Dear Editor:
I am writing again about the relationship between Hoboken’s public school board and Hoboken’s charter schools.
In a letter published recently from Hoboken school board member Irene Sobolov she suggests that comparisons between Hoboken’s public schools and Union City’s public schools don’t account for the fact that there are no charter schools in Union City’s district. She writes that Union City is “able to target 100 percent of their budget to the success of their diverse population while 30 percent of Hoboken’s local budget supports three other districts.” The assumed direction of causation underlying this statement is that sharing resources with charters in a given district causes poorer performance in the non-charter public schools of that district.
Data I aggregated from state of New Jersey Department of Education’s 2012-2013 Performance Reports Data Files (http://education.state.nj.us/pr/database.html) certainly indicate that non-charter public schools in districts with charters have poorer academic performance than public schools in districts without charters. I found that 32 of 515 districts in New Jersey with students enrolled in grades 3-8 (where the NJASK standardized test is administered in language arts, math, and science) for the 2012-2013 school year also had at least one charter school in the district. The public schools in districts with charters had significantly poorer academic performance, as measured by the NJASK, than those in districts without charters.
45 percent of tested students at non-charter public schools in districts with charters aren’t fully proficient in language arts, 36 percent aren’t fully proficient in math, and 28 percent aren’t fully proficient in science. (At Hoboken’s non-charter public schools, 47 percent of tested students in grades 3-8 aren’t fully proficient in language arts, 45 percent aren’t fully proficient in math, and 30 percent aren’t fully proficient in science.) Meanwhile, only 26 percent of tested students in grades 3-8 at public schools in districts without charters aren’t fully proficient in language arts, just 20 percent aren’t fully proficient in math, and only 11 percent aren’t fully proficient in science.
So it seems clear that, on average, poorer academic performance in a given district is correlated with whether a charter school is present in that district. However, correlation must not be mistaken for causation. In my opinion it is more plausible to think that causation goes in the other direction. Do charter schools form in random places for no reason? Rather than thinking charters cause poorer performance in the non-charter districts where they are located, I think it’s far more likely that poorly performing public school districts that aren’t responsive to creating educational choices cause charter formation in their districts.
This is largely the case for Hola, and you can read more about it in this newspaper’s 2009 story at http://www.hudsonreporter.com/view/full_story/5127301/article-HoLa%E2%80%99s-triumphant-return-Spanish-English-school-preps-for-lottery–still-looking-for-students-. I suspect many of the charter schools in New Jerseys other school districts that have them have similar origins.
I hope Hoboken school board members will consider this alternative direction of causation – i.e. that poorly performing public school districts cause charter school formation – and focus their energy and resources on improving performance at the public schools in the district they oversee.
Sincerely,
Jon Maguire