The empty promise of school choice

Charter school outcomes are, on average, worse the public school outcomes. Some people may be surprised by this -- but likely only if they are in the flock of the American free-market ideology. Fredrik deBoer, who researches academic assessment at CUNY, writes on how little sense this makes on his blog The ANOVA:

There are no specific pedagogical mechanisms that are tied to the doctrine of choice. There’s no secret book titled “Actually Good Pedagogy” that only charter schools get to buy. There is no experimental approach to learning long division that is only employed in private schools. Your average child moving from one type of school to another might find that their social world has changed, that their commute is easier, or that they like the cafeteria food better. But there is no consistent differences in how charter school teachers teach, no fundamental difference in approach between public and private. When people ask me why the results from some atypical charter success story fail to scale up in places like Detroit or Chicago or Nashville, I often say “because ‘charter school’ is not a meaningful experimental condition.”... What the designation “charter school” shares broadly is only the ability to fire teachers with impunity, that’s all. And that could only possibly work to improve outcomes, again, in a world where teachers control student outcomes in a straightforward and uncomplicated way. They don’t.

The ANOVA