Report: Indiana vouchers a bad deal for students, public

A report released this week by the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability puts 28 pages of research and data behind what public education advocates have been saying for years: Indiana’s school voucher program is a bad deal for the public and it’s not providing academic benefits to students.

Drawing on published studies and details about the Indiana program, the report addresses the question of whether private school choice in Indiana is leading to better educational outcomes for children and whether it’s an efficient use of public funds at a time when state budgets are constrained.

“As it turns out, the answer is no, when ideology is put aside and evidence of what has worked to enhance student achievement is used as a barometer,” it says.

The Center for Tax and Budget Accountability is a Chicago-based think tank that generally supports progressive policies. Ralph Martire, the center’s executive director, and Indiana legislators who have opposed vouchers presented the findings in a Statehouse news conference.

Jason Bedrick, a policy analyst with the libertarian Cato Institute, attacked the report in an article posted later Tuesday, accusing it of using data selectively and misrepresenting school-choice studies.

The CTBA report relies heavily on a large nationwide study of public, charter and private schools by University of Illinois professors Christopher Lubienski and Sarah Theule Lubienski, published in 2006. The research “clearly shows that students who attend traditional, K-12 public schools outperform students who attend both charter schools and private religious schools,” it says.

Harsh penalties for Atlanta educators convicted of cheating

The world is filled with injustices. But today my sense of outrage is reserved for the prison sentences handed down for Atlanta educators convicted of altering student test scores.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter ordered 20-year sentences Tuesday for three of them, with the expectation that they will spend seven years in prison. Five others were sentenced to shorter prison terms and two got probation or home detention.

That’s right, 20-year sentences, with seven to serve. It’s what you might have gotten for killing someone in a slightly gentler and more forgiving era.

The teachers were found guilty of racketeering, an offense normally associated with organized crime. Baxter pronounced the maximum sentence even though the defendants had clean records and are clearly not a threat to cause violence to anyone.

Yes, cheating is wrong, even criminal. Atlanta parents deserve accurate information about whether their children are learning what they should. And it’s true that some educators may have benefited financially and by reputation – especially former Superintendent Beverly Hall, who was charged but died from cancer before she went to trial.

But as a New Yorker article last summer made heartbreakingly clear, teachers weren’t motivated solely by greed. They worried about losing their jobs if test scores were too low. And they worried most about their students, who faced the prospect of having their neighborhood schools shut down.

CREDO report boosts Indy charter schools

Indianapolis charter schools got a vote of confidence from a recent report by Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes, better known as CREDO. The study concluded urban charter schools are outperforming neighboring public schools, and Indy charters are doing better than most.

“It confirms a lot of the results we’re seeing on the ground,” said Brandon Brown, director of charter schools for the Indianapolis mayor’s office. “If you look across the state, the performance of charter schools is mixed. But if you look specifically at Indianapolis charter schools, they tend to consistently outperform traditional public schools.”

CREDO has critics. Some say it exaggerates the difference in performance between charter schools and public schools*. Others question its methodology, which compares charter students to statistically constructed “virtual twins” in public schools. There’s also concern that CREDO’s approach distracts from what makes schools effective and contributes to the “charter wars” – a zero-sum battle for reputation and students.

But the studies carry a lot of cachet and typically get a lot of press coverage. The center and its director, Macke Raymond, have been churning out detailed reports on charter schools for years. They have a giant database of student records and use a methodology that’s complex and hard to second-guess.

In the latest study, CREDO looked at charter schools in 41 urban areas from 2006 to 2011 and concluded that, in many cities, charters are doing a better job of boosting test scores than nearby public schools serving similar students. The study says that, overall, urban charter schools are providing students with the equivalent of 40 days of additional learning in math and 28 days in reading.