Jim May: Case for Indianapolis charter schools relies on cherry-picked data
Writing for the Indianapolis Star, Jim May explains that the argument in favor of some charter schools is full of holes.
In his column, Mind Trust CEO Brandon Brown asks why some Hoosiers are skeptical of charter schools. He follows this up with the type of selectively cherry-picked data that gives informed citizens pause.
Brown claims charters “have revolutionized public education within Indianapolis’ old city limits.” By some measures, yes. By others, no. For example, while ILEARN is problematic as a measure of students’ abilities, Indianapolis Public Schools tends to outperform the vast majority of charters within its district on that test.
Brown makes claims about the funding and performance gaps between charters and public schools. Yet, it appears that the studies he references consider innovation schools to be public schools when it comes to funding, but charter schools when it comes to test results. This leads to obviously skewed results.
If we take both of these studies at face value, Hoosier charter students outside of Indianapolis receive approximately 87 fewer days of learning in reading and 74 fewer days in math. With 180 days per school year, that translates to those students receiving a bit more than half an education.
To be clear, some charters achieve extremely good results. Others are on par with their local traditional public schools. And many perform significantly worse. Brown is compensated by the Mind Trust to convince Hoosiers that only the first of those is true and his opinions should be read with that in mind.