Please help...

[HiPointDem]

I'm writing a flyer as we have charter schools on the ballot this election. I'm trying to write up a brief 10-point flyer with a point, a little info, & a web link where the reader can go to check the facts, e.g.:

1. Charter schools do not improve student outcomes.

The largest study of charter schools to date was the 2009 Stanford University CREDO study. The sample population covered 14 states and DC: 70% of charter school students in the US at that time.

Researchers compared state reading and math test scores of charter students to scores of regular public school students matched for characteristics like family income.

For math scores, 37% of the charter school students showed less improvement than their matched public-school peers. Forty-six percent had gains that were statistically equivalent, and only 17% had statistically higher gains. In other words, 83% of charter school students performed the same or worse on state tests than their public school counterparts. For reading, charter students on average had lower gains as well.

http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/National_Release.pdf

If you can help out by adding bullet points or info, please have at it!

[NYC_SKP]

1. I can't help because I'm not against Public Charter Schools...

Or magnet schools, or schools within schools.

But I am against private charter schools.

In my neck of the woods, many of the charter schools provide better environments than their counterpart district high schools.

For people like Sara, for example, a very oversized girl who people would call homely or ugly, one charter school saved her from the bullies at her traditional high school.

For Riley, to take another example, the bullies at a different school would have driven him to suicide. Riley is a special needs kid without an IEP, so can't get services.

I'm sure others who visit this forum will be able to help you, however.

[HiPointDem]

3. i didn't expect your help.

[proud2BlibKansan]

5. My friend's daughter just left a charter because she was bullied

She had never been bullied before. Her parents went to the teacher who didn't know what to do. They found out later she was a first year TFA with a degree in Art History and an understandable lack of knowledge of child psychology - in addition to her lack of experience. They then went to the principal who said he believed kids should be allowed to work out their differences with as little adult interference as possible.

When the bullies began using Facebook (the school page) to continue their bullying, my friend withdrew her daughter and enrolled her in her neighborhood traditional public school.

[NYC_SKP]

6. Not all charters and not all public schools do their duty, and some are downright criminal.

In the most populous state, California, a public school classroom can similarly be staffed by a newbie with no more than a CBEST, or even less if the public school has a waiver.

So the TFA factor isn't really relevant.

And public traditional versus public charter isn't really at issue for teacher qualification, not in my state.

BTW, I've never met a TFA teacher so no dog in that race.

But crap happens everywhere and wherever it happens it needs to stop.

[MichiganVote]

2. They suck. And they discriminate. At least they do in Michigan.

[proud2BlibKansan]

4. They expel students with disabilities.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/19/charter-schools-disabilities-_n_1610744.html

[NYC_SKP]

7. The word "expel" appears nowhere in that article. Jeebus.

The article addresses underrepresentation, not expulsion.

Show me where expulsion is mentioned.

"We have known for several years that students for disabilities were underrepresented in charter schools," Jim Shelton, the U.S. Education Department assistant deputy secretary for innovation and improvement, told The Huffington Post. "The report puts a fine point on issues we were concerned about," said Shelton, the U.S. point person on charter schools. In a letter attached to the GAO report, Shelton wrote that the Education Department is working on new guidance to help charter schools meet federal standards for enrolling special-needs students. Shelton also noted that his agency's Office for Civil Rights is conducting four compliance reviews into charter schools that appear to have underserved students with disabilities.

While 34 percent of traditional public schools had populations with high concentrations of students with disabilities, only 23 percent of charter schools had similar compositions, the report said. To help explain the data, GAO investigators visited 13 charter schools and concluded "some charter schools may be discouraging students with disabilities from enrolling."

[proud2BlibKansan]

8. They expel them here where I teach

And no, the press has never covered it so I don't have a link. Just personal experience.

[proud2BlibKansan]

10. Charters here are destroying my school district

I'll dump on them all I want.

[proud2BlibKansan]

14. Just a question.

What is it - exactly - that you teach? Subject? Grade level? It would help me understand your perspective.

[proud2BlibKansan]

16. What kind of management ?

[Igel]

11. There are useful stats and not-so-useful stats.

Those are not-so-useful stats.

I know charter schools that are great for kids' education. I also know charter schools where the kids are warehoused. They learn nothing.

Far more of the latter than the former.

But while they carefully matched students for income, etc., that's probably not all the relevant criteria. A lot of kids are put in charter schools because they are singularly unmotivated to do squat. Those who are doing reasonably well are more likely to be left in public schools. So the data are skewed and the overt sincerity of the attempt to show that the data *aren't* skewed distracts you from seeing the relevant criterion.

There's a craft, a science, and an art to establishing default hypotheses and figuring out what characteristics to control for. Many ed faculty come to a problem already knowing what's important. That keeps them from examining the data and seeing what's actually going on. (Yet they're all over the idea that teacher candidates must chuck any preconceptions that they know what it means to be a good teacher. Look only at the data, as interpreted by the pundits and their little altars.)

Yet that doesn't even do justice to what's going on, as far as I've seen it. I've seen kids put in charter school mid-year, in time to salvage their fall grades. They are given passing grades in a charter school instead of failing pubic school. Then they transfer back in the spring and bring with them a good average that we have to accept. They fail every test, their average goes down from the minute they appear in the public school classroom again, and they squeak by with a barely passing grade.

The public school's graduation rate's saved from another ding, another kid graduates with a degree that really means little once it's gained. Of course, those students who can't pull this trick off are left to fail in the charter school until the following fall, when they often repeat the year or drop out.

[HiPointDem]

12. i just want a one-page flyer, though. as it's the biggest study ever done on the matter, good

enough.