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25% of Charter Schools Owe Their Soul To the Walmart Store
theodp writes "Among the billionaires who helped Bill Gates pave the way for charter schools in WA was Walmart heiress Alice Walton. The Walton Family Foundation spent a whopping $158+ million in 2012 on what it calls 'systemic K-12 education reform,' which included $60,920,186 to 'shape public policy' and $652,209 on 'research and evaluation.' Confirming the LA Times' speculation about its influence, the Walton Foundation issued a press release Wednesday boasting it's the largest private funder of charter school 'startups,' adding that it has supported the opening of 1 in 4 charter schools in the U.S. since 1997 through its 1,500 'investments.' But as some charter school kids have learned the hard way, what the rich man giveth, he can also taketh away. For the time being, though, it looks like America's going to continue to depend on the tax-free kindness of wealthy strangers to educate its kids. For example, while it was nice to see the value of Shop Class recognized, the White House on Monday called on businesses, foundations and philanthropists to fund proposed 'Maker Spaces' in schools and libraries. Hey, when the U.S. Secretary of Education turns to corporate sponsors and auctions to fund his Mother's afterschool program for kids of low-income families in the President's hometown, don't look for things to change anytime soon."
Due to a technicality Alice was let off of on a DUI charge just recently. Maybe she should spend some of her $27 Billion on Drug and Alcohol education in the schools instead?
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I have come to the conclusion that the charter school movement was conceived in sin. born in corruption and is too full of conmen and grifters to give it any support.
There may be some decent, honest people trying to make things better in the movement, but it is not the way to bet.
$60,920,186 to 'shape public policy'...
AKA lobbying. What won't a politician do for money?
I'll bet they'll teach advanced shelf stacking techniques, door greeting, making do on low pay, turning your back on further education. etc. Walmart/Walton Foundation is NOT a charitable institution. Everything they do is profit through exploitation.
Good parenting means not letting your public schools become shit and not letting corporations take over your education system via backdoor like this.
This site has really gone down the crapper.
Yes. It's called slashdot. You're stinking it up with your "beta beta blah blah blah" bullshit. Take it to the farmers for composting or something.
Maybe schools should raise some more corporate-sponsored cash by doing product placements. For example, it would be easy to monetize homework assignments:
1a. Juan is planning a picnic. He buys packages of Sara Lee® brand 100% Wheat Home Style® Hot Dog Buns which each contain eight buns. He also buys packages of Osar Mayer® Jumbo Deluxe All-Beef Franks®, which each contain 10 wieners. What is the minimum number of Hot Dogs Juan needs to buy so that there are no unmatched buns or wieners?
1b. Juan plans to put 1/2 ounce of Heinz® Sweet Dill® Relish on each hot dog. How many 12-oz jars of relish does he need to buy? What brand of mustard would best complement the relish: (a) Heinz® Classic Yellow Hot Dog® Mustard (b) some other non-specific mustard?
1c. Extra credit: Juan asks his friend Latoya to buy ketchup for his picnic. List three benefits Latoya would receive if she bought genuine Heinz® Classic® Ketchup instead of the discount store brand. Explain how sometimes what appears to be the least expensive choice isn't the greatest value overall.
It's quite simple really when you distance yourself from the whole thing, like those of us not in that country can do.
Step one: buy out all mass media. Advertise that government is bad and capitalism is good.
Step two: use aforementioned propaganda as a tool to get tax breaks.
Step three: use part of the funds gathered through tax breaks to show the masses that are getting poorer how good corporations are, reinforcing point one.
Step four: repeat step two.
Step five: repeat step three.
Every even step after one: profits increase.
Every odd step after one: chance of revolt against corporate agenda decreases and push for step mentioned above increases from public direction towards the government.
It's a brilliant construct, built to self-accelerate profit generation and increase fund transfer from public to private interests.
The new comment system seems to be designed to be used at full HD resolution with a maximized window. Apparently they didn't consider that with anything smaller than that, the comment are becomes a painfully narrow corridor.
My children go to a charter school and they are getting a far better education than they would at the failing local schools. My wife and I are both involved in the school and we both have a teaching background (I taught engineering at the college level for 4 years and my wife was a preschool teacher for 11 years, both sets of grandparents also taught public school for 20+ years). The teachers and organization of the charter school is light years beyond the local public school in delivering an effective learning experience for the kids. There are always a few bad apples, but anyone who tells you that charter schools as a whole are not far better than public schools is a liar in the tank for the teachers union or someone who has been brainwashed by their propaganda.
The money that charter schools get from the taxes that we pay is a pittance compared to what the pathetic, failing state run public schools get. If we don't want charities funding charter schools maybe we should ban teachers unions and give parents vouchers that they can take to any school that is accredited. Let's also institute a ranking system based on the learning the students actually do so even the laziest parents can pick winner schools. That way charter schools won't have to beg for funding and will be on an even footing with public schools; the problem is the teachers unions don't want that because they know that inside of 10 years all of the public schools would be gone along with their power, massive union dues and a huge fundraising/advertising arm of the Democrat party. The bottom line is the teachers unions exist only to further their own power and enrich the teachers, regardless of how well they teach. Until we break those unions, our children's education will always be second place on the political landscape.
They tried vouchers in DC and it has been an unmitigated success which is now trying to be shut down because the unions are scared spit-less that it will spread to other states.
That was indeed the double meaning. Thank you for spelling it out for everyone.
Fact is though, the beta protest movement has its place. And its not in the other discussions. Even a good cause can lose a lot of support if most ardent supporters start to trash everything, rather than focusing their protests on the issue.
I've read slashdot from the start - posting from time to time as anonymous (I never saw the need to register for forums that offer an anon capability) - and I agree that it's dying and that's actually a real shame. There are so few actual stories worth reading, and when there are, the posts are mostly people not contributing - just trying to be funny. It didn't used to be that way (there were always jokers and trolls, but not like this)
I guess I'll keep reading for now... but what a turn this site has taken...
Me too.
I specifically notice the change from MS bashing articles to stuff actually interesting. Maybe slashdot has finally grown into something useful.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
Whereas private schools exist solely for the benefit of the kids, and have no need to make money or pay employees?
There are certainly big problems with many public schools; I was lucky enough to go to a very good one, but the best school in one of the best school districts being good only highlights the problems. But what do you suggest if you see public schooling as only existing to benefit teachers and government? Religious, charity schools?
No.
Good parenting means taking _complete responsibility_ for your childs education. If your public school is awesome, great - but that only goes a little way. The culture, values, education, and effort/commitment of the parents has always been the number one predictor of a childs future academic success. Public schools are also limited in what they are allowed to teach your child - forced to comply with what is polically correct, what politicians and businesses have managed to redefine the subjects and ideas to study as, and what the local/state/federal government have compromised as the textbooks and teachers that your kid will interact with. These are usually far from the best choice which you learn about in great detail if you go and investigate on your own and then put together your own educational plan which you implement via home schooling, careful selection of private schools, or selective hiring of tutors.
Having kids was never supposed to be about the state taking over most of the responsibility for education, or for being a gloried childcare center because both parents work, or something that could be handled without careful planning and ensuring one had the necessary resources ahead of time. Politicians and the public can talk all they want about improving public schools and overall childhood education, but the further responsibility and teaching moves away from responsibile active parents - the worse the result will always be. We've had a 100 year slide away from families and responsibile parenting and nothing is going to be fixed in education until we reverse it.
Eh, the public high school I went to was pretty good, certainly produced many good graduates that are doing well now. NW suburbs of Chicago. Many parents even sent their kids to the public school instead of the rather prestigious catholic school nearby.
That's not all Alice has done. My wife and I recently spent a few days at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, a world class museum in Bentonville, Arkansas created by Alice Walton, and had an incredible experience. "Located on 120 acres of native Ozark forest, Crystal Bridges' grounds invite visitors to enjoy the natural environment as a continuation of their museum experience. The Museum's distinctive architecture immerses visitors in the landscape, while three miles of nature trails encourage exploration and reflection." And admission is free.
And here we have an example of a "self-fulfilling prophesy."
"tax-free kindness of wealthy strangers"
Why do some feel that charitable contributions should be taxed? Say someone makes a billion dollars this year and gives away that billion dollars to feed the hungry or buy clothes for the poor... that should be it. If the government takes half a billion off the top, that is half a billion less for those hungry and poor.
It's the same as giving someone a welfare check and then taxing half of it. Suggesting that would be considered preposterous by the same people who want to tax the hell out of the charitable contributions.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Correction: Good parenting means not letting your children become shit, regardless of the state of the school, corporations or politicians in control down the road.
Respect the Constitution
Many many decades ago, I went to a charter school for k-6th grade. The school had to allow everyone in the area as part of its opening up in a richer suburb. I lived along the border and was included in the school map. School had computers while only the jr high and high schools. My parents could have never afforded to to send me to a private school with lower population sizes and computers. I was lucky. And being a poor rowdy kid, they never kicked me out. Lucky that's where I got my introduction into computers.
Only thing I'd like to see is smaller classes, and charter schools on average have higher. This is supposedly with them kicking poor performing kids out. But charter schools differ so much, there is no "standard" model used. I think we can all agree smaller classrooms with more individual help is what schools should have, but thats gets very expensive. I'd rather take all those billions of dollars in state taxes on alcohol and marijuana taxes go to directly fund schools instead...
Haven't you heard? Corporations are already taking over the ed system via common core.
There's always usenet.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
And how exactly is sending our kids to schools that are not failing and who have and maintain actual standards
"Siphoning the education spending pie into Republican pockets"???
The education pie should not be going to commie Democrats, which it has been for many years now, any more that it should be going to Republicans (which to my knowledge it does not). The whole reason that our education system is broken is because of the teachers unions and the entanglement with the Democrat party, who would sooner cut off their left arm than face the real problems in the education system.
Sounds like a horribly inefficient allocation of resources. Even wolves spread teaching amongst the pack.
Or educated by Alice to have the mathematical skills needed to accept a job with such low pay that you need to go on food stamps.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
It looks like US education is moving towards a more efficient and profitable business model. Too bad learning outcomes aren't profitable.
Next, the corporations will lobby to de-couple learning outcomes from awarding funding to privatised schools. It might work well for the school-to-prison pipeline; lots of profit to be had from funnelling children into correctional facilities.
At least I know a place to discuss this question. And I guess a lot of activity in that specific discussion would be taken much more seriously by Dice than the Fuck Beta posts.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Most states allows groups of parents in a neighborhood to group together and form homeschool co-ops. This can significantly reduce costs and save time - but the tradeoff decision should be made by the parent based on what they think is the best interest of the child. In any case, public schools really are just one option among dozens and there is no real reason why it should be the default - especially these days with the huge amount of educational resources available online or via amazone or various community groups.
Parents only have a limited number of years to set the entire trajectory for their childs life - Taking 10 years off work to homeschool a child shouldn't be something that unusual - and, if more parents just took the time to investigate the education options available and what could be taught via a customized curriculum tailored to the child - I'd expect we'd see much higher overall academic achievement, stronger families, and more realistic/better balanced kids.
Thanks for that. A genuinely intelligent comment.
Do you have a child in a failing school? Have you spent time time talking to clueless administrators? One of them told me "it was against state law" to teach the multiplication tables. They won't teach fractions except for 1/2, 1/3 and 1/4. That is unfortunate because you don't get to pick your fractions in algebra. One of the (first grade) teachers directly criticized my wife for not speaking more to my son in Spanish. The kindergarten teacher said he "didn't want parents in the classroom". The public school principal spoke with me in very thinly disguised contempt.
I could either run for school district or send my son to a charter school. When we asked about math, the principal of the charter school said, "Oh, so that is why none of the fifth graders who come from the school district can't do math."
So no, my presence, my ideas, my concerns were not welcome at the public school. Your theories fail the actual children in the schools. I like choice. What does it matter that a "corporation" does it rather than the school district? If you don't like charter schools, then don't send your children to one. If enough people don't like them, they will close.
These charter-school folks have a long-term agenda, and that is the conversion of public education from a public service to a fully privatized profit center, with the added perk of eliminating teachers unions as a political force. A key factor in achieving this is that wealth inequality has become so extreme that local governments no longer have the resources to educate the nation's children, but billionaires do. Can parents and boards of education afford to say "no" when, in the face of decaying buildings and teacher layoffs, big-time donors come offering modern, well-staffed facilities, with all the latest IT and other equipment, if only you let the donors do it their way? Once the public school system is reduced to being merely a dumping ground for the worst, most disruptive and unresponsive students, the donors won't have to be so generous, they'll be making handsome profits as the contractors in a privatized fee-for-service education system. It's just like the 1990s when deep-pocketed for-profit HMOs offered healthcare at below-market rates. Once all the nonprofit hospitals and insurers were driven out of business, the for-profits jacked up premiums at double-digit rates for decades. It was a brilliant strategy, and it's happening all over again, in education.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And good statecraft means making sure the population is well educated. Be it through strong public schools or making sure parents have the time, energy, and resources to educate their children themselves.
Taking an interest in your kids is now an "inefficient allocation of resources"?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
It's quite simple really when you distance yourself from the whole thing, like those of us not in that country can do.
Let's think about where we are starting from today
Step one: buy out all mass media. Advertise that government is bad and capitalism is good.
Can't buy out all mass media. The left already owns most of it and refuses to sell unless they're sure their message will continue to be pushed.
Step two: use aforementioned propaganda as a tool to get tax breaks.
Or support government initiatives like EPA regulations and healthcare, depending on who owns it (see #1)
Step three: use part of the funds gathered through tax breaks to show the masses that are getting poorer how good corporations are, reinforcing point one.
Not going to happen when most people get their news from places like CNN, USA Today, NPR, etc. and elect people like Obama, Reid, and Pelosi
etc...
Hardly. A better analogy would be if wolves let the coyotes teach their cubs. Teachers are *not* part of my "pack" (read family). They are people who have jobs, barely anything more.
Public school teachers are all well and good, but from the Parent perspective (who has the strongest interest in the education of their child):
* The parent has no control over which specialist/teacher is chosen. In fact, in many school districts, the assignment of students to classes isn't known until 5pm on the Friday before the first week of school. This just hammers in that the child will be forced to attend the school assigned classroom regardless of the parent's interests or concerns about the teacher.
* The parent has little to no control over what is taught in the class - and has little ability to protest or take their child out if they find some material offensive or inappropriate.
* The school sets the emphasis on the various subjects, which might be completely opposite of what the parent believes is correct for his child.
* Even if a parent is willing to work with the child when he comes home from school on those areas he/she wants to emphasize or reinforce, typically the child will have other conflicting homework or be worn out - simply lose his creativity after attending public school for many years.
* Sometimes the parent believes the teacher/school is actually teaching wrong information, or the child is being exposed to bad influences/culture - How much time does the parent spend every week deprogramming their child when he/she could have been teaching/reinforcing instead?
Taking active direct control of the childs education by reading up, becoming familiar with educational topics and curriculums, which books are good/bad, what teaching philosophies work/etc and then choosing the right educational venue (public, private, tutor, home school, coop) would seem to be a better approach.
But honestly, a lot of parents are afraid of homeschooling because they think they couldn't stand being around their child all day or that they just can't teach effectively....or that the child is somehow losing out. For grades K-8, it honest is not that difficult and with a larger family and some careful planning there is no issue with socialization. And just 2-4hrs/day of direct 1-on-1, or 1-2 education time between a parent and child easily matches or surpases what a child learns by being one out of 30 students during 5-7hrs of public school. All home schooling really requires is an educated parent with a reasonable amount of time, modest resources, and the drive/commitment to make it work. As for specialists, I'm currently home schooling my 3rd and 5th graders and will consider exposing them to community colleges professors or dedicated online classes when they get to high school for those subjects that need substantial expertise.
Taking 10 years off work to homeschool a child shouldn't be something that unusual
Yeah maybe it shouldn't, but seriously how many people do you know that have enough savings or income from a single parent to take a 10 year vacation?!? Personally I don't expect that I'm going to get a whole 10 years of retirement.
-- QED
There's a similar loop around government regulation, what's called the "revolving door". Hire people who used to be government regulators with a fat paycheck; tell existing regulators they'll earn more that way than their government job pays; use profits from unregulated activities to hire more regulators. This is how financial companies in the US cracked regulation by the SEC, food manufacturers avoid the FDA, etc.
It's hilarious how an AC thought your history lesson here was a plan for the future.
Much like a city depends on fines for it's budget so will the government on philanthropy. The government would spend more on social causes if philanthropy did not exist. Cities would not have a vested interest in not reducing income from fines if it did not depend on it for its budget.
I'm confused. At first glance I thought the summary was saying that the Waltons were donating hundreds of millions to charter schools as an act of grand philanthropy. I'm sure the schools could use the money. But it looks more like the money is going toward lobbyists for charter schools and not charter schools themselves. Am I reading that right? I'm sure that's exactly what kids need.
Step one: Form a union for government employees.
Step two: Force all government employees to join said union.
Step three: Force all government employees to pay dues to said union.
Step four: Have the government collect dues from government employee's paycheck and pass it directly to the union
Step five: Funnel millions of dollars of dues from employees to those politicians that favor you.
Step six: Wind up with government for the government by that government, AKA the Democratic Party. Fuck the people who pay for it.
That's true and false all depending on who you're looking at.
Until the trolls show up. Gets tiring spending more time adding things to the kill file rather then discussing. Currently most of usenet is great because the idiots are on web forums.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
It's intelligent to recommend parents take 10 years off working to educate their children? I personally think that working towards better schools and working (and saving for college and beyond for the children) is more important than micromanaging their education. A few hours every day can "fix" anything learned during the day. Even if school was free daycare, it's still better than quitting for 10 years.
Learn to love Alaska
a simple minded person that doesn't understand how competition can force public schools to step up their game.
Competition can't improve public schools. The public schools aren't allowed to compete, so they've never had a chance to try.
Name a single charter school that accepts *every* applicant. When that happens, then we can talk. The rules are not even close between public schools (not allowed to expel anyone, short of a conviction of a violent felony against a school employee), and a charter school (accepts only "qualified" students, and keeps numbers to a preset level by rejecting/expelling unwanted students).
Learn to love Alaska
I think you have that backwards... in most public schools with a union, it's virtually impossible to fire a tenured teacher... while simply violating school district policy can get you expelled without any conviction.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Parents are pissed off that they can't fire teachers. But they don't want to have to justify the reasons (often "protecting" their little monsters from a teacher who demands homework be turned in or something just as offensive). And I know plenty of teachers fired, yes, union members. These days, all it takes is a suggestion of impropriety with a student. And yes, the "zero tolerance" policies are out of hand, but it's the only tool the schools are allowed. Give the schools some freedom, and they might be able to compete. But restricting them then complaining they don't succeed when actively working to hinder them is about the stupidest thing ever.
Learn to love Alaska
Good statehood means formatting the populace to a defined set of memes and ways of thinking. Can you imagine if everyone actually took responsibility for their own thinking? It would be anarchy! People would actually give a shit because they would understand how things work instead of just delegating power to others and doing what they were told. People would demand transparency. People would demand democracy.
It sounds like that would be a good thing... but I challenge anyone to show me a truly educated society of any more than a few thousand - any more and it just gets unworkable. Society is global today and that makes it completely impossible.
In a proper setting, teaching is a calling.
Some of the public school systems right nearby Bill G. already have something of an alternative to private charter schools.
http://www.lwsd.org/schools/Ch...
So not sure why they have to push so hard to get private charter schools stood up.
Admission is by lottery, which is just as self-selecting for motivated parents as charter schools... that is to say, you will probably get into one of them if you bother to apply. Once in, you're expected to put in so many hours of community service (both students and parents), as well as make a "voluntary" donation of $200 per year (as a public school, they can't really mandate collection).
The schools themselves tend to be small and very tightly-knit. They're usually run entirely by a handful of "star" teachers with free reign over the curriculum and virtually no administration... they usually share a principal from the nearest conventional school. The real "scam" is some legal loophole that allows these schools to be built with none of the extra facilities - usually when school campuses are constructed, they need a certain minimum allotment of athletic fields, gyms, cafeterias, multipurpose rooms, etc. While some of these choice schools have such things, the majority of them are just a handful of classrooms - so funds are purely focused on academics (kids can still participate in sports and activities at their local conventional school). The other scam is no school busses; parents have to drive the kids there themselves, though a lot of them carpool and the kids also get public bus passes.
So it's actually not all that much different than what you describe. Most of them have themes (art/theater , environmentalism, politics, foreign language / history, STEM, etc.). The big complaint is that there aren't more of them, which is funny because they appear to be much cheaper to run than most typical school campuses and draw on a lot of parent involvement.
America spends vast amounts of money on its public education system, but it's not yielding better outcomes.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
What these people who you denigrate as "wealthy strangers" are doing is provide a better, and usually less costly, alternative for education, after public schools have already sucked vast amounts of money out of the pockets of low and middle income Americans and wasted them on a poor public school system.
No, of course, things won't change. The problem with US public education isn't lack of money; it has plenty of that, it's is structure: an ineffective mix of curricula, bureaucracy, social engineering, tenure, unions, test scores, and outdated teaching methods. And the solution is to create alternative forms of schooling, and private money is important for that because tax dollars alone can't do it, in large part because of demagogues and ideologues like you.
Taking more money in taxes and shoving it into a failing educational system under the control of the same people who have given us our current system won't help students; creating viable and better alternatives, tailored to the needs of communities, will.
But to make that money, they have to prove to the kids' parents that they provide value for that money, i.e., good education. There's no such requirement for public schools, so they can provide the bare minimum education because they have no competition. Yet another example where capitalism trumps communism.
Public schools exist to protect property values by keeping the neighborhood from filling up with illiterates (hope I spelled that properly : - ), and by making neighborhoods more attractive to buy a house in because there are good schools nearby, and even for the purpose of turning out people better able to to be informed citizens, the better to choose wisely representatives and the path of the nation.
Okay, admittedly that last part is utopian idealism that's being rapidly destroyed by big money buying congresscritters, but an uneducated populace will never fix that, or even know to fight it.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
"Fact is though, the beta protest movement has its place."
And you'd like it confined to a "free speech zone" far from where anyone will actually be aware of it?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Thanks for that link. Dice seems to have been able to keep it off my screen previously.
If you're joining the Slashcott, allow me to direct you to The Individual Midnight Thread.
http://slashdot.org/submission...
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
What are you talking about? There are lots of problems with public schools, but quality of education relative to 150 years ago when the state was not involved is not one of them.
If you were educated back then you were unlikely to learn anything other than the minimum to support farming and reading. Your parents had none of the baseline knowledge to even consider privately tutoring you. Either that or you were born into wealth.
Public schools have issues, but parents who don't care about their children's education have been around for a long time(and used to be a stunning majority), and luckily with mandatory public school those parents have a lot less influence than they used to and those ideas have been mostly wiped out.
Whereas private schools exist solely for the benefit of the kids, and have no need to make money or pay employees?
Why can't they do both? They already do seem to be doing a better job at both.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Are you smarter than an 8th grader in 1912?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Because clearly this is an issue of free speech. Arguing against people spamming topics with item completely unrelated is stifling free speech.
And somewhere, people are hooking up generators to bodies of people who actually fought for free speech, to make money on electricity they will generate after that claim.
And those outside your country, including chinese, figured out that you're a single party oligarchy. Chinese even copied it, minus they knew their people aren't gullible enough to swallow the bullshit, but pliable enough not to have to feed them the bullshit in the first place.
Strange how I live in a country where private schools are all but unheard of, and quality of our public schools is far greater than that of private schools across the US.
How soon should we expect them to become shit, existing only for the benefit of the government and teachers? They're only gone the way they are for about 40 years as far as I know, and they've been fairly steadily improving over at least thirty of those.
In order to secure desires of the owner's of Walmart concerning how education is to be granted in the USA, everyone should accept higher prices at WalMart. Its not as if you have a choice in the matter anyway.
especially in a highly dynamic technological society, where all parents have an innately excellent grasp of differential equations and the advanced mathematics needed to be competitive in the marketplace.
Who needs usenet, when we can still send smoke signals. Global warming is just a lie anyway, right?
If they just increased the default font size a little and if one could more clearly mod-up posts which are actually on topic.
As everyone knows that most parents have a far better understanding of differential equations and other mathematics skills than do math teachers. Besides, parents always have Fox News to rely on if they are weak on subjects such as history, social studies, as well as how to prepare their children for a reverse mortgage and life in the unemployment line.
Is that the one that teaches intelligent design and creationism in biology class?
So that the 60% of the money to pay teachers can instead go to charter school administrators, whose salaries vault into the 7 figure range. Clearly, one of the advantages of being a not-for-profit charter, just like the NFL.
In counties that have large school systems you can bet your last dime that organised crime has infiltrated many departments. That last 6% of so of funds that just can't be pinned down by audits is available for criminals and in billion dollar school systems that 6% is a huge ongoing pay day. Here is the way it actually works out. Somebody decides that efficiency saves money. A county with 200 schools will open a building and trades department so that each school does not have to hire out maintenance work. Also new construction and contracted repairs will be handled by a central source. That will involve a huge fleet of maintenance men and vehicles and equipment. Because of the shear size of such departments any audit will in itself consume millions of dollars and virtually cripple a maintenance department for months. It also means that organised crime will target positions and individuals with planning and maintenance departments, Purchases and contracts can be steered to include Mafia owned or controlled vendors. I have seen first hand the vast waste caused by this issue and can tell you that it even reaches deep into local governments and can even reach out and control law enforcement and investigations as the sheer size and complexity of the issues make elected officials very shy about upsetting such a huge apple cart. Not to mention that anyone who allows himself to be seen as vaguely aware of the nonsense will limit is career in such a system.
Is that the same Kentucky charter school that teaches intelligent design and creationism in biology class?
Bitch is worth $20+ billion. $158 million is what, like a half a day's pay? It's chump change for a Walton. Want to be a real humanitarian? Spend some of those billions ensuring your workers earn a living wage so their kids don't have to live in poverty while they're not attending one of your fancy expensive charter schools.
This is a story? Rich people (read: evil people.. unless they're Warren Buffet or George Soros) donate to help kids' educations, let's denounce that and find all kinds of fault with it because it wasn't from a democrat sponsored and controlled government program. This reeks of one-sided leftist propaganda seeking to accuse the other of propaganda.
This is all about rallying against the freedom of charter schools because big government and teacher unions can't exercise the level of control over them they want to.
I'm so sick of this posturing from opposite ends of the aisle: but this is illustrative of the fact that the left is all for "compassion" only as long as they can claim exclusive ownership of it and can twist it into a PR bonanza; if the other side does anything remotely similar, it's ridiculed and belittled, items are sarcastically referred to in quotes ('research and evaluation'), you get stories like this and.. well, Melissa Harris-Perry. Amazing hypocrisy and piety at work.
I'm perfectly positive that Gates and Wallmart have some ulterior motives at work, in fact - tax write offs at least.. but this is absolutely as true of the left as it is the right. They all do things for ulterior motives.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
The Walton's aren't exactly liberals.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Yes and yes. Mark my words. Oh, and don't expect a critical look at US history either.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
It seems that whenever a discussion/argument about occurs, whether it be about charter vs. public or whatever, the conversation almost always comes down to good teacher / bad teacher. There are then anecdotes about their personal experiences in school and that sets the stage for all the commentary afterwards. To begin, each person's experience is unique. Each person had one school experience, in one place, and at one time. This is equivalent to having taken one flight to one place, once and being qualified enough to tell all the other pilots how to fly airplanes. If you say to a person, “Since you know so much, why not become a teacher and show us how to do it right.” That same person will demure, “No, I couldn't be a teacher. I couldn't deal with a classroom of kids all day long. It would be too stressful.” No where did this person mention, charter vs. public, what they were teaching, or anything else outside of dealing with students. Deep down, people know that it boils down to a classroom full of unruly children and the stresses of all the “outside” experts telling you how you should do your job. They are right. If you can't handle the stress, you shouldn't be there. Moreover, you shouldn't make judgments about the people who are. In my experience, there are two basic kinds of teachers. There are those that had a pleasant educational experience. They graduated, went to college, got certified, and began teaching. This is the only career they really ever had or experienced. They got a rude awakening once they entered the classroom. The other kind had a career first. They did this for years, then started a new career in teaching. These teachers have a more realistic view about what these kids are going to face after they get out of school. In both cases, these teachers have the understanding that all the problems in societies boil down to hate, bigotry, greed, and poverty. Mostly, societies act this way out of ignorance and fear of the unknown. The only effective way to make the world a better place is to make the unknown, known. What better place to start than with the young? Teachers, for the most part, are interested in promoting social justice. Unless, something ruins them. Teachers are like cops. Teachers usually have teacher friends. It is the only people they deal with every day except kids. Just like cops and criminals, who else would understand your life? Who else could you talk to? Certainly, not parents. They are only interested in their “little Tommy”. They could care less about any other child. Like all institutions, schools contain many different kinds of jobs, each with their own agenda. So among staff, there is a lot of political intrigue. Whether a school is concerned with satisfying a state's needs for accountability or satisfying a charter's income needs, the politics is the same. The only difference is the cause. The public thinks that teachers get a 3 month vacation every year with pay. The reality is that teachers are only paid for 9 months work and laid off for 3 months. Only, their paychecks are spread throughout the year. The public also thinks those 3 months are a vacation. Many teachers work summer schools, take courses to keep their certifications, or take summer jobs. In any case, they are not “having fun” taking time off. Many teachers plan lessons during the summers, because what they teach and how they teach is constantly being directed and changed by outside forces every year. Pedagogy, the practice of teaching, is both an art and a craft and have to be constantly tweaked to improve practice on an ever-shifting sand, of politics, policies, and educational standards or reform. Teachers do not have as many rights as other people. They are basically public figures without the fame. Anything you say, write, or do publicly could be a career ender even if it is perfectly legal. If a teacher were to promote gay marriage, legalization of cannabis, be caught publicly smoking cigarettes or drinking, that could end their jobs. The
Name a single charter school that accepts *every* applicant. When that happens, then we can talk.
Ok, Gateway Preparatory Academy (GPA). True, they only accept students who live in the State that chartered them, because otherwise the State doesn't pay, but they've accepted every student who has ever applied. That's because they haven't hit their State mandated cap on enrollment yet.
Any other Charter school in the same State that hasn't hit the cap the State Board of Education is willing to pay for also accepts every student that applies. The only time they have a lottery is when they are no longer legally allowed to accept more students, because the State has set a limit on enrollment. The only preference allowed when they have a lottery is that the children of the people who founded the school may get a preference if that's written into the Charter. Typically that might affect a handful of kids, as the number of founders is usually half a dozen or less and their kids were all enrolled before the school filled up years later.
Also, the Charter schools in the same State have the same rules for expulsion, special ed, etc... as the other public schools in the State. GPA has 2x the "average" special education enrollment and 2X the "average" gifted and talented enrollment.That's because personalized education attracts both ends of the spectrum.
There may be other States where the rules are different, but I didn't found a Charter school in those States, so I wasn't required to become an expert on their school-related law. I do know the way things work in a few States, though, and non of them work they way you state.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
actually helping to prove my point by getting testing that was given at the end of compulsory education as public schools were becoming common (and at least a portion of the population moved from one room school houses for the local farms to more structured environments).
btw, I'm not saying the state is the sole purveyor of education and that a private system or local system can't do as well. I do believe perfectly good private school systems exist that provide education at this level. I'm merely saying that for the vast majority, the public school system was a boon, allowing them to answer questions like the ones in those tests.
Whether public schools have IMPROVED in the last 100 years is another question entirely. In my opinion, they have gotten much worse in the sciences and maths, and held ground in writing/reading comprehension. But at the same time, the quality has leveled out significantly and access to education has improved quite a bit. So probably on net, the total intelligence has gone up a decent amount.
Strange how I live in a country where private schools are all but unheard of, and quality of our public schools is far greater than that of private schools across the US.
How soon should we expect them to become shit, existing only for the benefit of the government and teachers? They're only gone the way they are for about 40 years as far as I know, and they've been fairly steadily improving over at least thirty of those.
Another generation. Two at the most. Basically as soon as your power elite figure out that a stupid, compliant and ignorant society is easier to 'handle'.
http://newint.org/features/201...
Casteism
American's prefer to 'own' their children. Thus we have few gains (evolution) and continue to harbor prejudice and promote greed. Tis how we beat (mostly killed) the Indians and others out of their lands and stuff, lives. We're Christians and God Help you! Many schools or perhaps most dwell on competition and not cooperation. It often gets worse in college depending on the path you're on. You've heard the motto: "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing." Besides Wolves are too much like Dolphins, only not on the menu, as yet.
We're not into that. Children are considered 'property' and as such repeat the ills of the parents. Good to great teachers may dent that, but they'll lose to home schooling as it is not the real world where we all need to cooperate and get along. Parents have tons of prejudices and some desire to live again through the kids. In some respects the old fashioned schools where the older helped the younger and cooperation was king. Alas that's gone except for some sports, but even there, winning at any cost, prevails.
Hard to know what's charity if the agenda is produce more of the same. And the number one reason they do this stuff is for the tax deductions they get and PR, plus pick the schools who will teach them to be good little Associates and later, impoverished greeters or Box dwellers, down by the river.
Why are there so many 'single quotes' in this 'Post'?
Are 'double quotes' just for rich people? Or are we telling the interpreter to 'ignore' and special characters inside them?
There's more to being a good parent than doing what only benefits your own child. Being a good parent includes creating a community for the benefit of everyone, which in the end benefits each individual. Parents abandoning the public school system only benefit your own child or an elitist sub-group of students. Parent should have the ability to "home school" if they choose. But that process should merely be an option via the local public school system. Meaning materials etc. are distributed via the local public schools. Not via some *for profit" (read "personal gain) enterprises. School vouchers are undermining not only local public schools but also dumbing down national public school systems by sucking valuable resources out of those educational systems. For what? The ability of a select group of parents to send their kids to elitist schools? Charter schools have the option of selecting who they want to educate. Public schools don't have that option. And privately run charter schools often require that parents be "engaged" in their children's educations. Public schools don't have the ability to demand the same. Their mandated to take any and all, where the parents are engaged or not. And that's why the public schools give the appearance of "failing". Parents have a sense of entitlement and feel ALL the educational responsibility falls upon the public schools and teachers. When the biggest problem is a vast majority of parents have abandoned their responsibilities to ensure their students are meeting educational standards. So, the problem with the public schools is the attitude on the part of parents in general.
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
You've done a great job covering the major criticisms of charter schools. The Arizona charter school system exemplifies all of the problems, and more. The 'more' is the faith element. Many charter schools are religious and while the Catholics and Mormons (big in this state) are supportive of science teaching there are others teaching faith instead of facts. I accept that parents must be allowed to make education choices for their offspring, however execrable, but it should never be on the public dime. Another aspect that may be the tip of an iceberg is the corruption engendered by the absence of accountability. Some charter schools here get their supplies from a corporation run by the school's owners' cronies such that they pay over the top prices. Again, the taxpayer is footing part of the bill. To me, the most disturbing element is the lack of accountability. Once accountability is removed mostly bad things happen, true in any context but worse in any profit center masquerading as a public benefit.