NEPC Reviewers Give Half a Cheer for Two Reports
Boulder, CO (PRWEB) January 05, 2015 -- URL for this press release: http://tinyurl.com/m6a8g53
A recent pair of reports advocating school choice to improve educational outcomes differ in their relative utility, but both fall short due to their unsubstantiated faith in market forces to effectively improve public schooling, according to a new review released today.
The reports were examined for the Think Twice think tank review project in a review published by the National Education Policy Center, housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education.
Erin McNamara Horvat and David Everington Baugh co-authored the review, which considered reports from the American Enterprise Institute and the Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now, or ConnCAN. Dr. Horvat is associate professor of Urban Education at Temple University and studies issues of access, equity and family engagement. Dr. Baugh is a school district superintendent who has evaluated numerous charter school applications for opening and continued operations while leading a moderately sized, diverse district in suburban Philadelphia.
The ConnCAN report, A Crisis We Can Solve: Connecticut’s Failing Schools and Their Impact, relies mainly on anecdotal evidence for its claims on behalf of school choice as the solution to the problems it identifies in the Nutmeg State’s public school systems. “It is merely a choice advocacy document and is therefore of little value to serious policy reform conversations or academic researchers,” the reviewers write.
The AEI report, Better Data, Better Decisions: Informing School Choosers to Improve Education Markets, has more to offer, Horvat and Baugh write: “It is grounded in solid scholarship and data from existing choice research as well as research conducted by its author. It makes useful suggestions regarding how choice might be more effectively implemented.”
The reviewers caution, however, that the AEI report “makes unsubstantiated claims about the power of choice to reform schools and to improve educational outcomes.” In fact, both reports are constrained in their reliance “on choice within a mythical school marketplace to effect change,” Horvat and Baugh conclude.
Find the review by Erin McNamara Horvat and David Everington Baugh on the NEPC website at:
http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-charter-aei-conncan.
Find the two reports under review on the web:
Better Data, Better Decisions: Informing School Choosers to Improve Education Markets, written by John Valant and published by the American Enterprise Institute:
http://www.aei.org/publication/better-data-better-decisions-informing-school-choosers-improve-education-markets/.
A Crisis We Can Solve: Connecticut’s Failing Schools and Their Impact, written and published by ConnCAN:
https://www.scribd.com/doc/247050431/ConnCAN-Brief-A-Crisis-We-Can-Solve.
The Think Twice think tank review project (http://thinktankreview.org) of the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) provides the public, policymakers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected publications. NEPC is housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education. The Think Twice think tank review project is made possible in part by support provided by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.
The mission of the National Education Policy Center is to produce and disseminate high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. We are guided by the belief that the democratic governance of public education is strengthened when policies are based on sound evidence. For more information on the NEPC, please visit http://nepc.colorado.edu/.
This review is also found on the GLC website at http://www.greatlakescenter.org/.
William J. Mathis, NEPC/Univ. of Colorado- School of Education, http://nepc.colorado.edu, +1 (802) 383-0058, [email protected]
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