"A child's learning is the function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher." James Coleman, 1972

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Obama's Charter Policy Built on "Sketchy Evidence"

Could it be more than coincidence that while Bill the Oligarch huddled with corporate charterites that a national study would be released showing the bankruptcy of the charter solution? The Christian Science Monitor's caption for the AP photo: "Bill Gates shakes hands with Nelson Smith, President and CEO of National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, at National Charter Schools Conference in Chicago Tuesday, the same day that a government study found that charter schools do no better than public schools in student outcomes."
Photo Kiichiro Sato/AP.

A clip from the Monitor article, which is the only newspaper so far to report the new study:
. . . But others believe that, while there still may be a place for some charters, research like this study doesn’t justify the massive public-policy push to create more charters quickly.
“The worry is that President Obama and others are getting seduced by the movement because they’re looking at the results from boutique charters [like KIPP and Aspire] rather than at the wide array of charters that don’t outperform regular schools,” says Bruce Fuller, an education professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Professor Fuller remains “cautiously optimistic” about charters and says they seem to do some things well, such as attracting energetic young teachers. But, he adds, “It’s irresponsible that President Obama would [push] all 50 states to create more charter schools in light of such sketchy evidence.”

1 comment:

  1. I cannot believe I voted for this guy. I knew he was pretty bad, but not this bad. You can't vote for Republicans, and you can't vote for Democrats either. And these are the same guys who run around complaining about choice. The choice is you can do what the hell WalMart wants or you can go to hell. Well, it probably beats working at WalMart, which is pretty much what all these folks want us to be doing.

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