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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.'"
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.
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.........
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.
And exactly what is wrong with people that can afford to help their children get a better education doing so? Should not every parent try to provide the best life skills and education for their offspring that they are able to provide?
Are you advocating that people who have these means...sacrifice the lives of their children, send them for a poor education merely to prove a social "point"?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
...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.
not really
lots of towns in the northeast with public schools that are better than almost private school in the USA. of course these towns have property taxes which in some cases cost more than a lot of people earn in a year.
if you look at the newsweek or us news annual high school rankings, a big percentage are in NY, NJ and Connecticut. California has a lot and a few other liberal areas are represented as well. the red states with their low tax ideals have very few good schools
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
...sacrifice the lives of their children, send them for a poor education merely to prove a social "point"?
The point is people who have a stake in the public school system are motivated to maintain a quality public school system. People who don't often have other motives.
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.
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.
80K? In my area it is about 30K
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
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+
What else is there to grade schools on?
Having standardized tests is useful, as long as you don't take the results of those tests as the be all and end all. To use test results as the only way of judging schools is to fall prey to the MBA mentality - if there isn't a simplistic metric then it doesn't exist. Think of how that mentality has affected so many businesses.
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
Lots of charter schools have union teachers so you have no idea what you're talking about.
But Charter Internet and TV have been pretty reliable recently.
Fast too
but their rates just went up again
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
The problem is way too complicated for just simple test scores.
Education Success is spread out across these factors. I think prioritized in this order.
Involvement of the parents - Parents are largest aspect to a child's education. If the parent doesn't care about the child education he will most likely not bother with education.
Overall Environment - how safe the child feels. Does the environment encourage learning. Or is it about who is the toughest.
Child's genetic traits - Now almost everyone has some sort of learning disability, this isn't about that, but for children with higher level that can prevent learning.
Child's own ambition - Now if the kid doesn't want to learn he won't
Finally...
Quality of the school and teachers - Granted extreme incompetence will make things worse, but with the most middle rung teacher, who is teaching because they are afraid to taking more math classes in College, and doesn't know what else to do with their life. Still won't do too much harm if they do their jobs.
Charter Schools/Private look impressive because it gets the students with parent who care enough to get them into charter schools, and creates a better environment for them to learn, not because of the school, but because the kid is in a school with other kids who want to learn.
Other then focusing on schools, we need to change the focus.
1. Reduce Crime and Crack Down HARD on Gang activities. Big cities and small towns, needs to be sure the child is in an environment where they feel safe and doesn't need to join a group of people just for protection.
2. Media campaign targeted at parents, showing them that even though they got by chances are your kids won't.
3. Encourage the media to show educated people in a good light, not the anti-social nerds.
After that then we can focus on what the teachers and schools are doing.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Generally teachers are paid whatever is a bit lower then the average tax payer for their area. Voters get surprisingly upset when teachers make more then they do.
You would figure most people on Slashdot would have a good enough understanding of math and statistics to know that just because testing scores may not be perfect, there are plenty of practices that can make them very useful.
We can do pre-tests and post-tests so teachers aren't penalized for having students that were already poor performers. A teacher could be rated as outstanding even if his students are testing under the standards as long as their improvement was above expectations. The government has access to enough information to adjust test scores based on socio-economic factors. If 75% of a teacher's students are on food stamps, and the data shows students on food stamps generally underperform, then the performance metrics can take that into account.
The statistics world already has wonderful tools like standard deviations to determine if results are either expected deviations or are actually meaningful. And while the simple ones taught in STAT 101 aren't good enough for most uses, there are far better techniques that governments could pay very qualified statistics Phds to perform on teacher metrics.
And even though these metrics will still not be perfect, does that stop the private world from trying to rate employee performance? Sometimes a person is put on a doomed project and it is too hard to determine if they did a great job while everyone around them failed. But when people actually care about performance they understand that sometimes life can be unfair and that should not be an excuse for a shoddy product.
And our schools are certainly a shoddy product as they stand today.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
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.
Buildings. Lunches. Janitors. Electricity. Air conditioning. Security guards. Principals. Bathrooms. Toilet paper. Counselors. Lawn mowing. Drainage. Hot water. School buses. Copiers. Staples. Alarm bells. Curriculum. Receptionists. Telephones. Tests. Grade books. Morning announcements. Mailings. Web sites. Signage. Playgrounds. Landscaping. Sidewalks. Parking lots.
Exactly. My kids are in a charter school and it's *much* better than the local school district. Not only is the education better, but the environment is much better - the kids wear uniforms (no it's not like a military school) and there's a strong emphasis on respect and courtesy. Test scores are consistently better than the public schools. The kids in the charter school are easily two years ahead of the public school kids.
All we hear around here is that the charter schools are "stealing money" from the public school district, but from my point of view I pay my taxes and I want the best education for my kids. The school has open enrollment and is available to anyone.
All of which may explain why the school has a loooong waiting list.
Everyone has a passion even kids ! How bout we foster their passions and let them grow with their passion !
That matches my personal experience, actually. For example, I learned most of my core trigonometry well before I ran into it in school, because I wanted to write space combat games, and trig is how you answer questions like "my ship is at this position facing this direction, the target is at that position, what angle is it at relative to straight ahead?" Learned most of my Newtonian physics the same way. I learned a fair amount of biology, geology, meteorology, and other things when doing research GM'ing tabletop RPGs. And I know several people who learned things like HTML5 and CSS because they wanted to make nicer websites.
Granted, the basics like spelling and arithmetic probably need to be taught for their own sake. But past a certain point, I find that people learn something more effectively when they're learning it it accomplish a goal they care about. Certainly they're better motivated in those cases.
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
"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.
You've managed to teach yourself some some subjects - good for you. Now, what about the rest of the students?
For the relatively SMALL subset of moderately intelligent students who are self organized AND self motivated AND who have living situations with enough stability and support to allow the student to thrive in an independent academic environment this is all that's needed.
For everyone else, not so much.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
You would figure most people on Slashdot would have a good enough understanding of math and statistics to know that just because testing scores may not be perfect, there are plenty of practices that can make them very useful.
We can do pre-tests and post-tests so teachers aren't penalized for having students that were already poor performers. A teacher could be rated as outstanding even if his students are testing under the standards as long as their improvement was above expectations. The government has access to enough information to adjust test scores based on socio-economic factors. If 75% of a teacher's students are on food stamps, and the data shows students on food stamps generally underperform, then the performance metrics can take that into account.
Two things, this type of proper adjustment to look at the actual effect teachers have isn't always done well, and your underlying assumption is that the standardized test accurately measures what a student knows. From assessment theory and observation it is known that a single standardized test in purely multiple choice format cannot accurately measure what a student knows.
Given that though, the tests could have some usefulness. There are two problems though. The unions don't want them used at all because they have this fantasy that all teachers are wonderful and should be treated the same. They don't want anything used that would move towards a pay for performance system as that would undermine their power and worldview. The other problem is that systems like you mention are typically implemented blindly because that's easier and then it doesn't take into account the problems inherent in multiple choice test taking and the failure to adjust for the factors you mentioned or other that weren't considered. When those problems are ignored you have distortions where good teachers are either driven out or forced to teach poorly in order to conform to poorly thought out system.
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.
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 largely don't. This desire for worthless simplicity is part of the problem.
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"
What else is there to grade schools on?
The people that criticize standardized testing are usually opposed to any accountability whatsoever. We are not going to fix our schools until we can fix the politics. Public schools are more politicized than any other institution in America. Teachers unions are the single biggest donors to the Democratic party, and 20% of the delegates to the last Democratic Convention were members. Democrats will do anything to support the unions, and the Republicans will do anything to oppose them. Neither party is concerned about actually educating the kids. Charter schools are just a pawn in the game. Democratic politicians generally oppose them, and Republican politicians generally support them. Neither cares about any actual evidence about whether they are effective or not.
So, no accountability for results?
While spending billions of $?
That's bullshit.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Fine, what's your actual solution then?
Because lack of accountability isn't a solution. It's adding to the problem.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I have found that what makes a good school here in a California school district is the PRINCIPAL.
Everything rolls down hill. Get good Principals and let them do something with the staff.
Union Lifers who don't care are a problem at the school, but most of the teachers want to do their best and the Principal makes that happen.
My wife is the attendance clerk, our son attended, and it is amazing the transformation some kids who were "problem kids" at other schools turn around at our school. 2/3rds of the students have PERFECT attendance at mid year, and usually 1/3 to 1/2 maintain that year long. Far and beyond the average in the school district.
It is a high achieving school:
President Blue Ribbon
Title 1 distinguished school
(NCUST) “Excellence in Education Award” 1 of 12 schools nationwide)
many more that I am not listing for space.
despite being in a relatively poor area, there are kids that run the range in socio-economic and a broad multicultural background as well, roughly 50% of the kids are on some sort of assistance, 70% on WIC or similar program.
The only difference is the Principal, and yet there is never any focus on Principals
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
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.
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
Then teach them how to write or modify their own games or bake their own pizza. Use a game engine and have them mess around with the physics model. Have them learn some game design/simulation concepts. Learn the chemistry of baking and maybe some small business skills. Put them in the kitchen and see if they can cook better food than the staff.
There is plenty of opportunity to teach "lazy gamers". Almost all of them want to change something about their favorite game, but our system just tells them to recite the Pythagorean Theorem. No wonder they want to drop out and play video games.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
Well, one of the major problems as I see it is we spend so much money in administration while conducting studies, extra testing, filling out federal paper work, etc. that we skimp in the number of teachers and subjects the kids are exposed too. Hell, in our district in Oregon my middle school daughter is not even given the option of taking Spanish let alone any other language.
Priorities in even the best school districts are fucked up.
I'm saying the choice shouldn't exist, and the appropriate level of resources plus those otherwise spent on the choice should be put into the broken system to fix it.
Having charter schools is like giving parents access to "private school lite" in that their kids will get some, but not all, advantages that the kids who go to elite private schools get. The problem is that not everyone benefits. Only the most vocal and caring parents who push for their kids to be taken out of the bad public schools will get the advantage. The parents who don't care, aren't around or have their own problems keep their kids in the public school, and things get worse as a result.
In my mind, the real answer is to correct the problems in the existing system rather than trying to build a parallel one around it. Fixes would be extremely controversial and wouldn't work until things got intolerable:
- Pay all teachers in all districts well. Make it a lucrative profession -- there are too many places that pay teachers less than flight attendants (and starting FA salaries are insanely low.)
- Introduce more rigid tracks into schools -- academic track, vocational track, sports training track, warehouse track. Basically, do the most good for the most people and realize that not everyone will achieve at the same level. (Of course, society would need to provide jobs for everyone at all levels, which is a way bigger problem.)
- Put enough money into poor districts to bring them up to the same standards as better ones. Yes, that's a lot of money and represents a huge transfer of wealth. No, it's not palatable in the current climate. Just spending double on the students isn't enough, you need to take inflation into account.
So yes, I think that if the situation were bad enough and there were no alternatives, adding more money would fix the problem. With the alternatives, you give enough people the option to say "Oh, that's not my problem anymore."
People in my school district complain bitterly about taxes, but their kids get a good education out of the deal. I think a lot of them don't realize that many other parts of the country charge a pittance in taxes per year and return a predictable result in school achievement. I also think a lot of people are bitter about the "evil teachers' unions" just because their private sector employment has been taking away wages and benefits for decades almost unchallenged. One real world example of the disconnect -- my old job wanted me to relocate to Florida a while back. Even the real estate agents showing us around said we would need to factor in the cost of a private school to get a comparable level of school quality.
I also think things will have to get really bad before anything changes. Look at the political will and control China has -- they realize their economy is out of balance and too reliant on exports. Their solution? Manufacture a domestic consumer economy by picking up people and physically moving them to cities. They're moving hundreds of millions of people to cities over the next decade, because subsistence farming peasants don't buy stuff, but city dwellers do. I think you can safely assume that nothing like that would happen here. But, it has the potential to instantly fix that problem.
> I have found that what makes a good school here in a California school district is the PRINCIPAL
I'll second that sentiment.
My son's primary school had a bullying problem bad enough that it made the papers. The principal retired and a new principal brought in. Within a two years, it was a different school, and within three, she was getting the pick of teachers across Toronto any time there was a vacancy because teachers were desperate to work with a principal that was active, knew every student's name and personality, and most importantly of all, supported the teachers when parents were being difficult.
It took an amazing amount of work on her part, but she *made* the school. (The excellent teachers made the classrooms.) Watching her stand-down parents who wanted to make excuses for their child's bullying was eye-opening.
I was stunned when the grade 6 graduation speech by the students praised her specifically and at length for making them feel safe. When I went through primary school, the only students who even knew the principal's name were the troublemakers...
I oppose the current standardized testing because they don't result in accountability. First of all, tying teacher performance to the tests is only resulting in pressure for the teachers to teach ONLY what is on the test. Any time spent on other topics, no matter how much they might spark the students' interest and love of learning, is time wasted and might result in the teacher being let go in favor of one who will teach to the test. This is already happening in classrooms. My kids school, for example, uses EngageNY which literally is a script of what the teacher should say, at what point, in what manner, how the kids should respond, and how long each lesson should last. Lessons aren't about finding how to spark each child's love of learning, but about giving each child the same scripted performance so they will all spit out the same answer on the test.
Secondly, these tests are designed and run by big companies like Pearson. Pearson is being paid millions of dollars here in NY to design tests. Nobody is allowed to view the tests. Not parents. Not teachers. Not principals or administrators. Tests are to be taken by students and sent back for grading. They are graded and then destroyed. There can be no challenging the scores because no third party is allowed to see what the test constituted. One group of four teachers in my kids' school peaked at a test booklet. (Something that could get them in considerable trouble.) They answered a question in it and each teacher got a different answer. If four teachers with masters degrees in education can't get the right answer, what hope do elementary school kids have?
Third, these companies have a financial incentive for students to fail. If a student does poorly on a test, Pearson can sell the school test prep materials, teacher training courses, administration training courses, etc. If a student does well, they get no additional profit. So why wouldn't they try to maximize failure on the tests?
Finally, these tests don't help teachers assess their students performance. The tests are given at the end of the school year and the results are made available next school year when the kids are with another teacher. When a teacher gives a test, he/she can use it to gauge whether little Johnny needs help in one area and where little Sally is excelling. These tests tell teachers nothing of the sort and are only used as weapons to bludgeon teachers with.
I won't argue that teacher's unions are sinless saints, but the standardized testing regime as it is currently set up has one purpose only: To put all of the "poor student performance" blame on teachers so that companies like Pearson can get bigger profits.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
How the hell are kids in Japan/China/whereever "beating" our children in school?
Oh right, rigorous testing.
China? Who knows. They only give international test results from Shanghai, and given the accuracy of statistics from the Chinese government, I wouldn't particularly trust those.
Japan? They do pretty well, but not as well as Finland. So let's look at some Finnish practices.
Finland does not give their kids standardized tests.
It is not mandatory to give students grades until they are in the 8th grade.
Finland has no private schools.
Finnish schools don't assign homework, because it is assumed that mastery is attained in the classroom.
Compulsory school in Finland doesn't begin until children are 7 years old.
In an ideal world, teachers would get paid more than I do because, as important as my job is to me, teachers have a ton more responsibility.
(Disclaimer: This "ideal world" would probably benefit me directly because my wife is a teacher by trade - although she's not currently in a classroom. Mostly because the low salary made staying at home to raise our kids cheaper than having the teacher salary and paying for daycare.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Exactly. My child was scoring in the 95th percentile on the standardized tests but was having problems at school. After a psych-ed assessment, he was classified as 'Gifted'. He was also being bullied relentlessly and had no friends to speak of. Constant headaches, tummy aches, and at times, debillitating anxiety; primarily as a result of the social environment at the school. Teachers and the principal were either powerless to do anything about it, or indifferent. We enrolled him in a local charter school which caters to gifted students. On his first day back from that school in gr. 5, he said "Mom! I've found my people!". He's been there a 2.5 years now and it's like night/day. He has lots of friends, is being academically challenged, has almost no tummy aches/headaches, and is in general a happy child now. Since all the kids in that school are gifted and many have additional issues (ADHD, Aspergers, Anxiety, etc), there appears to be no bullying of any sort... The kids who are there want to be there and feel lucky to be there.
I don't know whether our canadian charter schools are different from US charter schools but I have no idea what I'd do if we didn't have this school. There are just some kids for whom the public system does not work.
Here's some suggestions:
1) Instruction. Make teaching a more prestigious career. Pay more, but also require higher credentials. Most people who would make the best teachers pursue other careers because they can get paid more doing something else.
2) Curriculum. Start teaching deductive logic in elementary school. It would vastly improve students' ability to understand mathematics, argumentative writing, hard sciences, politics, and just about anything else. Philosophy should be introduced by high school. Foreign language should also be introduced in elementary school. Most people have a very tenuous grasp of grammar before studying a foreign language.
3) Health. Longer school days, less homework. In the lower grades, combine recess with physical education, and force exercise upon kids. Their physical education grade ought to be based on progress -- a goal is set by the instructor and the student must progress towards it, such as loss of body fat, increase in strength, etc. No more packed lunches -- all students are provided two healthy meals during the school day. Furthermore, rather than just a school nurse, hire pediatric doctors. A child's health shouldn't be dependent on their parent's ability to obtain quality insurance or buy quality food.
Schools function the same way they did a hundred years ago and that's why they fail. Everyone always points to parents as the problem and they're right. Shitty parents are more often than not the problem that holds children back. We need to abandon the archaic idea that a person owns their child. A child affects society and this system of entrusting parents to do the bulk of raising their children (all while working 40+ hours a week) is absurd. I hate to quote Hilary but she was right, it takes a village.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Your statement that California pends over 10k/student is incorrect. Most schools are funded on what is called the revenue limit. It varies by school district from nearly 10k to about half of that. A very few school districts are funded on what is called basic aid and are considerably richer and spend 13 to 15k per student. Teacher salaries vary widely from roughly 32k to 90k+ depending on the district. Salary is only part of the cost to the district to hire a teacher. Districts also pay benefits, retirement, workers' compensation insurance, medicare, social security (district option - some are in; some not), state and federal payroll taxes, etc.
Other costs that the district must bear are facility costs, which are always considerably higher for high schools than elementary schools; transportation costs, property and liability insurance, utilities, etc.
Since the implementation of class size reduction funding, class sizes are generally 22-24, not the 30 you allege.
Now to your list:
1. In my experience this is simply not true. Public schools generally have much better computer equipment that charter schools. I have never seen a charter high school with any decent laboratory science teachers, labs, or materials.
The rest of your list of items 2-10 are individual subject areas that the district board of trustees can fund to a greater or lesser levels depending on that amount of money they have and their priorities. However, they must provide a Free and Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) for ALL of their students. That means that the district must pay for athletic equipment, uniforms, including cheerleader uniforms, field trips, books, and all of the other things you list, without charging the students and their families. If they tell your daughter or son that she or he must pay for cheerleader or athletic uniforms, they are in violation of California law and you should contact your local ACLU chapter, as they are very active in seeing that FAPE is enforced.
Another huge cost that public schools incur that charter schools largely dodge by one means or another is special education. California schools are required to provide a Free and Appropriate Public Education to even the most profoundly developmentally disabled student through age 22. One child can cost a district as much as $250,000 per year, not counting legal costs if the parents are litigious, which many special ed parents are.
As to your last question, school district budgets are public documents. Most districts post them on their websites. Inaddition, each district is required by law to have an annual, independent financial audit, which is also a public document. If you want to know where the money goes, it is easy to find out.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I can still recite the multiplication tables up to 12 with no real thought.
That might not have been a waste of time for you, but it was for me. Memorize such nonsense on your own time.
I disagree. I can do lots of useful math without a calculator. My kids, who were not forced to memorize such nonsense, can't. You might argue that calculators are ubiquitous, and you'd be right, but the related area in which they fail is not having any idea when answers are wildly wrong. They simply type and trust.
Finland has private schools, which are funded by the state the same as public schools -- kind of like our charter schools, but with more restrictions.
Compared to us, in Finland all students are expected to learn the language of the school (Suomi or Swedish, depending on the location), and their parents are also expected to know it. Finland also lets teachers choose textbooks. I'm sure the creationists would love that one, and we'd be complaining about how it's lowering our education standards.
But free educational opportunities are available from an early age.
So, being a product of public education, I wouldn't be so quick to leave the teachers out of it.
I've had really great teachers, and really lousy ones. The problem is that as far as I can tell nothing was really done about either. Maybe the great ones get the special page in the yearbook more often, but that's about it.
I had teachers who turned the most interesting classes into exercises in rote and process. "Notebook reviews" were checks to see if the material that was placed on the overhead was copied verbatim. Two teachers forced the class to memorize all the prepositions in the english language and provide them verbatim in alphabetical order - must be some kind of rite of passage for middle school english or something as it happened in two different grades.
None of this stuff would fly in any business that depended on selling services to adults who actually had to consume those services. Kids just have to live with it, and their parents don't get any choice about paying for it anyway. Colleges do somewhat better, but most of their students are barely more than children themselves and certainly not critical about the use of their money. I love learning, but I could never see myself actually paying for a degreed class - too much nonsense.