New Charter Study by Mathematica With More Bad News for Corporate Ed Reform
The first national charter school study was conducted in 2009 by CREDO at Stanford, and the co-funders of the study (the Walton Foundation and Pearson) were not enamored by the results. So bad were they for charter school fans that the study, though given skimpy coverage by the LA Times, was never reported by WaPo or the NYTimes, and received minimal coverage from one news magazine, U. S. News and World Report, which obviously did not get the memo:
On average, charter schools are not performing as well as their traditional public-school peers, according to a new study that is being called the first national assessment of these school-choice options. The study, conducted by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford
To improve reading in California: Let’s try the obvious
Sent to the Santa Monica Daily Press, November 5, 2011
California still ranks near the bottom of the country in fourth grade reading, according to the results of the national NAEP test, announced at the beginning of November.
California was in the basement the first time NAEP scores were analyzed by state, in 1992. When this happened, whole language was blamed and California reacted by adopting an intensive phonics approach to language arts. But the scores remained low. A few years later, our low scores were blamed on bilingual education, and California reacted by adopting an English-only approach. Still, our scores remained low.