Surely, traditional public school educators and charter supporters argue, there are better methods of measuring our students’ performance! I’ve heard a number of people, including Petrilli, intimate that charters outperform traditional public schools in those areas standardized tests cannot measure. Perhaps, and perhaps not. We don’t really have the evidence to support any comparisons on that score.

That’s one reason why the Broader, Bolder accountability recommendations are so interesting. If well executed, BBA’s proposed inspectorate system could lift the curtain that obscures what is actually going on in schools. Petrilli believes this kind of system will allow charters to outshine traditional public schools, even if their test scores are lower. We’ll see….

As for some parents reveling in their students’ low test scores…. That strikes me as a bit over the top. In a world without academic content standards, everyone gets to be brilliant.

However, I do know a couple of virtual charter programs that are excellent but have lower standardized test scores than would be expected for their demographics. The reason is that many of the parents who are homeschooling their kids through these programs could not care less about the CA state standards and the STAR tests. They only have their kids take the tests because it’s required in order to receive their curriculum stipend. Their kids are learning plenty but it may or may not line up with what’s on the tests.

I know several families in my local homeschool support group in virtual charters who did ZERO test prep with their kids as a matter of principle. One mom is so anti-standardized testing that she encouraged her child to refuse to read the questions and just randomly fill in the dots. She was *PROUD* that her child failed the test if you can believe that.

Test scores correlate strongly with a number of non-school factors (they correlate particularly strongly with parent education). And moving your child to a school with different demographics may or may not change the kind of education your child gets.

I think parents in struggling schools sense this — they can see that in many cases the teacher in their school are doing the same things they’d expect teachers in high test score schools to do.

The tipping point often comes when with safety/discipline issues — at that point the expectations about school are clearly fraying.

But I suspect there is often as much tolerance for parental mediocre teaching/curriculum at high test score schools as at low test score schools.

Secondly, I would ask what choice do most parents have? You go to the school you are zoned for, according to your address. If you’re a homeowner, you pay property taxes that support all of the schools, yet you are only allowed to use a particular school. Unless you can afford private school, or unless you are the “winner” of a seat in a magnet school (determined by lottery around here), you have no choice. So, it’s actually a GOOD thing that parents are supportive of their child’s school, no matter how well it performs on the state tests compared to the other schools that they could never attend.

You know, “Bloom where you’re planted.” and all that jazz.