If I wrote, “The market mechanism just doesn’t work in education,” I’d expect two responses. Some people would nod their heads in agreement, and others would say, “Typical garbage from that America-hating socialist who doesn’t think our children should be able to escape our failing public schools.”

But what if the person who said that began her statement by saying, “I actually am kind of a pro-market kinda girl. But it doesn’t seem to work in a choice environment for education”?

The “pro-market kinda girl” is Margaret Raymond, founding director of the Center for Research on Education Outcomes, usually known by its acronym, CREDO. It’s part of the Hoover Institute, not exactly a wild-eyed liberal think tank, and it’s funded by pro-privatization, pro-charter types like the Walton Foundation (That’s the WalMart family). One of the major missions of CREDO is to study and promote charter schools. Raymond is married to Eric Hanushek, who also works at the Hoover Institute and is one of the deans of the conservative “education reform” movement.

For all her pro-market, pro-charter leanings, Raymond appears to value serious research, which is why I’ve read her two CREDO studies on the effectiveness of charter schools with interest. They compared similar students in charters and “traditional” — read, “school district” — schools. In the first study, charter school children came out slightly behind “traditional” school students in achievement. In the more recent study, charter school students came out slightly ahead. Actually, both studies were pretty much a wash. It’s like saying charter school kids are taller or shorter than “traditional” school kids because their average height differed by a quarter of an inch.

CREDO’s latest report looked at charter schools in Ohio, and they didn’t look good.

[I]t finds that charter school students in the state are learning less than students in traditional public schools, the equivalent of 36 days of learning in math and 14 days in reading.

In the national CREDO studies, by the way, Arizona’s charter school students lagged significantly behind “traditional” school students (“But . . . but . . . we have BASIS, the best charter school in the universe! Doesn’t that mean Arizona’s charters are better than district schools?” No it doesn’t. And no, BASIS isn’t the best charter school in the universe. It gets great test scores from high achieving students, a trick many schools have figured out how to do). In some other states, charters topped “traditional” schools, sometimes significantly, which is why on average, charters and “traditional” schools came out pretty much even in the national studies.

Here’s what Raymond said in a recent talk in Ohio discussing the CREDO report that slammed the state’s charter schools.

I actually am kind of a pro-market kinda girl. But it doesn’t seem to work in a choice environment for education. I’ve studied competitive markets for much of my career. That’s my academic focus for my work. And it’s [education] the only industry/sector where the market mechanism just doesn’t work. I think it’s not helpful to expect parents to be the agents of quality assurance throughout the state.

Raymond wasn’t making an anti-charter or anti-school choice statement. She was saying that parents can’t be expected to make intelligent school decisions about where to send their children with the scanty information they have at their disposal.

I think the policy environment really needs to focus on creating much more information and transparency about performance than we’ve had for the 20 years of the charter school movement. I think we need to have a greater degree of oversight of charter schools, but I also think we have to have some oversight of the overseers.

Both Arizona and Ohio have been referred to as the “Wild west of charter schools” because they’re so lacking transparency and oversight. Here in Arizona, that’s how the system was designed, so the “invisible hand of the marketplace” would raise the good schools and drive the rest out of business. According to Raymond, it’s not working so well in Arizona or Ohio or anywhere else where it’s easy to start charter schools and there’s little oversight once they’re up and running.

This article appears in Dec 11-17, 2014.

5 replies on “Who Just Said “The Market Mechanism Just Doesn’t Work” In Education?”

  1. It’s funny that I I am finding are happy parents and students graduating. You would think that with all the negative articles about charter schools parents would be flocking back to public schools.

    TUSD enrollment drops again.

    It would be nice if we could focus our efforts on improving the public school system in Tucson. But apparently our time and money must be spent on trying to get them to obey the law.

  2. I’m not sure looking at the “market” for publicly supported K-12 education is terribly important. In the case of both school districts and charter schools students and their parents have little or no financial exposure resulting from their choice – both are essentially provided at no cost to them. It is important that their choices be informed by available information on the schools and charters they are investigating and selecting from.

    As a parent I would want to know if my child will be taught by experienced and licensed teaching professionals with degrees and experience in their subject matter. Some charter schools focus heavily on subject matter expertise, others do not. Some districts employ full time substitutes with little or no classroom experience, others do not.

    The information publicly available on individual schools (district and charter) is limited to grades on standards based tests of student achievement, almost entirely skewed by the demographics of the student populations attending them. There are no transparent school assessment systems focusing on school quality. e.g experience and qualifications of teachers, administrators, classroom facilities, teaching technologies available and employed.

    As a result the “market” is reactive. Parents know the schools their students are doing a great job and have a strong cadre of teachers and administrators and, like Lake Wobegone, all the kids perform above average. They remain in place. Other parents see their schools as pits of failure with a revolving door of inexperienced and substitute teachers led by mediocrities. They elect to flee to what they hope is higher ground. Without specific information on who is leading and instructing in the schools, the former parents are making a safe bet and sound decision; the latter parents are in danger of escaping the frying pan for the fire.

  4. “parents have little or no financial exposure resulting from their choice”
    No, they have far more at risk than simple money – their children. So I don’t get the point.

    Both charter and public school systems are poor. The basic foundation of applying assembly line mentality to education of children is so completely, 180 degrees backward in the modern world, that there is virtually zero value in any taxpayer funded schools of any kind except as a daycare service.

    This is not to take one thing away from all the educated, hard-working teachers who strive every day to make it work; but school as designed today is so flawed, it probably does more harm than good except in cases where kids would otherwise spend the day without supervision or in abusive or dysfunctional homes.

  5. Well, David a topic on which you and I remain in lock step in opposition. I’ll say it here again that charter schools have become a place where it’s more about the money than the education; I have seen too many kids come out of the program less prepared than their counterparts in traditional schools. But, the way for traditional schools to eliminate this shanker is a better prophylaxis, and I don’t mean just more money.
    Yeah, you might be subject to criticism for the opening paragraph but that is because this is your normal routine, negativism. It’s raining outside right now but on the positive side I happen to know it will be a nicer day later on.

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