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How Good Are Charter Schools For the Public School System?
theodp writes "'You go to these charters,' gushed Bill Gates in 2010, 'and you sit and talk to these kids about how engaged they are with adults and how much they read and what they think about and how they do projects together.' Four years later, Gates is tapping his Foundation to bring charter schools to Washington State, doling out grants that included $4.25 million for HP CEO Meg Whitman's Summit Public Schools. So what's not to like? Plenty, according to Salon's The Truth About Charter Schools, in which Jeff Bryant delves into the dark side of the charter movement, including allegations of abuse, corruption, lousy instruction, and worse results. Also troubling Bryant is that the children of the charter world's biggest cheerleaders seem never to attend these schools ('A family like mine should not use up the inner-city capacity of these great schools,' was Bill Gates' excuse). Bryant also cites Rethinking Schools' Stan Karp, who argues that Charter Schools Are Undermining the Future of Public Education, functioning more like deregulated 'enterprise zones' than models of reform, providing subsidized spaces for a few at the expense of the many. 'Our country has already had more than enough experience with separate and unequal school systems,' Karp writes. 'The counterfeit claim that charter privatization is part of a new 'civil rights movement', addressing the deep and historic inequality that surrounds our schools, is belied by the real impact of rapid charter growth in cities across the country. At the level of state and federal education policy, charters are providing a reform cover for eroding the public school system and an investment opportunity for those who see education as a business rather than a fundamental institution of democratic civic life. It's time to put the brakes on charter expansion and refocus public policy on providing excellent public schools for all.'"
the location/setting is is everywhere already
As long as people take test scores seriously and refer to test scores to see how 'good' schools are, you can continue to know that something is wrong.
If charter schools are allowed to operate, then they shouldn't benefit from special privileges that public schools don't have. They should have to accept any students in the area (regardless of academic level, just like the public schools). They also should be required to have all students take the standardized tests (instead of finding reasons to exclude children who they know won't do as well, so the school looks better ranked in comparison).
If charter schools aren't cheating and they are showing an improvement that is one thing. But too often they are cheating to make themselves look better compared to public schools.
Of course, when Bill Gates goes to a charter school he is impressed. One assumes that he would be shown the best students from the best school in any given area or ditrict he was visiting. Empirical data should drive these decisions, not the "gushing" (really slashdot? he "gushed"...) of Bill Gates. He's a fine guy, and seems to really want to do some good with some of the fortune he made, but if he trusts the evidence of his own eyes in these kinds of situations, then he is a fool.
http://www.charterhouse.org.uk/
Also never seem to attend public schools. Usually these cheerleaders are wealthy, and wealthy families tend to use private schools.
We spend over $10,000 per student every year for public education.
Teachers (being very generous here) make $80,000 a year. 30 students to a class.
In nearly every school:
1. No computer curriculum/no practical science materials
2. No district/state funding for athletic equipment
3. No district/state funding for clubs
4. No district/state funding for field trips
5. No district/state funding for new books/supplies
6. No district/state funding for musical instruments/art supplies
7. No district/state funding for theater/drama sets/costumes
8. No district/state funding for industrial arts/woodworking
9. No district/state funding for automotive repair classes
10. No district/state funding for uniforms (cheerleading, band)
Where is the other $220,000?
Yep, we're just churning out bright, qualified students one right after the other.
Geez, our present system is an utter failure in most of the US. I would posit that pretty much anything is worth trying, in an effort to start trying to reign in cost, and get more results from our efforts.
There is one thing, however, which I don't know how we can fix, at least not from a legislative or policy standpoint, and that is the lack of parental participation.
So many parents think of the schools as a dumping ground for their progeny for day long child care. They don't participate except to raise hell with the administrators they their little Bobby or LaTonya is accused of mis-behavior (MY child would never...), or if they need to be held back due to lack of progress.
Do they even hold kids back anymore?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
To the extent students exchange charter for public, that is good. To the extent low performing students are relegated to public schools, that is bad.
To reduce the resistance to charter schools, they should put at least as much emphasis on lower performing students as high. It will require separate experiences and possibly facilities, and that will meet with criticism on an anecdotal and shallow basis. That is the solution. Once it is shown charter and other nontraditional schools reduce dropout rates, they will be accepted (by an informed public).
In the mean time the current bureaucracy will defend itself mindlessly by comparing results of the different styles using "standard testing" as the criterion. Fail. It will be a propaganda war with the media the willing shills for whoever prevails. Not logic or reason.
The big difference is that Charter Schools are not compelled to accept a student. The standard public schools cannot turn away a student who is disruptive or below the curve academically. Charter Schools can. This allows them to select the best students and avoid the ones which would drag down the school and the other students. This has positive and negative implications, but it does mean that statistically the Charter Schools are going to show higher grade point averages.
...to be involved in charter schools as there are people involved, some more laudable than others.
But I don't see much upside for public schools.
Years ago Lester Maddox said that if you want better prison systems you need better prisoners.
Naturally everyone had a cow, but he had a point.
If charter schools bleed off all of the kids from homes where learning and education are prized, whose parents are going to be involved, and all that's left in the public school are the kids rounded up by the truancy officer, it's not going to go well.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Public schools have transformed into something they were never supposed to be, and no longer serve their initial intended purpose - the education of children.
Today, they are simply political indoctrination camps. Not a fuck is given about making sure they learn the material. Every fuck is given to coddle and spoil them so they associate government with being coddled and spoiled - essentially ensuring the next dependency class.
Making people stupid and dependent is the mission of the DOE. Shut it all down.
why are Charter Schools so big on college but not so much other post secondary education?
Of course they don't hold kids back. Every year they hold a kid back is one more year of that kid dragging down the test scores for the school. Much better to push them out as fast as they can. You see the same thing in government, where you can't fire employees very easily. Bad employees tend to get promoted the fastest so that they can be sent somewhere else.
Bill "My charity is better than yours" Gates "I Don't have to Pay Tax". Is looking increasingly unhinged. He needs to go back to what he does best, stabbing his fellow employee in the back...or the from in the case of Ballmer. Seriously "When a kid gets diarrhea,"...hold on, aren't these the sort of thing that your taxe....ahhh I see.
They're called enterprise schools in my district, but the one that I was involved in was a big success. We had a plan, which was to bring E.D. Hirsch's Core Knowledge curriculum to middle school students, to prepare them for high school and beyond. We wanted the entire school to be an honors school. Students had to have a B average to get in. The school district went along with the plan, and we opened the school in 1998, and my daughter was in the first class. The NAACP warned us that they would be watching us closely because they suspected that we were creating the school only for middle class white kids. What happened surprised them and us. Middle class white kids ended up being a minority in the school. The biggest ethnic group came from lower class hispanic families who saw the school as an opportunity for their children with good grades to get ahead. We also had a number of black and asian kids from poorer neighborhoods. The district was more than happy to bus the kids from all over the city to the school. The NAACP quietly shuffled off. I think they were actually disappointed.
The school was a success, but it required the interest of parents, administrators and teachers who agreed with the vision, diligent oversight, and a district that entusiastically cooperated. If any of the above elements are missing you have a potential disaster on your hands.
Proverbs 21:19
Today, charters have become part of a campaign to create a less stable, less secure, and less expensive teaching staff. Nationally, charter school teachers are, on average, less experienced, less unionized, and less likely to hold state certification than teachers in traditional public schools. In a word, cheaper.
There it is folks.
Out of curiosity, I googled to see if there are any charter schools in the US using the Finnish model.
There are none.
I would think if educating our children to the best techniques available, there should be Finnish type of charter schools popping up all over the place here in the States.
No. Because it's all about the money and creating a cheap working class for as little money as possible.
I volunteered at a charter school (BASIS Tucson North) in Tucson, spoke with some of the teachers, and later one of my friends worked there. It's a wonderful place; the teachers are given a great deal of freedom to teach effectively, since they were hired as professionals who can figure out what the students need on their own, rather than being micromanaged by policies and administrators. This fellow taught physics, and was encouraged to do things like make the senior class a special projects course, teach quantum mechanics in high school, etc. The same's true for a friend who teaches Latin at the Basis school in Flagstaff. These are public charter schools: anyone who wants to attend is on equal footing with anyone else who wants to attend (unless they have a sibling who already goes there), and may attend for free.
Now I'm in Washington DC, where 40% of students go to charters. They do that because the schoolboard-run public schools here are in many cases awful, and the charters give kids in the projects another option. Test results (if you put any stock in them) show that children at charter schools do somewhat better than children at the schoolboard schools (they're all "public schools"), but there's a hidden variable there. In Northwest DC (the wealthier, low-crime, white area), there aren't that many charter schools, since the schoolboard schools here are actually somewhat decent; in Southeast and Northeast (the black areas), the schoolboard schools are bad and there are more charters. So, despite a less favorable demographic, the charter schools have higher test results overall.
Are all of them good? Of course not; the ones that are bad wind up becoming known as bad, and attendance goes down. But they at least give parents and children an option to get out of awful schoolboard schools if they can't pay for a private school. A first-grader doesn't have time for all sorts of excuses about schoolboard politics or administrative red tape or curriculum standards; she just needs to be taught to read and write. If her neighborhood schoolboard school isn't doing that, charters give her a second shot at getting what her parents are paying for when they pay taxes.
If the schoolboard-school advocates want charter schools to go away, then they can sort their own house out first.
I think ultimately it's about unionization: in places where teachers are heavily pressured (or forced) into joining the teachers' union, charter schools represent a crack in the monopoly the union has on teachers' labor. The unions hate charter schools for that reason, and I think a lot of the anti-charter rhetoric comes from the unions' dislike for non-union teaching going on.
yes
i've heard of two kids held back in kindergarten
i don't know about flyover country, but here in NY, kindergarten is now what first or second grade used to be when i went to school. my first grade older son is doing some work that i didn't do until third grade
I'd be careful on the anything aspect. I was a proponent for vouchers until I realized that a big company would take over the educational system, similar to how prisons are privatized and how testing is scored by a single firm. What would result would be laws passed that would be a hefty barrier for entry for anyone else other than a well-heeled company, and we would get very crappy private schools that replace our already crappy public schools.
Of course, there is homeschooling, but that is being quickly outlawed state to state. Some states require a social worker sign off on a parent removing a kid from a public school. Not like homeschooling is much better, but our educational system is so bad that the homeschooled kids I encountered are actually better off come college time (as they pass the high school equivalency around 12-13.)
Colleges is where one sees the failure of the US educational system. I live in a city with a first tier university. When it comes time for admission and staying in, a student in the top 10% of a US high school just does not have the ability to compete with his/her counterparts who come from China and India [1]. It is like someone wheelchair bound competing in a 100 yard dash against 10 Usain Bolt clones for a single spot.
The school system in the US is a sign of the times. It is just shameful. Virtually every other country out there produces more educated and socialized students.
[1]: The China and India college student also get their education at no cost to them. The US student has to get student loans that they owe for life just to be even in the ball game.
The US teachers unions and reflexive leftists hate them because their intent is to "raise the bar" so to speak.
I've had experience with charter schools in Coos Bay and Redmond, Oregon. Both have been a sort of alternative place for kids who don't fit in to the social mainstream. Both have been accepting of kids regardless of performance. Both have used alternative teaching styles, both have been free from district funding and district control for the most part. And it comes down to the desires of teachers and parents, and the kind of environment they want to create and participate in. They aren't particularly better or worse than the mainstream schools, and they take away less funding from the local district because they receive federal dollars. That can't go on forever, the whole experiment seems fragile. But it has been better for our family to have more options, because hey I'm sitting here posting on Slashdot at 7 AM, and frankly, our family doesn't fit it with the social mainstream (if you want to summarize it that way).
I have no idea if the quality of education is better, but at least in my experience, there is no elitism, if anything the 'alternative' charter schools are generally looked down upon. But so are the regular schools anymore. All I can say for sure is that some of our kids like attending the charter schools more because of the curriculum, the teachers and the attitudes, while others don't. And that is what it comes down to, is the kids getting the best experience, which I certainly didn't in school.
The charters are renting old school district properties in Redmond, (as well as many other services from them) the net effect being that the local school district gets more money per non-chjarter student at least while federal funding is in place.
The public school system is deep in the hands of people for whom the education of children is not paramount. There are factions there who wish to indoctrinate, and factions who simply wish to enrich themselves at the expense of all of us. There are some well-meaning good people who are in that system, but they don't control it and are more and more tightly constrained and restricted from being able to effectively educate with each passing year.
Strip everything above the state level, and maybe the state too. Education belongs in local hands.
While I agree with most of your points, I will add the problem is also the teachers and the schools.
The teachers make it as difficult as possible for working parents to communicate with them or be involved with their kid's school work. My daughter has been to 4 public schools and the only way we are able to get information from the school is to continue to hound the school.
At the school my kid is at now, my daughter's grade in math went from a 84 to a 33. When I asked my daughter to see her work, she said it was on on the school's computer. When I emailed the teacher (they don't answer the phone), she told me that parents are not able to help since all the work is done at the school on the computers and the next day my daughter's score changed to a 100.
There is one thing, however, which I don't know how we can fix, at least not from a legislative or policy standpoint, and that is the lack of parental participation.
While I agree with some of your points, I'll take issue with this statement. In my opinion, the lack of parental participation and school/legislative policy have degenerated in a vicious cycle. Schools try to do more to help kids, while discouraging/preventing parental influence on school policy. As a result, parents are less involved, which leads the school to do more, etc.
As for "day long day care" - so true. Look no further than the push for 4k and Head Start, which have repeatedly and consistently failed to produce lasting benefits, while costing taxpayers *billions*. There's no educational justification for it.
Help find a cure for cancer. Join the [H]orde
Parental participation is NOT the problem. The problem is administration and the U.S. litigious attitude. School boards have members pushing personal agendas in terms of education, while stripping power and responsibility away from front-line teachers for fear of any potential legal action. Teachers should be granted "legal guardian" status for every child in their class during the school day, superseding the parents. This would allow teachers to act more like parents and deal with kids, instead of having to throw their hands up in the air in frustration that Little Johnny has a rich, douchebag lawyer for a father.
as a source of pork for privateers.
I graduated from a charter school in 2003. It was an absolutely amazing experience. Through my own childish stupidity I had failed out of public schools, and found myself in what was supposed to be my last semester of high school still needing a full year's worth of classes. So I ended up at the charter school, because it was setup to be work at your own pace. I never witnessed, or heard of, anything like what is mentioned in Jeff Bryant's article. The sketchiest thing that I felt went on was they allowed under age high school students to take smoke breaks. Granted they more or less had to, as a lot of the kids there would have not gone to school at all if it meant not being able to smoke. This was absolutely amazing for me. Instructors did not bother me, and they handed me as much material to work on as I wanted. I managed to finish a full year's worth of school work in about six weeks. I was able to graduate on time, and get out. That said, it was not a good fit for the other students. My fellow classmates, for the most part, fell into two distinct categories: drug addicts and pregnant women. These were not the type of people that benefited from being able to work at their own pace, largely unsupervised. The instructors did very little teaching. Most of them just read the newspaper, and made sure the class was orderly. As a result the majority of the other students never did any work, and very few of them ever graduated. Of course not every charter school is going to be the same, but that was my experience. Ultimately I feel like the school I was in was an abysmal failure for the type of kids they were trying to help. I have always been one who prefers to teach myself out of books, and not be stuck in a rigid curriculum that limits my ability to learn at my own pace. I was highly motivated to get my crap done, and get out. The other students were your more traditional drop outs, who genuinely struggled with the school work, and they were not getting the help they needed.
But Gluen [sic] is no mere charter operator. In fact, as Al Jazeera reported, he is the head of a powerful movement in Turkey involved in “the most extensive and sensational corruption investigations” of that country’s recent history.
Indeed, the Gülen movement is "involved" in corruption investigations, in the sense that it's Gülen members who are accusing the AKP of being corrupt.
But this article seems to be being deliberately vague in an attempt to insinuate that it's Gülen that is corrupt.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Applying an industrial paradigm to what is not an industrial process. People far too often look at schools in terms of producing "widgets", streamline the operation, standardize it, and pump out the product. Which does not work when you have huge variation between children. If all children are individuals why don't they each have an individualized learning program? What's that you say, too expensive? Don't want to pay a few more dollars a year in taxes? You get what you pay for.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
When I was in high school there was only one local charter school and it sure didn't resemble any institution such as those depicted in Waiting for Superman. Students who had no shot of graduating went there. All the coursework was on a computer (which was kind of a big deal then, I graduated over ten years ago), students only had to be there three hours a day, and there was no certified teacher present. The 'teacher' was more like a supervisor - a guy who only had a high school diploma, was only in his early twenties, and everyone knew him by his first name. The idea was that the computers were the teacher, so they didn't need a certified teacher to run the whole gig.
Despite the fact that the coursework was mind numbingly easy, everyone cheated, and the supervisor didn't care. In fact, they'd take pot breaks with the supervisor. You could just keep taking the modules until you got them right, anyway. Then, once all the coursework was completed, the students received a full high school diploma from THE LOCAL HIGH SCHOOL. Totally indistinguishable from the one I got. Yet none of these students were competent enough to take the most basic college courses.
The charter school existed for a couple reasons. First, the No Child Left Behind Act had just been passed and the school system was scrambling for a solution to increase the graduation rate. Second, it was a private institution which received a government grant to function (by paying the supervisor minimum wage instead of paying a certified teacher a teacher's wage, by only staying open 3-4 hours a day, they were able to pocket most of that money). Finally, it was a way to get 'problem students' out of the system -- a sort of purgatory before they either took blue collar jobs or ended up in prison.
I had a couple of friends that went that route. I'm not friends with any of them anymore. One currently lives in government subsidized housing, is unemployed, and has a couple kids. One's a heroin addict and career criminal. One lives with his mother, he just got out of prison.
I'm rather skeptical of charter schools.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
As long as charter schools are publicly funded privately run institutions that is all it is. Not unlike the private prison movement that has turned into a disaster.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
If you want to compete with these Charter Schools, then don't use these isolated instances of sensationalized journalism to try and make broad generalizations about all Charter Schools, but how about instead you focus on improving our public school system so that we're not driving families to these alternatives? I'm a product of a public school education (high school graduate in 2003), and I remember people would fail classes, students would be held back grades, teachers would grade our papers with red ink, not everyone was given a pat on the shoulder and told "good job for trying, here's a gold star." Our current public school system is one based on passing arbitrary standardized tests, where teachers are hounded by administrators that haven't seen a classroom in 15+ years to make sure their kids pass. My sister in law teaches elementary school. She is forbidden from giving any student a grade less than 50% on an assignment. Don't turn it in? That's okay! Here's a 50%! Didn't answer the question correctly. That's okay, at least you tried. Math is hard! Here's a 50%! She can't even grade students papers in red ink because of the psychological "trauma" that it will cause. Come on people...give me a break! The real psychological trauma will be when these kids are passed all of the way through high school with a 4th grade reading level, no ability for critical thinking, and a chip on their shoulder that they're smart and they'll never experience failure. What our public schools are doing is wussifying our kids and making them think that they don't have to work hard to succeed. They are going to be sadly mistaken when they go to college (because, you know, nowadays every kid DESERVES to go to college) or get their first job and they end up failing a class or getting fired because they aren't capable or willing to do the hard work. Parents that don't care are a big problem, but by schools caving to these parents and passing them up through the grades without the necessary knowledge, just so they don't have to deal with irate parents, they are doing these kids a disservice. I'm completely for criminal punishment of parents that don't support their children's struggle to obtain a basic minimum education.
The misconception is that "everyone can do well". If everyone does well in school, goes to college, etc., then in a generation, we'll have college educated burger flippers and janitors. That's the reality. Someone must end up doing those crappy jobs---and it's usually folks who don't do well in school (or drop out) and don't end up going to college (or drop out). Not saying there aren't exceptions or hard luck cases, but society needs that segment! (yes, YOU wouldn't want to be in that segment, but those there aren't there by choice).
Like in that "Incredibles" cartoon, ``if everyone's super, then nobody is'' or something along those lines.
Lots of charter schools have union teachers so you have no idea what you're talking about.
One thing is certain - teacher's unions and their allies on the left do not like competition and thus do not like charter schools.
Yes. And it is remarkable that the alternative to eliminating charter schools -- making all schools charter schools -- is never mentioned in these diatribes.
Since when is the only fix for broken public schools to eliminate all alternatives? I would think a good fix for broken schools is to eliminate the broken schools, no?
But Charter Internet and TV have been pretty reliable recently.
Fast too
but their rates just went up again
Teacher's unions are gutted hollowed out shells of their former selves. You should be thanking unions for 40 hour work weeks and weekends anyway. What you advocate is the same race to the bottom you see in IT with Google and Microsoft trying to get as many foreigners through our borders to destroy working conditions for everyone already here.
Yeah, like the present public school system is a shining beacon of success.
Yep, we're just churning out bright, qualified students one right after the other.
Geez, our present system is an utter failure in most of the US. I would posit that pretty much anything is worth trying, in an effort to start trying to reign in cost, and get more results from our efforts.
There is one thing, however, which I don't know how we can fix, at least not from a legislative or policy standpoint, and that is the lack of parental participation.
So many parents think of the schools as a dumping ground for their progeny for day long child care. They don't participate except to raise hell with the administrators they their little Bobby or LaTonya is accused of mis-behavior (MY child would never...), or if they need to be held back due to lack of progress.
Do they even hold kids back anymore?
Too many parents are burned out, working all day not getting home until after 6pm only to crash and wake up and do it again. They don't have as much time or energy for their kids as in years past because wages on average have not kept up with the cost of living, so people are working harder for less. It's an effect from the short sighted economic policy in this country. And considering how many kids have been pushed (sold) to go into debt to go to college only to find themselves without a good enough job or enough income for the decent standard of living they were promised, it's only going to get worse.
The public school system is growing increasingly dysfunctional because it is chasing the doomed goal of "closing the achievement gap" for non-white students, a gap that exists not because of inadequate teaching but because most of those students are a byproduct of a corrosive social and cultural environment.
This had led schools into the business of providing social welfare services, something they are not equipped to handle, especially in terms of budgets and personnel. There is no amount of money that the schools can spend to fix the problems of broken families, poverty and a corrosive social environment dominated by crime.
School administrators are right, Johnny can't read if he's hungry, etc, but the school system doesn't and won't ever have the money to address these problems and it seriously detracts from the educational mission to divert scarce funding into performing social welfare services.
It's an open question as to whether ANY social welfare spending (at least as structured in the US) can "solve" any of these problems. So many of the problems plaguing these students are CULTURAL issues, not issues of simply being poor. Teenage parents, missing or jailed parents, etc -- we don't seem to know how to solve these problems even in the broader social welfare system, let along trying to do it within the educational system.
Modern American Public schools are pretty bad. If you are going to compare charter, then compare it to the actual public schools (corruption, non-education, etcetera) instead of comparing Charter to the ideal and assuming that modern state-instituted education is better than the private offering - which is what Charter is.
No no Hell's no. Teachers are effectively representatives of the state and you want them to supersede the parents? Remember children are required by law to go to a public school, or if you can afford it out of pocket a private or home school. Public school already indoctrinate students. Worse yet they are managed by the board of ed.
No sir I dont like it.
Another problem may be modern limits on parental power.
My dad's father came to the U.S. from Ireland, and both my dad and his father attended Catholic parochial school. They had two tools that are denied to modern parents:
1) The schoolteachers could hit you with a ruler if you didn't do your homework.
2) The father could beat the shit out of you if you didn't do your homework, or mouthed off to the teacher.
I'm not saying that all physical punishment is warranted, and I'm not saying it's the only way to motivate a kid to learn. But I suspect that at certain junctures in a kid's life, it's a very effective tool. And when there's something very important at stake such as a kid's future, it may in some case be in the kid's best interest. But it's not a tool that can be legally used in most of the U.S. or western Europe currently, AFAIK.
Private schools come and go. if you start 100 private schools then some time later most will be out of business. A few, ones that could draw good students from wealthy families, will remain. If you now compare those to public schools they may shine. Bussinesses that succeed always look like their outperforming the governments delivery of similar services. In aggregate, including all the places they fail, they may not. How many failed charter schools did Bill Gates look into. How many of those failed before they even chartered because the demographics just would not work.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
We literally have sunk trillions of dollars into the DOE and things continue to free-fall.. The only answer I've seen come from government stooges (on both sides) in my lifetime is to keep throwing more money at it and cut funding when GPA don't rate in their charts.
There really should not be any surprise that Charter (and other private types) schools are on the rise. The DOE has provided a huge void in getting a real education, the capitalists see the opportunity and fill it; for a price.
'dark side of the charter movement, including allegations of abuse, corruption, lousy instruction, and worse results' - What is up with this guy? Of course there will be fraud/etc - that is a fact in any type of business, but everything he mentions has been going on in the DOE for decades - like it's something new..
The sad thing, that this post glosses over, is the current school system educates better than any time in U.S. history. It's just the rest of the world doing even better that.
Charter schools are simply given leeway to deviate from the bureaucratic web that dominates traditional public schools. Their charter allows for much more flexibility and to break the confines of traditional public schools. Charter schools are educational experiments, recognizing that for the reasons you list and more, the traditional public school system is no longer functional.
Education is not an issue which can be properly defined and solved with a specialist approach. Slashdot is the mecca of specialization. So, what is going on here? Why are you guys pretending to have this conversation? You ARE the point of this system: You are the culture which will create our value-less scientific future. Without you, we will never get brains into space. Do not worry about this silly educational inequality stuff. Why bother with the kids who don't succeed? We have the technology. The system therefore MUST be working.
India education is very expensive, I don't know where you get the idea it's provided it's not.
I'm currently a server in a restaurant. Last week a local public school union's bosses rented our banquet room for a conference and I was chosen to cater it. They spent 3 of 4.5 hours talking about how union membership and school enrollment has been plummeting for the last 10 years and that the primary cause (other than their criminally bad schools) is the growth of charter schools. There's sure to be at least a little truth in these allegations against charter schools but I expect this article has a more Machiavellian motivation.
In Atlanta, the public school system was overrun with corruption (it is even worse in neighboring Dekalb County (GA) School System). Schools in the middle- to lower-income districts could never get any traction with the school board, and there was/is a overarching distrust along racial lines in a city that is becoming increasingly white. On the positive side, most of the successful charter school solutions we've seen here have involved huge community efforts and have created long-lasting, creative environments that serve all members in the community (enrollment is based on proximity within the district and a lottery; tuition is free just like the regular public schools). Negative examples come from areas where a large corporation or entity basically came in and did majority funding for a school, only to decide too withdraw support later, leaving kids who started in a school having to change schools, which is highly disruptive to many children. Other bad examples might involve state-funded parochial education.
Naturally, school boards and administrative employees hate charters, but then again, they are the problem charter schools are trying to solve. Charter schools often can retain better teachers due to better management (salaries are not necessarily any better). Charter schools seem to lack the permanence of regular public schools, however, as funding is so volatile.
I went to a public school myself, and my children go to our local public, non-charter school. I hate to see parents take their kids out of the system and go private since we need more concerned parents to participate in the process. Charter schools may be a decent alternative to keep kids in public schools while creating the alternative that lights a fire under dead-wood administrators. It just depends on the local issues at stake.
The fact is that our education system in the US is outdated and terrible (as Sir Ken Robinson has brilliantly and repeatedly explained - example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U). It needs improvement in many, many ways.
HOWEVER, just throwing more, and more, and even more money at the system (as endorsed by teachers' unions and government bureaucrats everywhere) hasn't solved anything. The city of Minneapolis spends nearly $21,000 per student per year (http://www.better-ed.org/20911-minneapolis-public-schools-avg-spending-student). With an average class size of 26 (actually pretty good), that's $546,000/year/classroom*....which is rather obscene, particularly when you consider their abysmal graduation rates.
So yes, I might agree that charter schools are not individually the solution, but we have to try SOMETHING different, and accomplishing change in small charter school 'hothouses' (where the parents are essentially volunteering their kids for an experience that is HOPEFULLY better than the norm) is far more possible than in the shitty public school system that is overwhelmed and ossified with bureaucracy, teachers' unions, and a cultural aversion to substantive change. The hope is that these changes, if they're successful, might actually percolate back into the stultified public schools.
And no, I don't think schools should be held to the same standards as a commercial business - they are intrinsically and substantively different. But there is an analogy to a refining company: schools are processing raw materials (our children) in an effort to make them finished products (fundamentally-educated adults). The difference is that schools can't simply throw out the dross, but are compelled to reprocess and reprocess until there's something useful there, fighting the 80/20 rule all the way to the bottom of Zeno's dichotomy paradox.
*let's dissect that, shall we?
Let's pay the teacher ~$120,000 year - so their total cost is ~$146,000/year - that rounds out our numbers, and I don't think any teacher would argue with that salary. So $400k/year left.
Lease rates for commercial, furnished offices in Minneapolis: let's use high-end, as we want our schools to be nicer than most office places: $304/psqft/year. We'll use a generous 40x40 room for the 'classroom' to account for other, shared spaces like gymnasium, cafeteria, etc., and ignore that - as the building builders and owners, the actual triple-net cost should be far less than half that (note, they don't pay property taxes, either...) - $50,000/year; $350k per year left.
Let's spend $100k PER YEAR PER CLASSROOM on 'stuff' - materials, dvd rentals, books, shared costs of projectors, smartboards. $250k per year left.
So in waste/bureaucracy, you could hand each student nearly $10,000 PER YEAR.
-Styopa
The more I learn about charter schools, the more it seems that they obviously are not supposed to be a permanent solution. The institution itself is seems explicitly designed to produce a scattershot of ideas and methods, some of which might fail spectacularly, and some of which might succeed spectacularly. While it is troubling that we as a society are learning which ideas work at the expense of our children, that doesn't mean we should just throw away what we've learned. I'm not talking about whether or not to keep charter schools around. I'm talking about taking some of the more successful methods and implementing them in our public schools. It concerns me that every time I hear about how awful charter schools are supposed to be, the speaker acts as though the best solution would be to nuke them and pretend the whole experiment never happened.
I sometimes ask revealing, often ignorant-seeming questions. Maybe they're harder to answer than you think.
As a fellow NY'er, whose kids are fortunate enough to attend decent schools, I'd watch that "flyover country" term. IIRC Colorado and some of the northern Midwest (not an exhaustive list) have good schools. OTOH San Diego public schools suck.
Overall though your point is well taken. Saying that public schools in America suck is a gross generalization. When it comes to those international tests where everyone bemoans America's poor ranking, there are large areas (e.g. Mass.) where the students rank up there with those other countries we're supposed to emulate. Tell the geniuses who want to improve America's public schools that they don't have to look beyond the borders - just look at the parts of America that have decent schools.
Charter schools have been tried in America for 15 years, probably longer than that. Ultimately, the performance varied, the teachers got paid less, and the high ranking officials got paid more. Considering that the teachers do the actual work, the students do the learning, and everything else is secondary, it makes sense. If you want better test scores, get better teachers and/or better students. I think America does poorly on international test scores, because it has bad students. You really can't do anything about that.
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Ah, all those brilliantly educated Chinese and Indian students. What percentile of Chinese and Indian students do they represent? Hint: it's a lot more selective than the top 10%.
What does it do to the public school system? Who cares? The only question is what does it do to the students. Schools exist for the benefit of the students -- not for the benefit of the school system.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
That's my experience, too, out in the country west. It continues on. My 7th grade kid is reading the same stories they had me read when I was in 9th grade.
Not that I think it's a great idea. 14 was probably too young for some of those and now he's getting them at 12.
Play Command HQ online
Do you have kids in public school, and if so, what part of the country?
Since the ultimate goal is corrective action: I have two daughters in a parochial school (mostly for the structure, attention to detail, and higher teacher-to-student ratio.) To address each point individually:
1) My kids's teachers maintain a high level of positive reinforcement for appropriate school behavior and getting work done. The sudden absence of that positive feedback (or even mild negative feedback), psychologically, effectively acts similarly to a ruler across the knuckles.
2) When we (as parents) find out about incomplete homework or bad grades, our kids know that it will be the end of the world for them. The suspension of privileges and the threat of making them bust their tails redoing homework is also an effective deterrent.
Neither approach requires anyone to "beat the shit" out of the kids, and it's just as effective.
Yeah, like the present public school system is a shining beacon of success.
I call "shenanigans". Do you have any actual recent sources for saying that? Are you from a state that is reasonably funding its educational system? I'm very impressed with my kids' public school and am happy we chose that over private. I'd find sources for something more than an anecdote, but I won't waste my time if you're not.
While I agree with some of your points, I'll take issue with this statement. In my opinion, the lack of parental participation and school/legislative policy have degenerated in a vicious cycle. Schools try to do more to help kids, while discouraging/preventing parental influence on school policy. As a result, parents are less involved, which leads the school to do more, etc.
If any schools are discouraging parental participation that is wrong and should be stopped. Parent support and participation is probably more influential to a child's success than anything the most talented teacher can do. While the school should be encouraging and supporting it, if they are not, the parents should demand to be heard.
As for "day long day care" - so true. Look no further than the push for 4k and Head Start, which have repeatedly and consistently failed to produce lasting benefits, while costing taxpayers *billions*. There's no educational justification for it.
Data on head start shows that overall, it is slightly better than a wash, but quality head start programs show long lasting educational, life, and community benefits for example through reduced crime long after the head start program. So the question is how to get all of them to be high quality. The educational establishment is only just beginning to really use real data driven methods to ensure high quality effective methods are identified and employed. That's sad it had not been done more before, but it is being done more now. Well actually the real question is how to get more parental support and involvement so that the school isn't expected to raise kids entirely while at the same time improving the effectiveness of the schools. The worlds most effective schools won't get great results without parents supporting their kids (if you don't believe me spend some time in both an inner city and a suburban school, preferably with a good teacher in an urban school), but the worlds most supportive parents will result in more effective schools, partly by demanding and getting improved schools, but partly because it's the foundation for a child having success.
Public schools destroy minds, institutionalize children, and provide a path for crooked organizations (like agents of our government) to sow lies and destructive ideologies in the minds of the young. Do your children a favor, and find an alternative. At the very least don't let/encourage them limit the alternatives for people who ARE trying to take good care of their kids.
When it comes time for admission and staying in, a student in the top 10% of a US high school just does not have the ability to compete with his/her counterparts who come from China and India [1].
And how is this measured? By administering more crappy standardized tests and then comparing the two? That's not education at all.
I'm glad that's working or you, but I'm not sure how well your approach to (2) would work for particularly rebellious kids. When push comes to shove, especially during adolescence, I suspect kids need to understand that the parent has a coercive power to back up the suspension of privileges. For example, if you ground the kid, and they leave the house anyway, what's your next step?
In the current legal climate, about your only serious recourse, is to call the cops. In my opinion, that's more problematic in a number of ways, then some traditional responses to such rebellion.
Why can't I slap my wife around? I feel that sometimes it's in her best interest that I do so, so why is that tool not available to me?
If you can't tell the difference between your role as a husband and as a parent, I don't think me posting the answer on Slashdot will do much for you.
I'd say it is tougher now. Mouth off to a teacher in a public school, teacher flips a switch under the desk, and the ERT (emergency response time... basically a dedicated SWAT team) runs into the classroom and hauls the student off. Then, the student now faces incarceration until age 23 unless they make it through the prison's school and indoctrination "levels" until some social worker/CO thinks the kid is ready for release.
So, a rap on the knuckles is one thing, but being in fourth grade, facing being behind bars for at least twice their existing lifetimes if they talk out of turn is a pretty steep punishment.
The teachers make it as difficult as possible for working parents to communicate with them or be involved with their kid's school work.
35 kids per class, 6 classes a day, 210 kids and their parents to deal with. In a typical day, 6 hours are taken by instruction, and 1 hour by lunch, school meetings, and other duties. That leaves 1 hour a day for grading, planning, prep work, etc.
Even if teachers gave 1 hour to every set of parents, that is 26 days of time @ 8 hours a day, or 210 days @ the available 1 hour a day.
Bottom line: There are too many kids per class for teachers to provide quality communication.
That process absolutely works, you're just missing the part about holding all the smarter children back so that everybody is at the same level... That's why everything I was taught in middle school was taught again in high school instead of teaching those of us who 'got it' new things...
When it comes time for admission and staying in, a student in the top 10% of a US high school just does not have the ability to compete with his/her counterparts who come from China and India [1]. It is like someone wheelchair bound competing in a 100 yard dash against 10 Usain Bolt clones for a single spot.
What you are seeing is the effect of the top 10% of a country with 300M citizens competing agains the top 0.01% of countries with 1B+ citizens each.
Given that educational opportunity in other countries is also subject to extreme selectivity, those 0.01% have also had the benefit of superior education not just through the system provided, but also due to the peer environment. A genius in a school full of geniuses must learn to work hard to succeed as opposed to being able to coast on the momentum of inherent advantage. The benefit of developing a good work ethic manifests itself in college where even a genius has to apply themselves consistently (if not strenuously) in order to master the material being presented.
In Ohio the charter schools are not doing a better job of educating students, but they are doing a dandy job of transferring tax-payer money into the pockets of the "management" firms that run the charter schools. Even the conservative Columbus Dispatch has noticed the lousy job the charter schools are doing: Columbus has 17 charter school failures in one year.
in Ohio results from standardized test have been no better - and often worse - for the Charter schools. Good Charter schools have been the exception, not the rule in Ohio.
The right question is whether charter schools are good for children, not whether they're good for the failing institutions that the children are escaping.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Eventually someone will perfect the burger-flipping robot, and then we will all be screwed.
There are problems with the public school system, especially in areas where the "upper middle class" simply place their kids in private schools and don't do anything to help fix it.
I grew up in St. Louis, and went to the school district whose actions were largely responsible for the "mandatory desegregation" program. The program was in its infancy while I was in school, and was tough on the kids that were "bussed in," but there were a number of success stories that would have otherwise been impossible.
Recently I had the opportunity to speak with a retired teacher about the program, and it is amazing to hear about its ongoing success. She was also talking about the horror of charter schools from a teacher (and administrator) perspective-- effectively gaming the system on all ends. Her insight was that ultimately you need to shut down the schools that cannot meet basic levels of achievement. There are systemic problems that take a long time to fix, and it isn't in the kids best interest to be part of the slow process. Transfer the kids to effective schools and give them the tools they need to succeed.
As to the general state of primary and secondary education in the US, there are some real good things going on, but there is also a lot more that needs to be done. The same goes for university based on what I see from new grads.
We should be more concerned about what will help the most students and less concerned about what is good for the public schools themselves. The public schools now are dominated first by the teacher's unions and second by a huge federal bureaucracy. Neither of these is motivated entirely by the good of the students. I see the charter schools as an attempt by some people to break away from union and government domination of their children's schooling, much like the home schooling movement. In both cases, the students who are completing these programs are tending to be much more successful than average. Charter schools may not be the best solution to our education problems, but they are a worthwhile effort.
Every one of your criticisms about charter schools applies equally to public schools. A good public school in a rich neighborhood will turn away poor people by requiring that to send their kids there you have to have the kids in a certain set of (expensive to live on) streets. The charter schools in this state (Michigan) are required to accept everyone, and are administered by local school districts just as public schools are. The public schools equally or exceedingly demonstrate corruption and poor teaching. The thing that the charter provides is a _choice_ to the parent that did not exist before. You wish to remove that power from the parent, and your post is a wolf in sheep's clothing.
"Of course, there is homeschooling, but that is being quickly outlawed state to state. Some states require a social worker sign off on a parent removing a kid from a public school."
okay your first statement is pure BULLSHIT. Directly from the HSLDA website http://www.hslda.org/laws/
there are only 5 states that have "high regulation" (and this says nothing about a social worker having to sign off)
If you want to prove me wrong i want to see actual LAW from at minimum 5 states (no parent blogs no scare sites actual state run sites with a chapter and verse from the law).
Hint any state trying to pass that kind of law would have a visit from Mr Smith next day.
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
None of the schools my daughter went to had any where near that many kids per class. I think the largest class has 20 kids in it.
And I'm not saying that teachers don't have it tough. But teachers and schools are quick to take credit for kids doing well and quick to lay the blame at the parents for kids that fail.
I live in a relatively nice area with good public schools. We pay a lot of money in property taxes for the privilege, of course. I also have 2 little kids who aren't quite ready for school yet, so this debate will become pretty real for us soon.
The idea of a charter school on its face seems like a good one -- take the smart students who would be poorly served by a bad public school and put them in an environment where they can succeed. There are a few problems with this idea IMO: /. nerd of a certain age remembers the Simpsons episode with Troy McClure doing the voiceover for the Pepsi Education Channel. (If you don't, look it up...it's funny.) That's a little over the top, but look at what for-profit "colleges" like University of Phoenix or ITT Tech have done in the higher education world.
- Taking out the only students who care (and/or have parents that care) from the public schools will only hollow them out further and make them worse.
- Charter schools don't have to worry about things like special ed, kids with behavior problems and other stuff that public schools do. Public schools have the mandate to graduate mentally handicapped children from high school. Public schools are forced to deal with disruptive kids up to the point they commit criminal acts, and beyond. Charter schools have hand-picked student bodies whose parents give a crap about their kids. Those students are going to be the ones who take the extra effort and do well on their SATs or spend the time to get their homework done, and that's why charter schools are held up as models.
- Charter schools are run by education companies. Any
The only thing that will fix bad public schools is:
- Money -- Even if the local community can't support a big tax base, money needs to come from other sources to fix the existing public system. Teachers need to be paid well and have good working conditions. Students need at least a tolerable learnning environment.
- Parental involvement -- Even living in a decent area, I see so many parents who need their parent license revoked. Crap parents --> Crap kids --> Crap school. This goes across economic lines too...poor parents might be using drugs or abusing their kids, but some rich parents totally ignore their kids or let them do whatever they want.
Throw money at the public schools and the problems will be fixed. It just takes more money than people are willing to contribute right now, and it would take a huge mind shift to change that. Add on the libertarian agenda that gets pushed on us, the push for smaller government, etc. and it's going to be very tough indeed until the problem becomes so bad it can't be ignored.
At some point I think that's correct. Certainly small children all need the same things, learn to read/write, learn basic math, spelling, etc. But after 2nd to 3rd grade it should be individualized, group up the similar kids and get them on an advancement program. But, that requires stratifying kids... and we're going to have to get over the concept that every kid is a special snowflake. Little Johnny didn't make the cut, he's in class B.. and no amount of parental moaning is going to move the goalposts.
"It's time to put the brakes on charter expansion and refocus public policy on providing excellent public schools for all."
Translation: let's spend more money!
"Big success"
If I tell you that I'd like you to have $100,000 in your bank account at the end of the year and offer you two scenarios:
A) I give you $50,000 and an investment account
B) I give you $100,000, several full time professional money managers who will work around the clock, and that for every investment you make you will have two professionals to watch, check, and alert you of any changes or challenges which might result in a loss.
Which do you think is going to be a success at the end of the year? B, of course. That's what your charter (or enterprise) school is. If you take nothing but already-successful students, with parents who are involved in and focused on the academic success of their child, you have to royally fuck up to end up not hitting your goals. Heck, if you cleared out the worst performing school in the district of all the students and then put the enterprise students in there together and told the parents this was an honor and a privilege as it was a "magnet" school for academics you'd have the same fabulous results. If you combine all smart kids and involved, forward thinking parents you can make almost any teacher/staff group look like geniuses.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Whereas right-wingers hate teachers' unions so will do anything to reduce their numbers. It matters not that charter schools have not (in general) been shown to be more cost-effective than public schools. Of course there are exceptional cases to "prove" almost any particular viewpoint.
The problem is that - and I'm sort of assuming here, so pardon me if I'm wrong - I think the answer wouldn't really help and would make many people angry. The reason those schools work is that they're the schools where parents who care about their children's schooling go. They're generally a minority, which is reflected in how the average school is fairly poor. If the parents care, they'll get involved in the school, they'll push for better teachers, better courses, better structure, etc. All of this has already happened, so now we're left with a good chunk of those parents all being at schools that already work well.
The thing is, I don't see how to apply this on a wider level because most parents in the US do not care about education. Some people even seem to revel in their lack of it. This is the big differentiating factor between the US and the countries that you mention. Over there, education seems to be valued more, though I cannot really tell why precisely. If you just decided to emulate the small schools that work, you'd probably see the whole edifice collapse after a very short time since there would be no pressure to keep them running that way; the parents wouldn't give a toss (at least, the majority of them), which would make the children not give a toss, which would make the good teachers leave quite quickly, and then the whole thing falls apart.
Most "solutions" only focus on one part of the problem, but like most *real* (as opposed to idealized and partisan) issues, it's a combination of tightly interlinked factors which need to be addressed simultaneously. You need to motivate the parents and the children, you need to have an efficient administration structure (including personnel, evaluation methods, etc.) and you need competent and motivated teachers.
of course he does:
Union == Bad
regardless.
Hitting children does not really motivate them to work better. Would you work harder if your boss hit you with a ruler whenever your performance is down? Probably not - you'd just hate your boss much more.
Parents control their childrens lives, and hardly need to hit them. In a functioning family, the children knows very well when parents disapprove - they simply don't need to get to beatings.
What a load of crap. Charter schools are about choice. Of course there are bad charter schools. Kids are getting SHOT in public schools, so should we consider them to be dangerous beds of anarchy? Is it fair to a family that cares about their childs future that they have to either let that child suffer through the Chicago public school system simply because they can't afford to move?
And lets not forget, this entire issue would not exist if it weren't for the complete and total iron grip the teachers unions have on our schools. If they could admit that there may be some things the teachers themselves could do to help, and that simply throwing more money at the school might not be the answer we might get somewhere. But when their pay is locked to their education level, you end up having teachers with Doctorates in English teaching kids how to read huckleberry fin and complaining that their $80k a year salary is not commensurate with their education level. That's because we don't need people with 12 years of college experience to explain huckleberry fin to 15yr olds! The fact of the matter is you should be getting paid half that!!! gah, this drives me nutz.
"now even the charter schools are broken! we need to create a safe learning environment that takes a step away from the current entrenched system!" this is paraphrased, but that exact sentiment was shouted at a recent county meeting in my area. in short: we need to charter school the charter schools. so what was begun as an external effort to break the teachers' union (which may, or may not have got a bit too powerful; but i'll tell-ya, their salaries sure doesn't reflect that) is now a enfeebling case of: if i don't like something about the system, lets fork it -- each child in their own school system! one superintendent per student! this is hyperbole of course, but i'd council fixing the system at large rather than running from it to create a new system to screw up.
How Good Are Charter Schools For the Public School System?
No!
The difference is that kids aren't adults, but that is a very superficial difference. I do not like it when people assert that they can use violence against another person to get that person to do what they want, even if they believe it to bring about a 'better' result in the long run.
How do you handle the unattractive students? A student that has a C average and doesn't seem motivated to improve? Do you just not provide education? Do you slot them into schools designated for poor students? That's a recipe for disaster, and it won't change anything since the good teachers will avoid those schools in general.
I'd posit that the problem isn't anything in particular about schools or teachers or parents, but about society. Society doesn't value knowledge and education. We deride people for knowing things, demean "facts" as unimportant in public discourse, and discourage academic pursuits. Until we change that, nothing we do to schools will matter.
Here in New York, at least, they are horrible for the public school system.
They:
1) Take money from the public school funds, leaving public schools with less money to work with.
2) Aren't required to take ALL students. This means that they'll often reject any student with special needs, pushing them back to the now even more underfunded public schools. This is partly a business decision. Special needs kids require more money to help which would lower the Charter Schools' profits. It's also partly a testing decision (see #4 below).
3) Aren't required to take the horrible Common Core tests that public schools are subjected to and upon whose results teachers' jobs rely. (Common Core is a whole different mess, but it's partly related to the push to "privatize" education - translation: big companies want to make a profit off of our kids.)
4) Where Charter Schools do take tests, they get to decide which results count towards the reported score.
So, by sheer selection bias on the part of Charter Schools, they come out looking great (since nobody who might bring their scores down is allowed in) while public schools wind up looking horrible (since all of those special needs kids who might bring down test scores are pushed back to the underfunded public schools). Meanwhile, the Charter schools keep making money by funneling public school funds to the companies that run them.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
You know what makes kids want to learn? An environment where they can learn and feel successful in doing it. That means they need to be safe, well fed and have a nurturing home environment that allows them to grow. Nowadays we expect too much out of the public school system. We want the teachers and administrators to deal with all the other issues in our kids lives and not just teach them. If you add that to the low wages, teachers unions, school boards and tightening budgets its amazing that some school districts can keep the doors open. The parents need to step up in their own kids lives and make a difference by helping the schools help their kids. It's the only way they'll be successful.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
When I emailed the teacher (they don't answer the phone)
Do you expect a teacher to answer the phone during the school day? Elementary teachers typically only have about 30 - 45 minutes of prep time during the day when they aren't directly working with kids. Even if you called after school, that is usually the time teachers are using to make copies, work with other teachers, etc. It isn't like a desk job where you can answer the phone the moment it rings. However, you do have an argument if teachers are not returning your calls. My school district tells us we should return calls within 24 hours, and that's something I try to stick too. Most parents find email easier themselves, but I understand a phone call can sometimes clarify the situation quicker.
Worth trying, yes. But to actually "reign in cost" you have to, you know, budget appropriately (and most charter schools inherently add to costs as extant public schools don't magically become cheaper and it's a slow, grinding process to consolidate them (if at all possible)). As for "get more results", well, you have to first ask questions about whether we are actually getting results and then you have to examine their methodology, including making sure they're producing accurate results and not simply skewing them--for example, taking all the top scorers and placing them in charter schools and leaving all the low performers in public schools and you might have simple shuffled people around without even changing the median score let alone the average one.
How about student participation? The biggest hope for success of students are the students themselves. Yet we've consistently stripped students of any sort of power, consideration, or respect--student council, journalism, etc are all jokes in school. People may look to the past and point about how much administrations so actively fought students in the past as a sign that today things are better, but that's actually more evidence that the administrations won and now students are so actively discouraged that there's basically nothing left to fight over.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
What a strange country we're becoming where someone needs to "allow" a group of people to provide education for children.
I would ask what right (either legal or rational) you have to prevent charter schools, but I'd just get an ear full of the usual bullshit about the rights of arbitrary groupings of people outweighing individual rights.
there's no way to create a level playing field without drugging the smart kids to make them stupid. the idea of a level playing field is the same kind of idea as the "average child" unless you're a statistician, it's a worthless metric. your kid may be smarter than mine genetically. there's no way to level that playing field, so why should your smart kid have to be handicapped by ineducable future cart pushers?
we see money as the cure for everything. Education system not performing well? No problem...just throw more money at it. Social programs not lifting enough people out of poverty? Throw more money at it. Other countries that are outperforming us in education (Singapore, Norway, Canada) are spending far less per student than we are. Same goes for medical care. The problem is multifaceted. We spend too much on sports for one thing. Too much of the money is spent outside the classroom. I look at my property tax bill and I see that close to 80% of it goes to schools. And yet all we hear is that there isn't enough money for this, not enough for that. It's not the amount of money, it's how it's used.
See for example:
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2014/01/12/charter-failure.html
and
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2014/01/12/watchdogs-can-profit-from-oversight.html
I'm no fan of public education, but it sure seems like the way charter schools have been setup in Ohio is basically to hand over a large pot of money with little to no oversight. Yeah, real smart.
That's insane. If you take all the bad students, and look at the proportion whose parents are millionaires, it's pretty close to 0.
Most bad students are poor and have uninterested, uninvolved parents.
Giving teachers more authority to punish and reward students is a great idea and would almost single-handedly solve the major problems in education, though it should be limited to students whose parents are not involved.
I work for a private school. While it is not a charter, I have seen many parents of children in mediocre schools profess their love for charters.
Why would a parent love a school that performs, statistically, no better than the school they previously attended?
The answer is choice. Parents choose to put their children in those schools, and the administrators and teachers know that if they do not bend to the needs and wants of the student and the parent, then the student placement is put at risk.
One parent compared her local school district to the phone company. She said "before charter schools, the school district was like the phone company, they didn't have to care, they were the only game in town".
Charters give parents without means choice. That means the teachers and administrators of those schools have to be "nice" or the student walks. All else being equal, a parent of a C/D student in either environment prefers the charter school.
-ted
I can't really speak for the quality (or lack of) of the Charter schools, since none of our kids ever attended one.
But what I've definitely witnessed first-hand is a situation where the area public schools achieve very high ratings (according to the "GreatSchools" scoring system and so forth), partially by squeezing out the kids who don't "fit the mold". These days, more and more kids come into the public schools with IEPs, which is IMO a good thing. But the public schools see these and think "Warning: Extra expense! Warning: Confrontational parents!"
The first thing many of them do at "IEP meetings" is work on convincing you, as a parent, that many of the items on the plan no longer need to be on there, or that the school is "able to accommodate the request in another manner". (EG. You specify your kid should be able to bring his/her laptop to class every day to do assignments. The school retorts that it's a "security risk to the school's network" so it can't allow that, but "We have plenty of computers of our own your kid can use." Clearly, that's not the same thing. The school computer can't come home at the end of the day and only has the applications on it the school chose to install.)
A minority of parents opt to fight, spending thousands of dollars on "child advocates" and lawyers, until they get what they're after in the public school system. Many more just resign themselves to doing things the way the school administration prefers. When that become intolerable (kid starts failing or practically refuses to go to school anymore because it's so bad) -- a private school is often considered, and the public school "won", in the sense it eliminated one more kid who was screwing up its stellar statistics.
I guess my point is, not all "good public schools" are really so good beneath the surface. I'm almost to the point where I'd look at public schools with a GreatSchools ranking of 9 or 10 and be suspicious. The schools with a 6 or 7 may truly be the better schools since they care about students' learning more than maximizing standardized test scores and graduation rates at all costs.
I do have a few observations on the subject. My wife and I became disillusioned with public school after seeing the results our son was coming home with. There were no charter schools in the area. And, we quickly noted, the real problem is that parents really don't care. They *say* they care. But, the reality is that parents do not care enough to actually get involved. And, since the parents do not care, the teachers do not care and the administration does not care either.
We did not have the money for private education. We had to figure out something on our own. We called it homeschooling.
We discovered that there are 2 groups.
The first wants more structure in a child's life than school offers. These people tend to be religious types.
The other group wants less structure. These tend to be the unschoolers.
In the end, it does not seem to matter. Both groups get involved with the kids. The kids benefit.
When our friends reacted to the fact that we were homeschooling, a few things happened:
1. Is it legal?
2. You don't have a credential? How could you possibly be qualified?
3. How do you tolerate being with your kids all day?
4. My kids don't listen to me. You must be a saint.
5. What about the "socialization?"
6. And (mostly from teachers) If I had to raise my kids again, I would definitely homeschool.
Fifteen years later, we have our 2 sons (now 18 and 20):
1. Each of them has 2 black belts (Iaido and Jujutsu)
2. Both of them are Eagle Scouts
3. One of them started college at 15. The other started college at 13.
4. Both of them are straight 'A' students.
5. Both of them are employed.
I enjoy their company. We have great fun talking around the kitchen table. They bring their friends over and we enjoy them too.
We did make compromises. Homeschooling does take time. My software business would be more successful if I had devoted the same time to it.
My wife and I don't regret a single minute we spent homeschooling our sons. And, we could not be prouder.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren wrote a book 10 years ago, before the housing boom and bust, about how education and safety were killing middle America. In a short summary (to a detailed book):
Prior to women entering the workforce, families were more stable, because in surviving off one income, if the breadwinner was sick, mom could get a job, so you lost some income.
After women entered the workforce, family finances became less stable, because now EITHER parent losing the job was a catastrophe. And two jobs might reduce the likelihood that both are unemployed, but drastically increases the likelihood that EITHER becomes unemployed, and that was destabilizing finances.
The main driver of the middle class squeeze has been housing, and housing is driven by safe neighborhoods and good schools. To live in such a neighborhood has required two incomes, because the two income families bid up prices. This has absolutely killed single income families, because they can't compete.
The neighborhood based schooling encourages families to struggle for neighborhoods with good schools, which amps up the arms race for the housing.
Charter Schools aren't something she advocates, but detaching schooling from housing helps put the breaks on the housing run up.
The fact that you can live in a neighborhood you can afford and send to a good school is a HUGE thing. My kids attend a top rated charter in our city, but a few miles from our home. There are students from all sorts of neighborhoods. But the fact that our school competes with schools in millionaire zones has meant that people don't need to take out obscene mortgages they can't afford to educate their children.
The astronomical cost of private education (as a result of education inflation everywhere) has taken away private schooling from the upper middle class with multiple children. The charter schools has allowed us to have a family size we are happy with, a good education for our children, and stay in a house we can afford instead of needing to trade up.
The kicker, our charter school gets 95% of the funding as a traditional school, and our charter rents its building instead of getting it for free. The taxpayers save, the families get a good school, and the housing pressure for elite neighborhoods is lessoned. Now, our charter isn't a great solution for the truly poor. There is a required volunteer/financial contribution (either/or) per family, the school fundraises for stuff that might be provided in a public school, etc., there is no bussing. But if you are working class and willing to make a real sacrifice, or middle class and willing to give up some luxuries, you get a GREAT education.
But things like art classes are gone, and offered as after school programs, etc. But for many of us, an extra $300-$2500/year/student - depending on add-ons chose - is way more affordable than either private schooling ($15k-$20k/student) or fancier housing, $10k-$15k or more per year. I fail to see the downside.
Trying different ways of teaching should and would be ok except that the Right and Corporations have being using Chartered School as a wedge to kill public schools. The end game is to end public schools so only the rich and privilegde can sent their children to school and in this way widen the gap between them and the rest of the public.
IMHO charter schools are just being used as part of the privatization scam being perpetrated upon this country by billionaires, and education-for-profit corporations and consulting companies. The billionaires sponsoring this game have as much interest in helping children as they do in giving away their billions before they die... i.e., zero interest. If you follow the money trail you will see where it leads, and you will see that the "waiting for Superman", "no child left behind", "race to the top", Michelle Rhee, "parent trigger", "close failing schools", "Teach for America" hype is part of a massive fraud intended to make money off the backs of children.
For the facts and figures, read the new book "Reign of Error" by former Deputy Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch, and for the news follow her blog and twitter account.
"charters are providing a reform cover for eroding the public school system ..."
Long before charter schools were a political hot potato, the public school system in the USA had degenerated into a bloated bureaucracy of administrators managing a population of teachers holding degrees in "education" (instead of maths, physics, biology, psychology, etc.) - the "B Ark" of society. . This moronic mass has metastasized into our modern American public school system.
I dare you to visit the administrative center of a large city's public school system. You'll see hundreds, if not thousands, of school cops, social workers, bus traffic analysts, government grant analysts, etc. mindlessly walking the halls in search of a cup of coffee or the next new secretary to lay.
And I don't want to even venture near the topic of quality of teachers in these schools, whose only solution has been for decades "Give us more money!"
Charter schools *are* public schools. It's the traditional public school that does accept any and all students. Trying to make a single, one-size-fits-all school is foolish and damages education for everyone involved.
I send my children to an actual *private* school. Don't forget, the public schools *still* have their fingers in my pocket and I pay for education *twice*. The public education still is more expensive then the private tuition and the public schools will not allow my children to use resources without insisting on controlling my childrens' education.
About 10 years ago, I had moved all three of my kids to a local charter school after frustration with a particularly bad teacher at the local public elementary school, and the seeming unwillingness of the school administration to do anything about it. The local schools had also all switched to the 'new' matrix math method, which was particularly annoying to me.
For the first year or so, everything was fine. Then a series of administration scandals and teaching problems sent us running back to the public schools.
The problems:
1. The school administration decided it was ok to have a school staff member serve as security and carry a concealed weapon. Regardless of your stance on concealed carry, this was illegal in Colorado and against school district regulations.
2. The school principal and her husband, also a school employee, apparently embezzled over $50k from the school. They were forced to resign in disgrace and were being investigated for criminal charges.
3. The last straw was that in November of that year, my son's math teacher resigned for a 'real' teaching job. Through the remainder of that year, my son ended up having SEVEN different math teachers. He finished the year doing terrible in math, and never really recovered from that.
We later found out that staff turnover was something like 70% a year, and that the average teacher pay at the school was around $28k. (the lowest teacher pay in the district). Of course all the teachers were only there on short term contracts while they waited to get a real teaching job with a pension and benefits somewhere else.
This is no way to run an education system, and I won't be experimenting with charter schools again.
Necron69
Nothing wrong with it at all. It's the only way you can do history. Very useful to have a few poems memorized for impressing the opposite sex. Very useful to have a few nursery rhymes memorized in order to impress and please your kids. Formulas, theorems, knowledge of your craft, all involve some degree of memorization. If you have to solve every problem from scratch, you're going to be an inefficient at everything.
And yes, everyone should have addition and multiplication tables memorized, because it's so damn useful.
You come off as someone jealous of the kid(s) that could memorize easily, and having to find a way (mentally) to make yourself out to be smarter, and well, better than they are.
Our public education system (aka government schools) are consuming more dollars but are not producing better educational outcomes. In fact, while my sons attend great schools and I've been active in their education, they weren't prepared for either higher education or the work force. I attended the same school district 30 years prior and actually see a decline in the teaching methods and fit of courses to the needs of the individual child. Gifted education is non-existent. They offer AP courses only, which isn't the same thing. One size fits all education and no teaching of critical thinking skills. They only teach one path in life, you must attend college. These schools are nationally recognized, blue ribbon schools too. So the structure of the system itself rewards this approach.
Higher education knows that our public schools are failing. They see it when incoming freshmen fail to meet the minimum standards. The students have to go through remedial courses to come up to a level appropriate for college.
Public education is based around the teacher's comfort and convenience, which is a girl centric teaching approach. Boys are taught to be compliant, sit down, stay still, be passive. Those that don't are diagnosed as ADHD and meds are recommended. The fact is that boys and girls learn very differently. Read the book "Why Gender Matters" to see how some small teaching differences that account for those differences results in improved outcomes.
College is not the answer for every child. Some will be better off in more physical areas (one of my sons is a martial arts instructor for a living). Some will be better off in the trades (one of my sons is learning to be a mechanic). Some will be better in vocational training (one of my sons wants to go to a vocational school for animation). Some will be self taught (I taught myself about computers, networking, programming, and have been successful in the field for over 27 years). See Mike Rowe's Profoundly Disconnected website for an alternate point of view on the one size fits all educational model.
My view is that a diverse market place of educational choices ranging from homeschooling, private schools, charter schools, and public schools offers the best potential for improving education. I believe that vouchers would help to facilitate that market place. If no changes are made to the government education system, I will encourage my own children to homeschool their children. Two of my sons have been homeschooled and they have better critical thinking skills, are more independent, confident, and self assured. Frankly, the statistics show that homeschooling on average has better outcomes than government education. See College@Home's chart on home schooling versus public schooling statistics.
Here, we're hearing from the jailers, who are afraid their control is in danger.
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
Here's the bottom line, all social issues aside:
A Public School takes public money, is governed by people who are locally elected. They spend public money to provide the best education possible for children in the best environment they can, (in theory and often in practice.)
A Charter School in some places takes public money in others does not. They are not always governed by locally elected people. Their job is to educate children and turn a profit, they are not a non-profit organization, like a Public School.
So, when it comes to a choice between being profitable or going down the road to being non-profitable, and what level of education they will provide their children...which will win out?
Primary Education shouldn't be based on turning a profit...ever. It's always about making choices that are first and foremost, about educating children. Sometimes it's constrained by the funds you have, but the funds are not the focus.
In the history of US Primary Education, there has only been one, Privately run "public school system" that's both provided a profit and shown improved student achievement....for one fiscal quarter. After that, the improved student achievement became flat, then fell off. If privately run systems worked, turned a profit and created high student achievement, there would be a large amount of data out there about it. There isn't any. None. Public Schools would be hard pressed to fight real data. But, there isn't any, so they're fighting deep pockets of special interest groups who want to run schools and either turn a profit, or take public money and turn a profit, without necessarily providing high student achievement.
Do all Charters want to do that? No. Some have a great desire to create high student achievement. But what has and will drag them down is that they also have to create profit, because they're a business, not a non-profit organization.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
and say again, did the public schools have the outside expertise, to educate the students at first? illogical argument. Should they meet the same requirements for testing, with the same tests? Damn right, and should have harder, more succinct tests, to see if the test was taught or a philosophy of the subject was taught. That will tell you right off if the students were sorted, or why they were sorted. But to have the same pay expense ratio per pupil as the overall district, they will not match. Experience, no, overhead to make a profit? Now that will happen with private schooling.
We typically e-mail with our sons' teachers. If we need to do some real-time communicate on a matter, we set up a face-to-face meeting. This lets the school have someone cover for the teacher during that time.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
some of the links are bogus, as far as context. As far as charter schools, we have found them to be a mixed bag. (my wife is a teacher who has worked in both types of schools).
It really depends on the organization that is running the (charter or public) school. We have seen some (We mean YOU, Whitehat!) that provide little for the schools, and take away big profits. Others actually care about the services they are providing. Even in public schools, backwoods, bigotted attitudes of those on the school board can make for a very backwards school system, which fails to properly prepare kids for the realities of today's world.
Testing - I see somebody touched on that prickly subject. Many folks are carping against so-called "high-stakes testing", but really, how do we check to see if the kids have actually learned anything? The method has worked for many decades, don't mess with it.
In danger of playing the "race card" here, but even the Chinese/Asian students that ARE American Citizens, raised in the US, have pretty high scholastic achievement over other races in the US going from HS to College.
Even here in the US, a lot of Chinese, Japanese, etc kids still seem to be raised in households that value PUSH for kids to educate themselves.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
From the reports in the mainstream media the last few years, the reality of charter schools is this:
1. Some of them get to pick and choose which kids come in. Wonder why those have better scores?
2. The ones that must take anyone who applies show absolutly no better results (or grades) than
the public schools, and a percentage are *worse* than the public schools.
The real reasons that so many public schools are not good are:
1. The middle class ran away to the 'burbs in the fifties, sixties and since, so the tax base drops.
2. The folks in the inner cities, esp., have parent(s) working two and three jobs, and don't have time
to care about the school. Try living that way for a few years, and see how enthused you are at
the end of the day... esp. when you come home with maybe $10k or $12k/yr.
3. Another biggie: institutionalized racism. For example: in the sixties, a good friend of mine went to one
public high school in Chicago, and it was among the best in the city. When my son went there in
the late nineties, it was *terrible*.80%+ hispanic and black, and miserable teaching, and no
real opportutnities. One datum: my son took the *one* "computer course" the school offered. As someone
with a B.Sc in comp sci, and over thirty years of experience as a programmer, developer, and sysadmin
I will be glad to get in the witness stand in court and swear that that was *NOT* a "computer course",
it was what used to be a commercial course in typing. Period.
Let's see at least one-third of the school board being folks *from* those "bad neighborhoods", and let's see the school systems supported by income taxes, esp. corporate income taxes. Let them pay for what they get - an educated workforce - and you'll see change.
Oh, and NO CLASSES under college level with more than 24 kids. (Come on, bigots, let's see *YOU*, peronsally, deal with 36 or 38 teenagers every single school day, for years, and not quit.)
mark
I agree in a way, but lets not neglect the fact that "parents" have been force out of the position. I don't agree that it's the full issue either, nor do I believe it's accidental. US Adoption of the Russian "Industrial Education" system in the 40s is the problem and we are seeing the effect/impact.
40 years ago US households lived off of 1 income earner leaving a parent home to take care of kids and home. Today this is not possible for the overwhelming number of Americans. If you already have wealth, you are set. Wealth disparity in the US shows that the trends of 50 years ago have been reversed (intentionally?).
In addition to economic issues at home, school programs which enticed participation have been cut. Drama, Band, Sports, Art and Science shows, etc.. have all been drastically cut. Other social education programs such as recess, debate, (regional) spelling bees,, etc... have been cut. Interestingly nearly every State adopted legalized gambling so that they could afford these programs.
Kids today learn rote, and questionable ethics for academics. "Billy meant well" means the same thing as "Billy had correct results" today (see 'common core') and will get someone the same grade. Kids don't learn critical thinking, and don't learn social skills (generalizing for the majority, I won't discount exceptions).
Using the book example someone gave above, if I give a 1st grader a 9th grade level book and make them read it what happens? The child does not understand the book, even though they could read the words. Concepts of building education are very broken, which is why we see so man people giving up. That and the fact that College is extremely expensive and the economy being in this shape means that people don't want to spend the money or take out loans they will repay for 30 years.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Ohioâ(TM)s Largest Taxpayer-Funded Charter School, ECOT, Receives Bonus Check
The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) is the largest charter school in the state of Ohio. The online school is larger than the vast majority of Ohioâ(TM)s traditional school districts and received over $88 million in state funding last school year. This year that amount is expected to jump to over $92 million. On the latest report cards released by the Ohio Department of Education, ECOT continues to rank below all of the 8 large urban schools that are often-criticized by legislators and in the media for their "sub-par" performance.
15 Months in Virtual Charter Hell: A Teacher's Tale - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher
Last year I had a student who never showed up to class, never turned work in, skimmed by on gaming the system with a phone call every few weeks, just enough to keep from being dropped from the rosters. She called me three days after my final grades were submitted in June, desperate to find a way to graduate. I apologized, said my grades had been submitted, and offered information for the summer school we were holding. A week or so later, when I arrived for graduation an administrator pulled me aside to tell me that this student had passed "by the proficiency method" and would be graduating. Our graduation rate was so low that this was not a surprise to me, not after the year I had spent working in this system.
What, me worry?
Perhaps we need to rethink this whole "right to an education" thing as it has been traditionally thought of.
Perhaps we need to give everyone a chance at a regular education, but rather than continually pander to the lowest common denominator (behavior or ability), those can can't cut it or make it difficult for teachers to maintain control...we weed those kids out, and set up an alternate path for them, going to what used to be termed trade schools where the kids could then at least learn direct skills for a trade to work at when they were graduated from the process.
Would that not be a win-win? It allows the students that want to learn and behave to get a broader traditional education with competition, etc...un-hindered by students that can cut it, but still allowing for the lesser students to have trained abilities so they too can make a living in the world when they leave home.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Charter schools do better then public schools because Parents have more invested in their child's education. Its not because of better teachers because many teachers come from public schools. No this is about a typical Parent vs one who seeks out a better alternative which means they are more invested in their child's education. I would expect nothing but better results from charters. If more Parents invested more time and money into their child they would see similar results even at public schools.
Very simple answer:
NO
Perhaps it is because parents of today don't know or accept that if you choose to have kids, there are SACRIFICES that have to be made my most folks that aren't wealthy.
Quit working 14 hour days, to have money for a house bigger than you can afford, to drive that BMW you can't afford, and have other luxuries that others seem to have.
Drop back on the lifestyle, and pay that money and more importantly, TIME, to your kids.
If you wanted more disposable income, then you should not have chosen to have one or more kids.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Err...when and in what state is it against the law for a parent to use corporal punishment on their own child? I'm not saying abuse, but spanking, etc...is perfectly still legal as far as I know. It is just that so many parents today are a bit too namby pamby and want to be friends with their kids instead of parents to them.
But, I never heard it as against the law to spank your kids.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The problem is that - and I'm sort of assuming here, so pardon me if I'm wrong - I think the answer wouldn't really help and would make many people angry. The reason those schools work is that they're the schools where parents who care about their children's schooling go.
I think that how much parents care is an important factor. However, do you really think that parents in, say Texas, care less than parents in NY?
Hey, I know that if I'd not gotten the ass-whoopings I did, I would NOT have turned out as well as I did.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Depends on what state you live in.
I believe in AR, that on the books, there is still a law that says something like that you can beat your wife, but only like once a week and cannot use a stick/pole that is larger than 1/2" diameter. Something like that.
Its funny some of the old laws that are on the books...so, you actually might be technically legal to still slap her around in some states.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I guess I should have put in something like [rolls eyes] in my original post, as that it appears that your sarcasm meter isn't functioning at a properly high level.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
So your child cannot read or write at or above grade level? Down size? Out source it? Sell it for scrap? Throw it away and build another?
Maybe Billy Gates could sell this to the Taliban? And throw in a bag of Monsento Corn to sweeten the deal?
Geez, our present system is an utter failure in most of the US... would posit that pretty much anything is worth trying....
Why try "pretty much anything" instead of looking at places in the US which have been the most successful? I live in a state which perennially ranks first in the US in reading, math and science knowledge -- *all three*, at all grade levels, although occasionally another state manages a statistical tie in one of the categories. We started ed reform in 1993, almost a decade ahead of the rest of the country. Our ed reform law included charter schools.
Charter schools account for about 2% of enrollment in our state, so they aren't responsible for our overall success. On the other hand charter schools do slightly better than traditional schools on standardized tests; if you account for the higher motivation of charter school parents,it's fair to say that charter schools are comparable (although more diverse in approach) to traditional schools here, and both tend to be extremely successful by US standards.
Charter schools are heavily regulated here. They're not allowed to manufacture success by cherry picking students and pushing expensive, harder to educate (e.g. special needs) students on the local traditional school. On top of that, a charter here often has to compete with a local school district that would be considered quite strong elsewhere in the US. Put that all together, and it's hard to make a quick buck in charter schools here. While we do allow for-profit charters, they're only a small fraction of the charter schools here, as opposed to the 1/3 nationwide. I don't think it's an accident that we have evidence for charter school success here while clear evidence is lacking in the rest of the country. Our system discourages bottom-feeders from entering the charter school market.
I'd say our experience shows that charter schools can be part of successful ed reform, but they aren't a substitute for reforming traditional public schools. In fact, I'd say if you want strong charter schools, the best thing you could do is make them compete with strong traditional schools. There's nothing wrong with for-profit charter schools either, but it'd be a bad idea to let companies which run chains of for-profit charter schools design your charter school program. It's also a bad idea to let a traditional school district die because you have a for-profit alternative. That alternative won't be guaranteed to be any better than is needed to compete.
We don't have to be doom and gloom about our ability to educate our kids, or push some kind of quick-fix panic button. We can study the problem and improve our traditional public schools. If we do that, charter schools can by a valuable part of the solution. But if you bring in charter schools as an *alternative* to reforming troubled traditional public schools, you'll get mediocre charter schools and failed school districts.
The schools in my state, on average, are turning out world-class students. The schools in your state can, too.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I prefer email to almost all types of communication. I was just trying to preempt the "pick up the phone and call" replies.
While I don't see this as the predominant reason our schools suck, I agree with the point. If people have this incredibly wrong belief that "all children are the same" then of course we end up in this position, because people are not seeing reality. They wrongly believe that positive reinforcement, or the lack thereof, is the cure for every situation and it's not.
When your kids says "sod off" and ignores you when you give them a timeout what do you do? Continue to debate them as they ignore you? You turn off the video game, so they call you a name and turn it back on. Worse, when the kid gets older they leave the house after you say "you are grounded". He may not rob a liqueur store and go to jail, but what if he vandalizes someone's property and you have to foot the bill? You may wish he had robbed the liqueur store and went to jail.
In most cases I agree that one should not use corporal punishment. Logic and Reason should be the predominant method of teaching, because the only thing corporal punishment can teach is one of control. At a certain point, a person in authority and responsible for another person's well being may have to exercise that control.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
What's a teacher expected to do?
1) Do no harm
2) Understand the curriculum
3) Present same
4) Above, except in a manner that is understandable
5) Above, except in a manner that is appealing
6) Motivate kids to learn the curriculum
7) Motivate kids to learn other things on their own
8) Teach other life lessons so they have their act together
In public schools, one has no control of which school and which teacher.
A lucky kid gets a few good teachers (>= level 6).
(A 'connected' kid may get better odds?)
Maybe the charter schools still have a spread of teachers of all levels,
but at least a parent who cares can get their kid to some of the better ones.
Without the charter schools, there is no such option.
If public schools become better because of charter schools, that's great! But that's not the main point.
The main point of charter schools is to give parents a CHOICE when it comes to their children's education. Different parents value different aspects of education more highly than others. There is no one-size-fits-all model!
There are lots of choices when it comes to cars. Even with all that choice, there are some really bad car models out there! But with all that diversity, everybody can find something they like. Some value reliability, some focus on crash-worthiness, some on gas mileage, some on towing capacity. Which customers are right?
With choices in education, there will be good charter schools and bad ones, and there will be good public schools and bad ones. But charter schools give parents options without necessarily having to move to a different school district with features they like!
And if your wife ran out at night and vandalized property you would just "give her a good talking to"? What if she did it several times? What if she told you "fuck off, I'm going to go vandalize a house you dick!" as you were trying to "giver her a good talking to"? What if you came home and she was drowning one of your kids, is violence still completely unwarranted so you should let your kid die?
See, the point is that violence should not be the first answer (and probably not the second either). However to ignore that sometimes it's the only answer is idiocy. I never saw the person claim "beat your kid", or even advocate corporal punishment as a better answer than other methods. If what you said worked, we'd have no criminals in jail because everyone knows and obeys right from wrong and fully understands morality and their role in society and always does the right thing.
But contrary to your delusion, we have criminals in jail because humans don't always know or care about what is right and what is wrong. Some believe that they have no worthwhile role in society, and morality takes a back seat to survival and getting ahead sometimes. We can also snap when we become victims of those types of people society. Reality tastes pretty good, you should try some.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
If you want a job done right, do it yourself: home-school.
Cranky educator.
First: Discipline isn't about violence or even about physical coercion, it is about forcing structure where it is not naturally desired. Don't confuse force with violence. You don't condone violence and neither do I.
You say "the difference is" but there are multiple differences and some of them are just as important. One significant other difference is in the expected maturity of the person on the receiving end of discipline. You shouldn't marry someone you'd expect to kick puppies and bite other people, but kids will do that.
Another example of the maturity issue is found in the mentally handicapped. Some people have developmental issues that end up requiring them to be put into what is essentially a permanent childhood. They're never allowed to make the decisions for themselves that most adults take for granted. They're often forced to do what they don't want to do because things like taking showers and minimal hygiene are believed to bring about a "better" result in the long run.
I married young to someone who hadn't finished growing up. Had it been acceptable for me to provide the discipline that she so desperately needed, and if I'd had a clue how to do that, I think a lot of things about our lives would have gone better. The lack of discipline she needed meant that both of us suffered a lot of long term emotional pain. I doubt slapping her around would have solved anything, but I can tell you with certainty that trying to reason with her didn't either.
In many ways my ten year old daughter is much more mature now than my wife was back then and I think that's in large part due to proper application of force. (For my ten year old spanking was ineffective, just in case you're wondering, but boredom proved very successful. I wouldn't want you to assume that just because I advocate spanking where appropriate as a part of a system of discipline, that I believe it is the always the solution.)
1. At what cost? The Government and public education advocates have yet to demonstrate correlation between the amount of money spent overall or per student and student performance. 2. What evidence do you have for these assertions? The evidence I have seen is on the side of those who are for charter schools and voucher programs. If the Government has a monopoly on education then what incentive does school administrators and teachers have to improve their school? Inevitibly schools with involved parents will protest poor teachers who will be shuffled to schools where parents are less vocal. These poor teachers end up in schools in poor neighborhoods further hampering students education and opportunity. Where voucher and other school choice programs have been created the incentives placed on public schools change. Parents whose children are in poor schools can take their money elsewhere to a private school which causes the public school to lose funding. The private school must provide a better education than the public equivalent or parents would never put their children there. The children who attend those private schools recieve a better education than they would have if they remained in the poor public school. This means that because the public school loses funding the education of the remaining students is worse right? Wrong, actual experience has found that in this circumstance the Public School's competition with private alternatives incentivizes it to improve education. The findings have been that the education has improved for those students who go to private alternatives and for those who remain in public schools provided that the public school loses funding as parents take their vouchers elsewhere. Competition is what allows educational improvements for society by more efficienty allocating the scarce resources of tax dollars and education professionals.
The right question is, "How good are charter schools for the students"? Asking how good are charter schools for the public school system is putting the organization above the people it is supposed to serve.
Like many public schools, then.
There are problems, so let's abandon this idea and just keep doing what we're doing, which also doesn't work but at least it's comfortable. That doesn't sound very progressive to me.
They don't attend public schools, either. Therefore, we must also shut down the public schools.
I imagine the rich people's kids don't use OLPC or school lunch programs, either.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Because you don't need a good high school education to make it into vocational schools in the US. Being semi-literate is generally enough.
Heaven forbid we try to disrupt the status quo of our fabulous public school system. Problems with some charter schools? Gosh, never heard of any problems like corruption (Atlanta standardized test scandal), abuse (how many headlines about young teachers doing students have you seen), or performance (our inner city schools are doing wonderfully...) with public schools.
Mom and Dad have baby. They raise baby. That's the system. The system fails when the parents fail.
Gates, Bryant, et al. think that the problem is the presence of parental participation. They don't want to school citizens; they want to condition sheep.
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
Read what Heinlein said about his grandfather's (public-school) education as compared with what he had. And then compare with what is happening in this country right now.
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
Every bad thing they say about charters is worse in regular public schools. Logic would dictate ending the regular system and replacing it with all charters.
Our current public school system was modeled after the Prussian system, which was designed to turn kids into good little functionaries who do what they are told and don't rock the boat.
Whatever thought on charter schools is, we need to completely revamp public schools.
Choice is just an emotional appeal to life long consumer sheep who feel like they are free individuals because they can choose from a list of expensive drinks at Star Bucks or vote between two parties who almost the same (but spend billions highlighting their differences... spent that on twins and the public wouldn't even realize their DNA was the same.)
Education is NOT business. This is fundamental and when they fail at such basic concepts the outlook is bleak. The reality of this whole mess of fixing what was a good education system that wasn't broken is that BOTH political parties decided to fight over the area due to polling showing it's rise in importance to the voting populace (non-voters never matter.) It was lower priority in the past when less educated union protected jobs existed but as those outsourced or automated people needed education and the priority rose. Politicians responded. I think the business / consumer oriented perspective partially comes out from the fact politicians hire marketing companies to sell them like a bar of soap -- and it's all heavily biased towards the consumerism that drives the marketing industry. They sell you on their proposed education service / package deal which is sold to you just like any other product or service.
There are good teachers at bad schools and bad management greatly harming good schools... and bad kids and bad parents harming good schools. etc. If your community's public school sucks... then your community is partially to blame for this. Far more than 1 bad teacher is. The customer is NOT always right; and again, education is not a business-- children are not products and parents are NOT customers!
Parents are not experts in education anymore than they are experts in dentistry. Experience with the Dentist or healthy teeth (success without Dental experience) does not make you a dental expert. Yes, I have some education training and expertise; not much, but enough to see past the BS the takes up the whole discussion since it has become a political football.
I wont even touch the tribalism going on with parents who are perfectly happy to sacrifice other kids to give their DNA legacy an advantage... But "choice" appeals strongly to those types... and the racists and other bigots as well.
BTW, the data on Charters show they cost more and do not deliver more for the money; this despite the fact they usually have strong powers to BOOT OUT students back to the public system which can't reject anybody (another characteristic of public education business doesn't have.)
Your bad teacher might be a great teacher for somebody else. Don't be so self centered. Sure bad teachers exist, but every profession has failures who deserve to be fired... don't wreak the whole system trying to weed out 100% of the flaws. It's just like implementing big brother to make terrorism impossible.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
In private sector unions, you have two parties: the management (representing the company) and the union (representing workers). Neither one wants to get screwed, and they both negotiate to ensure that happens. Each is looking out for its own interests.
But in public sector unions you have three parties: the politicians, the union, and the taxpayers. Normally you would think the politicians are representing the taxpayers, but they're often not. The politicians ensure the union gets fat benefits at the expense of the taxpayer, and the unions pay handsomely to keep those politicians reelected, who then funnel more money back to the unions. It's a nice vicious circle where the politician gets to use taxpayer money, laundered through unions, to stay in office. The only ones who get screwed are the taxpayers.
The private sector equivalent would be if the union bosses were bribing the company managers to make sweetheart deals, but eventually such a scheme would collapse with the company's finances. Unlike the politician, the bribes wouldn't serve to keep him in his position of power -- it would get him fired and end the circle. Unlike the politician, the manager actually has to represent his company's interests.
Seems like blogs like Slashdot is starting to follow the old rule that any organization, given enough time, will be filled with liberals with nothing better than to espouse the agenda. Nice article selection.
Give Slashdot ten more years and there will be no difference between it and the Huffington Post.
Get back to tech, science and things geek!!
In contrast, traditional public schools which fail students do not close and are allowed to fail students year after year after year. Closing a charter school is a feature, not a bug.
I understand your argument but you entirely missed my point. my point was not that this darwinian processing will produce the best schools, it's that charter schools that survive in rarified niches pull up the average. You have observer bias in that you only can see the successes. You don't see the underserved areas and it doesnt mean the successful ones are better than the public schools if we restricted attention to just the niches where public schools succeed.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It depends on the district, which grade and the exact courses. In high school, I had 15ish kids in my AP computer science class, and double that in every general education course. The elementary school had around 25 per class for 5th grade, but was only around 12 in 1st grade. I'd expect that many districts follow this highly variable approach, rather than stick themselves to a single target number of students per class.
If only because it breaks up the teacher's unions which have been obstructionists for education reform, standards, and pursuing righteous disciplinary action against nearly criminal misconduct.
Will our schools suddenly have excellent results by transitioning to charter systems? No. But they'll have a chance at succeeding which is more then they have now.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Charter schools typically have similar educational success for fewer dollars than 'regular' public schools.
Many critics complain that the results are 'only' comparable, not the promised 'better' - but they miss the point. Typically students that flock to charter schools are escaping below-average public schools, so their individual educational experience is greatly improved.
Charter schools typically operate on shoe-string budgets that gives them fewer dollars to spend per student, leaving more money behind for those students still in public schools.
The problem is, as children flee under-performing schools, districts are saddled with a surplus of ineffective teachers (that's why the kids flee, remember), and they typically remain employed due to tenure, pushing out younger, usually more enthusiastic/energetic teachers through seniority.
The biggest opponent if charter schools are typically the teacher's unions - and remember what the primary focus of teacher's unions are; not the improvement of the education process, not the most effective use of precious taxpayer dollars, etc. - no, they are focused on protecting the rights of ALL teachers (good and bad) and maximizing teacher pay & benefits. If costs are reduced or effectiveness is increased, teacher's unions aren't opposed that, they just won't sacrifice their member's pay and benefits to make it happen.
When was the last time a teacher's union accepted a pay freeze or cut to fund building improvements, replacement textbooks, technology or increases in the teaching staff?
Ken
This is something we see all the time, the idea that less than 100% success might as well not exist. The unfortunate aspect of Charter Schools is that Public Educators are granted automatic tenure, making it almost impossible to fire teachers for anything less than molesting a student.
I'm a strong supporter of almost anything union, but I will never support inability to fire someone because they are shitty at their job.
Charter Schools don't have to deal with this, and so at least have the potential to succeed.
A lot of people say that they are "draining money" from the regular public school system, while completely forgetting that they are part of the public school system. They don't want to take students with disabilities?, well, here's an idea, provide students with special needs funding on a case-by-case basis, so it doesn't come out of the school's regular budget. This is what Canada does. They don't want to take students with a low chance of success? These seems pretty reasonable, to provide the education for those most willing and able to use it. Again, why don't we try improving the regular school system, so charter schools aren't godsends?
Bill Gates doesn't want to send his kids to Charter Schools?, therefore they must be bad! Charter Schools are designed to a be a step up from public schools, and a lot of regions use lotteries to determine entrants. Bill Gates is rich enough to run a private school just for his kids, why the hell should he take up schooling slots from Charter Schools that he believes could help a kid escape from poverty?
Yeah, like the present public school system is a shining beacon of success.
As with charter schools, quality of individual public schools varies immensely. I am fortunate enough to live in an area where the local public schools are VERY VERY good, for a town of about 30k. Top schools (elementary-middle-high) state-wide, in an above-average rated state.
The problem is not that there are no good schools in the system, but that the variation is high, and of course median isn't as good as it should be compared to average of industrialized nations. But the idea that the whole system is foobar is fabrication. Perhaps there are states where there is no hope for public schools (and most likely there are counties at least where this is true); but it is not generally true.
I would also point out that as useful as parental involvement is, it is sometimes overplayed: a little bit goes a long way. I received my whole education in one of top-10 rated countries internationally, and my parents didn't do much beyond attending once-a-year parent-teacher conference. Nor were they particularly interested in my academics achievements. They both have a college degree, and were always supportive regarding what I do and want to do, but really were not involved in education part per se. They did provide the safe and nurturing environment, however. This was -- and as far as I know -- pretty usual situation; state schools are expected to do their job, parents their job. But it's not a co-op where everyone is demanded hours of voluntary work.
I think the point, rather, is how parents value and support their childrens education. I know that people from lower socio-economic/academic classes (no high school diploma) tend to have negative view, and can be an active problem. So most important things is that children have positive experiences; and if parents do not offer that, then schools, volunteering organizations need to try to offer that. While regrettable that it is not always available from home, at least it can be provided by others. Small things, like celebrating the fact that a child learns how to read, and can now read about interesting things, be much more independent -- kids love this, given a chance to shine (I know, I actually have volunteered -- and learnt to positive appreciate parental involvement -- just not require, demand, or count on it).
After reading some of the suggestions for charter schools, I wondered why normal schools couldn't simply be given more autonomy.
There are many different systems throughout the world, but there is one thing every country with good schools has in common. Teaching is a highly respected job. Not always the highest paid, but always desirable. This should be a big DUH moment if you think about it, a teacher skills and talents really matter, and the more desirable a job the more candidates you have to select from. If you care about schools, attracting the best teachers is the first step always.
I cannot agree that "it's all up to parental responsibility and initiative". This sounds just too much like a right wing talking point, for one thing. A kid is a kid, they do not get to choose their parents. To turn a slightly naïve phrase, flowers grow from dirt. You never know what a human being is capable of becoming, and the worst of backgrounds does not doom everyone from that source.
However, if it needs to be said, of course having interested and involved parents helps. How could it not do so?
On the other hand, while I'm skeptical that a lot of charter schools cherry pick and receive above-average funding, as a society and as parents we have a duty and responsibility to our children. Even if charter schools wind up being interim solutions, or back-door ways of reforming public schools, we must try something. I do then, essentially buy into the argument that the average public school isn't quite up to snuff. However that happened, whoever is responsible.
My mother was a teacher in a public school. One thing she consistently said, the parent's don't support the teachers much anymore. There is more chaos in a child's life now. Parents often defend their child, even in the face of clear evidence of a child's wrongdoing. Years ago, parent's backed up the teachers much more often. It was like there was an "adults club" and children not only weren't part of it, they weren't welcome. Now each family is a club and outsiders, including the teachers, aren't part of it and are not welcome.
Nor was my mom the only teacher saying these things; all long-term teachers noticed this.
This isn't a call for a return to the old days. Child abusers had more ability to harm children then. Our society is far more mobile now, and more heterogeneous too.
What I believe is that each contributor to a child's life, that improves, will improve the child. Make the schools better and more children will be successful. More supportive and engaged parents will cause improved graduation rates. Lessen child poverty and student achievement will improve. Every complex problem has an answer that is simple, easy and wrong. But don't go getting the idea that because it's complex, you get a free pass to walk away. Not if you have children or want what's best for them.
Interestingly, there is evidence that below roughly 20 or so kids students will actually perform poorer in school overall.
Sucks to be someone who doesn't do well early on and gets streamed into the "no use wasting resources on them" camp.
Then why are there good public school in Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Germany, Singapore. Somehow the US is just sooo different then the rest of the world that nothing works here. If so why would charter schools fix the problem.
And if your wife ran out at night and vandalized property you would just "give her a good talking to"?
Defense of others, oneself, or your property are all exceptions. I figured it didn't need to be said.
If what you said worked
What did I suggest? Nothing. I just said that the ends don't justify the means.
But contrary to your delusion
It sounds like you're putting words in my mouth... I never said that all humans know what is right and wrong; I just implied that I don't think the ends justify the means.
If he was talking about something like self-defense, then violence would be one possible solution.
You say "the difference is" but there are multiple differences and some of them are just as important. One significant other difference is in the expected maturity of the person on the receiving end of discipline. You shouldn't marry someone you'd expect to kick puppies and bite other people, but kids will do that.
Maturity is irrelevant and subjective. I do not believe the ends justify the means, no matter what you say.
I wouldn't want you to assume that just because I advocate spanking where appropriate as a part of a system of discipline, that I believe it is the always the solution.
I don't care whether you do or don't; as soon as you go to use violence (or "force," if you prefer) against another person, I think that person has every right to beat the snot out of you. A shame that kids can't often defend themselves.
At the very least, I do believe in self-defense.
I'm in sales for a telecom service provider who sells data and voice services to a lot of these things. I also sell to a lot regular public school boards. I don't know how the scores compare and I never see classrooms in action. However, I see a very clear difference in how the administrators act to us, to each other, to the teachers and the children. Teachers too. Students as well. Parents too. I see a more positive, upbeat, willing attitude in the charters than I do in most publics on average. I get the sense that those who are there, are there because they choose to be there not because they have to be. I see more voluntary orderliness out of the children on average, and most of them are from really bad neighborhoods. Are some bad? I'm sure some are better than others, but we have that in public schools already, and we just take it as a given. I think charter schools have a place.
Being better than it was in the past isn't much of an accomplishment at all. And the rest of the world is only doing "better" in the sense that children can pass poorly-designed tests. It's all garbage.
There is one thing, however, which I don't know how we can fix, at least not from a legislative or policy standpoint, and that is the lack of parental participation.
Well, there are certainly ways to fix it from a legislative/policy standpoint. However, whether anybody would actually vote for the fixes is an entirely different matter. People really like to be able to have their kids, show them off, and send them off when they become a bother. Making everybody else pay for them when they become adults unable to function in society is just the next logical step. Oh, and I'll say that this is just as true in affluent and poor families - the affluent just sometimes (but not always) do a better job hiring more qualified people to tend to their kids when they can't be bothered by them, and tend to leave them enough money that only the most incompetent manage to become destitute.
Why can't I slap my wife around? I feel that sometimes it's in her best interest that I do so, so why is that tool not available to me?
This is one of several responses you made to people that simply claimed that corporal punishment is not an option in schools. I can read sarcasm, and I don't agree with your position. I think Steven Molyneux does a good job of presenting a thesis on no corporal punishment, but is wrong for the same reason you are. Interestingly you only responded to one of several examples I gave for when corporal punishment may have merit and completely ignored the psychological issue I presented.
Hint: Self Defense was one sentence out of 2 paragraphs of talking points.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I didn't ignore anything you said. I made the following clear in my comment: the ends don't justify the means. Unless you're defending yourself, others, or your property from some malicious person, I do not believe in violence.
My wife teaches at a charter school but has also taught at both good and bad non-charter schools. Our kids go to the same charter school and we wouldn't have it any other way. The truth is that the teachers unions (and non-unions such as the NCAE) are political entities. Period. They don't care about students and they barely care about teachers, frankly. Here's another hard truth for charter school haters: Charter schools ARE public schools in that they take public funds. But they are universally CHEAPER per student and outperform non-charters on average.
/// Not a super-genius . . . yet. ///
The very best thing I like about charter schools, is my kid is not getting shot. He would have been going to Brashear High School in Pittsburgh look it up in case you hadn't heard about it on the news already. Public schools are abysmal, $18,000 per student per year, that's half a million dollars per class room and the results are horrible by any measure.
Using my "wife" example above at what point do you use corporal methods (not the self defense question)? Substitute you wife for your child, and they simply refused to obey where it may not be a self defense issue but one of inconvenience, cost, or the fear that your neighbors complain to authorities that you can't control your child? You are trying to deny that a limit exists, and yet there is a point at which corporeal punishment becomes a method.
I would agree that it's a last resort, and nobody here claims otherwise. It may not work even as a last resort, but it's either this method or the kid ends up in legal custody. Perhaps you live in a shoe box and never see where this method was or could have been attempted, but that's a different issue which means you are not qualified to discuss corporeal punishment.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I would agree that it's a last resort, and nobody here claims otherwise.
My idea of "last resort" would be what I said above. When I think violence is justified, it doesn't matter to me what the age of the other person is.
but that's a different issue which means you are not qualified to discuss corporeal punishment.
Since it's a subjective issue, I doubt that will be a problem.
If magnet and charter schools were used as proving grounds for all the new educational techniques (that are FAAAR better than standard ideas) in such a way as to shift the 'traditional' (code word for Obsolete) schools to the new pedagogy, then everyone would see the benefits. At present, the existing public schools are shooting themselves in the feet by providing these alternative schools, and then not fixing anything at the regular schools. Fact: If you have a kid in public school in the city, the first thing you realise is how bad the public schools are in the cities. At ours, the alternatives are enthusiastically encouraged by the same administrators who run the obsolete schools.
Why do you say SD Public Schools suck? Just curious, because I leave in SD. I'd like to hear your reasons why.
I 100% agree with you regarding parental participation.
Our politicians want to make everyone more accountable. However, as you point out, parents cannot be made accountable through legislation.
I read a white paper once and it had many metrics for student performance:
* Amount of homework assigned
* Education of teacher
* Seniority of teacher
* After school programs
* Family income
I think there were a few more, but the metric that had the best correlation to student performance was family income.
Some parents work 2 or 3 jobs and do not have the skills/time to help their children w/homework.
Increasing student performance is a tough nut to crack
Competition is always good. Most objections come from the entrenched, such as the teacher unions. At one time the teacher unions denied they were unions, said they were associations. Follow the Fed lawsuit against LA, for example. The urban minorities want to send their children to charter schools, because they know the public schools are failures. But the Feds are attempting to stop minorities from attending charters, as it creates racial imbalance in public schools: Not enough minorities to meet the arbitrary quotas. Go figure this one out.
CT uses these as a way to integrate education in the state here. The State of CT is under mandate to racially integrate education under the case Sheff v. O'niel. The state can't use forced busing because the towns are autonomous and all the towns pretty much run their own school systems and the only way the state has a say is from some educational dollars thrown their way. Small rich towns get little money from the state and large poor cities get all the money. That is why my property taxes are high. So the Charter school is voluntary and they try to lure rich white kids to sign up along with a good number of minority students. The state also has project choice. Project choice is a program where the state goes into the city and tells minority children, hey you want to go to school in a nice rich town with some really nice white kids? And if the kids say yes, they get bussed to towns like mine. You have to remember that these small rich CT towns, public schools rival the best private schools for quality of education. I hope I didn't piss too many people off but that's how things are done in the "People's Republik of CT...
Paul E. Bahre
The public schools are a government monopoly, run by a bureaucracy. That is not good.
In Pennsylvania a few years back, the charter schools were paid by the school system bureaucrats. They, of course, made up reasons not to pay them, and the charter schools couldn't pay their people. No wonder they failed.
We need something to give people a choice of schools, that is not under the thumb of the bureaucrats. Even if it costs. But competition usually lowers prices, where bureaucrats raise prices.
This guy sounds like a shill for the bureaucrats.
If any schools are discouraging parental participation that is wrong and should be stopped.
When the participation is micro-management of curriculum the school doesn't even have control over, what would you have the school do? Encourage the parents to visit the school and take up instruction time voicing their opinions on the state-set plans?
Learn to love Alaska
So you are content living in a delusion where corporeal punishment is never needed. Good for you, I hope you are happy living there. If you ever decide to join the rest of the world, there are plenty of places where you can learn about the real world. Work with underprivileged children, mentor those in need, and for pity sake get out of your own little shoe box.
I am a parent, have mentored and worked with all kinds of children, and continue to visit the real world every day. It's a pretty cool place, but it's not some fairy tale where people all do the right things all the time.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
So you are content living in a delusion where corporeal punishment is never needed.
I'm not living in any delusion; I'm living with principles. The ends don't justify the means. How could I possibly make my position more clear? Stop-and-frisk should not exist. The TSA should not exist. Unfettered border searches should not exist. Even if those things did keep us safe, the ends wouldn't justify the means.
Do you know what is meant by "the ends don't justify the means"?
but it's not some fairy tale where people all do the right things all the time
Again, you keep pretending that I think that people do the right things all the time, but that is just false.
PARENTING>>>>PARENTING
Take a look at the JAIL INMATES, major reason causal....PARENTAL UPBRINGING, & the U.S., solution BILLBOARDS, picture of a car, with 'Key' left in the ignition & the message "DON'T TURN THE KID INTO A THIEF".....Doesn't work because the basic reason....BAD or NO Parenting from early Childhood. OUR ILLEGAL DRUG PROBLEM....Stupid Fucking Irresponsible PARENTING or NONE AT ALL!!
Funny, you mention everything except the problem in your claim to be living in the real world. "look over there, look over there!", and "Quick, look that way!".
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
What? There is no way I can make my position more clear. If you don't understand, then I don't know what to say.