Not all education reforms work out the way that reformers intended them to. Charter schools, designed to free publicly funded schools from onerous regulations, may be one such example. “After adjusting for student demographic characteristics, charter school mean scores in reading and mathematics were lower, on average, than those for traditional public schools,” the National Center for Education Statistics reported in August. “The size of these differences was smaller in reading than in mathematics.”
“Results from the second analysis showed that in reading and mathematics, average performance differences between traditional public schools and charter schools affiliated with a public school district were not statistically significant, while charter schools not affiliated with a public school district scored significantly lower on average than traditional public schools.”
Overall, charter school boosters point to gains in test scores for charter school students vis a` vis their counterparts in regular public schools. “My message to any parent, especially those with children attending charter schools, is to look at state-level assessments and get a real picture of student achievement,” Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform says. “It’s there that charter school students shine like the true stars they are.”
California, particularly in Los Angeles, may not be a good place for parents to start looking for such results. For example, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) funds a school—the Seeds of the People Academy, run by activist Marcos Aguilar—that delivers rock bottom test scores and a Marxist message, Judicial Watch found.
“While Academia Semillas del Pueblo’s efforts to indoctrinate students into this radical philosophy may be achieving results, its efforts to prepare students academically
are not,” Judicial Watch found after going to court to get the Academy’s application. “According to the State Department of Education, Aguilar’s school achieved the lowest ranking possible on its ‘Academic Performance Index.’”
“Interestingly, the LAUSD’s policy manual for charter schools lists ‘Improve
pupil learning,’ as its primary criteria for approving funding requests.” But, as the investigators at Judicial Watch discovered, LAUSD bureaucrats knew what they were in for when they gave the school the green light.
Aguilar’s application goes on to promise that eighth graders will learn about “United States History and Geography: A People’s History of Expansion and Conflict – A thematic survey of American politics, society, culture and
political economy;
• “Emphasis throughout on the nations the U.S. usurped, invaded and dominated;
• “Connections between historical rise of capitalism and imperialism with modern political economy and global social relations.”
In the last fiscal year, Judicial Watch discovered, the Academy cost California taxpayers $1.4 million.
“In May 1993, while a student at UCLA, Aguilar participated in a violent student protest,” Judicial Watch reports of the Academy’s founder. “The protest included
seizing a faculty lounge at the university, and caused $30,000-$50,000 in damages, including ‘broken windows and furniture and painted walls.’”
“The student protesters were attempting to force the university to establish a
separate Chicano Studies program.”
Ten years later, Aguilar got his wish, and not just at UCLA. “The Chicano-Chicana Studies movement that grew up in the ’60s has been very successful at the
college and university level,” KABC radio talk-show host Doug McIntyre remembered for Judicial Watch. “Virtually every major college and university has a Chicano-Chicana studies program, including Cal-State, Northridge.”
“You ought to see the building-size mural on the side of the Chicano Studies
Department there with paintings of Border Patrol agents with vampire fangs and blood trickling down their cheeks, and the American flag upside down.”
A reporter from McIntyre’s station attempted to do a story on the Academy. “He was nearly run over by a car,” McIntyre recounts. “The driver of the car, chased him down the street, tackled him and took the tape from him.”
“A second car tailed him back to the radio station,” McIntyre says. “We filed a criminal complaint, and there were bomb threats against the school and death threats against me.”
Public officials could also revoke the Academy’s charter but do they have the will to do so? Ten years ago, the Board of Education in Washington, D. C. wholeheartedly rescinded the charter of a school which it had previously unanimously approved.
The Marcus Garvey School got its walking papers when a DC court conclusively found that Garvey School students assaulted Susan Ferrechio, then a reporter with the Washington Post, when she attempted to obtain an interview with school principal Mary Anigbo. Ferrechio’s notebook was pilfered by the mob that Anigbo incited.
Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.
