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School's Out Forever at SV High Tech High
theodp writes "Touted as a model of successful education by the likes of Bill Gates, Silicon Valley's High Tech High just held its first — and last — commencement ceremony, graduating only 21 students in its brief history. Despite the financial support of the world's richest man, the charter school cited money woes as it voted to shut its doors. Adding insult to the poor HTH kids' injury, the local public H.S. district plunked down $8.6M to snatch up their abandoned school and will turn it over to a brand new crop of kids in the fall."
Adding insult? Oh come on. If this school had just gone to waste that would be an insult. It will probably be a good school in the long run.
Education is not about modern equipment. In fact modern equipmetn may seriously hinder education at times, when the sudents attention and mental capabilities are bound more by the technology they used than the subject they are learning. My guess is it will still take a few decades (or centuries) until computers can compete with pen and paper and blackboard (that have been perfected for a few centuries as well...). I know that in order to be creative and insightful I use pen and paper or, even better, a whiteboard.
Incidentially some of the "worlds richest men" are directly responsible for a slow computer revolution.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Adding insult to the poor HTH kids' injury, the local public H.S. district plunked down $8.6M to snatch up their abandoned school and will turn it over to a brand new crop of kids in the fall.
How on earth could this possibly be considered an insult? Because the public school district is so apparently awash in cash yet didn't subsidize their extremely specialized and (apparently) financially unsuccessful school, but instead let it flounder? Cry me a goddamned river.
Maybe I would have thrived there, instead of ultimately getting the hell out, getting my GED, and putting in time at community college before going on to uni. I certainly don't like the fact that only those wealthy enough were able to go, but I think that this is what our public high schools should be. Innovative, creative, and fun, with the chance to implement what is being learned. I believe that it would go a long way to getting rid of the, "Why do I need to learn this?" attitude that even I was guilty of at the time.
Unfortunately, K-12 education isn't exactly where the government's priorities are. Maybe one day.
"We may face a scorched and lifeless earth, but they're accountable to their shareholders first."
Our school system issues aren't all the fault of the government. Sure, "No child left behind" has fucked it up even more, but we can only lay a certain amount of blame on the government.
Our society looks down on education, to the point where we pass over well-educated, well-spoken presidential candidates for the apparent moron, the "regular joe guy I'd like to have a beer with." (Sorry, he doesn't drink any more, so you won't get that chance. But if you want to do some blow, he's the man.) Until we start respecting education as a society, our school system is doomed.
Not that we can't fix the government's problems with education, while we're waiting: stop funding schools based on property taxes, which slants education in favor of the rich, and punishes the poor. Stop pretending you can replace teachers with a computer, or some bloke off the street, and start paying them better. Repeal "No Child Left Behind."
Anyway. We've got a long way to go before we can fix our education system. But there's a lot more than the government at work here.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Warning: Gross Generalizations Ahead
Ah yes, the measure of a successful school -- sending all its students off to college.
Except that 'everyone' goes to college, now. Nobody holds a job until they're 24. Kids don't know how to work. Differentiating yourself requires even -more- education. Colleges begin to look more like trade schools.
As a software company, we don't hire based on education. We hire based on skill and experience. If you don't work until you're 24, you don't have any experience -- and no, college internships aren't a reasonable replacement for work experience. If the choice is between a post-college applicant with no experience, and a no-college appliant with 4 years of work experience, which do you think we're going to choose? Of course, this doesn't apply to every field -- doctors and lawyers aren't getting out of school any time soon
Kids need to work, not spend years 0-24 coddled by parents and a mediocre educational system dedicated to pumping out collegiate clones with no connection to the real world.
So, here's the deal. Two charter schools start in pretty much the same area, and draw from much of the same student base. One succeeds, and the other fails miserably. To me, that says -- among other things -- that the problem with HTHB wasn't "charter schools don't work", but rather that their *particular* implementation of a specific charter model didn't work. And as someone with experience *at that school*, I can tell you the problem was never the charter school model, but largely the administration.