I came across this video of Dr. Ravitch speaking to teachers and wanted to share it with you during this time of debate as to whether we should allow charter schools in the state of Washington.

 

And here is an excerpt from an article in the Wall Street journal by Diane Ravitch Why I Changed My Mind About School Reform:

When charter schools started in the early 1990s, their supporters promised that they would unleash a new era of innovation and effectiveness. Now there are some 5,000 charter schools, which serve about 3% of the nation’s students, and the Obama administration is pushing for many more.

But the promise has not been fulfilled. Most studies of charter schools acknowledge that they vary widely in quality. The only major national evaluation of charter schools was carried out by Stanford economist Margaret Raymond and funded by pro-charter foundations. Her group found that compared to regular public schools, 17% of charters got higher test scores, 46% had gains that were no different than their public counterparts, and 37% were significantly worse.

Charter evaluations frequently note that as compared to neighboring public schools, charters enroll smaller proportions of students whose English is limited and students with disabilities. The students who are hardest to educate are left to regular public schools, which makes comparisons between the two sectors unfair. The higher graduation rate posted by charters often reflects the fact that they are able to “counsel out” the lowest performing students; many charters have very high attrition rates (in some, 50%-60% of those who start fall away). Those who survive do well, but this is not a model for public education, which must educate all children.

An excellent interview with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez speaking to Dr. Ravitch regarding No Child Left Behind and charter schools was on Democracy Now last year titled Leading Education Scholar Diane Ravitch: No Child Left Behind Has Left US Schools with Legacy of “Institutionalized Fraud”.

The best source of information on charter schools can be found in the book that Diane Ravitch wrote titled The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education which I would recommend reading.

Dora