It hasnt been a great week for education reform. In addition to , a new report suggest Detroits charter schools are actually underperforming compared to their DPS counterparts.
June 7, MLive: Of 25 charter schools in and around the city, six had higher math or science proficiency scores than Detroit Public Schools’ average on the most recent Michigan Merit Exam, The Detroit News reported, and most of the others were doing worse than the district.
More charters chalked up poor results in reading and writing, but they surpassed the Detroit school district in social studies.
The real question is why should is anyone be surprised? You take the same kids from the same social conditions, teach the same curriculum tailored to the same standardized tests, and expect a different result because of a new governing structure?
The earnest but seemingly ineffective efforts at education reformand, to be clear, effective reform is absolutely necessary because the status quo is a messis reminiscent of the scene in HBOs John Adams miniseries where Adams and Benjamin Franklin raise money for the revolution by selling American flags for pocket change to absurdly painted French nobility. For all the expressions of high-minded aristocratic idealism, what was substantively produced was an empty gesture.
Some 230 years later its the same thing with American education. The Important People say they very much want to fix the schools. You know, for the children who are our most precious resource or whatever is the present bumper sticker du jour. The sad truth is the collective enthusiasm for improving education can only be sustained so long as the process is simple (more charter schoolsand make the logo bigger!) and no one has to get their hands dirty.
We can do management reshuffling, but devoting more resources to developing a diverse range of curriculum options for student bodies with diverse backgrounds and strengths/weaknesses? Spending the money to lengthen the school day and school year? Yeah, everyone just stare at the ground and shuffle your feet until someone changes the subject.
If structural reform is insufficient to help kids already behind catch up by going at a slower pace than the mean, then someone jury-rigs the test scores. Atlanta probably isnt an isolated incident. David Simon has pretty much accused Baltimore of doing the same thing.
March 10, 2008, Salon: They miss that the mayor wants to be governor, so ultimately the guy who was the reformer ends up telling people to cook the stats as bad as Royce ever did. Well, in Baltimore that happened. And they missed the fact that the third-grade test scores are cooked to make it look like the schools are improving, when in fact it doesn’t extend to the fifth grade, and that No Child Left Behind is an unmitigated disaster.
At some point, were going to have to decide if education reform exists to help kids learn, or if it exists to help the leadership class feel good about itself. If its the latter, then we can save a lot of time and trouble if the Chamber of Commerce just offered some landscape painting classes. If its the former, then we need to get serious about doing the difficult and expensive things necessary to ensure every kid has the educational opportunities to make something of himself or herself.