There are also public schools (magnet schools) which poach the best students - this is not unique to charters. Some of those magnet schools are the oldest schools in the nation: Boston Latin, Central High School in Philadelphia, etc. Perhaps magnet schools are a bad idea, but charters don't break any ground just by being selective. And as the AC pointed out, some charters select for troubled students.
Central High School in Philadelphia is a plain old public school with high standards - a so-called "magnet" school. It has been that way since the 1800s. The entire British system and the whole English-speaking world follows a similar model, with only the sharpest students testing into the good schools. All publicly-funded. "Charter" is a political buzzword more than anything else. In general it is more useful as a wedge issue than anything else.
One problem is the unions, is should be banned when it involves public money.
I would expand that to corporations who accept public money as well - but yes, I agree that lobbying by such groups undermines democracy. I don't think unions need to be eliminated - they might serve as an important counterbalance to the unmoving government bureaucracy... but they definitely should not be allowed to lobby.
Well, statistically, they don't do any worse (or better) than the public schools - so if they are so terrible maybe you should also be criticizing what the public schools are doing with your money? Let's not pretend that these terrible city schools aren't rife with corruption, too. Sometimes it is the exact same jackals who go to the charters to fleece us from there.
While I certainly agree that they do get paid pretty well considering days worked (at least around here), that does not make them lazy people. My brother was a teacher for a while and still worked all summer at another job. It wasn't his fault that his occupation doesn't have summer work.
I'm quite certain that uneven school funding is an issue. I'm also quite certain that fixing that disparity alone will not improve outcomes, having witnessed the money disappear into the ether in Philadelphia. I wish money were the issue, because fixing education would then be very easy.
(a) isn't backed up by factual and statistically-valid evidence
One only has to read their school district's negotiated teacher contract. It's there in black and white. Ours even had a ridiculous provision where they would go on probation for 6 months and then the probation would be removed from their record. They could pretty much go on probation as many times as they wanted. I think this was remedied, but the thing is a bit tough to read. In any event, there are absolutely no mechanisms whereby the union does any kind of quality control - they are dedicated to defense and collective bargaining.
(b) often is based on conservative objections to any amount of worker protection and due process in the work environment
I don't object to those things. I think public workers probably need a union to counterbalance the ridiculousness of government bureaucracy. Like corporations, they probably shouldn't be able to lobby... but that's a whole separate discussion.
I simply don't see things in black and white, that's all. I recognize that teachers and teachers unions have incentives and concerns that sometimes conflict with my concerns as a parent and taxpayer. I also recognize that we are on the same side more often than not. The same can be said about the school administration. Most local schools are given an impossible set of problems to solve, and they respond by kind of circling the wagons and going the path of least resistance. These days that is "common core"... it's mostly retarded and has not been shown to help or hurt students, but everyone in the command chain can point somewhere else when asked why they do it. This is not new - in the 80s it was "new math" and "phonics". Computers for every student. None of it was helpful, nor particularly harmful - but it was energy spent doing something that wasn't helping. I was hoping that charter schools would give us a place where educators could experiment a little more freely, but sadly that does not seem to have happened much and instead it has become just another wedge issue: it doesn't really make all that much difference but Republicans and Democrats rally around it anyway because it gets people fired up.
Sorry, I went off on a tangent. I just get frustrated.:)
Thanks for the link. I have to admit being very ignorant of charters outside of the Philly area. Here, the schools are excellent except for Philadelphia. The Philly public schools are so bad that the last governor (a Democrat) flooded them with money and it had no results at all. The Republican we have now yanked them back to their previous levels and that didn't really help either.:) The charter schools are a mixed bag - but on average they seem to do about the same. I'm not "pro-charter" simply because I've yet to see them work - not because I'm afraid of hurting the public schools... those need massive structural reform and the city itself needs a new approach to poverty. I guess it is at least good that St. Louis is willing to close down bad charters.
I reluctantly have to admit that maybe the British "some children left behind" system might have some merit. My wife is from a poor country, but got a decent education because she tested in to a good school at age 11. If we aren't going to address poverty, then I think maybe we owe the kids who want to learn an opportunity to do that. On the other hand, it puts a whole bunch of kids on a track to nowhere that is very hard to jump. This is a very difficult problem.
No, I'm not wrong. Total funding has gone up, up, up for US schools. Measure it in constant dollars, % of GDP, any way you like. Compare us to other countries, and there are perhaps two who beat us per-pupil. We spend enough money - the solution lies elsewhere.
And while schools still are highly dependent on local funding, that too has been changing steadily to the point where it is no longer the largest source.
I agree with you, but you have to admit that if you are the affluent parent of a smart, well-behaved kid the private school is a temptation. I went to both a mediocre public school and a very good Catholic school. The Catholic school spent a lot less per student and had somewhat pedestrian facilities, but the learning environment was much better and there were hardly ever fights.
I mostly agree with you on charters, but it's important to admit that the public schools were in pretty terrible shape even before the charters. And statistically, the charters aren't really any worse - or better. At some point you have to go after the underlying poverty. I'm not sure how to do that, but I think we all need to step away from 60 years of Democrat and Republican cliche positions on the matter.
I agree with you - the vast majority of teachers are very good and almost all work very hard. But just like any occupation, you have a few outliers. My beef with the public school system is that these outliers are protected as if they are just as valuable as the others. The teachers unions would earn a lot more respect from me if they thinned the herd a bit.
In my district, the charter schools directly take the money for a student that would have gone to the public school. It's public money, not private money. You may or may not be right about the ambitions of the people who created charters, but they are definitely not private schools.
Anyone who is a parent with a kid in public education can see that there are flaws. The whole system is setup to reward CYA behavior. Don't get me wrong, the vast majority of educators are well meaning and pretty hard-working. But the system itself thwarts them. There is no reward for going above and beyond. There is no reward for reaching out to parents - quite the opposite, since this will make more work for you and increase your risks with absolutely no benefit to your own situation. Problem kids are kept in the system. The system is set up to assume that budgets will always increase - even a mild decrease results in mass hysteria. Construction is shoddy government lowest bidder crap, and maintenance is nonexistent.
I have my kids in public school to expose them to a diversity of classes and cultures... I feel that being able to relate to people not entirely like oneself is an important life skill. But there is definitely an allure to private schools, where the vast majority of the students are there to learn, most of the parents care enough to spend inordinate amounts of money on education, and the entire system is geared towards keeping your business and keeping those Ivy League acceptance rates up instead of ass-covering.
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There are also public schools (magnet schools) which poach the best students - this is not unique to charters. Some of those magnet schools are the oldest schools in the nation: Boston Latin, Central High School in Philadelphia, etc. Perhaps magnet schools are a bad idea, but charters don't break any ground just by being selective. And as the AC pointed out, some charters select for troubled students.
Yes, that is other side of the same coin. Both systems are failing a certain class of students at the moment.
Central High School in Philadelphia is a plain old public school with high standards - a so-called "magnet" school. It has been that way since the 1800s. The entire British system and the whole English-speaking world follows a similar model, with only the sharpest students testing into the good schools. All publicly-funded. "Charter" is a political buzzword more than anything else. In general it is more useful as a wedge issue than anything else.
One problem is the unions, is should be banned when it involves public money.
I would expand that to corporations who accept public money as well - but yes, I agree that lobbying by such groups undermines democracy. I don't think unions need to be eliminated - they might serve as an important counterbalance to the unmoving government bureaucracy... but they definitely should not be allowed to lobby.
Well, statistically, they don't do any worse (or better) than the public schools - so if they are so terrible maybe you should also be criticizing what the public schools are doing with your money? Let's not pretend that these terrible city schools aren't rife with corruption, too. Sometimes it is the exact same jackals who go to the charters to fleece us from there.
While I certainly agree that they do get paid pretty well considering days worked (at least around here), that does not make them lazy people. My brother was a teacher for a while and still worked all summer at another job. It wasn't his fault that his occupation doesn't have summer work.
I'm quite certain that uneven school funding is an issue. I'm also quite certain that fixing that disparity alone will not improve outcomes, having witnessed the money disappear into the ether in Philadelphia. I wish money were the issue, because fixing education would then be very easy.
(a) isn't backed up by factual and statistically-valid evidence
One only has to read their school district's negotiated teacher contract. It's there in black and white. Ours even had a ridiculous provision where they would go on probation for 6 months and then the probation would be removed from their record. They could pretty much go on probation as many times as they wanted. I think this was remedied, but the thing is a bit tough to read. In any event, there are absolutely no mechanisms whereby the union does any kind of quality control - they are dedicated to defense and collective bargaining.
(b) often is based on conservative objections to any amount of worker protection and due process in the work environment
I don't object to those things. I think public workers probably need a union to counterbalance the ridiculousness of government bureaucracy. Like corporations, they probably shouldn't be able to lobby... but that's a whole separate discussion.
I simply don't see things in black and white, that's all. I recognize that teachers and teachers unions have incentives and concerns that sometimes conflict with my concerns as a parent and taxpayer. I also recognize that we are on the same side more often than not. The same can be said about the school administration. Most local schools are given an impossible set of problems to solve, and they respond by kind of circling the wagons and going the path of least resistance. These days that is "common core"... it's mostly retarded and has not been shown to help or hurt students, but everyone in the command chain can point somewhere else when asked why they do it. This is not new - in the 80s it was "new math" and "phonics". Computers for every student. None of it was helpful, nor particularly harmful - but it was energy spent doing something that wasn't helping. I was hoping that charter schools would give us a place where educators could experiment a little more freely, but sadly that does not seem to have happened much and instead it has become just another wedge issue: it doesn't really make all that much difference but Republicans and Democrats rally around it anyway because it gets people fired up.
Sorry, I went off on a tangent. I just get frustrated. :)
Thanks for the link. I have to admit being very ignorant of charters outside of the Philly area. Here, the schools are excellent except for Philadelphia. The Philly public schools are so bad that the last governor (a Democrat) flooded them with money and it had no results at all. The Republican we have now yanked them back to their previous levels and that didn't really help either. :) The charter schools are a mixed bag - but on average they seem to do about the same. I'm not "pro-charter" simply because I've yet to see them work - not because I'm afraid of hurting the public schools... those need massive structural reform and the city itself needs a new approach to poverty. I guess it is at least good that St. Louis is willing to close down bad charters.
I reluctantly have to admit that maybe the British "some children left behind" system might have some merit. My wife is from a poor country, but got a decent education because she tested in to a good school at age 11. If we aren't going to address poverty, then I think maybe we owe the kids who want to learn an opportunity to do that. On the other hand, it puts a whole bunch of kids on a track to nowhere that is very hard to jump. This is a very difficult problem.
No, I'm not wrong. Total funding has gone up, up, up for US schools. Measure it in constant dollars, % of GDP, any way you like. Compare us to other countries, and there are perhaps two who beat us per-pupil. We spend enough money - the solution lies elsewhere.
And while schools still are highly dependent on local funding, that too has been changing steadily to the point where it is no longer the largest source.
I guess it is possible to reform an individual. But I don't see them doing that, either.
LOL, but I went to public school for all but 2 years. We definitely had no logic teacher!
I may be naive, but can't students from failed charter schools attend another charter school as well as the conventional public school?
I agree with you, but you have to admit that if you are the affluent parent of a smart, well-behaved kid the private school is a temptation. I went to both a mediocre public school and a very good Catholic school. The Catholic school spent a lot less per student and had somewhat pedestrian facilities, but the learning environment was much better and there were hardly ever fights.
I mostly agree with you on charters, but it's important to admit that the public schools were in pretty terrible shape even before the charters. And statistically, the charters aren't really any worse - or better. At some point you have to go after the underlying poverty. I'm not sure how to do that, but I think we all need to step away from 60 years of Democrat and Republican cliche positions on the matter.
The one that says "constant dollars".
You can't blame this on overall funding levels - the US spends more than just about any other nation on public education. Funding is uneven, however.
We have very serious structural problems with our education system that more money will not solve.
I agree with you - the vast majority of teachers are very good and almost all work very hard. But just like any occupation, you have a few outliers. My beef with the public school system is that these outliers are protected as if they are just as valuable as the others. The teachers unions would earn a lot more respect from me if they thinned the herd a bit.
In my district, the charter schools directly take the money for a student that would have gone to the public school. It's public money, not private money. You may or may not be right about the ambitions of the people who created charters, but they are definitely not private schools.
Anyone who is a parent with a kid in public education can see that there are flaws. The whole system is setup to reward CYA behavior. Don't get me wrong, the vast majority of educators are well meaning and pretty hard-working. But the system itself thwarts them. There is no reward for going above and beyond. There is no reward for reaching out to parents - quite the opposite, since this will make more work for you and increase your risks with absolutely no benefit to your own situation. Problem kids are kept in the system. The system is set up to assume that budgets will always increase - even a mild decrease results in mass hysteria. Construction is shoddy government lowest bidder crap, and maintenance is nonexistent.
I have my kids in public school to expose them to a diversity of classes and cultures... I feel that being able to relate to people not entirely like oneself is an important life skill. But there is definitely an allure to private schools, where the vast majority of the students are there to learn, most of the parents care enough to spend inordinate amounts of money on education, and the entire system is geared towards keeping your business and keeping those Ivy League acceptance rates up instead of ass-covering.
That doesn't sound very falsifiable.
Until he invents farming robots to do the manual labor, it is less efficient in terms of human capital. The product is also more expensive.
Sounds efficient.
If you are into that sort of thing, you could just try the bar scene.
spontaneously healed and to rise from the dead!
This indeed seems to have a serious effect on math. The last time the dead rose we somehow wound up with a Trinity.
Yeah, I hate it when people respond to a pedant.