This election cycle has offered plenty of chances to watch the New York Times take Republican leaks or opposition research and run them straight, as news. Usually it’s about Hillary Clinton’s email or the Clinton Foundation, but now the Times has committed an act of blatant stenography of talking points from the pro-charter expansion side of the big ballot fight in Massachusetts. We’re talking about actual falsehoods:
The measure would affect nine communities that have either reached their caps on charter enrollment or have room for only one more charter school: Boston, Chelsea, Everett, Fall River, Holyoke, Lawrence, Lowell, Springfield and Worcester. All have long waiting lists.
It would not affect 96 percent of the state’s school districts ...
That’s … not what the law says, actually. The law allows for up to 12 new charter schools to be opened each year and says that, if there are more than 12 applications for new charter schools, applications to open charters in those nine communities get preference. But if there are 12 or fewer applications per year—which is likely—then new charter schools could open elsewhere. That’s why more than 200 school committees across the state have opposed Question 2. It could affect them. This isn’t an innocent mistake. It’s a sign that the article’s authors, Katharine Q. Seelye and Jess Bidgood, didn’t research the claims they heard from Question 2 backers, and that the rest of the article should be read with that understanding.
Then there’s this:
Still, one thing is indisputable: The charter schools here [...] have performed well. The urban charter schools, in particular, have produced better academic results than the district schools have.
Better academic results? Indisputable? Oh, really?
“Two studies, both by reputable academics at leading institutions, are supposed to show the superiority of Boston’s urban charter schools. Both studies are deeply flawed,” Dan Clawson—an education activist, University of Massachusetts sociology professor, and my father—says. One of the studies claims to have matched students at charter schools with students in public schools, comparing achievement between students who are as similar as possible with the exception of the kind of school they attend. Small problem:
It turns out that their sample of Boston charter school students contains 8% English Language Learners … and their sample of public school students contains 30% English Language Learners. The gap in their sample between charters and public schools is larger than in any of the other cities they studied; “coincidentally,” Boston charters show the largest edge in performance. The strong likelihood is that the entire effect is the result of a mismatched sample. At a minimum, conclusions based on this study are not to be taken as “indisputable.”
The other study compares students accepted to charter schools with students on the wait lists for the same schools. That should be a fair comparison, right? Sure, if every charter school had a wait list. But only five out of more than 60 charter schools had big enough wait lists to make comparisons possible, so “the study is comparing the five best charter schools in Boston, the ones with the longest waiting lists, to the average public school,” Dan Clawson points out, meaning that really, its conclusion is that “The five best charters in Boston are better than the average public school.” Can we see the study comparing the five best public schools in Boston with the average charter school?
Polling shows Question 2 losing by a significant margin. It’s certainly not for lack of money (thank you, Walmart Waltons!) or credulous media coverage.