Bad Charter Schools Stay Bad, encouraging similar Bad Charter Schools to be Built.

Why do we keep allowing the misinformed and partisan public school haters to get away with spreading charter school pie-in-the-sky success stories, instead of doing the research and dispelling their lies?

Here’s more bad news for those appealing to the parental instinct to do what’s right for their kids, by offering “choice,” instead of solutions. Washington Post:

Charter schools that start out doing poorly aren't likely to improve, and charters that are successful from the beginning most often stay that way, according to a new study by researchers at Stanford University. (They) also found that charter management organizations on average do not do a “dramatically better” job than traditional public schools or charter schools that are individually managed.

Previous CREDO reports … the 2009 report that showed that only 17 percent of charter schools across the board get better test scores than traditional schools.

And the report said that it was only elementary schools that showed an upward pattern of growth. “Substantial improvement over time is largely absent from middle schools, multi-level schools and high schools,” it said. “For the students enrolled in these schools, this is a tragedy that must not be dismissed.”

And for those who paint every public school as failing due to a few bad ones, perhaps you’d like to say the same thing about all the bad charter schools. All this means is we’re creating parallel school systems with same set of problems, and in some cases, worse.

And always remember, one bad year in the charter experiment is a totally lost year for a child. And despite a charters failure, more from that same failed group are being built without one angry parent complaining:

Some states, like Michigan, permit charter management organizations to open new schools even if the ones they are already running aren't doing well.

There is wide variation in the quality of the results produced by charter management organizations. “Across the 167 CMOs, 43 percent outpace the learning gains of their local TPS in reading; 37 percent of CMOs do so in math.” These proportions are more positive than was seen for charter schools as a whole, where 17 percent posted better results. However, about a third (37%) of CMOs have portfolio average learning gains that are significantly worse in reading, and half lag their TPS counterparts in math.

Now that can’t be good, right?