A case for public schools

We keep hearing how charter and private schools provide better services and training for our students, and achievement scores are higher in those institutions. However, certain studies paint a different picture.

For example, The Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University reported: "The study reveals that a decent fraction of charter schools, 17 percent, provide superior education opportunities for their students. Nearly half of the charter schools nationwide have results that are no different from the local public school options and over a third, 37 percent, deliver learning results that are significantly worse than their student would have realized had they remained in traditional public schools."

While public schools take all students - not just the select ones - and all public school students participate in mandated tests to measure achievement, the comparisons between public and charter schools become blurred.

The National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, found: "Using three recent years of data from the New York state School Report Cards and analyzing the charter population at the school level, we find that English language learners are consistently underrepresented in charter school populations across three academic years."

The Western Michigan University Department of Educational Leadership, Research & Technology recently reported that Education Management Organization schools consistently enrolled a lower proportion of special education children than their home district. Furthermore the report showed, "English Language Learners were also consistently underrepresented in charter schools in every comparison."

Howard Miller

Batavia