Waiting for Superman has energized reformers and citizens long frustrated with the pace of improvement of American schools. It’s vindicated choice proponents (like me!) who started screaming more than two dozen years ago that attention be paid to the problems that pervade urban and suburban education. Finally, there’s movie - an entertaining, non-wonky, but incredibly smart, movie - that tells it like it is. College students cry when they see the trailer, grown people cry when they see the movie, and a national campaign is on to promote its findings and its solutions.

There’s only one big problem in the entire movie. It uses flawed data to characterize charter schools, leaving viewers confused about why, if charters are only marginally good, is this being touted as a solution?

The answer of course is that most charter schools are more than marginally good. In fact, in 25 of 40 states with charter schools in the 2009-2010 school year, charter schools outperformed their public school counterparts in most measures of achievement, including the gateway and foundational courses of reading and math. States where this does not happen either have lousy laws (school boards are in control - only) or lousy authorizers (the now famed Ohio example where small theatre groups with no credibility could “authorize” a charter).

There is much more to it, of course, and we’ve written tomes proving that great laws make for great schools. But the movie doesn’t tell the truth about the achievement of charter schools because it relies on the findings of one group’s one study (which is riddled with methodology and data origination flaws). We’ve rebuffed it before and will continue to do so. And, hey it’s easier to quote the New York Times quoting one study than it is to ask state by state how charters are doing. The reality is that real, objective data can only be derived from meaningful apples to apples comparisons of students in states, using state assessments (which is the predominant means of assessing student achievement anyway).

So before the movie airs publicly, we’d humbly suggest the producers take one more look at the data they are using, lest they confuse and undermine their goal of telling their audiences that there is more than one way to deliver good education and help children succeed, that branding a child by zip code is like mandating everyone eat eggs for breakfast, and that without real quality options (which do indeed exist at a rate of three times 17%) we will not change the landscape, nor the skies above it, and we’ll be waiting for Superman for more decades to come.

*(image: 2007, User:S Sepp, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported)

Not to belabor the point, but charter schools did not come out winners in the ‘Race to the Top.’ In fact, they were hardly a factor at all. They counted for next to nothing (a possible 40 out of 500 points could be awarded for “ensuring successful conditions for high-performing charter schools and other innovative schools“) and states without strong charter laws (Maryland, Hawaii) fared just as well as those with them (Florida, DC).

Advocates and the Department of Education say that 15 states raised caps and strengthened laws during the ‘Race’, thus causing the public - and policymakers - to think much of the hard work has been done.

Take a look at this list and decide for yourself whether such actions merit the rhetoric…

California: Eliminated their annual cap of 100 new schools per year, but have only ever approved between 70 and 90 charters a year. Their cap didn’t inhibit existing growth at all.

Connecticut: Eliminated enrollment restrictions only on high-performing charters, but left a cap on the number of schools allowed to operate and still limits enrollment in most schools.

Delaware: Simply allowed a moratorium on the creation of new charters to expire and did nothing to proactively help or promote charter schools. A new moratorium could be enacted at any time.

More “Tall Tales”

I’m shocked, shocked to find that politics is going on in here.

I really love my friends in the eclectic education reform movement, even when they say really silly things. Take Joe Williams, who argues that the Duncan administration had to work really hard to keep ‘Race to the Top’ scoring “pure.” Pure? I’m sorry, but nothing is pure when people’s opinions are in play.

Let’s take a process I’m very familiar with - the role of reviewers in scoring applications for all manner of federal programs. First there is the selection process of reviewers, which in and of itself is skewed in favor of a certain ideology. DFER and kin are right to critique the scoring for Colorado and Louisiana. We’d add New Jersey into the mix of outrage over ridiculous omissions, but also Hawaii and Maryland for grade inflation.

We know people who would have been great reviewers and been able to read between the lines of BS that were carefully crafted in many a state application. But they were rejected. We know of people who became reviewers, who, shall we say, have a point of view that trusts bureaucracy just a little too much to make decisions concerning kids lives. I suspect, if ever released, identified scorecards would show it was they who scored some states high at the expense of others who ticked off the establishment on the way to the ‘Race’.

And what about the cut scores? In testing students, the cut scores can be artificially low or viewed as too high when it comes to passing kids on a test. The Duncan administration could have set the cut scores lower or higher. We believe they went lower, to be more inclusive of under deserving, but politically important states (like Maryland, where a Governor they love is fighting hard to keep his job).

Most people don’t realize that reviewers are told to check their actual knowledge of a state or issue at the door and focus only on what’s written in an application. So, if you knew that, for example, North Carolina talks a lot about data and testing but does little with it, you’d score that section lower than you would have if you’d only read how much they suggest they’d do with it all in a proposal. The same reality-vs-propaganda dilemma would be true for charters in NC.

And frankly, I don’t blame them. Every administration, including the one I worked in many moons ago, picks people it most agrees with to review programs. That’s their prerogative as soldiers of the commander in chief (who the people elect to govern). But let’s not be shocked by honest statements of fact that there’s politics going on in this gin joint. There is no “pure” reviewer or competitive grant program on the planet. Now that we have that behind us, can we have a real discussion about whether and how ‘Race to the Top’ can help kids when school districts and unions are in control of how the money gets spent? Didn’t think so.

(originally published @ National Journal’s Education Experts blog)

You want to know a secret? Parents and community leaders have spent decades talking and pressuring and begging for changes to our country’s education system until they are blue in the face. Want to hear another one? The education system, to a great extent, has spent as much time - though far less energy - ignoring them.

Why? Because it’s easier. Easier than admitting there is a problem. Easier than figuring out a solution. Easier than making a change that might be uncomfortable for a few adults.

Parents have always been the true warriors (and disrupters) in education. They’ve gotten charter school laws passed, demanded real options to failing schools, been teacher watchdogs where union bargaining agreements hogtie school leaders, and pushed curriculum changes when their kids were being cheated.

True, this brand of education reform came about through community engagement and participation in forums and meetings, but it also took grassroots organizing and camping out in legislative offices - blood, sweat and tears.

Parents already know what’s working and what’s not, and they’re out in droves every single day. Requiring their input as a condition of ESEA reauthorization is, quite frankly, silly. Requiring districts and states to make changes based on their input or risk the loss of funding, now that would make a difference.

There is no more dedicated charter school foe than Gwinnett County Schools in Georgia. For years, they have targeted Ivy Preparatory Academy, a unique all-girls school in Norcross educating more than 300 students.

First they denied Ivy its charter. Then they fought the state board which overruled their rejection. Then they fought the constitutionality of the state board. Then they cried foul over a funding allocation process they say robs their kids of a quality education. That’s a lot of billable hours, no matter how you look at it. No big loss for a district with a $2 billion + annual budget, I guess.

But in this battle, David just keeps getting one up on Goliath. On the latest round of state tests, every girl at Ivy Prep passed the reading and language exams. To add a cherry on top of that, no traditional public school in Gwinnett County had multiple grade levels ace the tests, but its other charter school, New Life Academy of Excellence, did.