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TIPS FROM Milwaukee on Choice and Charters

Oct. 5-6 in Milwaukee

Choosey about Choice-Are Charters and Vouchers Effective?

About 30 reporters attended EWA’s Milwaukee seminar on school choice, learning how much charter and voucher schools can vary, and how this makes it difficult to come to any definitive conclusion about their effectiveness

Scott Elliott of the Dayton Daily News, Sarah Carr of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Vicki McClure of the Orlando Sentinel taught reporters how to analyze audits and other records to monitor whether schools are being fiscally responsible. In other sessions, reporters were encouraged to provide a strong context of charter schools in their reporting so that readers can gain a full understanding of programs.

Reporters also got a chance to hear from a local educator about the impact school choice programs have had on his district.Howard Fuller, a former superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools discussed ina video taped interview with Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Alan Borsuk, the issue of whether school choice programs can make a substantial difference in student acheivement. You can read Borsuk's story here.

Milwaukee is home to the longest-running voucher program in the nation, including Hope Christian Academy, a well-regarded Lutheran elementary school that is housed in a strip mall, and journalists got a chance to tour three choice schools in the city.

Presentations:

  • Yvonne Isaacs president of the Dayton (Ohio) Public School Board of Education, presented “School Districts with Choice: Drain or Gain?” as a part of a panel, on the effect of charter and choice schools on school districts. The expansion of charter schools in Dayton exposed the growing fiscal crisis in the school district, which led to a change in leadership and sweeping reforms that helped stabilize schools. However, the district continues to lose students (and thus state funding) to the charters and an upsurge in the number of enrolled special education students because many charters aren’t equipped to handle them.
  • Jack Jennings of the Center on Education Policy and Harold Wenglinsky of Columbia University presented their report “Are Private High Schools Better Academically than Public High Schools?” which finds little difference in student achievement between private and public high schools when socioeconomics and family attitudes are taken into account. The report is supported by the Center on Education Policy.
  • Chad d’Entremont of Columbia University provided a summary of findings from numerous school choice studies. What’s the verdict? Results are mixed, and no definite conclusions about the effectiveness of school choice can be made. He explained the caveats and limitations of education research and how reporters should keep this in mind when writing about topics.

Tips:

Covering charter schools can be tricky especially if school directors decline interview and information requests. But Jen Sansbury, former education reporter of the Atlanta Journal Constitution and Waco Herald-Tribune, provides several tips on how to manuever around such road blocks. Sansbury shares her experience about reporting on a charter school in Texas and the 'obvious' and 'not so obvious' sources she turned to for help. Read document links: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page, 5, and Page 6.

Scott Elliott, of the Dayton Daily News and author of the popular education blog "Get on the Bus" offers his advice as well.

Reports:

If you want to read more about charter schools and their impact on public education, check out these two reports. The Center on Education Policy's "Are Private High Schools Better Academically Than Public High Schools?" and the Education Sector's "Smart Charter School Caps."
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Stories:
Read "Charter Schools: Missing the Grade" a four part series written by Vicki McClure and Mary Shanklin of the Orlando Sentinel. The reporters spent a year examining the records of all the charter schools in Florida, student performance, charter school spending and accountability among leaders and state government. In their investigation, they found charter schools weren't being held to the same standards as public schools in Florida.

The Salt Lake Tribune profiled Milwaukee's school choice programs in October to help public debate if whether Utah should create the first U.S. statewide voucher program.

And Jenn Jordan, reporter at the Providence Journal, wrote an in-depth story about Rhode Island's charter schools, at which spots are so coveted that some schools are harder to get into than Ivy League colleges.

Here are some sources to guide reporters on issues regarding charter schools and school choice programs.

 
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