionable assertions Levine makes. Here are a few:

    Levine writes: Charter schools could have been seen as a modest way of tweaking management systems in public education. There are many old public schools (Boston Latin, Stuyvesant) that essentially operate with their own charters or special exemptions.

    Levine describes two examples that he sees as charter like but that are in fact what many charter opponents strongly opposed – schools like Boston Latin and Stuyvesant that have high and difficult admissions tests. Charter pubic laws explicitly prevent admissions tests. This is a very important difference between the charter idea and the quasi private publicly funded schools that Boston Latin and Stuyvesant represent.

    Levine writes…chartering could have been introduced without a lot of fanfare, without especially high expectations, and not as a test of larger social theories.

    Really! It’s not clear that he understand the concept at all – which as developed first in Minnesota and then adopted in dozens of other states. The idea was to give at least one other organization the power to offer public education, beyond local districts. As a person based at a university (as I am), Levine ought to understand that there are various organizations offering public education at the higher education level. We thought the same principle ought to apply at the K-12 level. (please see: Charter Schools: Creating Hope and Opportunity in American Education, Nathan, 1996)

    When a group of people including a liberal Democrat Governor in Minnesota suggested in 1985 that high school students should have the opportunity to take college classes, with state funds following them, all hell broke loose. School boards, supts, teachers unions etc fought the idea. It passed, and has been hugely popular here for more than 20 years. It also helped stimulate improvements.

    When many of the same folks introduced the charter idea here, again there was huge opposition from the same groups. We did not introduce it with a lot of fanfare but the opposition fought fiercely. For example, though President Clinton supported the idea in his election effort (and afterward), the National Education Association wrote to members of Congress that it was “unalterably opposed” to use of federal funds to help start charter public schools. I have a copy of the letter.

    Levine writes: If conservatives were right that government monopolies guarantees poor results, then charters (which increased choice) should perform better than regular schools.

    N/o, charter advocates (such as the late Senator Paul Wellstone, the late Rosa Parks who tried to start some charters in Detroit during the last decade of her life) and other advocates NEVER said all charter would perform better than regular schools. We said they would either improve student achievement or they should be closed. Some have been.

    Levine writes (referring to a new book by Jeff Hening): Henig recommends, among other points, that the federal government should concentrate on collecting excellent public data for scholars to dissect, and that scholars should be rewarded for painstaking, cumulative research and not pressed to be overly “timely” or “relevant.

    Fortunately President Elect Obama has a more thoughtful view of charters than does Mr. Levine – we wants to double federal funding to help start them.

    Having been on a panel with Henig, I observed his deep distrust and skepticism of the charter idea. Universities have many people like Henig (and perhaps Levine, though I know less about his work) who suggest that they are neutral observers – aka scholars” who will do painstaking cumulate research. My experience over 38 years as a public school teacher, administrator, coordinator of a project for the National Governors’ Association, local PTA president, researcher and program developer, is that there is very little “neutral” research on education done by”scholars.”

    Another role for federal government would be to identify charters and district public schools with clear records of improving achievement, and helping them develop similar programs around the country. More than 30 years ago, as a teacher/administrator at a St Paul Public School, I participated in such a program. We were able to help many youngsters around the nation. We did not focus on giving research money to people at universities or their graduate students. Our efforts were in helping transform the lives of young people, especially in low income communities.

    Levine writes: It’s possible that when the dust finally settles on the charter-school debate, we will have learned something.

    With continuing vigorous opposition to charters from many education groups, we should not wait for “the dust to settle.” We’ve already learned that

    a. Some charters produce major gains with students from low income families; some charters have been failures

    b. It is possible to replicate outstanding charter (and district) public schools

    c. Many university based people will continue to push for studies

    d. While Levine, Henig, et al ask for more studies, the # of students attending charters has increased from less than 100 in 1991, to more than 1.3 million this year.

    e. Research can help identify strong schools, and to identify ways that implementation can be done more effectively.

    Dr. Martin Luther King’s words are worth recallling: “Our very survival depends on our abiity to stay awake and adjust to new ideas.”

    Joe Nathan, PhD and Director

    Center for School Change

    Humphrey Institute

    University of Minnesota

    author, Charter Schools: Creating Hope and Opportunity in American Education

  2. Peter Levine

    I wrote back:

      Posted! Thanks. I must say that I do support charters, rather strongly in fact, so I think my post may have been misunderstood. I’ll try to explain better next time. Jeff Henig’s book is also very good and quite compatible with your views. I wouldn’t treat him as a hostile skeptic; there are lots of great ideas there. Openness to a range of views can only help the charter movement.

    Joe Nathan responded:

      Peter, thanks for posting this.

      Glad to hear that you support the charter movement. And I agree that an openness to a range of views is useful…But

      * what the charter movement has in mind is not elite schools open only to those who can pass admissions tests – you cite 2 such schools as examples. They are in fact what many in the charter movement oppose.

      * I’m not sure what you mean about chartering could have been opposed without much fanfare – we just tried to get a law passed and ran into massive opposition. The same has been true in every state where people tried to get a law passed (including Maryland and Massachusetts) that included the option for some group other than local districts to create new schools (which of course districts have been able to do for decades)

      * Not sure if you have contacted the Mass Charter Association – they would welcome people who want to join in advocating for strong charters – unions, administrators and school committees in Mass have made expansion of the charter idea almost impossible.

      How do you feel about the effort to expand the # of charters in Mass?

      Finally, I’m including what is being presented as an excerpt from Henig’s book. If you think he and I are compatible based on these assertions, than I clearly am not communicating with you. If you have the time and interest, you might want to look at the book I wrote 12 years ago, or some of the columns I’ve written about the charter movement that appeared in Education Week.

      Here are two of Henig’s most questionable assertions:

      1. “Differences in student backgrounds and neighborhoods outweigh differences in school practices as predictors of achievement. ” Wrong – see schools like Amistad in New Haven Connecticut or many of the KIPP schools

      2. “In the 1990s, the charter school debate was based on a clash of abstract notions: unfettered markets versus government control.” Wrong. Henig has consistently mostly or completely ignored the liberal argument for charters – expansion of opportunity for low income families.

      There are many other quesitonable assertions in Henig’s writing – I return to my question – are you prepared to help expand the opportunity for families to attend charter public schools in Mass?

  3. environmental aspects

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