August 18, 2004: Headlines: COS - Cameroon: Journalism: Speaking Out: Education: Secondary Education: Charter Schools: Madison Capital Times: Cameroon RPCV Margaret Krome says Test Results Show Charter Schools Not Measuring Up
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June 8, 2000: Headlines: COS - Cameroon: Journalism: Speaking Out: Antibiotics: Livestock: Madison Capital Times: Cameroon RPCV Margaret Krome says Antibiotics Used As Industrial Livestock Growth Booster Puts Us All In Peril :
August 18, 2004: Headlines: COS - Cameroon: Journalism: Speaking Out: Education: Secondary Education: Charter Schools: Madison Capital Times: Cameroon RPCV Margaret Krome says Test Results Show Charter Schools Not Measuring Up
Cameroon RPCV Margaret Krome says Test Results Show Charter Schools Not Measuring Up
Cameroon RPCV Margaret Krome says Test Results Show Charter Schools Not Measuring Up
Test Results Show Charter Schools Not Measuring Up
by Margaret Krome
I remember proudly explaining to my private school friends why I attended public schools. My parents, I said, were committed to public school education. They had offered me the chance to attend a private school once they could afford it, but I declined.
After my homogenous neighborhood public elementary years, my much more racially and economically integrated middle school and high schools showed me how the cultural exposure in our newly integrating Southern city educated me about the culturally diverse world for which I was preparing myself. Additional federal funding for "at-risk" schools such as mine supported a rich diversity of course offerings, and I was grateful for the opportunities I received.
As parents, my husband and I also have supported public education and watched with alarm the growing trend toward establishing charter schools that drain precious taxpayer money from public education. Yet we've withheld judgment to see whether these approaches could nonetheless help at-risk students.
This week, results of meaningful academic test comparisons between charter and public schools became public. Although the Bush administration has promoted charter schools as part of its education program, for nine months it sat on the data that became public this week. It took sleuthing to ferret out the truth.
It is understandable, if unethical, for charter school advocates to want to suppress these results of test comparisons of charter schools and public schools, which show public school students consistently outperforming charter school students. Fourth-grade students in charter schools consistently did worse on reading and math tests than those in public schools. Some have attributed this poor performance to charter schools' having taken on more at-risk students. Actually, though, the charter school students did poorly even when compared to students of similar racial, economic and geographic background.
There are reasons why charter schools might be predicted to have poor performance, including their higher administrative costs and more resources spent on recruitment. Charter schools don't benefit from the efficiencies of scale in purchasing educational materials that public schools can offer.
But especially, these schools have so far lacked the sort of accountability under which public schools are obliged to operate. Far from offering a spur to public education to do better, the history of charter schools seems to be one of isolation from public scrutiny, as witnessed by the Bush administration's failure to make public announcements about the results of these schools' actual performance.The whole premise of the No Child Left Behind approach to education is that standards must apply to children of all kinds. Does this apply to charter schools as well? As any school board member weary from countless parent phone calls can attest, public education is of intense interest to citizens, and actions of public educators are accountable to them. Ought not publicly funded charter schools also be held accountable for the quality of education they do or do not provide?
Testing alone does not reveal the truth about the quality of a school's education performance. Increasing testing requirements has sometimes resulted in a more rigid approach to teaching, and a temptation by administrators to punish underperforming schools and teachers. However, these results, taken from thousands of students in hundreds of schools, add to growing concerns that charter schools merit greater public scrutiny.
The results of the fourth-grade student tests will probably spawn arguments for more, not less, funding for charter schools, to make them better. But as I learned as a child, the kinds of problems that prompt criticisms of public education can be addressed within the public school system far better than by siphoning off its resources to create new, less accountable and, it seems now, possibly less effective solutions that serve the private educational industry better than they serve the nation's children.
Margaret Krome of Madison writes a semimonthly column for The Capital Times. E-mail: mkrome@inxpress.net
Copyright 2004 The Capital Times
When this story was posted in December 2004, this was on the front page of PCOL:
| Our debt to Bill Moyers Former Peace Corps Deputy Director Bill Moyers leaves PBS next week to begin writing his memoir of Lyndon Baines Johnson. Read what Moyers says about journalism under fire, the value of a free press, and the yearning for democracy. "We have got to nurture the spirit of independent journalism in this country," he warns, "or we'll not save capitalism from its own excesses, and we'll not save democracy from its own inertia." |
| Is Gaddi Leaving? Rumors are swirling that Peace Corps Director Vasquez may be leaving the administration. We think Director Vasquez has been doing a good job and if he decides to stay to the end of the administration, he could possibly have the same sort of impact as a Loret Ruppe Miller. If Vasquez has decided to leave, then Bob Taft, Peter McPherson, Chris Shays, or Jody Olsen would be good candidates to run the agency. Latest: For the record, Peace Corps has no comment on the rumors. |
| The Birth of the Peace Corps UMBC's Shriver Center and the Maryland Returned Volunteers hosted Scott Stossel, biographer of Sargent Shriver, who spoke on the Birth of the Peace Corps. This is the second annual Peace Corps History series - last year's speaker was Peace Corps Director Jack Vaughn. |
| Charges possible in 1976 PCV slaying Congressman Norm Dicks has asked the U.S. attorney in Seattle to consider pursuing charges against Dennis Priven, the man accused of killing Peace Corps Volunteer Deborah Gardner on the South Pacific island of Tonga 28 years ago. Background on this story here and here. |
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Story Source: Madison Capital Times
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Cameroon; Journalism; Speaking Out; Education; Secondary Education; Charter Schools
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