Early on in Charles Payne and Tim Knowles article Promise and Peril: Charter Schools, Urban School Reform, and The Obama Administration they touch upon the promise of charter schools saying “effective charter schools provide new schooling options for children and families who have had, historically few.” They go on to discuss some of the characteristics of Charter Schools, the difficulty of setting up effective charters, and the problems of “scaling up” some of the successes. However, I want to first focus on this “promise” and choice aspect and how it relates to something I call the placebo effect in education.

            Most people are familiar with the idea of placebo effects in medicine; pretty much the placebo effect is that often positive effects from sugar pills that do not actually contain medication occur when a patient believes they are receiving the actual effective medication. I believe something similar can occur when it comes to Charter Schools. If for years, students and their parents in underperforming schools hear that their school does not provide a quality education it most likely means that the students will enter the school with a negative attitude. A negative attitude kind of acts as a reverse placebo effect; It would be like if your doctor said here is a pill to help you, but it pretty much never works and there is a chance it will make you more sick. You will not be in a positive mind set after taking that pill which most likely mean that you will not have positive effects from it. Charter Schools however are like a new experimental pill that has got a lot of good buzz in the news. If someone were to give you a pill like that, you most likely would have a positive attitude after taking it which may lead to better outcomes. I believe because  Charters do have a positive buzz around them and they are not the same old failing pill (or school in the case of education) that students and their families most likely enter a new Charter School with a more positive attitude than their old school.

            However, a placebo pill is not real medication and if you take a placebo and the initial positive attitude does not translate into real results you most likely will go back to having less confident attitude about feeling healthy again if not an even worse attitude. In the case of some Charter Schools, I feel like this happens at a high rate. For example, KIPP schools have a high rate of student attrition; in 2003 60% of the students who started at a KIPP school in 5^th grade had left the school by the 8^th grade. (Payne, C. & Knowles, T. 2009) If some students thrive at KIPP or other Charters, but other students struggle to the point where the leave the school (and possible drop out of school entirely) do we call that school a success for the children they helped pass state graduation exams like MCAS and or get to college or call it a failure since so many students could not complete the program? (this is not even going into the problems I have with KIPP and similar Charter School that use direct whole classroom instruction as their primary form of pedagogy and have draconian rules)

            I say we grade the schools similar to the way we grade. Let’s give a charter and grade of an A for each kid the graduate and a F for each kid who leaves the school entirely. If they have 10 students and 60% leave the school. That is 6 grades of F and 4 grades of A. If a student has 6 tests where they got an F and 4 tests where they got an A that is most likely going to average to a pretty bad grade on their report card.

            This is not to completely disparage charters. The flexibility they provide and possibilities for innovation are useful. However, when Payne and Knowles discuss what goes into making quality Charter Schools such as strong instructional leadership for help both administrators and teachers and intellectually authentic and ambitious curriculum. These are things that can benefit education in all schools but they will take lots of time, money, and effort to implement.