In light of recent public comments made at the state house against public education, I think this edition is appropriate and timely...
Rick DuFour, one of my favorite authors and most inspirational speakers I've ever heard, passed away about about two years ago; this was a huge loss to all educators ESPECIALLY public educators. Fortunately, he finished his most recent book knowing that he didn't have long. In his book, as the title suggests, Rick paints a research-based picture on why the attacks on us as public educators are WAY off base. Thank you Rick for your advocacy of public education and for telling the whole story and interpreting data the right way.
In light of recent federal and state moves and rumored moves, here are the highlights from Rick DuFour's Chapter 3 entitled "The Firings Will Continue Until Morale Improves" -
"Assumption One: Charter Schools Will Improve Other Public Schools - There are now over six thousand charter schools operating in the United States serving almost three million students, and thus, there should be ample evidence to prove their superiority. But when 2009 Center for Research on Education Outcomes completed one of the most comprehensive studies of charter schools ever conducted, the evidence did not support the hypothesis of charter school champions. As the center reports on its study of schools in sixteen states:
'The study reveals that a decent fraction of charter schools, 17 percent, provide superior education opportunities for their students. Nearly half of the charter schools nationwide have results that are no different from local public school options and over a third, 37 percent, deliver learning results that are significantly worse than their students would have realized had they remained in public schools' (Center for Research on Education Outcomes, 2009, p.1) "
"John Hattie (2009) has synthesized more than eight hundred meta-analyses of fifty thousand research studies of factors that impact student achievement and established that an effect size or anticipated impact for those factors. He argues that a significantly positive effect must be greater than 0.40. He concludes that the effect size for charter schools is 0.09; Private/Religious Schools is .2 ." (Dufour, In Praise of American Educators, 2015, p. 32)
I encourage all educators to purchase this book "In Praise of American Educators" by Rick Dufour (2015) if nothing else but to read and spread the research provided as he goes on to defend against voucher programs and private school glamorization as well.
Over the next few weeks it is important that we continue to advocate for public education as this legislative session continues to unfold.
Keep your eye on the news...
(Dufour, "In Praise of American Educators", 2015, chapter 3)
