NEW YORK, April 8 (UPI) -- Teachers in charter schools tend to be young, and often lack certification credentials from state officials, according to a recent survey. The report, by a University of California-Berkeley researcher, was recently touted in The New York Times under the headline, "Study finds charter schools lack experienced teachers."
The short answer to this finding is, "so what?"
There's a longer answer, which is based on the fact that charter schools appear -- the data are sparse -- to be performing at or above the level of comparable public schools in their area. A survey of test performance figures by the Charter Schools Development Center found that students at established California charter schools -- those that have been in operation for five or more years -- scored an average of 708 on the Academic Performance Index exam in 2002, compared to an average public school score of 689.
Similar surveys in Michigan, Minnesota, and other states suggest that charter schools are holding their own, if not out-performing the rest of the public school system. These average-score results are all the more impressive if we consider that in many cases, charters are taking in kids that the public schools don't seem to be able to educate.
In Ohio, industrialist David Brennan operates charter schools that are largely populated by students that have dropped out of other schools. In many states, charters are concentrated in low-income districts where at one time, parents had no choices at all. One of the largest and most successful charter programs is located in Washington, D.C.
An impressive finding in the charter debate comes to us from Timothy Gronberg and Dennis Jansen of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Their 2001 study found that students continuing in charter schools enjoy higher rates of improvement than students continuing in traditional public schools. A similar study in Colorado, which compared charter school student performance to that in socioeconomically similar traditional school districts, likewise found slightly higher performance at the charters.
Studies in Michigan, New Jersey, New York, and other states suggest that charter schools have a definite impact, for the better, on how the public schools in their area operate. In general, the public schools become more "consumer-oriented," i.e., they listen to parents more, now that parents have choices. A survey by the U.S. Department of Education found the same effect nationwide. This is an impact Ed-Biz likes to call "the Federal Express effect."
One must enter a major caveat about test scores. They aren't widely available. But this is largely due to decades of resistance by public school administrators to have comprehensive testing, which would enable parents and scholars to make (gulp) comparisons. As performance testing becomes the norm in most states, and is now encouraged at the federal level under the No Child Left Behind Act, not only will school performance and accountability improve, but perhaps education scholarship as well.
Charter schools shouldn't have much trouble adapting to accountability. They're already administering standardized tests. More than 97 percent of charter schools give at least one such test. Many of them have to, in order to continue operating in their state or district. The charters, in other words, have to prove they are performing based on results. Imagine if that logic were applied to all schools.
The University of California-Berkeley study is indeed revealing. It may tell us less about charter school performance, however, than it does about the mind-set of many scholars and journalists in what Bill Bennett has called "the education blob." According to Sara Rimer of the Times, for example, the paper "suggests that some charter schools ... may be replicating problems of the public schools they were intended to replace."
Actually, the problem with public schools, as the study itself suggest, is not a lack of certified teachers. The schools are loaded with certified teachers who aren't able, at least in the public school system's highly bureaucratic and anti-innovative management system, to get kids to read, write, and do their math at grade level.
In other words, the study, like so much of the education discussion today, is so hypnotized by its focus on the means that it neglects to consider the ends. The goal is not a process; the goal is a result: learning.
Here's an interesting question for some education researcher to run a regression on. Suppose one was to compare performance of students at all schools -- public, private, charter, and others -- based on actual performance on standardized math and reading tests. Would the students at schools with a lower percentage of certified teachers perform about the same, worse, or better as the students at schools with a higher percentage of certified teachers?
My own guess is that teacher certification would not have any strong relationship with better student performance. In fact, it would probably have a mild "negative correlation." Whatever the finding, if it's anything other than a strong positive, then one must question the premise that teacher certification -- which essentially amounts to taking a couple of education technique courses and overcoming various bureaucratic hurdles -- is even a positive good.
There's an alternative way to look at the certification debate -- based on consumer choice. Whether their teaching staffs have as many bureaucratic slips of paper on their wall or not, charter schools have managed, in only a few years of operation in most cases, to attract more than 700,000 students around the country. If we consider that more than two-thirds of the nation's charter schools have a waiting list that's equal to 50 percent or more of their current enrollment, the index of parental interest is even higher.
Perhaps certification itself needs reform. Suppose that the end of the year, parents cast a vote on each teacher who has one of their kids in the classroom: qualified, not qualified, no comment. Any teacher that gets more than half the votes of the parents is automatically certified in the state, whether or not they've undergone the state's process or not. Teachers that don't get half the votes three years in a row are de-certified, and have to go back and re-qualify through the official process.
Whether such a reform ever passes or not, something like it is already happily underway in the charter schools. Parents don't get to certify teachers officially, but they can vote with their children's feet. Judging from the traffic flow, they have no qualms about the "uncertified" charter teachers that are so troubling to the education experts.
("Ed-biz" focuses on the dynamic, cutting edge of change in education, as business generates alternatives to public education, and promotes change within public education. Gregory Fossedal is a contributing editor to Educationnews.org.)
