Stand Up for Public Education: Spurious Marketing of America's School Administrators
Daniel Downs
May 09, 2007
The American Association of School Administrators (AASA) has been running a campaign called Stand Up for Public Education for a number years. The purpose of the campaign is to improve the public image of America’s secular schools. Since No Child Left Behind, public education has come under serious public scrutiny. National proficiency testing as well as long-term quality criteria have revealed the poor performance of many of our nation’s secular schools. When comparing test performance of private, charter school, and military school students, public school consistently score lower in language, math and science.
Over the past few years, AASA has published news articles, written books, and held conference to market a better image while opposing their critics. One of those presumed critics is the US Chamber of Commerce (USCC). In past articles, I have written about the USCC’s commissioned study called “Leaders and Laggards” written by the Center of American Progress. The study essential reiterates what the business community has been saying for years. America needs a school system in which families have a choice about where their children will attend and what curriculum will be taught. In other words, parents should have control over their children education not bureaucrats near and far. American school system must be more accountable for outcomes and financial resources received from taxpayers, which means schools must be managed efficiently. These mandates must be translated into standardized reporting through modern technology so the best end results can be achieved. Choice means a free market. Success in a free market requires customer satisfaction. Because parent and their children are the consumers of public education, schools must satisfy parents. Until recently, parents had no way of evaluating what a good school was. No Child Left Behind (NLCB) was designed to give the public the means to evaluate school performance. NCLB also mandated that all schools produce student who have achieved a minimum proficiency level of knowledge and skills in reading, math, and science. The AASA launched a campaign called Stand Up for Public Education to let the world know they are not pleased with the bad press resulting from NCLB.
On their Stand Up for Public Education webpage, AASA showcases the results of two analytical studies of the 2003 national proficiency tests entitled “Comparing Private Schools and Public Schools Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling” and “Comparing Charter Schools and Public Schools Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling.” These two studies were conducted by the Education Testing Service under the auspices of the Institute of Education Science. The obvious reason AASA showcases these two studies is because the two studies claim public schools outperform both private schools and charter schools.
The million dollar question is do they?
A study that has created a big stir in education circles is “On the Public-Private School Achievement Debate” written by Harvard Professor Paul Peterson and Elena Llaudet. In their paper, they reveal a number of questionable student and school characteristics used in the above studies. For example, the authors of the two studies regarded the following student characteristics as disadvantages that should compensated for in the large test samples; those characteristics were student participation in Title I, free or reduced lunch, Limited English Proficient (LEP), and special education, as indicated by having an Individualized Education Program (IEP). Peterson and Llaudet did not deny these types of disadvantaged should be adjusted for in studies of this kind. Instead, they demonstrated the studies flaw by replacing those characteristics with other but similar characteristics. Why? Because those original characteristics were not apples-to-apples comparisons. Private schools have no Title I program. If 40% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch, a public school gets to include its entire public school population in Title I. Not all private schools even participate in the free lunch program as do public schools. According to Peterson and Llaudet, private schools typically participate in IEP funding only for severe disabilities. Public schools, on the other hand, enroll student with moderate and severe disabilities. A similar situation exists with LEP. Large discrepancies exist between private and public schools. Peterson and Llaudet used student reports of foreign first languages spoken at home because they revealed private schools being underreported in the LEP data. When they performed the same tests using more comparable characteristics, private schools achieved higher test scores.
Another critic of the two studies was Shanea Watkins. In “Are Public or Private Schools Doing Better? How the NCES Study Is Being Misinterpreted,” she agrees with Peterson and Llaudet that the above studies are flawed. Because they do not follow standard comparative research methodology, their authors’ interpretations are also flawed. To Watkins, this means absenteeism is not a relevant characteristic of poverty or vise versa. Therefore, it should not be used as a comparative factor to adjust scores in favor of public schools having higher absenteeism.
It is hard to believe that the AASA and their public school superintendents did not know about the spurious results of the two studies, which leads me to conclude that the AASA prefers deceiving the public as part of its image improvement campaign. Maintaining a positive image means maintaining public approval, which in turn results in approved tax levies and control of American education.
No Child Left Behind has increased public scrutiny of public school performance immensely. Tests and studies showing all other types of schools doing better would certainly create a negative image for public schools. Their deceptive marketing efforts probably has not helped much either. Many communities have been refusing to increase taxes for local schooling, which apparently has led school administrators and other public officials to seek by hook and crook, through courts and constitutional amendments, the means to maintain school funding increases.
In the last analysis, this is a problem of our ‘political’ economy. The best possible solution may be to remove control of school funding from the bureaucrats, i.e. education professionals, politicians and judges, and redistribute it to education’s primary consumers, parents and their children.
Over the past few years, AASA has published news articles, written books, and held conference to market a better image while opposing their critics. One of those presumed critics is the US Chamber of Commerce (USCC). In past articles, I have written about the USCC’s commissioned study called “Leaders and Laggards” written by the Center of American Progress. The study essential reiterates what the business community has been saying for years. America needs a school system in which families have a choice about where their children will attend and what curriculum will be taught. In other words, parents should have control over their children education not bureaucrats near and far. American school system must be more accountable for outcomes and financial resources received from taxpayers, which means schools must be managed efficiently. These mandates must be translated into standardized reporting through modern technology so the best end results can be achieved. Choice means a free market. Success in a free market requires customer satisfaction. Because parent and their children are the consumers of public education, schools must satisfy parents. Until recently, parents had no way of evaluating what a good school was. No Child Left Behind (NLCB) was designed to give the public the means to evaluate school performance. NCLB also mandated that all schools produce student who have achieved a minimum proficiency level of knowledge and skills in reading, math, and science. The AASA launched a campaign called Stand Up for Public Education to let the world know they are not pleased with the bad press resulting from NCLB.
On their Stand Up for Public Education webpage, AASA showcases the results of two analytical studies of the 2003 national proficiency tests entitled “Comparing Private Schools and Public Schools Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling” and “Comparing Charter Schools and Public Schools Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling.” These two studies were conducted by the Education Testing Service under the auspices of the Institute of Education Science. The obvious reason AASA showcases these two studies is because the two studies claim public schools outperform both private schools and charter schools.
The million dollar question is do they?
A study that has created a big stir in education circles is “On the Public-Private School Achievement Debate” written by Harvard Professor Paul Peterson and Elena Llaudet. In their paper, they reveal a number of questionable student and school characteristics used in the above studies. For example, the authors of the two studies regarded the following student characteristics as disadvantages that should compensated for in the large test samples; those characteristics were student participation in Title I, free or reduced lunch, Limited English Proficient (LEP), and special education, as indicated by having an Individualized Education Program (IEP). Peterson and Llaudet did not deny these types of disadvantaged should be adjusted for in studies of this kind. Instead, they demonstrated the studies flaw by replacing those characteristics with other but similar characteristics. Why? Because those original characteristics were not apples-to-apples comparisons. Private schools have no Title I program. If 40% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch, a public school gets to include its entire public school population in Title I. Not all private schools even participate in the free lunch program as do public schools. According to Peterson and Llaudet, private schools typically participate in IEP funding only for severe disabilities. Public schools, on the other hand, enroll student with moderate and severe disabilities. A similar situation exists with LEP. Large discrepancies exist between private and public schools. Peterson and Llaudet used student reports of foreign first languages spoken at home because they revealed private schools being underreported in the LEP data. When they performed the same tests using more comparable characteristics, private schools achieved higher test scores.
Another critic of the two studies was Shanea Watkins. In “Are Public or Private Schools Doing Better? How the NCES Study Is Being Misinterpreted,” she agrees with Peterson and Llaudet that the above studies are flawed. Because they do not follow standard comparative research methodology, their authors’ interpretations are also flawed. To Watkins, this means absenteeism is not a relevant characteristic of poverty or vise versa. Therefore, it should not be used as a comparative factor to adjust scores in favor of public schools having higher absenteeism.
It is hard to believe that the AASA and their public school superintendents did not know about the spurious results of the two studies, which leads me to conclude that the AASA prefers deceiving the public as part of its image improvement campaign. Maintaining a positive image means maintaining public approval, which in turn results in approved tax levies and control of American education.
No Child Left Behind has increased public scrutiny of public school performance immensely. Tests and studies showing all other types of schools doing better would certainly create a negative image for public schools. Their deceptive marketing efforts probably has not helped much either. Many communities have been refusing to increase taxes for local schooling, which apparently has led school administrators and other public officials to seek by hook and crook, through courts and constitutional amendments, the means to maintain school funding increases.
In the last analysis, this is a problem of our ‘political’ economy. The best possible solution may be to remove control of school funding from the bureaucrats, i.e. education professionals, politicians and judges, and redistribute it to education’s primary consumers, parents and their children.
Print
Email
