Weekend greetings, CharterFolk.
We start today with new data out of Tennessee.
There, SCORE has replicated CREDO methodology to find that charter schools are generating striking levels of additional learning relative to their district school counterparts.
Results are especially strong in elementary and middle schools.
And what makes the data all the more significant is that they reflect post-pandemic performance.
Because that’s one of the challenges that we face right now. We don’t have much post-pandemic charter school performance data. So we keep relying on studies based on pre-pandemic findings:
Macke’s national CREDO study released in 2023.
And the PPI study from last year.
Important studies, no doubt.
But since then, we have seen a data vacuum, which is now beginning to be filled.
Not by the system, of course.
But by the charter school world.
Like Rocketship.
Being a single charter school operator, they cannot implement Macke’s virtual twin method, but using NWEA’s norm-referenced data they get darn close.
And the results look very encouraging.
Oklahoma and Missouri are starting to provide new state-level data, as I highlighted in this week’s Whip-Around.
Meanwhile, ESC Matrix has accumulated stunning new data about charter performance in New York.
And yes, it includes post-COVID outcomes …
… showing that NY’s charter schools are ridiculously outperforming district schools, especially with historically underserved students.
If there’s any place in the country where charter schools should be allowed to grow as rapidly as possible, it’s New York.
And yet the cap remains in place, and the leading candidate for mayor opposes the growth of charter schools.
Think of that.
It’s what counts for “progressive values” on education policy today.
The Grotesque Becomes Normal
Just up the road in Providence, we see those same values find further expression.
Charter schools outperform district schools by considerable margins.
Thousands of students are on charter school waitlists while school buildings sit empty. And still, city leaders choose to let those buildings rot rather than allow high-performing charter schools to serve more kids.
In Baltimore, as I’ve written before, we see entire district schools where not one Black student tests proficient.
And yet the district siphons money away from better-performing charter schools to fund its own brokenness.
Maryland’s charter school association fought back, securing a proposed rule requiring that 98 percent of funding flow to charter schools.
But now, status quo forces are hijacking the process to take even more funding away.
It’s threatening enough to challenge the very viability of many charter schools.
What word could we use to describe it but “grotesque?”
And yet, it’s found in so many places across the country, we’ve begun to call it “normal.”
What Happens When We Hold Up a Mirror to the Grotesque
Pre-Covid, Macke’s research …
… showed that Maryland charter schools were delivering 30 days more growth in reading and 36 days more in math than district schools.
And trends were improving.
But none of us pretend anymore that better data will tip the debate.
Because we’re not pushing back against parties who lack information.
We’re confronting a system that sees its “grotesque” reflection and calls it “normal.”
It’s the metaphor Macke shared during her introductory comments at her annual symposium this year.
How our efforts at populating the landscape with performance data function much like …
… a funhouse with all those distorting mirrors. Only this one operates in reverse. No matter how grotesque the figure standing before the mirror, the reflection is one of normalcy.
She goes on from there to say that she is not going to spend time highlighting again the system’s poor performance, nor even its efforts to prevent data from being available to parents and the public, because she knows that her audience already knows those things.
In fact, we all know those things.
We live in a warped world where organizations charged with helping students learn are the biggest purveyors of the idea that it doesn’t matter whether students learn.
It’s the ultimate form of grotesque:
Claiming left to be right.
And up to be down.
The absurd notion that somehow student learning doesn’t even matter.
A Vista. Not a Mirror.
Macke’s comment is one that has helped me think anew about moments like this when we see the charter school world and other common sense reformers get new data out into the landscape.
It’s helped me understand why we do it.
We do it, of course, for our own purposes.
To maintain a sense of integrity.
To know whether our movement is in fact having the impact we were designed to create.
But in terms of those efforts’ impact on the rest of public education, one thing has become extremely clear.
We’re not doing it to hold up a mirror.
They couldn’t care less.
We’re doing it to open up a vista.
A view into the future.
Because while the public education establishment may think it can cruise into a world where it doesn’t matter how much students are learning, the rest of the world is driving in exactly the opposite direction.
Yes, of course, selective colleges are pivoting back to required testing.
We all know that.
But even flavor-of-the-month trade schools are in on it. Indeed just created a new section on its website to help students prepare for trade school admissions requirements …
… which are chock full of the very tests the public education establishment claims don’t matter.
Never mind, also, all the private schools that have historically used tests as a basis for admission. With all the new ESA and voucher programs funding private schools, we are going to see an explosion in the number of families desperate to help their kids score well enough to get in. It makes this video on YouTube teaching parents how to help their kids do better on private school admission tests such a resonant sign of the times.
As is the fact that more employers are now using aptitude tests as part of their application processes. Business Insider reports that 76 percent of employers now use aptitude testing in hiring, up from 52 percent just three years ago.
It’s an inevitable result of not having any reliable data about students coming out of high school. What are employers to do but implement the very tests that public schools deem unimportant?
And the frustrating thing is that, in the modern day with all the technology we have available at our fingertips, it’s just not that hard.
Or even time consuming.
Last year, there was little fanfare about how the SAT went adaptive.
The whole test takes just over two hours these days.
It’s not that complicated, CharterFolk.
Getting a basic read on kids’ literacy and numeracy levels every year?
Every school in the country could get it done in half an afternoon!
The World We’re Driving Into
We’re about to inhabit a world where driverless cars fill the streets of every city in America.
And where we still don’t know whether Johnny can read.
It’s not an inevitability.
It’s a choice.
So, when I see reformers in Tennessee and Oklahoma and Missouri getting new data out into the landscape, Macke’s lesson seeps further in.
It’s not a mirror, CharterFolk.
We’re not reflecting anything.
Certainly not anything the traditional system has any interest in seeing.
We’re revealing.
We’re giving a glimpse into the future of public education.
One where grotesqueness finally stops being normal.
And where funhouse distortions become a thing of the past.
Such that we can finally see clearly what is so undoubtedly true.
Because, yes, student learning really, really matters.