The Office of the Legislative Auditor (OLA) made news when it released a new report on charter schools in Minnesota. (The June 2008 report, simply titled “Charter Schools,” is available at www.auditor.leg.state.mn.us/.)
The finding that got pundits and journalists talking is the conclusion that students in charter schools “generally did not perform as well on standardized academic measures as students in Minnesota district schools.”
So where do we go from here?
If you believe that poverty is the fundamental obstacle to educational performance, you might use this as an occasion to dismiss the role of charter schools, call for a new “war on poverty” that also includes yet more increases in funding for district schools.
It is true that we expect schools to do too much, including saving the planet from environmental catastrophes and teaching parents how to be parents. But let’s not let schools off the hook, either. How a school is run can make a difference.
Finding Adequate Comparisons
Do the findings of the report confirm that the charter school idea has failed? Not exactly. The researchers observed that after various demographic factors are accounted for, “the differences in performance were minimal.”
In other words, charter schools performed at least as good as district schools—even without being able to tap local property owners for taxes.
But let’s back up and start with the authors’ statement that “the limitations of the data do not allow us to make definitive conclusions” about the performance of charter schools or district schools, as a class.
The most important limitation to the report is that it does not have any way to measure what really counts in education: Is a student who starts out the year in a charter school better off at the end of the year or not? If that student is better off than a similar student in a district school, perhaps the charter school idea—or at least that particular school—is good.
In other words, the best way of comparing the value of two schools is to compare how much similar students gain over time. The OLA report did not do this.
This omission is an important limitation to the report. That’s because it is possible that the differences in students who transfer to charter schools may be more important than the differences in the schools themselves.
The OLA attempted to get around this possibility by matching charter and district schools (on student demographics) within their region of the state. Still, it could not find a suitable match for one quarter of the charter schools.
(In addition, nine charter schools with “unique learning programs” such as online curriculums were not included in the comparison. There is a good methodological reason to omit such schools, but the fact that they have unique programs is in itself a benefit to their students.)
Digging deeper into the data reveals something interesting: the relative performance of the two types of schools, at least as revealed in this report, depends on the income and racial composition of the school. In some situations, charter schools as a group do outperform district schools.
For students who were at the very bottom of the economic ladder, district schools held an advantage over charter schools. But for students just below the poverty level, charter schools held their own.
For schools that have overwhelmingly minority enrollments (75 to 100 percent), charter schools held their own.
In addition, charter schools are better than district schools in Minneapolis and Saint Paul in making Adequate Yearly Progress, a measurement of the federal No Child Left Behind education program. That’s important, since these districts are the largest in the state, and among the worst performing. According to Education Week, for example, the graduation rate for 2004-05 was 59 percent for Saint Paul, and 45 percent for Minneapolis. (See the graduation rate map tool, a great new resource, at www.edweek.org/apps/maps/.)
A Lesson from Chicago
So can charter schools work? Other reports suggest the answer is yes. Earlier this year the Rand Corporation (www.rand.org) compared district schools and charter schools in the Chicago Public Schools system. Unlike the OLA researchers, the Rand researchers looked at student gains over time.
They concluded that charter schools “may produce positive effects on ACT scores, the probability of graduating, and the probability of enrolling in college.” These results, they said, “are solidly evident only in the charter [high schools] that also included middle school grades.” In that circumstance, the likelihood of graduating increased by 10 percent (or 7 percentage points); the likelihood of attending college increased by 29 percent.
What made the difference? The Rand researchers said that it was either the charter status of the schools, or their unusual grade configuration—which was in turn made because they were charter schools.
Are charter schools the only cure to what ails public education? Not at all. But lawmakers would be foolish to cap their numbers, as was discussed during the last session in Saint Paul, or make them more like district schools.
The problem with progressives: Government’s legitimacy is grounded in restraint
June 30th, 2008 by Craig WestoverThis commentary originally appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press Friday, June 27. Comments welcome there.
I am quite pleased to see how quickly Growth & Justice president Dane Smith responded (”In the mainstream – legitimately,” June 25) to my June 20 column (”The problem with progressives”) in which I asserted my mistrust of progressive politics. Like my dental hygienist, I get a little pleasure out of hitting a nerve.
Smith “strenuously” objects to my contention that progressives are immune to restraint, and he finds the notion “preposterous” that progressivism is a dangerous challenge to constitutionally limited government. Yet nowhere in his piece does he say what it is that restrains progressives from expanding government beyond legitimacy. And that is really what the debate is all about.
Let’s put to rest the notion Smith attributes to me that our government is “illegitimate” — Government is legitimate. What I question as illegitimate is the scope of activities Smith would endow with government authority.
The Declaration of Independence establishes that governments are instituted among men to secure the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Smith’s view not withstanding, government is not instituted to create a better world through the “visionary planning and wise investment” of an elected few.
The Declaration goes on to state that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. Smith misses the word “just” when he chides me for failure to recognize the difference between “undemocratic governments under brutal dictators” and “democratic governments that are responsive to the will of the people and largely a force for good.” The legitimacy of a government is not determined by whether that government is a democracy, a republic, or even a dictatorship or whether it is “largely a force for good” or “in the mainstream.” Every form of government can exercise tyranny. Each has.
Just authority legitimizes government. “Just” authority is the inherent right an individual has to secure his own unalienable rights, which he can, therefore, justly consent to government. I have a right to recovery if someone steals from me; I can consent that power to government through police and courts. I have no right to band together with my friends to rob our rich neighbor to help our poor neighbor. I cannot consent that power, which I do not have, to government. Just authority is not any old power that at one time or another 51 percent of the people think is a good idea or a legislature or executive can usurp based on an election mandate.
That brings us to the crux of the question.
I argue that the principles of the Declaration and the language of the Constitution both legitimize and constrain government power. Smith believes that the will of the people endows government with both legitimacy and authority. The question he ignores is, “What restrains the will of the people to expand government authority beyond legitimacy?” (Is “legitimacy” even an issue when the reality is society can always be made better no matter how good it is?)
The best answer I can infer from Smith’s piece is I ought to trust the “pragmatic” progressivism of Growth & Justice and Smith’s personal sense of “balance between good government and a vigorous free market.”
Here’s why I am leery of betting my freedom on such trust:
Growth & Justice, according to Smith, believes we have invested too little in public education, transportation, health care and environmental protections. OK, let’s assume Smith is correct. At the same time we were saying “no” to more investment, we were also saying “yes” to a plethora of wealth-transferring, behavior-modifying, regulation-imposing programs of dubious merit and less constitutional authority. We created monopoly education and government-regulated health-care systems that limit individual choice. We made transportation policy intent on engineering behavior and guiding development rather than increasing mobility. We expanded the scope of government “service” well beyond what is authorized by either the state or federal constitution, or by a decent respect for individual independence.
Yet, Smith argues that government in the last decade was “restrained” because the “price of government” was a constant. The “price of government” is a formula that determines the “proper” size of government based on the total income of the state.
In other words, government is restrained not by rule of law or enumerated powers, but by how diligently you and I produce wealth. The more wealth we create, according to Smith, the more government is entitled to, the more government we can afford, and therefore, the more government we should have — of course while maintaining a “balance between good government and a vigorous free market.”
Dane Smith is no “jack-booted, Mussolini-style totalitarian.” But his belief that life can be improved through a government restrained solely by some Hobbit-like virtue that vows to use the Tolkienesque ring of government power “largely as a force for good” is naïve and dangerous. And the longer Smith wears the ring, the more he might come to realize that good intentions are not an adequate check on unrestrained government power. Ultimately, however, it is your individual liberty that hangs in Smith’s progressive balance between good government and a vigorous free market.
Craig Westover is a contributing columnist to the Pioneer Press Opinion page and a senior policy fellow at the Minnesota Free Market Institute (mnfmi.org). His e-mail address is westover4@yahoo.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
This commentary originally appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press Friday, June 27.
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