The Contentious Controversy Over School Choice

Some blog followers might be interested in a recent post “The Contentious Controversy Over School Choice” [Hake (2013)]. The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: Contentious controversies over school choice are exhibited in e.g.:
a. Eighty-one comments (as of 13 Feb 2013 08:15-0800) on Diane Ravitch's (2013) blog entry “An Economist Explains the Problem with Choice” at http://bit.ly/11r9xCJ.

b. Two long threads initiated by my post “Economist Kern Alexander Explains the Problem with School Choice” [Hake (2013a) at http://bit.ly/WIdRH5. On 13 Feb 2013 08:15-0800 the threads had grown to (a) over 40 posts on Phys-L list with OPEN archives at http://bit.ly/Ve9Sof; and (b) 26 posts on the Physoc list at http://bit.ly/Y7k7rg (to gain access you may need to obtain a password by typing your email address into a slot).

c. Andrew Maul’s (2013) “Review of Charter School Performance in Michigan” at http://bit.ly/WHiO6R. The abstract reads in part: “The Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University conducted an analysis of the differences in student performance at charter schools and traditional public schools in the state of Michigan. In contrast to the majority of prior evidence regarding charter effects in the U.S. which tends to show no impact, the study finds an overall small positive effect of being in a charter school. . . . . . . . even setting aside issues with the study’s methods, the actual magnitudes of the effects reported are extremely small.”

d. Gene Glass’s (2011) “Charter Schools: Making Public Schools Private” at http://bit.ly/YXwZmO. Glass ends with: “It is difficult to see that anything other than the White voting public's desire to simultaneously cheapen public education and create quasi-private schooling for their children is driving, in its larger part, the charter school movement.”

e. Linda Darling-Hammond's (2010b) “Restoring Our Schools” at http://bit.ly/VSI9fy. Darling-Hammond writes: “Race to the Top requires that states expand charters but fails to assure quality and ensure access, despite evidence from the largest national study to date (conducted at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution) that charter schools more frequently underperform than outperform their counterparts serving similar students; evidence from a UCLA study indicating that charters exacerbate segregation; and evidence from many studies that charters serve significantly fewer special education students and English-language learners.”
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To access the complete 12 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/YdSVsX

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
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REFERENCES [URL shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 13 Feb 2013.]
Hake, R.R. 2013. “The Contentious Controversy Over School Choice,” online on the OPEN! AERA-H archives at http://bit.ly/YdSVsX. Post of 13 Feb 2013 11:23:04-0800 to AERA-H and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists.