A Second Report Shows Charter School Students Not Performing as Well as Other Students. Now make sure you're sitting down for this one because once you read the spin the Radical Republicans put on this you'll be dizzy. According to the NYT, the Education Dept. released another report,

"show[ing] that children in charter schools generally did not perform as well on exams as those in regular public schools. The analysis, released Wednesday, largely confirms an earlier report on the same statistics by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)."

So despite this and other findings that found in

results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress test for fourth graders, [. . .] charter students scoring significantly lower than regular public school students in math, even when the results are broken down by income, sex or location.[. . .] when students in special education were excluded, charter students scored significantly lower than those in regular public schools. The results held when comparisons were made by poverty and by sex.

When broken down by race, the results show charter students generally lagging behind those in regular public schools in reading and math,

the Radical Republicans deputy education secretary, Eugene W. Hickok found the results "encouraging." He did so because he and the rest of the Radical Republicans "are big supporters of charter schools." Which means for Hickok, no matter the results, charter schools are doing a better job than public schools. Hickok "points out that in many ways charter students are holding their own." So this is the new definition of success, "holding their own." We should dismantle public schools because charter schools that often have little public oversight are "holding their own?" Hickok isn't the only Radical Republican who attempted to spin the report.

"Representative John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio and chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, described the new report as a refutation of the teachers' union [AFT] report, although the results were largely the same. He highlighted findings showing that in comparing students of the same race, charter students were not doing significantly worse than students in regular schools."

So now we should pull money away from public schools because the pet project of the Radical Republicans produces results "not [. . .] significantly worse than" the existing government run program? Please, someone get me a chair I'm getting dizzy.
posted by Idle Crank at 12/15/2004 10:42:00 PM