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."

Comments

Not surprising

[gweihir]

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.

Re:Not surprising

[0100010001010011]

I could not disagree more.

There were 2 types of classes in college. Those that handed us out notes and went through a slide show and had us fill in some blanks and those that handed out nothing and wrote on the blackboard.

Guess which one I retained more information from? I've seen that people retain more information if they write it down than if they just see it.

There is an Excellent easy way to back up data on the blackboard, it's called notes. Some classes I didn't even have a notebook. Prior to the class I'd grab some sheets out of the recycle bin and write on the back side.

There's a very easy way to apply corrections, it's called crossing it out and rewriting it. You even retain th original information so you can sometimes see a progression of thought.

Notebooks, on sale, cost $.79 a piece.

Re:Not surprising

[slarrg]

I think you're misunderstanding the point of school. It's not to get information from your head to a report. Instead the point is to get the information from an authority into the head of the student. The papers and reports the students create are immediately garbage once the lesson has been taught they're an exercise to help the student remember. Seriously, who thinks the writing of students is of any value other than a teaching tool for the student (or maybe refrigerator wallpaper for a proud parent?)

Re:Not surprising

[gilesjuk]

No wonder standards are slipping in education, especially science and maths.

A blackboard/whiteboard doesn't go wrong and it relies upon having a good tutor who knows what they are talking about. They can't just flick through a load of slides, they have to interact with the class.

People designed planes, nuclear bombs and all sorts of engineering/science marvels without computers. Computers are useful but not essential.

Not entirely govs fault

[Tony]

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.

No, that's not it, either.

[TrinSF]

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.