Kay recently posted on Republican whining that our president thinks governing is actually something worth doing. I agree both with her disdain for the president’s (and, in my view) our polity’s opponents, and her argument that in fact it is important to try to solve problems before they become crises.
That’s especially true in the case of No Child Left Behind, which threatens real disruption when the day of reckoning comes (soon, in 2014) — with the heaviest impact falling, of course, on those least able to bear it.
But it is important to remember as well that Obama is no knight sans peur and sans reproche in the school reform fight.
I’m no kind of expert here, but what has consistently driven me crazy every time I’ve dipped a toe into the literature on education reform is the near-total absence of any actual reason to believe anything so called reformers say.
So without further ado, I’ll turn the critique over to Diane Ravitch, a stalwart in chronicling and condemning the Overlords’ attempt to remake American education to some abstract vision. In her latest, a damning review of Stephen Brill’s panagyric to the grand alliance of Wall St. viceroys and Silicon Valley technophiles, she offers this summary of the Obama administration’s approach to the reform of reform:
The Obama administration has offered to grant waivers from the onerous sanctions of NCLB, but only to states willing to adopt its preferred remedies: privately managed charter schools, evaluations of teachers on the basis of their students’ test scores, acceptance of a recently developed set of national standards in reading and mathematics, and agreement to fire the staff and close the schools that have persistently low scores. None of the Obama administration’s favored reforms—remarkably similar to those of the Bush administration—is supported by experience or evidence.
Most research studies agree that charter schools are, on average, no more successful than regular public schools; that evaluating teachers on the basis of their students’ test scores is fraught with inaccuracy and promotes narrowing of the curriculum to only the subjects tested, encouraging some districts to drop the arts or other nontested subjects; and that the strategy of closing schools disrupts communities without necessarily producing better schools. In addition, the “Common Core State Standards” in reading and mathematics that states must adopt if they hope to receive a waiver from the US Department of Education have never been subjected to field-testing.
I am pretty close to an O-bot, I guess, and I do think that we have in President Obama one of the most sneakily effective drivers of real policy change to be seen around these parts for a long time. And again, I’m nothing like an education reporter.
But my background as a science writer makes me very suspicious. The Obama waiver seems better than the alternative of the NCLB guillotine — Obama at his worst is a meliorist, a believer in the possibility of progress through human endeavor. But the weakness of the empirical justification for what is on offer sticks in my craw…and it reminds me that even with the best of our friends, being on the right side of the angels most of the time still means that some moments are spent on the far side of that line. Which bears noticing, and an attempt to repair.
Oh — and this all gives me a very sketchy excuse to post a wonderful video turned up by my Swiss science writing colleague Reto Schneider. The video documents what purports to be a lecture on “Mathematical Game Theory as Applied to Physician Education.” It is…well see for yourself, and think Sokal before Sokal:
<div align=”center”>
<iframe width=”420″ height=”315″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/RcxW6nrWwtc” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
See how great all that science-y stuff is for education and all?
For the details on the hoax (and the astonishing fact that even after being told the whole thing was a fake, some members in the audience persisted in seriously-intended questions!), check out what Reto has to say at the link above.
Image: Antonio de Pereda, The Knight’s Dream, 1655
kay
Absolutely, Tom. I agree.
If Obama and Duncan are well-intentioned, then I think they’re being naive, as far as vouchers, charters and the for-profit companies that manage charters.
I don’t know how they regulate this at the federal level. Every grifter, crook, consultant and lawyer is going to be getting money intended for students. It’s already happening in Ohio.
Testing is itself a for-profit business.
Thanks for following up.
jron
kay’s correct. Charter schools were an interesting idea for gaining some local control whose time has passed.
They have become little more than yet another vehicle for siphoning money from the public, and could soon be on par with private prisons and military contracting for their success at it, if not for the fact that local citizens just might, possibly, pay more attention to what they are doing.
Mark S.
re: Dr. Fox lecture
That reminds me of a joke. A physicist who gives the same lecture all the time gets sick of it so he asks his driver, who has sat though the lecture a bunch of times, if he would be willing to give it while the physicist pretends to be the driver. The driver says ok, and has no problem reciting the lecture he’s heard a billion times.
Then comes the Q and A part. The first two questions are common enough that the driver is able to fake it pretty well, but then some nerdy guy stands up and asks a really hard question. So the driver answers, “That’s such a stupid question I’m going to let my driver answer it.”
soonergrunt
Queue the anti-Obama firebagger whinging (I love that word) about how this is TWO YEARS TOO LATE, ZOMG! OBAMA IS WORSE THAN BUSH! GO NADER! in 5…4…3…2…
kay
@jron:
That is key.
Obama and Duncan need to explain to me how they’re going to regulate that.
If they’re going to deregulate at the federal funding level, and leave actual regulation to the states, how am I protected?
How does taking 15% off the top and handing it to private management entities benefit me, and where’s the transparency/accountability on that? I’d rather pay a superintendent who lives in my school district, is accountable to an elected school board, and doesn’t have a profit motive.
I do think Congress cannot whine that the President acts unilaterally if they will not act, however. Congress wouldn’t act, Obama moved. They have to do the job.
Mino
Grifters gotta grift.
Rather reminds me of the for profit prisons. Lobby the policy around the desired outcome—-profit.
Neither industry has the original purpose of the institutions in mind.
Mino
@jron: We think alike, I see. I just type more slowly.
John X.
Charter schools are big business, and Obama is in the donations game. We’ll all pretend to be shocked and appalled when it doesn’t work out, but the checks will already have been cashed.
Mark S.
I still marvel at how utterly idiotic this is. Did anyone read the fucking bill before it was passed? Did anyone really thing such a goal was even remotely attainable?
Samara Morgan
Sneakily is the operative word.
the Overlords are farming PROFIT on education. But RttT is a headfake to give schools more control is all. How do you fight “freed” market theory in America? It doesnt fucking work and no one will admit it–its a pervasive universal american mythology.
Obama’s real goal– to kill the myth that everyone needs a 4year college degree.
His early graduation program is fantastic…its in trial in eight states.
Kids can choose to graduate a year early and attend a trade school– which means they will be earners in the job market 3 years ahead of the college prep droids. The Obama administration is making excess jr. colleges into cool cutting edge vo-tech academies. And addressing the cost of a crippling college mortgage. College costs will go down when not every one goes–supply and demand.
its awesome.
Anya
How did Ted Kennedy get suckered into supporting the monstrosity that is the No Child Left Behind?
kay
@jron:
I think well-intentioned reformers should have anticipated charters were going to have be actually run by private for-profit management companies, with all the potential for abuse and corruption that comes with that.
They have to sue to get discovery and transparency in Ohio. How did that happen? Why isn’t there a better mechanism, built in, for transparency and accountability? We’re supposed to rely on a lawsuit?
Samara Morgan
@Mark S.: NCLB mandates that all american children will be “proficient”, ie above average. the only way to accomplish that is to teach the test. thus America’s 25th in science and 30th in math global rank– the rest of the world does not take Americas test.
Tom Levenson
@Samara Morgan:
There is no way to achieve that south of Lake Woebegon under any circumstances.
SiubhanDuinne
This is for you, Tom:
Bartender says, “Get out of here. We don’t serve faster-than-light subatomic particles in this place.”
A neutrino walks into a bar.
Ohio Mom
If history is any guide, pretty soon someone is going to post a comments about how in their state, charters don’t work like that (and the rules do vary by state) and /or how a particular charter saved their kid. Okay. Great.
Just know, whoever you are who is going to post that comment(s), that your charter is the decoy. In every state, there are a couple of fantastic charters to distract us from the real purpose of charters, which is to dismantle as much of the public school set-up as possible.
I know that may sound paranoid. But it is very parallel to the anti-abortion cause. It sounds paranoid that they don’t want women to enjoy sex but when you parse it all out, that’s the only answer that fits what is going on. And when you parse out every part of the charter effort, dismantling public schools is the only answer that fits what is going on.
Ohio Mom
@Anya: What I remember reading is that he thought NCLB could and would be tweaked to allow more federal dollars to get to the schools. But boy, it was a bad move.
Gilles de Rais
Teachers are not real happy with Obama right now. The only thing that is keeping them on his side is the (very correct) impression that the alternatives are so much worse.
Redshift
@Mark S.:
Republicans want to discredit public schools, so having a system that labels ever-increasing numbers of them as “failing” is a feature, not a bug. I don’t know what the Democrats’ excuse is.
Leaving aside the ones who are just looking for an excuse to destroy it, I have a theory about why even among well-intentioned congresspersons seem to constantly believe that public education has gotten much worse and needs fixing. I think there are some honestly well-intentioned officials who grew up in districts with good schools (since the vast majority come out of that background) and never saw evidence of “how the other half lives” until they got into office. Since they never knew of such things when they were in school, they must be a new development, and the schools must have undergone a shocking decline.
It’s sad that we have all these complex “reform” efforts, when most of what’s wrong with American schools (which is what’s always been wrong with them) could be fixed by making funding equitable, rather than coming from the wealth or poverty of each school district, and trying to compensate for the fact that people working three jobs have little time to support their children’s education at home.
socratic_me
First, a note. Every child being proficient does not mean every child being above average. The tests are standards based, so students aren’t evaluated against other students.
Having taught in three different states, my understanding is that the day of reckoning is already here for pretty much everyone. States were left to determine their own route to success, so most states set up systems where proficiency rates had to increase a couple of points a year before spiking to 7% and 9% jumps in the last few years before 2014. No one is making AYP anywhere anymore.
Lastly, I am not sure that the solution offered by Obama really is any better. Ravitch points out how it is unproven. I will just note that evaluating teachers based on measures which they do not directly control is likely actively harmful to the profession. The people who need to produce for teachers to be evaluated positively based on test scores are not the teachers themselves. This mismatch of responsibility and incentives/consequences creates an environment that is, at best, highly stressful and unfair. At worst, it drives people to mass fraud and cheating epidemics, which will of course only go to show how rotten our schools are, setting off another round of reforms that damage or destroy our school system.
Redshift
@SiubhanDuinne: Excellent!
Gilles de Rais
@kay: Our local elementary district got a taste of this in 2009. They turned over one of the local schools to a charter. The guy then promptly fired everyone, dragged his entire family on to the payroll at a quarter-million dollars each, and sat there until the district promised to not go after him for the money in exchange for him turning the campus back over to them.
Beats working.
Tomjones
I don’t think it is that common for charter schools to be managed by for-profit companies. Does someone have a link that says otherwise?
soonergrunt
@SiubhanDuinne: hahahahaha!
Tomjones
@Gilles de Rais: I think what you meant to say is that the teachers’ Unions are not real happy with Obama.
We should keep in mind that the teachers’ Unions are not a monolithic force for good. They support a lot of dumb things, like ‘first in first out,’ regardless of a teacher’s merit.
Tomjones
@kay:
The accountability is that students won’t enroll in a charter school that sucks.
It looks like only Wisconsin, California, Michigan, and Arizona allow for-profit corporations to manage charter schools.
I have a very close friend who has worked for one of the poorest public schools in L.A. (well, and he also worked for Beverly Hills High, but that’s neither here nor there), and who now works for a charter in L.A. serving the same constituency.
His new school is managed by a non-profit and, he claims, they have a graduation rate that exceeds that of some of the wealthiest public schools.
Yutsano
Quick edit: panegyric. I spell it wrong all the time too so I’m good at recognizing my own bugaboos.
Good debate going otherwise.
Tomjones
@Tomjones: Of course that should have been ‘last in, first out.’ doh.
deep cap
That blog is pretty amazing and you all should read it. (Especially the last paragraph:
)
Tomjones
@Ohio Mom: You’re right. That does sound paranoid.
socratic_me
@Tomjones: The distinction between teachers and their unions is a BS tactic used to distinguish “hard working educators” from evil unions- one that has worked, I might add. The union is a democratic institution. Though their are inevitably some members who disagree with some specific proposals, it does, by and large, represent the views of its members. An by and large one thing teachers support is LILO, even in the face of reformers claiming it is bad for innovative young teachers. This is largely due to the fact that innovative young teachers aren’t idiots and realize that likely the first head on the chopping block without tenure protection and the like is the pain-in-the-neck who thinks she is so smart and won’t leave well enough alone, not the new teacher who is cheap and easy to fire/replace.
lacp
It’s not just for-profit charters. Here in Philly we have a wee bit of scandal involving a nonprofit charter operator that is also a serious political donor.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20110927_Annette_John-Hall__Getting_the_King_charter_story_right.html?cmpid=125459048
Gilles de Rais
@Tomjones: No. What I said is precisely what I meant.
Tomjones
@Gilles de Rais: Do you have any evidence to support that assertion?
Gilles de Rais
@socratic_me: Nailed that in one.
Ohio Mom
A couple of years ago my husband was on-line, checking on what passes for our retirement savings and there was a box with Today’s Investing Tip, and he clicked it. It was all about how for profit colleges were at that time, THE most profitable sector. It was an Ah-ha moment for me.
If a measley two to four years of schooling that not everyone participates in could be so profitable, how much more so could the thirteen years of K-12, where everyone must participate, be. And that’s when the idea that the charter movement is but one part of the grand effort to dismantle public schooling no longer seemed the least bit outlandish to me.
Freddie deBoer
This has, indeed, been my constant critique of the school reform movement.
Gilles de Rais
@Tomjones: Just the spouse of a teacher for the last 19 years. I go to all the parties and all that. What would she know about it? What would I?
Tomjones
@socratic_me: Only 40% of educators are in a Union or represented by a Union.
So I would say the distinction is a pretty important one for that 60%.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.t03.htm#union_a03.f.2
Tomjones
@Gilles de Rais: My boss and a couple attorneys in the office think Obama is a $ocialist. Therefore, most lawyers think Obama is a $ocialist.
Ohio Mom
@Tomjones: I had a comment that apparently disappeared, that said Wikepedia is wrong on this, in northern Ohio (Kay’s neck of the state), for profit charters have been permitted for a long time. One of the big players is White Hat Management and they are a case study in graft.
aimai
@Tomjones:
You must be joking.
aimai
Keith G
@soonergrunt:
Wow dude, hasn’t happened yet. For all issues you might have with those other folks, it is you stirring it up. Of course, you are not alone in this behavior.
You could wait for them to hit ‘Submit’ and then address the merits of their statements.
Pliny
Fuck yeah, just what we need, public funding of private for-profit corporations, with little to no oversight. It’s worked out so well with military contractors, pharmaceutical companies, bank bailouts…
If you guys haven’t read the Shock Doctrine you probably should, because regardless of who wins the next election, these neoliberal economic policies will continue.
Pliny
Also, it’s only tangentially related but I was reminded of this awesome IOZ post:
Ash Can
I’ll freely admit that this is an area in which Obama has disappointed me. I wish he were more aggressive in his support of public education. And I think a lot of this is a result of choosing Arne Duncan as his sec. of ed. AFAIK, Duncan didn’t actively do any harm to the Chicago Public School system while he was here, but he didn’t distinguish himself either. What Obama should have is an Elizabeth Warren of education heading up his DoE, instead of a mediocre, run-of-the-mill political operative.
BGinCHI
This is just too fucking depressing.
I’ll tell you what is happening at the University level.
We’re teaching students what they should have learned in high school or before. But that’s the same as it’s been for the 20 years I’ve been doing this (including grad school). The biggest problem with education right now is that teachers are being squeezed out of the equation: testing and the administrative bureaucracy, along with a culture that increasingly is less interested in difficult thinking, makes it more and more difficult for teachers to do their daily work.
And so what you have is less creativity and imagination undergirded by skills.
kay
@Tomjones:
I don’t know what you’re reading, but that’s nonsense. Ohio and Florida both have for-profits managing charter schools. The for-profit distinction isn’t even a hard and fast one, because non-profit managers of charters may outsource certain responsibilities to for-profits.
This is not obscure information. Gail Collins wrote about it in her column. It’s not like you’d have to read position papers or educational theory to be aware of it.
I’m not even arguing against charters, as a substantive matter. I’m simply asking the first question, which is how are they going to be regulated, and school reform advocates can’t even answer that.
This is public money. There has to be a serious answer to that question. Concerns can’t simply be brushed off as reflexively anti-reform.
burnspbesq
@jron:
Sorry, but you need to spend more time with the parents of charter-school students before you start pontificating. My son is in his sixth year at a charter school that works spectacularly (Orange County High School of the Arts). There are hundreds, if not thousands, of such successes.
Your small piece of lunacy neatly points out the biggest problem with the education debates: there is no body of reliable empirical evidence to support any position, and there probably never will be, because it is inherently impossible to measure the things that really matter and far too easy to measure the things that don’t. I sympathize with Tom’s frustration, but it’s Chinatown, Jake.
kay
@Tomjones:
Propublica, hardly an obscure or biased source:
Here’s my question: why do I have to wait for a lawsuit, and the discovery process, to find out where White Hat spent my money?
They refuse to account for the money, Tom. My local superintendent can’t refuse to account for money, or they’ll walk him out of there in handcuffs.
burnspbesq
@Ohio Mom:
You know nothing. I know OCHSA probably saved my kid’s life. Just imagine being a gay teen planning a career in dance, at a typical suburban public high school. Having a nurturing and supportive environment has meant everything to my kid. So please, take your sanctimony somewhere else.
Bex
@Mark S.:
They really should have named NCLB the Why Can’t We All Be Like Lake Wobegon program. It would have been more accurate.
kay
@Tomjones:
I’m not suing the for-profit manager of the charter. The parents and others who started the school are. Charter proponents are suing the management company. They just won a discovery motion, which is the one and only way they could see the books.
How did that happen? How did the management company receive all that public funding without any mechanism in place for transparency and accountability for public funds? Why did we have to go to court?
I would just suggest that charter school proponents have to answer these very basic questions before expanding this. This is no longer theoretical.
gene108
@Gilles de Rais:
Teacher’s aren’t really happy with politicians at any level, at this point in time.
They rightly feel the politicians are trying to “reform” their jobs, without having a clue about what works and what doesn’t work.
Obama’s as bad as anyone else, in this regard.
The problem with America’s public schools are two fold.
The first problem is most of America’s public schools are just fine, as that international test that came out showing Finland as #1 pointed out. It’s when you start getting into poorer school districts that you run into real problems with educating kids, which I think would be relatively universal across the world. The problems that accompany poverty work against getting a good education.
The second problem facing American schools is all the stinking second, third, fourth and to the Nth degree chances we give people to keep getting educated.
If you drop out of high school, you can get a GED and then go to community college and then to a four year college. Bill Cosby’s a drop out, who got a PhD. The pressure for our kids to do well isn’t the same as in other countries, where if you don’t get into college at 18, you are SOL for getting a secondary education.
These two factors really work against the rush to improve education. (1) Most of our schools don’t need serious improvement and (2) even if a kid doesn’t do well, he can always make it up later in life, so we aren’t under the same sort of do or die pressure that other kids are under.
I really get tired of “adults” saying how kids today are so much worse than they were. As someone, who got 95% of his education in the 1980’s and later, I really get tired hearing how bad our schools are. I grew up with it and I don’t see why a new generation has to grow up with it.
I bet if you polled people about their thoughts on the schools they attended or their kids attend, most people are satisfied with the those schools.
I don’t get how we go from contentment about schools at the personal level to a national discourse that focuses on how our schools are failing. There’s something really strange going on that’s being overlooked.
Elliecat
@kay:
This is truly the point. All we hear about is the need for “accountability” in public education but somehow that concept disappears in discussion of charter schools. I really don’t understand how we are supposed to believe that charters are doing a better job when there is this lack of accountability and data.
Ash Can
@burnspbesq: I wouldn’t call corruption in the charter schools’ administration something that doesn’t matter. The fact remains that there are charter schools that are insufficiently regulated, and that divert funds from their states’/communities’ public school systems. It boils down to this: Too many people are focused on going off the grid, when the proper response is to repair the grid rather than abandon it.
slag
@kay:
Combine that situation with tort reform and you have a libertarian’s wet dream. Zero transparency or accountability.
kay
@Elliecat:
I didn’t even get this far: “are they doing a better job?”
In Ohio, I can’t even account for the funds they spend. In my public school district, I can follow each and every school dollar (if I want to). If I can’t, if the “management” (public employees) don’t comply with reporting requirements, I can go to the elected school board, and if they don’t account for funds or force the public managers to comply, we’d go, I suppose, to the prosecutor.
I wouldn’t have to wait for discovery in a lawsuit to account for public funds. That’s insane. WTF? It’s public money.
Bex
@burnspbesq:
Or the money that the charter company is siphoning off the top of public education could have been put to use creating the same environment on a public school campus, if “school reform” hadn’t forced the schools to focus exclusively on test scores to the detriment of everything else.
Charter schools also have an advantage that truly public schools don’t — they can pick and choose which students they educate. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone paying attention that a school that can choose to only take the 1) grade-level or better students with 2) active, involved parents and 3) no learning disabilities or anything else requiring special accommodation or extra resources, and then 4) give the boot to any students with behavior issues, will appear to have better outcomes than a school that’s required by law to educate every student who comes along, no matter how ill-prepared, unable, or disruptive to everyone else.
Hoodie
@Ash Can: @burnspbesq: My boys go to a great charter, and I know there are other good ones. I think they could play a role in experimenting with new techniques and learning environments. However, I can see how they are vulnerable to abuse and could be used by private interests to undermine public education, siphoning off public revenue to private pockets. You can see that happening in NC, which used to cap the total charters statewide, but the new Republican state house has lifted the cap (instead of something more reasonable, like simply bumping it up notch for population growth). For charters to be successful, they should remain relatively few in number and constantly monitored for success.
Elliecat
@gene108:
I’m still trying to find it but I read a great book about ten years ago about how all this “public education is so bad” is a myth. The authors had quotes going back over 100 years about how public education was going downhill.
This is one of those things people accept without thought or question (like “taxes are bad!”). The authors also found data showing that the majority of people surveyed who said that public schools were in terrible shape were happy with the performance of their own children’s public school.
ETA: they also found a correlation between education becoming more accessible to new demographics and fresh cries that public education was getting worse. Making sure poor kids and special needs kids had equal access to public education really ramped up the “concern.”
kay
@Hoodie:
I think there’s another, broader question.
At what point do charters cease to be “public schools” and simply become publicly-funded private schools?
Because if the one and only distinction between “public” charter schools and private schools is that “public charters” are publicly funded, that’s a problem.
For goodness sakes. Even private schools are non-profit. We crossed a fairly profound line when we allowed for-profits in. Shouldn’t that have been very carefully considered? Going to for-profit in k-12 education? What is “public” about this, other than the funding?
Tom Levenson
@burnspbesq: The issue (or rather an issue) as I see it is not whether or not a charter school can work — clearly some can, brilliantly.
It’s whether the system is set up with perverse incentives. And that is clearly the case in a great many circumstances. The Washington DC test scandal (one of a number) shows what happens when you put specific employment consequences onto one, easily gamed instrument.
Charter schools milked for profit — happens all the time. Charter schools that show the same or worse distribution of success and failure to the public schools — again, this has been documented a lot.
When charter schools succeed that’s great, and their success should be an object of study. But when there are systemic problems built into the enabling legislation, and when there is real institutional weakness in the oversight, then you have a big problem. Which is what we do here.
kay
@Gilles de Rais:
There is a manager in Ohio (he’s a private CPA) who has been sanctioned since 2003 for not reporting. He’s skated through and around three separate state auditors, all Republicans. The last auditor who sent him some sternly-worded letters is now the Lt. Governor, and her issue number one is deregulating schools.
I think we have a problem.
kay
@Gilles de Rais:
Here’s where you can read about Mr. Shye, who is the treasurer, yet is permitted to write checks to himself.
This has been going on since 2003.
burnspbesq
@bex:
Sorry, but no. OCHSA is run by a very well-funded non-profit foundation (it’s the pet charity of one of the founders of Broadcom). It files 990s just like any other tax-exempt. They’re publicly available, so you can look for yourself and see the total absence of any administrators being paid way above market.
Triassic Sands
@Elliecat:
This is similar to voters having a low opinion of Congress, but relatively high regard for their own elected representatives.
The chances are neither their schools nor their elected representatives are anywhere near as good as they think.
Remember, the House, for example, is filled with people who regularly win elections with 55%-70% of the vote and make up a body with an approval rating in the low teens. And in most cases, I think if you asked voters, you wouldn’t find that they voted for their representative as the “lesser evil.” Eric Cantor’s constituents probably like the guy. One of history’s worst elected officials ever (from the standpoint of governing) has, in his six House elections, won 67%, 69%, 74% (no Democratic opponent), 63%, and 59%. If there is any good news in there, it’s that 2010 was his lowest percentage ever, but it was still an easy victory.
Ohio Mom
@burnspbesq: I don’t doubt your kid went to a great charter. I said in my first comment there are fantastic charters.
But here’s the rub: my family purposely lives in a suburban district because we have a special needs kid. Our district has deep pockets, if my kid needs something, they can afford to give it to him. It’s making a huge difference in his development and habilitation.
Do I think it’s fair, or good public policy, that there is so much difference between our school district and the Big City district a couple of miles away? No, no, no, a thousand times no. The first time I realized I both abhored and deeply needed inequitable school funding (and it goes without saying that this inequity is utlimately based on white people wanting to keep their kids away from minority children), I got dizzy. Cognitive dissonance is an unpleasant sensation.
That’s all. Just say, I’m lucky I found a loophole for my kid, I found a decoy charter that was just what he needed. You don’t have to refuse to see the nefarious intent behind the charter movement in order to benefit from it. I ruefully admit my kid is the beneficiary of racism. We don’t make the rules, we only complain about them and try to take advantage of them when we can because our kids are only kids once.
Bex
@burnspbesq
I’m not sure what you’re responding to, here: in CA, the monies that fund charters are skimmed off the top of public school funding regardless of administrator salaries. It doesn’t matter how aboveboard and upright your charter is, its very existence drains funds from public schools. And the fact remains that that money is, by and large, being spent on the kids who are already advantaged. If parents and voters had spent the last decade fighting as hard against the state’s habit of treating education as a bottomless piggybank as they did for vouchers and charters, California might still have a world-class school system for all its students.
Hoodie
@kay:
That’s a valid point, something that my kids’ charter principal (who was a public teacher/admin) struggles with. Charter slots are allocated here by lottery, but you have to put your name in the lottery. A lot of parents of kids that might benefit from a particular charter often don’t apply, probably because they’re not involved or not aware of the opportunity. That means, as you say, that the school can end up being kind of like a private school, i.e., it ends up full of self-selected kids. It also means, however, that the charters sometimes do not have access to alternative funding sources (e.g., grants) because of a lack of diversity. I imagine you could fix a lot of that with better enrollment strategies. I think charters do have that potential advantage over private non-profits, because at least the funding is public and the enrollment standards can be tailored to meet public goals.
kay
@burnspbesq:
This isn’t how charters were sold. They were sold as parent-directed, locally-run public schools. Were the people paying the freight told they’d be relying on a “pet charity” or a “well-funded” non-profit to manage (their) public money, and if they had questions on where that money went that they’d be directed to go find the 990?
That’s a far cry from the parents meeting and running the neighborhood school. To whom do I direct my (ordinary parent or taxpayer) inquiry? Broadcom?
Ohio Mom
I’ve made this comment before on other charter threads but I’ll say it again. Public school systems are a form of local government, described in the state consitution.
They have jurisdiction over a described geographical area (aka the district), just like a city or town has a described geographical area; they have a governing board that is democratically elected by the citizens of that geographical area, just like a city or town has a council; they are required to have open meetings and records (with the exception of records about individual students, which is to protect the students’ privacy), just like any other branch of government. If you don’t like what your school board is doing, you can speak at a meeting, campaign for someone you think will better represent your concerns, or even run for school board yourself.
None of these things are true of charters in their current form. In their current form, they are meant to replace a level of democratic government with a private entity.
Ohio Mom
I was amused to see Broadcom was the angel behind the OCHSA school. That’s Eli Broad’s foundation and if you’ve read Diane Ravitch’s book, you know he is a major player in the school *deform* movement. He has every reason to make that school a showplace.
kay
@Hoodie:
This link is about Stand For Children, which is a (supposedly) progressive school reform political operation.
It’s about video of the founder and public face of the organization, speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival.
This is a progressive, well-intentioned former board member, and why she quit:
I think lots and lots of school reformers are well-intentioned, but the thing is being hijacked, and they seem powerless to fight it, or even acknowledge that it’s happening.
kay
@Hoodie:
I’m not beating up on you, and I’m glad you love your kid’s charter, but, honestly, when charters were first proposed, did anyone envision that the biggest players/board members were going to be these corporate chiefs handing out campaign donations?
How is that “local” or “public”? I actually know my school board members (slightly, well, one of them quite well). I can vote them out. I can attend a local school board meeting that is covered under Ohio’s (strict) sunshine laws. Anyone can.
kay
@Ohio Mom:
We now have a school reform revolving door. I can’t imagine what Rupert Murdoch’s “education technology business” might be about, but I love that the former school chancellor and reformer is now on the payroll.
Newscorp in every classroom! What could go wrong?
Ohio Mom
Kay, it looks like Murdoch’s ed business is mostly about crunching student assessment numbers (i.e. standadized test scores):
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/09/rupert-murdoch-news-corp-wireless-generation-education
Of course, any good teacher can figure out on her own what a kid knows or doesn’t know (yet) and what skills a kid has or doesn’t have (yet), but there’s no money in that. From the above-linked article: “Murdoch has made it very clear that he views America’s public schools as a potential gold mine.”
And maybe that’s the most accurate way to think about this whole movement, it’s a gold rush.
Samara Morgan
@Tom Levenson: yet that is the text of the law.
All children shall be “proficient”. Proficient means above average.
Bush was at least a consistant WEC retard.
Its hard to believe that ALL his staff was also, but 10 years of unquestioned NCLB is incredible.
I think it is symptomatic of the anti-intellectualism of white christian (protestant) america. 78% of Americans do not believe in ToE, far more than other industrialized nation..
Why is that, do you think?.
kay
@Ohio Mom:
You know much more about this than I do, I only got to the for-profit part as a result of thinking about why they were attacking public school teachers, and gutting collective bargaining, so I came to it that way. Late, and half-assed.
But. Remember this? Bush’s love affair with for-profit scam “educators”, beginning in the fucking cradle?
Babies “learn much more rapidly from real life”. How sad is that? That she duped all those people into buying a video rather than providing “real life”?
Samara Morgan
@Freddie deBoer:
well, no. not constant. for example you suggested here that teachers unions might be the magic secret ingredient to make charter schools “work”.
WTF?
you are such a liar.
Omnes Omnibus
@ Samara/m_c: Proficient can also mean competent. Also, to get your 78%, aren’t you including people who believe that some supreme being started the process? Intellectual honesty helps.
Ohio Mom
@kay: I’m not sure why I became so interested in this topic, other than a low-level panic about whether or not my kid will be able to finish his schooling successfully before our school system is seriously weakened. But after a while, it’s very easy to see the many connecting threads.
My top two go-to sources are:
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/, though I’ll add the caveat that the proprietor of this blog is somewhat past shrill and you have to take that into account, and
Diane Ravitch’s book, which was written for a general audience and very readable (if you only read one chapter, pick the one on the Billionaire Boys)
For Ohio news, Plunderbund.com has a few new posts on the proposed new voucher program for any family with an income of $95,000 (!) or less. Here’s the er, money quote from the post titled “93% of Ohio’s voucher-accepting schools are religious”: “But as we’ll talk about very soon, this bill could also open the door for the creation of new, poorly performing, unsupervised and poorly-regulated private schools throughout Ohio that will drain even more valuable resources away from Ohio’s public schools.”
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: im quoting pew.
its not my 78%.
i think its shameful actually….embarrassing.
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: proficient > competent.
competent == average.
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: I bet then that PEW is doing the conflating. I have seen 40-45% as Intelligent Design/Creationist types. I think that is fucking embarrassing. Unfortunately, I can’t find a link right now.
@Samara Morgan: A definition. NCLB is a stupid, verging on asinine, law, but it does not mandate above-averageness for all.
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: Here is a Gallup poll from less than a year ago. Note that 16% believe in evolution without any involvement by God at all. 40% are creationists and 38% believe in evolution with some involvement by God. Yeah, the percentages don’t add up.
Jebediah
Regarding the Michael Fox video – the real relevance is that it proves global warming is a big fat hoax. After all, some eggheaded academic types got fooled once, so obviously AGW is lie-brul crap.
It also proves that Micheal Fox is made of neutrinos, since he was visibly older in 1970 than he was later when he did “Family Ties” and the Back to the Future movies. And, of course, he would have to be made of neutrinos to do all that time travelling – since Christopher Lloyd is made of normal particles, he couldn’t do it himself.