I've commented a couple times on op-eds written by retired CSU professors Walter P. Coombs and Ralph Shaffer. Well, Walter is back in this Los Angeles Daily News op-ed. Walter is partnering with Christopher J. Shaffer, a high school student, who I suspect is probably related to his buddy Ralph.

In this letter, Walter is once again taking a swing at charter schools.

The oft-told myth that charter schools outperform traditional public schools has been put to rest by an unexpected source - Jed Wallace, the president of the California Charter School Association.

The charter boosters, who now count President Barack Obama as one of them, will have to regroup and explain away this stunning revelation.

At a convention in Long Beach in March, Wallace relayed the disappointing results of the state's 2008 Academic Performance Index to the membership. The API is the benchmark standard by which all of California's elementary, middle and high schools are judged. Wallace's report was not what the charter crowd expected to hear, and a dismayed audience of teachers and administrators were shocked to hear that they were trailing public schools.

In 2002 the API had charters trailing traditional schools statewide by 22 points. After six years of innovation, drum beating and braggadocio about the superiority of charters, Wallace was forced to concede the differential now is 28 points as charters have fallen even further behind.

There are a couple problems with Walter's claim that this statistic puts to rest the "myth" that charter schools are superior. First, despite Walter's assertion that the "API is the benchmark standard by which all of California's elementary, middle and high schools are judged", the API is actually a lousy measure of achievement. I've spent entire posts ranting about it before, but here's a short recap of some of my favorites:

• The California Department of Education (CDE) "re-norms" the API every year as they change test weights, add/remove tests, etc. Thus, CDE tells schools that they aren't supposed to compare API scores from year to year. Of course, the CDE is among the first to do exactly that to show how much schools have improved.
• Schools get the most increase in their API scores not by moving students to grade-level, but by moving students from the very bottom level to one level up. Thus, schools can see significant API score increases without getting a single additional student to grade level.
• While schools get API scores for each "significant subgroup" (I wouldn't want my child in an insignificant subgroup) the scores that get reported in letters like this are the schoolwide scores. Schoolwide scores hide achievement gaps between Asian and white students and their poor and minority peers. Schools with achievement gaps of 40 or more percentage points can show dramatic improvement on the API while doing nothing to close those consistent gaps.

Second, Walter is talking about the average of the API scores of charter schools vs. the average of the API scores of traditional schools. That's a meaningless comparison. The reality is there are some great charter schools, such as American Indian Public Charter and Oakland Charter Academy in Oakland Unified and there are some great traditional schools such as Highland Elementary in Inglewood or One Hundred Fifty-Sixth Street Elementary in Los Angeles Unified where dramatic improvement in student achievement is occuring. Further, there are terrible charter schools and terrible traditional schools. Rather than comparing the averages of those pools, we should be looking at these high performing, high minority and poverty schools, charter and traditional that are being successful.

This comparison of average API scores doesn't do anything to solve the question of whether charters are better than traditional schools. The answer is sometimes.

The first results were good and the privateers trumpeted their success, but now reality has set in and once again California's public schools lead in educating our youth. They now outrank the charters in student achievement by a substantial margin. The wild claims of the charter school promoters have turned out to be, as many predicted, simply hot air.

The reason charters do as well as they have is attributed in part to creation of specialized academies that draw students who already were doing well in public schools. Charters have also benefited from the conversion of high-scoring traditional public schools that became charters. However, these conversions are not operated by the anti-public school charter fanatics.

There are a couple issues in this section that I'd like to respond to. First the idea that charter schools only score higher because they cherry pick already high performing students is ridiculous. Perhaps that has occurred in some instances, but this is not the normal case. Look at the two charter schools I mentioned earlier. All you have to do is visit those schools to know that they're not cherry-picking the rich white kids from the Oakland hills. They're taking the same students that Oakland Unified's traditional schools were failing and they're helping them succeed.

Second, I'd love to see some examples of all these "high-scoring traditional public schools" that have become charters. I'm sure there have been some, but I doubt that it has been a significant number.

Third, I think Walter use of the term "anti-public school charter fanatics" is outrageous. Walter needs to remember that charter are actually public schools. While I'm certain there probably are some anti-traditional public school fanatics out there, I believe that there are anti-charter school fanatics as well. In fact, I'd put Walter in that category. He's a fanatic.

California now has some 800 charter schools with another 80 on the way. Now that the mirage of charter schools is shattered, it is up to Californians to halt the rush to a charter school system that fails to give our students the best possible education. Lawmakers must institute strict regulations to govern charter schools, insuring that they meet the standards that we have come to expect.

While the current budgetary crisis may make it appear that charter schools are a good idea, their continued proliferation would only result in the further degradation of the California educational system and create an ever-growing and unacceptable drain on the education budget.

What Walter seems to refuse to acknowledge is that there are traditional public schools, many of them for that matter, that are failing to give students the best possible education. Yet, Walter's not calling for their closure. Charter schools actually have some accountability in that their chartering district has the ability to close them if they're not meeting the needs of students. They have to issue regular reports and are held accountable for performance. Many charter schools have been closed for failing to provide the "best possible education." How many traditional public schools have that same level of accountability? I'd say, none. Despite the illusion of accountability in No Child Left Behind, most schools in their fifth year of Program Improvement are not closed, have staff changed or reopened as a charter schools. The vast majority use the "some other major reform" strategy and just do more of the same. In fact, there aren't even any additional consequences beyond the Program Improvement Year 5 level. Schools just stay in year 5 forever.

When our state only gets a little more than 40% of its students to grade-level each year, the problem is a lot bigger than some poor quality charter schools. Our public school system has fundamental problems. We have a large segment of the education community, who think like Walter and believe that more funding to traditional public schools is the answer. Doing more of the same isn't the answer. Schools need to adjust and change their practices in order to meet the needs of all of their students. That's what the high-performing charter and traditional schools are doing.

These effective schools don't make excuses for poor student performance. They look at their practices and they adjust. They look at data to drive their decisions. They assess students to see where their knowledge is lacking. They work together, collaboratively to do what needs to be done to raise student achievement.

Unfortunately, Walter is trying to use charter schools as the excuse for why traditional public schools aren't doing better. That's just an excuse Walter. You can do better. Our schools, traditional and charter can do better. Let's end the excuses and begin the work of improving all of our state's schools. Our students can't wait for the adults to figure out who is right.