Poor Performance of City of Milwaukee Charter Schools raises questions about Mayoral Control of MPS

Today, State Representative Tamara Grigsby (D-Milwaukee) made public recently obtained information related to City of Milwaukee charter schools, raising new concerns over the merits of a mayoral takeover of Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS).

A memo drafted by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau reveals that, on average, more students at MPS are performing better than the students attending charter schools under contract with the City of Milwaukee.

“It’s one thing to talk about accountability and achievement in education, but it’s another thing to see it through,” Grigsby said. “MPS is in need of serious reform, but after looking at these scores, it is incredibly difficult to believe that placing our public schools under mayoral control would improve education outcomes for our children. As far as the city’s charter schools are concerned, the evidence indicates otherwise.”

As the Legislative Fiscal Bureau notes, in the 2008-2009 school year 49.9% of those attending a city-controlled charter school scored proficient or advanced in reading, while 59% of MPS students scored at that level in the same year. In the area of mathematics, 49% of the tested MPS students scored at a proficient or advanced level in the 2008-2009 school year, while only 33.1% of students at the City of Milwaukee charter schools met that standard.

In recent years, Milwaukee’s public schools have consistently outperformed the schools run by the City of Milwaukee by nearly ten percentage points or more. As the recent fiscal bureau memo concludes, after averaging together test scores from the three most recent school years, “49.6% of City charter school pupils were proficient and advanced in reading, and 32% were proficient and advanced in math.” Within that same time period, 59% of MPS pupils scored at the proficient or advanced level in reading and 45% scored at those levels in mathematics, resulting in an achievement gap in which MPS students are outperforming City of Milwaukee charter students in both subjects.

“Milwaukee’s schools are in need of sweeping reform, but poor performance at the schools already controlled by the City of Milwaukee raise serious doubts over whether or not a mayoral takeover will deliver the change we need,” Grigsby said. “The need for improvement at both our city charter schools and MPS is a clear indication that no simple change in school governance or sleight of hand will be the solution needed to better educate our children. We cannot afford to pander to such ideas, just as we cannot afford to abide by the status quo.”

Study finds no evidence that mayoral control leads to academic improvement

Chicago, the home school district of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, is frequently sighted by Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett as evidence that mayoral run school systems improve student achievement.

The civic arm of the Commercial Club of Chicago, one of the oldest organizations representing the business, professional, educational and cultural leaders of the Chicago region, has issued a scathing critique ,"Still Left Behind 2009", that challenges Barrett's position.

The study, which characterizes Chicago high school student achievement as "abysmal," supports an earlier analysis published in the Harvard Educational Review entitled "Mayoral Takeovers, Recipe for Progress or Peril" that concludes: "the record suggests that the long term benefits of takeovers are more elusive especially in regard to student achievement."

The Harvard analysis reinforces the Commercial Club's review of academic achievement in the Chicago public schools: ...Chicago is hardly an advertisement of mayoral takeovers. In 2005, for instance, only 42.5% of students in grades three through eight scored at or above national norms on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills reading test- a gain of only ten percentage points since the Mayor took over the system."

Here are some of the Commercial Club's key findings.

Most of Chicago’s students drop out or fail. The vast majority of Chicago’s elementary and high schools do not prepare their students for success in college and beyond.

There is a general perception that Chicago’s public schools have been gradually improving over time. However, recent dramatic gains in the reported number of CPS elementary students who meet standards on State assessments appear to be due to changes in the tests made by the Illinois State Board of Education, rather than real improvements in student learning.

At the elementary level, State assessment standards have been so weakened that most
of the 8th graders who “meet” these standards have little chance to succeed in high school or to be ready for college. While there has been modest improvement in real student learning in Chicago’s elementary schools, these gains dissipate in high school.

The performance of Chicago’s high schools is abysmal – with about half the students dropping out of the non-selective-enrollment schools, and more than 70% of 11th grade students failing to meet State standards. The trend has remained essentially flat over the past several years. The relatively high-performing students are concentrated in a few magnet/selective enrollment high schools. In the regular neighborhood high schools, which serve the vast preponderance of students, almost no students are prepared to succeed in college.

The full Comercial Club report is linked here.