Buckeye's case for "dropout recovery" charter schools made with graduation numbers much higher than official counts from the state
Contact: Sherman Dorn, (813) 205-6143; (email) sherman.dorn@gmail.com
Kevin Welner, (303) 492-8370; (email) kevin.welner@gmail.com
TEMPE, Ariz. and BOULDER, Colo. (March 4, 2009) -- A February report from the Buckeye Institute offers up "dropout recovery" charter schools as a solution to reduce Ohio's dropout rate. But a new review of the report finds that it relies on charter school graduation data that are inconsistent with state figures, "resulting in a dramatic overstatement of the graduation rates at the charters."
The report, The High Cost of High School Dropouts in Ohio was written by Matthew Carr for the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions. It was reviewed for the Think Tank Review Project by Professor Sherman Dorn of the University of South Florida, a national expert on dropout data and policies.
Dorn summarizes the Buckeye report's approach as follows: "It offers crude estimates of the social costs of dropping out ... and then uses a limited set of data about charter schools ... to estimate increases in graduation and attendant savings ... if more public-school funding is diverted to these for-profit charter schools."
The new report borrows its formula from six previous reports by the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation on graduation rates in various states. Dorn observes that the Buckeye report, like the Friedman reports it emulates, "uses the existing literature on dropping out and school competition in a superficial way"--comparing the relative earnings and social burdens of high school graduates and dropouts, while ignoring extensive debate over the real costs of dropping out.
The report also ignores "a large body of useful research" on charter schools, even as it posits "dropout recovery" charter schools as the best solution to the so-called dropout problem.
However, the most glaring problem identified by Dorn's review is that Ohio state data contradict the report's exaggerated claims about the number of students graduating from the charter schools that the Buckeye report holds up as the solution, most run by a controversial for-profit education management company called White Hat Management. For example, one school that Ohio reports had fewer than 10 graduates in 2004-05 is asserted in the report to have graduated 145; another with 42 is claimed to have graduated 338.
"Overall, for 18 schools for which Ohio reported a specific number of graduates, the report claimed 1,610 more graduates in 2004-05 than what the state reported," Dorn writes. "This documented exaggeration represents approximately half of the total graduates that the report claims for the 23 schools." The Buckeye report doesn't explain the source of its graduation data or discuss the discrepancy between its counts and those reported by the state.
Find Sherman Dorn's review on the web at:
http://epicpolicy.org/thinktank/review-the-high-cost
CONTACT:
Sherman Dorn, Associate Professor of Education
University of South Florida
(813) 205-6143
sherman.dorn@gmail.com
Kevin Welner, Professor and Director
Education and the Public Interest Center
University of Colorado at Boulder
(303) 492-8370
kevin.welner@gmail.com
About the Think Tank Review Project
The Think Tank Review Project (http://thinktankreview.org), a collaborative project of the ASU Education Policy Research Unit (EPRU) and CU-Boulder's Education and the Public Interest Center (EPIC), provides the public, policy makers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected think tank publications. The project is made possible by funding from the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.
Kevin Welner, the project co-director, explains that the project is needed because, "despite their garnering of media attention and their influence with many policy makers, reports released by private think tanks vary tremendously in their quality. Many think tank reports are little more than ideological argumentation dressed up as research. Many others include flaws that would likely have been identified and addressed through the peer review process. We believe that the media, policy makers, and the public will greatly benefit from having qualified social scientists provide reviews of these documents in a timely fashion." He adds, "we don't consider our reviews to be the final word, nor is our goal to stop think tanks' contributions to a public dialogue. That dialogue is, in fact, what we value the most. The best ideas come about through rigorous critique and debate."
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The Education and the Public Interest Center (EPIC) at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the Education Policy Research Unit (EPRU) at Arizona State University collaborate to produce policy briefs and think tank reviews. Our goal is to promote well-informed democratic deliberation about education policy by providing academic as well as non-academic audiences with useful information and high quality analyses.
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