Joanne Barkan, writing in Dissent, argues that three big nonprofit foundations (the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation), working together, exert a “decisive influence” on public-school education. “Whatever nuances differentiate the motivations of the Big Three, their market-based goals for overhauling public education coincide: choice, competition, deregulation, accountability, and data-based decision-making,” she writes. But, Barkan warns, these market-based reforms are hardly a panacea: “[E]vidence is mounting that the reforms are not working. Stanford University’s 2009 study of charter schools-the most comprehensive ever done-concluded that 83 percent of them perform either worse or no better than traditional public schools; a 2010 Vanderbilt University study showed definitively that merit pay for teachers does not produce higher test scores for students; a National Research Council report confirmed multiple studies that show standardized test scores do not measure student learning adequately. Gates and Broad helped to shape and fund two of the nation’s most extensive and aggressive school reform programs-in Chicago and New York City-but neither has produced credible improvement in student performance after years of experimentation.” (HT: Jason Ward) [%comments]
The “Big Three” of Education Reform
TAGS: Education
and 
. You can also watch it on 
I would like to point out that Charter schools have made a drastic impact in New Orleans post Katrina (and are likely a better example of true reform over New York Or Chicago) http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2010/0829/After-Katrina-how-charter-schools-helped-recast-New-Orleans-education
So the joint conclusion of all these studies is to simply give up, because nothing will get any better, no matter what you try?
“…a 2010 Vanderbilt University study showed definitively that merit pay for teachers does not produce higher test scores for students; a National Research Council report confirmed multiple studies that show standardized test scores do not measure student learning adequately.”
So, what you’re saying is merit pay doesn’t produce higher test scores, but that’s irrelevant, since test scores are meaningless.
Or are you saying that only the test results that confirm your thesis are relevant and all others are not?
You can’t have it both ways.
The evidence that charter schools made any impact is not clear from your reference, Scott. It’s a good headline, but it’s not the facts.
The closing lines say that there are “not a plethora of excellent schools.” Which, since 75% of the school are charters, is not a resounding endorsement.
That charter schools rebuilt quickly is no shock, there’s money to be made if you can move faster than bureaucracy. It’s just as likely that these gains were caused by a new seriousness among students after a tragedy as it is that the school ownership had anything to do with it.
As I understand it, Merit Pay is not supposed to instantly increase test scores. Its not that teachers are lazy and need extra prodding. The idea behind merit pay is that it offers good teachers more incentive to stay and less-than-good teachers less incentive. It also attracts more of the young teachers who are looking to work hard and climb the ladder, rather than someone who just wants to go through the motions until they get a pension.
Similarly, the point of Charter Schools is not that Charter Schools are always better. They are experiments. Some will be better, some won’t and some will be failures. The idea is that through competition and choice and the market, the successful schools will thrive and be emulated, and the failures will be weeded out.
Neither merit pay or charter schools are intended to be THE WAY to fix education in and of themselves. They are mechanisms for discovering and testing new ways of providing education.
Sorry to Annoy you, I was referring to the decreasing number of failing students. http://www.csmonitor.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/media/chart-new-orleans-eighth-graders-closing-achievement-gap/8553865-1-eng-US/Chart-New-Orleans-eighth-graders-closing-achievement-gap_full_600.jpg
But as mentioned in the article, trying to analyze this problem in strictly quantitative measures is (literally) failing our children. Qualitative Look at New Orleans: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsEP_5axdLI&feature=player_embedded
Happy National School Choice Week
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Carl Bialik, the WSJ numbers guy, had a column about this in Dec. Here is the link
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704170404575624562978485450.html?KEYWORDS=charter+stanford
Here are two excerpts
“But a closer look at the study reveals a potential methodological problem. There could be differences between the two pools of students, such as parental involvement or drug use, not accounted for in the study.”
“There is some consensus among these studies. Researchers generally have found that charter schools in low-income, urban areas boost test scores, while suburban charter schools in wealthier areas don’t.
Sean Reardon, an associate professor of education at Stanford who isn’t involved in the studies by his university colleagues, says it is clear not all charters are equally successful.”
That is a poor use of a percentage. What if 79% of charter schools studied produced the same results, 4% worse and then 17% better.
It’s not that I don’t believe the results it’s that they are trying to tell a story without enough information which is bad for that study if the conclusions are in fact what the percentages quoted imply.