The University of Texas reports on a new study that says urban school districts in Texas do a better job of retaining black students than the privately operated charter schools, even some with more money to spend.

An analysis of Texas Education Agency data of average black dropout rates in Texas secondary schools shows that Houston, Dallas and Austin public schools outperform privately operated charter districts, with charter districts having three times the dropout rate reported in the comparable urban districts (4 percent versus the charters’ 13 percent).

“Leavers” are included in a separate category from dropouts, and that category addresses students who depart a school for any number of reasons, such as to pursue an education at a different institution.

Vasquez Heilig found that on average Austin, Dallas and Houston public schools also outperform all Texas privately operated charter districts when it comes to leavers, with charter schools reporting about twice as many leavers as comparable urban school districts.

“In urban areas where there’s typically a higher concentration of economically disadvantaged families, charter schools have given parents a free alternative to the ‘failing’ public school system,” says Vasquez Heilig.

“The thing is, prior to this there were no real examinations of just how successful the charter schools have been at retaining minority students and raising their school completion rates. While some charter districts have had pretty low attrition rates, it’s clear that there are districts with as many as 50 percent of their black students leaving and 90 percent dropping out.”

Interesting. Charter schools would undoubtedly say it's wrong to paint with a broad brush, that each school should be evaluated on its own merit. Which is exactly what conventional schools say — before being shouted down by the Billionaire Boys Club charter school lobby which insists that the entirety of public school districts, particularly the one in Little Rock, Ark., are without redeeeming qualities. This study doesn't attempt to measure quality of instruction. But it underscores a central point in the debate that charters don't like to talk about. Charters can dismiss, discourage, "out-counsel," disqualify by rigid rules and otherwise take steps to insure a student body relatively more ready to behave and learn than those in the conventional public school districts that must accept and hold all comers, no matter how little they desire the benefits. When charter schools reach the billionaires' ultimate goal — a charter seat for every child and parent who wants to be in one — you can imagine the remnant of U.S. public education. The dream of an egalitarian and universal system will be dead.

The Arkansas Board of Education voted 7-1 today to give a three-year renewal to the Academics Plus charter school in Maumelle, but wouldn't allow an increase in the enrollment. The school also wanted a 20-year renewal.

The Little Rock School District opposed the expansion of the school, which is predominantly white and middle class despite having promised when it opened that was going to reach out to minority and poor students.

It was noted that the school doesn't show strong improvement in student scores, particularly against schools with similar demographic make up. From the state department's blog:

Board Chairman Mays said he wondered whether the school was simply creating an option for the haves not to attend school with the have-nots.

In practice, particularly in those years before the Pulaski School District build new schools in the growing city, the answer was yes.

I took a most unscientific stab at this topic in my column this week. I noted the shortcomings in a University of Arkansas ranking published in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that assigned a number score to every school in Arkansas based on the national Iowa Test. I took it a step further by looking at additional UA research assessing those test scores according to income level of the schools' students. Cherry picking, I found that the eStem charter schools in Little Rock and the KIPP charters in the Delta didn't stand out to the extent you might gather given the publicity they receive in the daily newspaper. eStem, particularly, was well behind the average scores of schools in its economic group.

I didn't intend to take that farther than being an example of being wary of using a one-size-fits-all number to measure charter school success against other schools.

Now comes some experts, writing in Science, from a more learned perspective but drawing some similar conclusions.

Writing in the journal Science, UC San Diego educational economist JuIian Betts and Richard Atkinson, president emeritus of the University of California and former director of the National Science Foundation, find that most studies of charter schools "use unsophisticated methods that tell us little about causal effects."

The data just isn't there to make comparisons many have made.

Most studies take a simple snapshot of achievement at a charter school, reading and math scores in the spring, say, and compare these to scores at a nearby traditional public school. A study of this sort, Betts said, is "naïve and essentially meaningless." [Little Rock charter schools and their cheerleaders do this all the time.]

The researchers find some value in studies of students in highly prized charter schools that use lotteries for admission where those students are compared with students who didn't draw into the schools. But even these studies have not been very representative, the writers say. They urge so-called "value-added" testing that can measure progression of students. This, among others, would require routine access to student data. Note, please, that Attorney General Dustin McDaniel and the state Education Department continue to fight to the death to release such data to the Little Rock School District in its federal court effort to determine the impact open enrollment charter schools have had on draining better students from the Little Rock School District.

The state Board of Education today has approved several applications for charter schools by school districts.

Those approved: 1) a conversion charter for an elementary school in Cross County that will provide "projects-based" learning aimed at rural students; 2) a conversion charter for a STEM school in the Lincoln District; 3) a conversion charter STEM school for middle grades in Osceola. The Board has another application pending from Warren. UPDATE: The Warren application for a conversion charter for K-3 also was approved.

• WALL STREET SUCCESS: On-line schools affiliated with K12 Inc. are good for profits, but not so great for students, a New York Times article says.

Required reading for the Arkansas Board of Education, Arkansas legislators and anyone interested in "school reform":

It's a major investigation by the New York Times into on-line schools, "virtual charter schools" or however you want to style them. This is directly relevant here because the article focuses on K12 Inc.. And what is K12? It is a for-profit corporation. In the anything-goes-Huckabee era, K12 (founded by William "Slot Machine King" Bennett) drove the formation of the Arkansas Virtual Academy, which reaps significant amounts of public tax dollars for the corporate sponsor. Its expansionist vision has mostly been restrained here. But it never quits trying. It was denied an expansion from 500 to 1,500 students in June

And what does the NYT find generally about the virtual charters?

* They amount to a public subsidy for home schoolers.

* The teachers made available to work with students on-line are underpaid and have crushing student loads.

* Profit for the private investors appears to be their most important product. (No kidding. They get per-pupil tax money equivalent to schools that have cafeterias, gyms, labs, principals, real teachers instead of parent volunteers, computers, equipment, desks, etc.)

* Student results are uninspiring (a study shows only one in three of the "virtual schools" are making acceptable progress as measured by No Child Left Behind Standards).

My favorite nugget in the story was a quote from a K12 executive that the outfit's "core competency" was lobbying public officials. Not children. Not education. Lobbying — on which the company spends huge sums. As the Times put it, the online charters "score better on Wall Street than in classrooms." Said the Times:

... a portrait emerges of a company that tries to squeeze profits from public school dollars by raising enrollment, increasing teacher workload and lowering standards.

Current and former staff members of K12 Inc. schools say problems begin with intense recruitment efforts that fail to filter out students who are not suited for the program, which requires strong parental commitment and self-motivated students. Online schools typically are characterized by high rates of withdrawal.

Said an education researcher:

“These folks are fundamentally trying to do to public education what the banks did with home mortgages.”

In other words, the profiteers get the public's money. If the students fail, society pays, not K12.

Speaking of charter schools: Here's another dirty little secret about how many of them operate. They don't make accommodations for disabled students, as conventional school districts are required to do.

The Walton Family Foundation announced today that it will put another $25.5 million in KIPP charter schools over the next five years to expand the number of children they can enroll from 32,000 to 59,000.

The announcement doesn't say if the anticipated expansion includes Arkansas, but Education Week's report indicates KIPP will go "deeper" in areas in which it already has schools. KIPP has been expected to open a Little Rock school for some time. The Little Rock School District should make a public offer to turn over to KIPP operation of one of its poorest performing schools, with the students assigned to that school.

The Walton Foundation, by the way, touts Mathematica research (paid for by the Waltons and Gates and other billionaires) as finding superiority in KIPP work. I've mentioned previously that some have taken a different view of that Mathematica research. Education Week gets into that here, including press management of the study to benefit the interests of the financial backers and criticism of potential conflicts of interest. Education Week has also written about the mixed results of charter school management organizations.

The Billionaire Boys Club has sold the credulous on the notion that if you hang a charter school label on a school it follows that it MUST be better than a conventional public school. The problem is that, in study after study, the facts don't bear it out.

After a disastrous report on the failure of charter schools nationwide to exceed the general performance of conventional schools, the billionaires (Gates and Walton foundations were among the underwriters) commissioned another study, by Mathematica Policy Research. It was focused on the best of the charter school management organizations, such as KIPP, that operate multiple charter schools nationwide. In other words, the cream of the charter crop was culled for studying, much as the cream of the charter crop creams the best students. This is the best spin Mathematica could come up with for the billionaires when the study was done.

The report highlights a range of organizational models and educational strategies that produce achievement effects that are more often positive than negative, but that vary substantially among CMOs.

In other words — meh.

Schools Matter, a skeptic of the Billionaire Boys Club, has done a sharp analysis of the study— clearly another bummer for charterites. (Though the national press is ignoring this latest study more than it ignored the earlier CREDO study.

Schools Matter has a point of view, yes, but if you read the analysis you'll find its critical points are illustrated by text from the Mathematica report, paid for by the billionaires, remember. Among the highlights:

* Only 17 percent of charter schools showed statistically better test scores than comparable public schools.

* More years in a charter school do not produce statistically significant student performance. (Charterites argue that first-year student comparisons are unfair to charter schools.)

* Charter school students — even in those schools that target poor and minority students — typically arrive with higher prior achievement level. Please note quotes from the billionaires' own report:

Thus, while CMOs attract a disproportionate number of black and Hispanic students, these students tend to have higher test scores on average when they enter the CMO than their black and Hispanic peers in the host districts

Also:

The selection process of students is driven in part by who learns about and chooses to apply to CMO schools. It is possible that the parents or students who end up enrolling in some CMO schools are more motivated or have other assets. In addition, CMOs can encourage certain families to apply or enroll in their school; even those with random lotteries can target their recruitment efforts and ask students to sign agreements to attend regularly and do their homework.

Where have I heard before that evaluation of the inherent advantage enjoyed by charter schools — committed parents?

* The study could find no solid statistical support for the belief that Teach for America and similar young, energetic, but inexperienced teachers produce better results than veteran teachers. Quote:

Math impacts are higher among CMOs that rely more heavily on TFA and the Teaching Fellows programs as sources of new teachers. Specifically there is a statistically significant association between math impacts and the percentage of new teachers from these two sources, both of which tend to recruit and provide some training to recent graduates of highly selective colleges. One should be cautious about placing substantial weight on this finding because this is one of the many secondary hypotheses tested and the positive association could be due to random chance.

* There's more debunking of beloved "reformer" myths (merit pay and frequent testing, for example). Again from the billionaires own report:

We found no significant relationship between impacts and three other factors that we posited might contribute to student achievement. Specifically, impacts are not correlated with (1) the extent to which CMOs define a consistent educational approach through the selection of curricula and instructional materials, (2) performance-based teacher compensation, or (3) frequent formative student assessments.

The Walton-subsidized mouthpieces in Fayetteville and elsewhere will shortly be respinning all this if they aren't already. Luke? Jay?

• NEW HIGH SCHOOL: LISA Academy recently opened a new high school to accommodate growth. It's in western Little Rock and part of a charter school with a 31 percent black enrollment and 74 percent full lunch price population, against about 71 percent black and free- and reduced-price lunch in Little Rock district.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette editorial page — reflecting its publisher Walter Hussman's devotion to the Billionaire Boys Club effort to wreck the Little Rock School District by encouraging establishment of as many charter schools as possible and forsaking efforts to improve the existing public school districts in Pulaski County — naturally emphasizes the positive when it comes to charter schools.

But this morning's effort went beyond emphasizing the positive. In cheering the LISA Academy's new high school, the editorial today said:

So why not have more charters? Couldn’t they prove not only better for students, but for taxpayers, too? OH SURE, those who oppose charters will say, the LISA Academy off West Markham. La dee-da. That outfit is just taking a bunch of well-to-do white kids out of the traditional schools. Of course it’ll do well.

Except . . . .

The last numbers we got show that the LISA Academy had a white enrollment of 37 percent.

Thirty-seven percent.

Black, Asian and Hispanic kids make up most of the rest.

So charter schools can perform better and be more efficient with the money they’re given and serve the whole community?

Now for what the Dem-Gaz conveniently omitted.

The State Department of Education's most recent data show 472 students in LISA's middle and high school grades. Of these 148, or 31 percent were black; 130, or 28 percent were Asian, and 162, or 34 percent were white. 30, or 6 percent were Hispanic.

Last I heard, Asian subpopulations haven't been generally identified as lagging in educational achievement. More than a few of the Asian population at LISA probably are Turkish-American students who followed the striving Turkish educators who established the LISA Academies here and who have associations with a burgeoning network of Turkish-influenced charter schools around the country. I've mentioned previously how former City Director Lottie Shackelford introduced me to several of the LISA officials at a local coffee shop and said proudly about the Turkish community here, "They even have their own school." Those with Lottie were too kind to correct her by saying LISA was actually a public school, funded by tax dollars, not a "Turkish school."

Based on national statistics, I'd guess that the Little Rock School District's test scores would be better if its population was 62 percent white/Asian, like LISA's, rather than 71 percent black. The reason, I hurry to add, is more about class than color. Study after study has shown the negative impact of poverty on school achievement and poverty falls disproportionately among black students here.

So let's compare by a more meaningful indicator, again drawn from state data.

* LITTLE ROCK SCHOOL DISTRICT 71 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches on account of low family income.

* LISA ACADEMY: 26 percent qualify.

Might Little Rock do better with reversed percentages? Good question. I do know you'll rarely find charter school backers talking about these apples and oranges. It complicates their story line.

The current State Board of Education, I'm happy to say, gets it. It turned down an expansion request from LISA Academy recently because the school could make no showing that it did any better in student achievement with similarly situated students than the surrounding Little Rock School District.

LISA claimed superiority in test results to schools locally, but it was an apples-to-oranges comparison, as Board member Ben Mays pointed out. "Of course you have better scores because they [neighboring schools] have free and reduced lunch rates of 65 to 70 percent. But when you compare it with those with 25 percent, there's not much difference." Scores for black students are higher than black students in the area as a whole, but LISA officials couldn't say if their black students came from higher income backgrounds, as Mays asked.

I know I'm just peeing into a multi-billion-dollar Walton-Gates-Broad-Hussman-Stephens-Murphy wind here. But that's the rest of the story.