Charter School Propaganda: A Case Study
I really don't want to keep debunking this past Sunday's big, fat, wet kiss from the Star-Ledger's Julie O'Connor to the TEAM/KIPP charter school in Newark -- see here and here. But O'Connor has given us such a perfect example of reformy propaganda that it really does merit further deconstruction.
O'Connor's love letter to TEAM/KIPP is based on a collection of received truths:
- Urban public schools suck (and suburban schools aren't that great, either).
- We've spent too much already on district schools.
- Charter schools are awesome because they "prove" that poverty can be overcome in our schools; they are also "doing more with less."
To make her case, O'Connor gives us several talking points, clearly pre-digested by TEAM/KIPP for her easy consumption. Among them:
"One KIPP elementary school even outscored Montclair kids in 2013, a much higher income group."
"In a city where almost half the students don't graduate, nearly all its kids finish, and a remarkable 95 percent of them go on to college."
"At last count, nearly 10,000 families were on a waiting list to get their children in."There are others, and I'll get to them in due course. But let's take these three for right now. Are these points of data factually correct? Yes, absolutely.
But are they true? That's an entirely different question.
The master propagandist never puts a piece of data before the public that isn't factually correct. Why would she? Facts are not malleable in and of themselves, but their application certainly is. And what O'Connor has managed to do here is tell a story that is certainly "factual," but leaves out so much critical information that it can hardly be called "true."
Let's take these "facts" one at a time:
- Did TEAM/KIPP's grade 3 students outscore Montclair's in 2013, and does that tell us something? In O'Connor's construction, it would tell us that TEAM/KIPP has "proved" that charter schools can, indeed, close the testing gap, because Montclair's students come from more affluent homes.
Let's go to the data:
There is no doubt that O'Connor is right: in 2013, TEAM/KIPP's students beat Montclair's district Grade 3 English Language Arts (ELA) average score. OK, it's only 0.2 points, and - See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2015/05/charter-school-propaganda-case-study.html
