Monday, December 18, 2017

EXAMINING CHARTER SCHOOL CLAIMS

Recently, Terry Ryan, CEO of the Boise-based education nonprofit Bluum and of the Idaho Charter School Network, wrote an article in Idaho Education News decrying an Associated Press article which criticized charters as being among the most segregated schools in the country. Ryan noted that there have been criticisms leveled at the authors of the article.

But this is only one of a number of charter critiques that's been published lately. 

Since these are just a few of the recent articles about charters, it's curious that Ryan opted to respond to the Associated Press article.  However, his claim is that Idaho charters are different:

From his op-ed: "In Idaho, critics have accused public charter schools of pulling the highest performing students out of their traditional public-school classrooms and creating student populations that do not reflect the diversity of the communities they serve. In 2015, a Boise-based organization, Centro de Communidad y Justicia, filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s (US DOE) Office of Civil Rights. According to that complaint, “Idaho’s charter school system has evolved into an unequal public-school system that discriminates against students of color, LEP students, students with disabilities (many of whom are Latino), and students from low-income families.” The hard charging US DOE’s Office of Civil Rights under President Obama never acted on this complaint apparently finding little merit in it."

To prove his point, Ryan cites Idaho State Department data to show that Idaho's charters as a whole, while not matching Idaho demographics, come very close to the demographics of the Boise and West Ada districts.

There are a few problems with Ryan's arguments:
  • First and foremost, Idaho's charters as a whole are not a school district; they are a bunch of disparate schools which are spread across the state of Idaho.
  • Idaho charters are mostly k-8 or k-6 schools, so comparing to k-12 systems is an apples-to-oranges measure.
  • Selecting certain demographics and ignoring others is cherry-picking -- it's important to note that Idaho has a large number of Limited English students, and the charter system has almost none.
Here are the data with regard to Boise's charters and the District as a whole.



If we really want to look at how Idaho's charters are doing, we should follow the example set by Anser, a Boise charter that is sponsored by the Boise School District. Each year, Anser's staff and their Board chair appear before the Boise Board of Trustees and present their annual report. As part of the report, they compare school performance with demographically similar schools in the District. Since Anser's free/reduced percentage is in the teens, they compare their performance with Roosevelt and Washington Schools in the Boise District. At some levels, Anser has superior achievement to the District schools; in others, they have lower achievement. But Anser makes an appropriate comparison and uses the data to set goals and improve performance. 

For the most part, we would agree that we have not seen the widespread problems that have occurred elsewhere with charters in Idaho. However, charters in general do not reflect the demographics of the school districts in which they reside.