Charter/voucher proponents out in force

The educational "reformers" — meaning the people who agree with the Bush folks (Is that reform we can believe in?) — have been out it force getting their word in the media. We've had all kinds of articles and op eds about the glories of vouchers lately, now that the courts are deciding whether Arizona's limited voucher program is constitutional.

Today it's the charter proponents talking up an Arizona Republic reporter about how enrollment's on the rise at charter schools.

It's true, and as I've said before, I like the concept of charter schools. I just want to see adequate oversight of the education in the schools — inspectors going in and seeing how the schools go about teaching their students — and financial oversight as well — thorough bookkeeping to show how they're spending state money.

But when the two main "experts" the reporter talks to are Matthew Lardner from the Goldwater Institute and Eileen Sigmund, president and CEO of the Arizona Charter Schools Association, you know the article is a puff piece, not reporting.

There are two howlers toward the end of the article which the "reporter" simply lets slide. One is a lie, and the other doesn't pass the logic test.

Paraphrasing Sigmund, the writer says there are "stringent laws and oversight" relating to charter schools. Anyone who knows our charter school laws is aware that ours are some of the loosest in the nation, which is why we have more total charters than any state but California and more students in charters per population than any state in the nation. It's very easy to get a charter school approved and very difficult to do something bad enough to get one shut down.

Here's the howler from Lardner:

Let's take Lardner's statement apart. The "quality control" he cites is that parents can see the school's test scores and pull their children out if the scores are low. This ignores the fact that you have to be very sophisticated to figure out what scores mean related to a given population of students. The only way parents could be truly informed consumers is if the state published reports about the charters based on careful observation and analysis. Without that, the "invisible hand of the marketplace" is truly invisible. Kind of like it's been in the financial sector lately.

And then he says parents can take their children out of a charter school, but can 't leave a public school. Tell me Matt, how did all those folks get into the charter schools? By leaving public schools, right? And people have the choice of leaving one public school and choosing another. They can even choose to put their kids in a different district.

I don't fault Lardner, much. I'd like him to be a little more honest, but hell, he's just pushing his agenda. But a reporter should do his homework, or just check what he's been told against common sense.

I would love to see more genuine reporters and fewer stenographers.