In his State of the State Speech Tuesday night, Gov. Mike Dunleavy will recycle the empty education slogans that constitute his alleged education reform plan, which met with statewide opposition last year and will do so again.

Dunleavy will use his speech to mention the Harvard study on charter schools that he has been promoting for the past year. Dunleavy has misrepresented the contents in the report by Paul E. Peterson.

He also has repeatedly failed to acknowledge the research flaws and weaknesses that have been exposed by a diligent Fairbanks math teacher working on her time.

“When it comes to most educational outcomes, Alaska can't boast about being No. 1. However, according to a Harvard study published last year, our charter schools can,” Dunleavy will say.

What he wants is for the Legislature to strip powers from local school boards and give it to his hand-picked members of the State Board of Education, who he can count on to create more Dunleavy-approved charter schools, damaging neighborhood schools.

“It's time to build on this success and expand charter school availability to ensure that any student in Alaska can benefit from these transformative educational models,” Dunleavy will say.

He will claim that those who don’t repeat his charter school slogans are special interests and should be ignored.

Members of the Legislature and the public would be better served by ignoring Dunleavy’s recycled material and read the updated research report from Fairbanks teacher Beth Zirbes and co-author Mike Bronson about Dunleavy’s charter school assumptions.

Zirbes teachs math and statistics, while Bronson has a doctorate in biology.

Their conclusion is that Dunleavy has drawn the wrong lessons from the Harvard study that he can’t stop talking about and he continues to make false statements about the research.

“The governor drew an invalid conclusion that Peterson had found Alaskan charter schools more effective than neighborhood schools. Peterson did not compare charter and neighborhood schools, but simply compared charter schools across the country,” they said.

“We find that, after accounting for students’ socioeconomic status, the charter schools and neighborhood schools in Alaska communities which had charter schools at the time of the Peterson study do not statistically differ in the percentage of their students scoring proficient in the English language arts standards."

“We find instead that proficiency declines as family income declines,” Zirbes and Bronson wrote.

Zirbes contacted Peterson, who declined to provide data about sample sizes, names of the charter schools in the sample or test score summaries.

“Since comparisons of the academic scores of Alaska’s charter schools with other Alaska schools have not been made, we make the comparisons ourselves,” they wrote.

“In summary, no evidence shows that charter schools outperform neighborhood schools in terms of English language arts proficiency once we consider their students’ socioeconomic make-up,” they said.

There are far fewer economically disadvantaged students in charter schools than neighborhood schools. There are also fewer students for whom English is a second language. Most charter schools do not have bus transportation for students, school lunch programs or other features that would make them more accessible to poor families.

Here is the report by Zirbes and Bronson.

Everyone should read this document before listening to any more Dunleavy slogans and ask why Education Commissioner Deena Bishop, who calls herself a data nerd. has failed to perform similar research or have someone perform it for the state.

Bishop testified last year that she believed there were about 2,000 students in Anchorage alone on waiting lists to get into charter schools. The real number was about 350.

Dunleavy and Bishop have claimed that the state education board, which consists of people appointed by Dunleavy, should be given the power to create new charter schools because local school boards are not approving enough of them.

Meanwhile, there will be legislative public hearings Monday at 8 a.m., Wednesday at 8 a.m. and Wednesday at 5 p.m. on a proposal by Sitka Rep. Rebecca Himschoot to increase the base student allocation to better support Alaska schools.

Himschoot, a retired teacher, is one of the most informed Alaska leaders on education. She certainly has a better grasp of these matters than Dunleavy, who sticks to memorizing simplistic talking points. Here are the public hearing details.

Here is the sponsor statement from Himschoot about House Bill 69.

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