Times Article on Charters - Journalistic Malpractice?

This week is National Charter Schools Week which it seems would be a great platform from which to discuss the great work that many public charter schools do in providing quality school choice.

And yet - the New York Times front page news recently stated that “the majority of the 5,000 …. Charter schools nationwide appear to be no better, and in many cases worse, than local public schools,”. Why and what is this based on? It is based on the widely discredited work of CREDO.

CREDO’s work “contains a serious statistical mistake that causes a negative bias in its estimate of how charter schools affect achievement,” according to Dr. Caroline Hoxby of the National Bureau of Economic Research and Stanford University in a 2009 analysis.

“Overwhelming, peer-reviewed research demonstrates that charter schools disproportionately serve disadvantaged students and educate them at higher levels than traditional public schools,” said Jeanne Allen, president of The Center for Education Reform (CER). “The notion that The New York Times is allowing one biased and discredited report to trump the overwhelming body of evidence demonstrating the success of charter schools is more than troubling, it borders on journalistic malpractice” (quoted from CER web page).

CER would suggest the New York Times is guilty of journalistic malpractice. What is journalistic malpractice?  According to Conservapedia:

Journalistic malpractice is a term used to describe the once objective field of journalism which has now been reduced to ideology and slander. It is attributed to people within the mainstream media and old-media, but not exclusively. Their failure as a group willfully misleads, manipulates and distorts the public.

My thought – and I welcome yours as well – is that the research on education, innovation and charters is often murky and one could use a number of studies to support either case – for or against. Maybe in fact, we are back to my earlier civics lessons – students and their parents should vote with their feet and attend the schools of their choosing – and that is more powerful data than any research study.