A reader from Oregon explains the destructive consequences of choice. School choice has been a goal of the right for decades and is now embraced by the Obama administration:
“For US education to thrive, charters must go.
“Some Win, Some Lose with Open Enrollment”. The headline in the Eugene, Oregon Register-Guard may seem like an occasion for joy to the winning school districts but, really, it is just terribly sad for all of us. Open enrollment across district lines is the latest and most extreme version of a school choice movement that is on a trajectory to split public education in two – one set of schools for the haves and the other for those left behind.
School choice is probably the most popular of the signature elements of the current school reform movement – and is there any reason why alternative and charter schools shouldn’t be popular? They house some of the best teachers and some of the most innovative programs; they have more opportunities for enrichment because they are exempt from many of the requirements faced by regular schools; and the parents are more involved and more able to donate time and money – the last not because they care more about their kids. Rather it is because the parents need to be able to provide transportation and often are required to agree to levels of involvement not possible for families without a car and a stay-at-home parent.
The result: one set of schools with wealthier, less diverse students and fewer kids with special needs; the other serving children more diverse in ethnicity, income and educational needs (with fewer resources and more requirements). Public education was supposed to be the great equalizer, an inclusive, welcoming place that gives all kids a chance to climb the ladder of success. But current trends create a de facto tracking system based on socioeconomic status.
Of course we’ve always had school choice. Through the 1960s the choice was public or private. Over the last few decades, however, public school districts created alternative and charter schools and encouraged them to draw their students from the surrounding neighborhood schools. In a Darwinian battle the schools would compete for students with the best schools thriving and good riddance to the losers. It is really hard to believe that school “reformers” didn’t foresee the result: the non-charters left with the most needy kids, fewer resources and, inevitably, failure.
The fact that public alternatives and charters have many good teachers and leaders and involved parents is, itself, the strongest argument against public charters and alternatives. Those are the very resources needed by neighborhood schools to make them what they need to be. And it isn’t even a zero-sum game – it’s negative-sum. Services are duplicated and shifting enrollments make long-range planning impossible.
The parents of students who choose schools outside their neighborhoods are not the problem – good parents will always look for the best available school for their children. The teachers and administrators in those schools are not the problem – many of them are among the best. The problem is the system that sends parents school shopping in the first place.
It is a system that takes advantage of the parental instinct to provide our children with the best possible education. You don’t have to be a public school hater to participate; school shopping has become a mark of good parenting for parents of all persuasions. “I can’t send my daughter to the neighborhood school,” said one mom recently. “Those parents aren’t involved.” And, sadly, what used to be a myth is creating a reality as parents like her opt out of their neighborhood schools.
If, as I suggest, we are to end most school choice, it is important to be sure that we are sending our kids to excellent neighborhood schools. To be honest, part of the reason parents have been so willing to drive their kids across town (or now to a different town) is that some neighborhood schools had become rigid, take-it-or-leave-it, hostile-to-change institutions. Parents with concerns or questions were considered pests. Though they can’t be all things to all people, our neighborhood schools need to be what many already are; nimble, responsive, welcoming neighborhood centers providing an outstanding education to all kids.
The successful innovations that charter and alternative schools have devised wouldn’t be wasted. They – including language immersion – can and should be applied in the neighborhood schools. And charters and alternatives that step up to meet the needs of high school students when regular high schools are unable to do so should be allowed to keep working with, rather than competing against, the mainstream schools.
It is a cliché that if you are attacked from both sides of an issue, you are probably correct. But school “reform” seems to call for a corollary: if there is agreement on an issue from both sides of the aisle, it must be wrong. It is truly mind-boggling that free-market educational policies – so obviously counterproductive, ineffective and unsustainable – are supported by both Democrats and Republicans. The deck may be stacked against us but if we are truly committed to equity, diversity and efficiency in our public schools we’ll need keep working to convince officials, parents and educators that it is essential that we stop this suicidal intra- and inter-district competition, phase out school shopping and bring back new and improved versions of the centers of our neighborhoods – our schools.
Jim Watson, Eugene, Oregon
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“…and is there any reason why alternative and charter schools shouldn’t be popular? They house some of the best teachers and some of the most innovative programs…”
I could not read past this. Many public schools house some if the best teachers in the country. Alternative and charter schools boast some of the best students due to the attraction to these schools by those with a strong academic work ethic. If you are a scholar in your area of teaching and your students are academically-minded, you would no doubt be a great mentor. It is the teacher who can reach the most academically poor students and make a difference in their lives who are the “best” teachers.
amen
I agree. I don’t think that charter schools have a monopoly on the great or best teachers. Most charter schools are no better than the real public schools and charter schools have more failures than great successes. In addition, the real public schools have more teachers with years of experience, while charter schools have teacher churn and very few teachers with years of experience. They don’t want teachers with 20 or more years of experience since they are more expensive.
I don’t think the author said that charter schools have a monopoly on great or beset teachers, just that they have “many” good teachers and house “some” of the best teachers and innovative programs. Presumably all the rest of the best teachers and innovative programs reside in the public schools.
No, charter schools don’t have a monopoly on “beset” teachers. I think charter and public schools are equally “beset”.
Sorry, I don’t usually pick on typos (since I make enough of them myself). Just thought this one was quite appropo.
I am going to have to get a real keyboard for this thing.
An added thought to LG . . . . .
It is the teacher who can reach the widest range of student abilities (academically poor to highly capable) and make a difference in their lives who are the “best” teachers.
Thank you for the clear representation of some of the arguments about school choice. You also fairly and accurately represent some of the reasons why many of us are strong advocates for school choice. I do wonder how much of this comes back to our individual philosophies of democratic education. Based upon the closing remarks in the post, it appears that you believe the three primary purposes of public eduction to be the promotion of equity, diversity and efficiency in society. Is that accurate?
How does this compare or contrast to something like Nussbaum’s contributions to the conversation of global human rights, one that focuses upon the individual citizen “as a free and dignified human being”? Should we hone in on what is equitable and efficient for an individual learner or for what is equitable and efficient for the system? Also, does the system exist to serve the state or the individual citizens/learners? How does our response to such questions impact our position on school choice?
You note that choice has existed for a long time, but it appears that limiting school choice reduces choice only to the the more affluent…those who can afford a private alternative, those who can afford the time and resources to home school. As an advocate for choice, I am confused as to how reducing the choices of the less affluent promotes equity, unless you are also proposing that we close all private schools. Is it not possible to increase equitable access to more choices? To reduce choice strikes me as top-down and authoritarian. To increase choice appears to democratize education.
With regard to the best teachers being in charter schools, what is it that draws the best teachers to those schools? To the best of my knowledge, they are not getting paid more. Is it because they are getting the “cream of the crop” students, and they enjoy working with them most? If so, is that really how we define “best teacher”, as one who can effectively teach those who are least in need of their assistance? If it is true that the best teachers gravitate toward charter schools, is it possibly because of the distinctives of the charter schools, and the creativity that it affords them? Perhaps they love the idea of working in a fully project-based or game-based learning school. However, is it really appropriate for a choice-less neighborhood school to essentially mandate that all parents send their kids to a project-based learning school, even when they can’t afford a private alternative and they are convinced that such a school is not best for their child?
I am quite open to correction and conversation about this important topic and the various questions that I surfaced. I am a strong advocate for open and civil discourse on these matters, especially among people with different positions. I very much respect your decision to make this post, and to do it in a way that strives to focus upon the substantial issues at play.
Why assume the “best” teachers are in charter schools? Is there any evidence for this assertion? One thing that most charters share in common is high teacher turnover. Does this generate the “best” teachers?
I don’t know of any evidence to support it. I was going to challenge that assertion in your initial post, but it didn’t seem to be at the heart of the matter. I was just accepting the possibility that it was true based upon your statement in the initial post, “They house some of the best teachers and some of the most innovative programs.”
In fact, I don’t necessarily accept the idea, in most cases, that there are absolute best and worst teachers for all situations. A teacher who thrives in a virtual school or project-based learning school may not be as effective in a traditional self-contained classroom and vice versa. I did an 18 month study of “innovative schools” and my research supported your statement about high teacher turnover. Based upon my interviews and study of the subject, it appeared that much of that turnover was due to non-negotiable school-shaping concepts. If you love the traditional self-contained classroom and find yourself in a project-based learning school, but you don’t like project-based learning, then you will likely not last very long. In addition, you will experience strong peer pressure to get on board or to find a better fit at a different school. You can’t just close the door and do your own thing when there are not even doors or traditional classrooms, when the environment insists upon coaching more than traditional notions of teaching. On the other hand, by having so much choice and variety of school emphases (everything from the standard local school to a variety of schools with distinctive school-shaping concepts), it gives teachers more choice on the types of places to work as well.
Also, I think we need to ask our selves why charter schools have high turnover. The lack of a union presence means little representation and security for the employee. This I believe is one more reason why we need to preserve our public schools. Preservation of public schools is greater than ed reform; it’s also about sustaining a middle class. I hope more people begin to see this. Thank you Diane for creating this space for people to discuss the important issues of our day.
Nussbaum (and Sen) start from a classically liberal viewpoint, while I believe some of the opponent to choice are coming at it from a more Rousseauian direction.
I always find a bit of irony in that. The types of learning environments that I see in Emile are far more likely to be found in the charter schools of today. I realize, however, that this is not the portion of Rousseau that you were referencing.
Given Rousseau’s treatment of his own children, I would hesitate to take his parenting (and teaching) advice seriously.
This is an excellent post, in general. The OP presents many issues quite eloquently.
A point can be made regarding the built-in parental choice of living in a community. We choose the communities in which we live–our schools reflect the representative demographic’s commitment to the community, therefore we already choose our schools after a fashion.
One if the biggest problems of so-called “failing schools” is the lack of parental AND citizen involvement and support. The schools are reflections of their communities, not institutions that are separate from such. One cannot justify the argument that a community is good enough for people to live in but not good enough for the same folks to support their schools and be given the choice to flee to other neighborhoods without living in them. Citizens need to take more responsibility for their own communities beyond simply paying taxes and complaining about the neighborhood.
A community need not be affluent to be successful and its citizens involved. Citizens in many middle class communities work with their public institutions to constantly improve. Some do not. Some citizens in areas scourged by extreme poverty do not work as a citizenry to support the community and some in the poorest communities do. Choice opens up an opportunity to shift responsibility on the part of those citizens who do not support their community no matter what their socio-economic conditions. Choice gives permission for families to be responsible for their own children, but not their communities.
The statement about schools becoming hostile “take-it-or-leave-it” environs is provocative. I have seen many families whose children have found success within a particular school and some who have had nothing but bad experiences. A family must also understand that supporting a school is more than just questioning every decision on a personal level. Understandably, many families get caught up in the “what’s in it for my child” argument, but many fail to see the big picture of how the school supports their community as a whole. The conflict of citizen-responsibility vs. personal responsibility often frames the choice argument. Rather than abandon the community in which you’ve chosen to live, get involved in it and work to improve it for the good of all.
Modern societal thinking has become so self-centered that the concept of “public choice” has been able to thrive.
(I’m expecting to hear from teaching economist any time now…)
Started thinking about it before you posted, did not hit the post button until afterwards. If I had waited a bit I could have talked about how we agree on choice of community as school choice. I need to point out all the areas where I agree with folks to rehabilitate my reputation.
I would not worry about those who disagree with you–a healthy debate is good for everyone. I think people tend to be very passionate here because these “dialogues” ultimately affect people, young people most of all. The good news is we are generally a society protective of our youth. It’s those who would oppress without concern for the masses that we should worry about.
TE,
I would agree with LG about not worrying about your “reputation”. I don’t agree with much of what you write but you write it in a fashion that, for me, is not abrasive like let’s say like HU. And I know I can be abrasive myself.
It’s just that the economics point of view where human interactions are viewed as being best described by economic parameters just doesn’t sit well with me. I find it to be lacking not only in its disregard for other “human” factors but the cold hard analytics of the economic realm of study which for me do not have much basis in logic and reality.
May I suggest a book for you to read that delves into those other human activities and proclivities: “A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues” by Andre Comte-Sponville.
Duane
This comment also draws us into questions about the philosophy of democratic education. Is society fundamentally built upon the family unit (in the various contemporary forms) or the broader societal unit. Some argue that a parent’s first responsibility (as a citizen) is to care for and ensure the well-being of the family members. A second loyalty can then be to the broader community. Families consistently choose how they will or will not engage in various community efforts. some buy locally, while others see value in purchasing things online from distance companies. Some use FedEx while others use USPS. Some travel outside of their community for medical care, especially when they would benefit from specialists. Some have great loyalty to the local college or University, while others choose to attend distant schools for many reasons. Some attend local places of worship, others do not participate in those aspects of the local community. Individuals and families can make each of these choices while still remaining engaged, in one way or another, with improving the local community.
Please do clarify if I am misunderstanding things, but the argument against school choice seems to assume that, in the short term, the neighborhood school is currently adequate for every child that would have to attend. Otherwise, it would be irresponsible to require that parents send their individual child to a school that is inadequate (not just less than exemplary, but inadequate). The alternative would be that a parent in such a situation should sacrifice their child’s educational well-being for the sake of the broader community. I am not sure that a community of family units like that promotes broader community well-being.
With that said, as a parent, if I had no choice but the local neighborhood school, I would most definitely be much more engaged in local school activism, advocating firmly and consistently in every medium and venue necessary on a wide variety of matters, especially matters of curriculum, pedagogy, and a careful evaluation of the teachers. I would strive to be civil and respectful, but in the end, things would likely be intense and, at times, quite contentious. Instead, given that I have choice, I am less engaged with these conversations.
“Please do clarify if I am misunderstanding things, but the argument against school choice seems to assume that, in the short term, the neighborhood school is currently adequate for every child that would have to attend. Otherwise, it would be irresponsible to require that parents send their individual child to a school that is inadequate (not just less than exemplary, but inadequate). The alternative would be that a parent in such a situation should sacrifice their child’s educational well-being for the sake of the broader community. I am not sure that a community of family units like that promotes broader community well-being.”
The argument is not based on the assumption that all school should be simply deemed “adequate”–it is based on the idea that schools are representative of their communities and therefore belong to the people. As such, they are the responsibility of the people. By leaving them for schools in other communities, citizens are abandoning the institutions for which they are responsible.
LG,
My house happens to be close to the district line for Junior High Schools. The a small majority of his fellow elementary school students are assigned to junior high A, my son and the rest are assigned to junior high B. We requested a transfer to junior high A because of it physical proximity to our work and home and because the majority of his close friends were assigned to school A. Did our changing assigned schools mean we abandoned our community?
“Did our changing assigned schools mean we abandoned our community?”
If it’s in the same district, no.
My community is determined by the school district boundaries? What happens when those boundaries change?
There are a couple of things that I find interesting in my conversations, especially with other academics who are against school choice. First, I am surprised at the number who choose to send their own kids to private schools or made other alternative arrangements, but part of their defense is that they wondered if they did the right thing. When that happens, I always assure them that they did the right thing. Not in the sense that they selected the absolute best school, but that they considered and made what seemed to be the best choice for the sake of their family. As I see it, that is good parenting…carefully considering what is best for your child. I really have trouble seeing that as selfish or anti-community. Isn’t a community better off if families are functioning is such a way?
Also, it seems to me that a supportive community (and surrounding communities) provides parents choices on such matters. It embraces diversity of learning experiences for all learners. It empowers and frees families. The concept of the charter system allows for that, although there are definitely parts of the system that could be changed…like less restrictive and prohibitive enrollment processes, a rapid investment in many more options (so as to reduce the problems with the lottery systems in some parts of the country), and adding to it a robust voucher plan that more fully opens up the choice of private schools to families as well. After all, private schools are often very intimately embedded into the overall local community life in largely non-sectarian ways.
Similarly, when I speak with other anti-choice academics, I am often surprised at how many argue against it because of how it allows people to be less engaged with the community, and yet almost all of them went away to University, many to elite private Universities rather than attending the local state schools. Why not stick around and continue to support the local community rather than moving away? I don’t fully understand why the logic used against character schools (for the sake of the local community) does not seem to be consistently applied to many other aspects of community and life. I appreciate any help understanding this better.
“To be honest, part of the reason parents have been so
willing to drive their kids across town (or now to a different
town) is that some neighborhood schools had become rigid,
take-it-or-leave-it, hostile-to-change institutions. Parents with
concerns or questions were considered pests.” I’m glad to see you
point this out, because it’s something often left unspoken in the
conversation about school choice. There are no charters where I
live, and no alternative public schools of any sort. Open
enrollment does not exist–you attend your neighborhood school,
period. We’re in a suburban district, with “good” schools. But our
public elementary school is extremely rigid, and the words
progressive, understanding, supportive, creative, fun, welcoming,
flexible, or inventive would never be used to describe it. School
days are filled with behavior modification, punishments, and test
prep. Most parents are afraid to question, for example, the mounds
of useless daily homework, because they know they will be
“considered pests.” I did speak up to the school and the district
on several issues, and I was shut down in a big way. As frustration
over all this builds, I trust charters and open enrollment will
soon be a reality in our part of the country. Very few in the
anti-charter movement seem willing to admit that many “good” public
schools do stink. Who wants to send their kids to a
school–traditional public or charter–that only manages to cram a
little test prep between punishments and “consequences”? This is
the kind of thing that has left parents like me desperate for
alternatives. Can’t elementary education return to the nurturing,
accepting, low-stress, interesting thing it once was in this
country?
While this letter has much to recommend it, I think it leaves out a few things.
The ability to schools schools in the traditional system is a little about the public private choice, but it is mostly about the choice people make about where they live. The traditional system creates a “de facto tracking system based on socioeconomic status” because people can choose a place to live and a school that is far from the place of work. Shopping for good schools has always been the mark of good parenting, but in the traditional neighborhood system it is bundled together with the choice of where to live.
I think we also need to realize that if we are going to give each student the education they deserve is going to create inequalities. Giving high performing students the capability to stretch their intellect without the wasteful duplication that the author laments requires that we group these students together in a single building. While the author does allow for this at the high school level, public magnet high schools like Thomas Jefferson in Fairfax county fall victim to his criticism equally with charters, not to mention the public magnet elementary schools in that district. Those schools have explicit entrence requirements that create a system with “one set of schools with wealthier, less diverse students and fewer kids with special needs; the other serving children more diverse in ethnicity, income and educational needs”.
Like many public policy choices, how we structure schooling is about trading off one worthy social goal against another.
If I could note one specific part of this article, it would be that charters get way more curricular independence. Our local school wanted to have a one trimester course during the 11th grade year for ACT prep. (We have an excellent teacher who does this on her own time about ten Saturdays per year so we have a person that is qualified to do this.) The state would not approve such a course because it would not be curricular instructional time.
However, multiple charters have teachers who only do ACT prep. Some have courses that start in 8th grade. They claim to be public but have different rules. With all of this additional prep, they’re scores should turn out pretty ok. But ours will not budge much in all likelihood. Then we’ll hear how awesome they are!
This is perhaps the best analysis of the issue I’ve read yet. However, the genie is out of the bottle on school choice. It will be very difficult to reverse the trend before way too many children and families are fractured by its perverse outcomes on community. As go the neighborhoods, go the country. Once parents experience the reality of their choices, schools will already be closed, neighborhoods divided and all they have left is to endure. I was among the generation of parents who sought out optional schools for my young children because our house was located in a school district ravaged with crime, gangs and distressed economics. I taught in a district with the most prestigious reputation in town, so I was able to enroll my own children in the public school in which I worked. Our experience included a sense of isolation from the neighborhood families, extensive driving obligations on parents, both us and parents of our children’s friends and restrictions from participation in many organic events simply because we didn’t live in the neighborhood. It does have an effect on the sense of belonging, being accepted and feeling a part of everything going on in that community. Once our children were teens, the issue of driving themselves became a coordinational nightmare requiring extraordinary expenditures of money and time to supervision, guidance and planning. It wasn’t overwhelming for our family as it might be for others, since I worked at the school, knew most every family and established close relationships with more people than I would have if I was working elsewhere and taking my children to a school 12 miles outside of our resident neighborhood and knowing few families. Looking back, my husband and I marvel at how we ever managed the juggling of schedules, driving back and forth, attending events and doing it all with a smile and pleasant countenance. It added more stress for everyone and it didn’t go well at times. Luckily, the school in which I taught and my children attended became the center of our lives and we made that commitment from the very start. Today, we sometimes wonder if we made the right choice back then or could it all have turned out the same anyway. We will never know, but my heart goes out to families who endure the hardships of this school choice trend and its repercussions to the stability of a central neighborhood school community, not to mention the disruption to the family. That kind of support and comaraderie can never be duplicated when students scatter helter skelter and families so deeply impacted from that reality. Deep down I question if transferring my children was the right thing to do at the time. If we’d stayed and worked just as hard to improve that needy school district, things may have been better in the end. It is a tough decision we make as parents. We always put our children first and too many choices are made out of fear or ignorance. Today, both districts still struggle with enrollment, loss of revenue and the result of white flight from crime ridden areas or the false pretense that things are better on the other side of the tracks and the worry of ‘will my child get into the most prestigious college’, etc. What a complex issue for all Americans then and today. Perhaps not much has really changed in 30 years except that diversity and equality is even more topsy turvy today thanks to the divisive reform measures we have been led to believe is best for children. NOT! Good luck to those parents and students suffering through this dismal time in education. Hope is eternal, so there is that. I am humbled by the immense pressures being put on everyone in our public schools now. I am retired, but continue to speak up, encourage teachers to do the same and fight for common sense approaches to the right education reform.
There is no accident with the privatization and corporatization of public schools. This is all a part of the continued fascism of the U.S. There will be two classes. The elite and the slaves. This is why there is the separation and inequity. No accident here. If you use what I call “The Correction Factor” on charter schools which allows for charter schools not having to follow most ed code and local regulations, cherry picking parents and students, not dealing with behavioral problems, ESL and special education charter schools suddenly do not do so well and never have in the first place as only 17% did better than regular public schools without the “Correction Factor.” Now almost none do and most do worse. So why follow a failed principal? Just for the reasons I stated above. This is all a part of the incremental changes towards the long term goal of total domination. they now have control of almost allof your life through the schools and the financial sector and do not forget “Big Brother” wherein they can listen into any phone call, email or any other kind of communication and can save it all forever digitally to use on you at any time they want to. And this is “Freedom?” I call it Orwellian Double Speak.
“…failed principal…” Freudian slip? 😛
“The problem is the system that sends parents school shopping in the first place.”
I find it interesting that we are OK with parents having a choice on trivial things in life but not regarding arguably the most important issue in a child’s life: education.
“…they have more opportunities for enrichment because they are exempt from many of the requirements faced by regular schools…”
Might this be a call for more autonomy for all schools? Bureaucracy stifles innovation. School leaders struggle to be effective instructional leaders because they are bogged down with external, uniform mandates they may or may not benefit their local students and families.
This is the great irony of prevailing education policies. Politicians assert that public schools are failing and their policy is to increase education regulations. Then, when that POLICY fails, their go-to-solution is closing neighborhood schools and handing them over to unregulated charters.
If politicians really believed that deregulation leads to innovation, you would think that they would skip all the rigmarole and just deregulate public schools. The fact that politicians don’t even consider that shines a light on the profit motive. It’s about appeasing corporate benefactors who want more charter schools, not about meeting the needs of children.
Regulation and choice rightly vary inversely to each other. I must purchase electricity delivery from a single provider, hence it is highly regulated. When I have a variety of options, choose the option that best fits my need and the regulatory hand can be lighter.
That’s the business model and schools are not businesses. When each school has its own elected local school council comprised of parents, teachers, community members, a student representative and the principal, as in some cities, they should be given more autonomy and choices.
Lets talk about schools. If higher education institutions had geographic admissions requirement, it seems perfectly reasonable that governments would require each institution to provide all of the usual undergraduate majors, including education, engineering, etc. If we allow students to choose the institutions, the institutions themselves can make decisions about what programs to offer, and society can take advantage of economies of scale.
K-12 is not higher ed. States define minimum subjects (and some topics) that must be taught in K-12 public schools. Schools should be able to expand on that, to meet the needs of students in their communities. Current policies and budget constraints result in narrowing instead.
Primary education is not secondary education, but I don!t think that necessarily means one can not learn from the other. In any case you wanted a “non-business” example and I think I provided one.
Do you disagree that if the state forced college students to go to a particular college justice requires that all majors be available to the students at every university?
College students are adults, can’t be required to attend school and models for adults are not applicable to minors.
I would point out that many college students are minors when they begin college and most will not obtain their full rights as adults until well advanced in college.
If you would prefer, I can make the same argument using private high schools. I note that when people on the blog want an example of a truly great high school, they often talk about Sidwell Friends or Phillips Exeter or the lab schools at the University of Chicago.
Yes, I’ve had them in my courses and I’m fine with that, but minors in college are the exception, not the rule, and they’re usually gifted kids who need more challenges. Not everyone likes their presence on the college campus though. I worked at one college whose president frequently complained about them, because he couldn’t stand having to deal with their parents.
Students need not be minors for parent problems. I only brought it up because you argument seemed to hing on the age of the student. At U Chicago the norm for first years seems to be 17 (or younger), but that may be because the other top schools seem to reject younger students.
Colleges MUST deal with the parents of minors, but they are not required to deal with the parents of adults.
That is really a minor point. The question is whether the status as a minor requires the state to directly manage the educational institution.
What if too many choices leaves you with a weakened and watered down product.
Minors attend private schools and they are not managed by the state, at least where I live. It’s FERPA that requires schools to deal with the parents of minors.
Prof W,
You are correct about having to deal with minor children, but I don’t see the relevance to the topic at hand.
DeeDee,
If one option starts to get watered down, I doubt the families would choose that option.
Uniformity is required when individual households are not given choices. A trivial example is the new reduced calorie lunch requirements. High school distance runners like my son will run about 50 miles a week, requiring an extra 5,000 calories a week over baseline needs. High school students in Kansas did a nice film about this here:http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=2IB7NDUSBOo&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D2IB7NDUSBOo
Funny video but you lost me. What the heck are you talking about? Does your state mandate calorie intake? Crazy! What happened to bag lunches? More than that, I got stuck on your first statement: “Uniformity is required when individual households are not given choices. ” Yeah, like speed limits? I am really out of my league here.
This is not my state, this is national. Here is a story from ABC:http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/snacks-usdas-solution-healthy-school-lunch-protests/story?id=17324285#.UOjbMXy9KK0
The lunch policy at the high school must be suitable to the average student, so it is unsuitable to the extremes. Better sorting of students would allow better policies for those individual students. The video was apariently mad by students in a rural Kansas school district. Many of these students have an hour or two of chores on the farm or ranch before school, sports practice after.
Again, that’s the business model. Sort, rank, stack, punish, shut down, reward, expand to scale etc., might work for Microsoft or McDonald’s, but we want all kids to be successful, so more differentiation and individualization within schools is necessary, not more standardization across schools.
Actually my point here is that students do need to be treated as individuals. Endurance athletes need more calories than students that get no exercise.
My more general point is that choice between buildings can provide better matches between building resources and student needs.
Sorry, might as well give it up, because I don’t believe in charters or vouchers.
BTW, I do believe in magnet schools and selective enrollment schools for high achieving and gifted kids.
Prof W,
I am interested in why you are against charters but in favor of limited admission magnet schools. It seems to me that many of the arguments presented here against charter schools ( 1) charter schools divide the community, 2) charter schools take the cream (in terms of parents and students) from the local schools, 3) charter schools take funds from local schools) all apply to limited admission magnet schools as well.
Unfortrunately, both discriminate. The difference is that magnets are still district run public schools and they dramatically out perform all other methods which should be expected as they also cherry pick. Still wrong yet they actually perform and have to follow ed code and local regulations. We do not need to reinstall segregation and discrimination as it does not work and is morally and ethically wrong. We should not be destroying equitable education. A part of equity is extra help for certain sectors as a result of specific actual needs.
George Buzzetti
You bring up an interesting point. I know of at least three students per the last 7 years who have taken graduate mathamatics courses in buildings outside the local high school in my town while high school students. Is it ethically and morally required that these students be prevented from taking those courses because not all students are capable of that level of work?
Highly gifted is the flip side of special ed in a way. They both need extra help. Highly gifted because of their ability to absorb material and not be bored to death. I was lucky where I went to school, a private school, in that they understood this and dealt with us accordingly as we needed this extra push for ourselves. We are wasting a lot of talent not really dealing with highly gifted. LAUSD has about 5,000 identified 150 + I.Q. students. These students have the highest suicide rates, leave school early by being bored to death and many end up in the criminal justice system or leaders of gangs. If we really cared they would be at Harvard, GeorgeTown, Berelely, Stanford and such. As time goes on I really apreciate the extra help that we needed. All we wanted to do was learn. What is wrong with that?
I really need a keyboard. Not sure how “in” changed to “per”
My city has magnet schools and neighborhood schools with magnet programs, not just selective enrollment schools for gifted kids, so there are a lot of choices.
I support schools for gifted students because I was trained in gifted education, taught a lot of gifted kids myself and I know that they often need more than what can be provided in overcrowded regular ed classrooms.
Your son must go to a small high school. Most high schools now have different foods available.
DeeDee,
I think my comment ended up in the wrong place so you may have missed it, but the calorie restriction is nationwide.
George Buzzetti,
Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought you were arguing that providing magnet schools for the gifted discriminated and was morally and ethically wrong.
“The result: one set of schools with wealthier, less diverse students and fewer kids with special needs; the other serving children more diverse in ethnicity, income and educational needs (with fewer resources and more requirements). Public education was supposed to be the great equalizer, an inclusive, welcoming place that gives all kids a chance to climb the ladder of success. But current trends create a de facto tracking system based on socioeconomic status”
Current trends? As if racial segregation wasn’t a feature of public schools for 100 years, and as if socioeconomic segregation isn’t a COMPLETELY OVERWHELMING feature of nearly all public schools right now?
Muskegon Heights, home to recent charter chaos, is 80% black, and close to 50% of its residents under the age of 18 live below the poverty line.
The city bordering Muskegon Heights on the south, Norton Shores, is 92% white. 6% of its residents under the age of 18 live below the poverty line.
This is an extreme and vivid example, but it reflects segregation patterns all over the country, particularly in the midwest and northeast, where the division of haves and have-nots isn’t an ongoing process, but a fait accompli. I don’t think the author understands this, or grasps how ‘stuck’ tens of millions of the have-nots are.
We figure segregation could be worse now than before de facto. What do you think?
A well-reasoned article. However, it glosses over two critical related issues — 1) why do parents choose a charter rather than the neighborhood school; and 2) the skim-the-cream element inherent in charters that enroll via application in low-SES areas.
I have seen few, if any, detailed surveys asking parents who enrolled their children in a charter why they did so. My seat-of-the-pants guess is that the main reason that low-SES-area parents enroll their children in charters is the parents’ perception that the low-SES-area neighborhood school is characterized by endemic student misbehavior and a related negative peer pressure that discourages good behavior/academic effort. If so, seems like the low-SES-area public school systems should be focusing their school reform efforts on improving student behavior rather than on high-stakes testing/teacher discharge or charters.
Charters usually have less behavior problems and fewer negative peer pressure problems. This is because the charters enroll via application and, in the low-SES areas, this will screen out the children whose parents are too unconcerned/dysfunctional to learn about the charter, successfully complete the application procedure, and provide the daily transportation. All the charter students will have parents who are sufficiently concerned/functional to accomplish these tasks. The neighborhood public schools will have some students whose parents are concerned/functional but still choose the neighborhood school as well as all of the students whose parents were too unconcerned/dysfunctional to enroll in the charter. Therefore, even where charters and the neighborhood public schools have the same income and racial demographics, in the low-SES areas, the charters will have more educable, better motivated, better behaved student bodies than the neighorhood schools..
I do recall an article linked to an earlier post where a mother in Detroit said she wanted her child in a charter school because it was safer for the child. The academic outcome was secondary for her.
That is very true. Parents will look for safety over quality.
That seems like a reasonable choice to make.
Even with all these advantages they still do not really perform when only 17% nationally perform even marginally better than regular public schools. If you use the “Correction Factor” which takes into account charter schools not having to follow most ed code and local regulations, cherry pick students and parents, do not deal with behavioral problems, ESL and special ed you suddenly when apples are apples have a very low performing segment of education, charter schools.
To see the lack of accountability just go to the latest DOE OIG report on the total lack of accountability of charter schools at every level in Florida, Arizona and California. This audit is DOE-OIG/A02L0002. I am willing to bet that your state looks the same as these do. When presented with this at the California State Board of Education the board could not shut down the meeting fast enough as they had just had a staff presentation on charter schools where staff said everything is beautiful and accountable. They lied to the State Board of Education as they have the study and knew they were not telling the truth to the public and the California State Board of Education. This study is a great tool in the argument against charter schools.
Don’t forget all the additional time that charter schools like KIPP add to the school day, week and year. Charters with so much more instructional time SHOULD be scoring higher than neighborhood public schools.
I feel crazy reading this post. Public school in its essence is free education to the public supported by tax payers. Charter Schools are public schools as well. Should one neighborhood and/or parents of a school get ( more) involved, supporting students and staff to be and do more, so be it. That is at anyone’s free will, rich or poor.
People are not created equal frankly, there are lazy and bad people. Folks who do not think its their responsibility to take care of their own. It’s time to let’s those who want to excel to excel and model that recipe for other so when they ask why?, you can simply say it take committed parents to raise a great kid.
Charter schools are not entirely public since they do not serve the public nor are they required to. To keep touting the “charter schools are public” mantra is to ignore the concept of democracy promoting the general welfare and instead provide for the welfare of a specific few on the backs of the general public.
“People are not created equally…” I think you are confusing the nature vs. nurture argument. People are not all born into the same lifestyle or culture situations–there is a great inequality that is a fact of life. There are alo many people born with physical and chemical disadvantages who may struggle more than those who are born mentally and physically healthy, but people aren’t “born lazy.” However, the environment in which a child is brought up can shape development.
In some areas, you have to have a license to own a dog but anyone can be a parent. I agree that it takes committed parents to raise a great kid, but let us go one step further…it takes a community to raise a great kid but not a school. School personnel cannot overcome the influence of community on children. Community influence is strong if parenting is weak. Many parents who cannot afford to move to a stronger community need support to provide an environment where they can care for their children. Schools can support these families, but only a community can improve the quality-of-life for its citizens–schools are just one arm if the community.
“…it’s time to let those who want to excel excel…” And everyone else be damned? Are you seriously saying we should abandon innocents because they have parents who aren’t taking care of them which makes these children “lazy or bad?” So you leave them to rot while the “good kids” take tax payer funding and run off to the “safe haven” of a charter school to “excel?” I am often baffled at how so many feel that simply taking care of their own family with little regard for their own community is good parenting. Children need to understand that communities ARE the people, not just some of the people, you know, who are “good and enthusiastic.”
Would you elaborate more on the statement that charter schools don’t serve the public? It seems to me that requiring them to serve the public is simply a matter of construction the right set of regulations for charter schools and I would be interested in what you think those regulations should look like.
I think there is plenty of evidence on this blog that charter schools do not serve the public.
Here’s a little irony for you: To require charter schools to serve the public by regulating them, you are, in effect, turning them into public schools. Why not work to improve the public schools instead of replace them?
Now here is someone who makes simple real sense in “Why not make public schools work?” I say “Duh.”
I don’t agree that there is plenty of evidence that charter schools, as a concept, don’t serve the public interest. Certainly individual charter schools might not, but the same can be said for individual local governments, including the public school system.
You need not regulate charter schools to the degree that you regulate traditional public schools because you introduce the possibility of choice by the students. If you force people to buy their electricity from one provider, the government must regulate the price. If people can choose, that price regulation is not necessary.
Charter schools by design have almost no accountability. You have no right to their financial records as you do at a school district of for an individual school. According to the latest DOE OIG report, Sept. 2012, charter schools in Florida, Arizona and California have no accountability for charter schools at any level of government. This report is DOE-OIG/A02L0002. If we do not know what they are doing and do worse over the last about 18 years why do we need them and why are they being pushed? It certainly is not to have a better system.
Charter schools have less regulation and oversight and if that is a mistake it should be corrected. I do not think charter schools will need the level of regulation required of public schools. See the answer above, and because there is less of a danger of political patronage with a charter system.
Charter schools are as political as it gets. How do you think they have gotten this far with as many failures as there are?
The regulations around public schools were at least partially motivated by removing the ability to award patronage jobs. Dr. Ravitch knows far more then I about the history of education and might choose to comment.
This is why history is not important anymore. People might remember why there is ed code and unions. Patronage, fear and personal grudges were very common in the past and it was really not that long ago. Every time you have something unregulated problems are going to happen and be large.
“I don’t agree that there is plenty of evidence that charter schools, as a concept, don’t serve the public interest.”
Nowhere in my original post were the words “as a concept.” You added something after-the-fact perhaps to put the debate in a new direction. However concept and reality are two different things when it comes to charters.
Charter schools as they exist today do not wholly support the public, and one not need ask a fellow poster for evidence of the discussion on this point when one can research the topic on one’s own.
This is quite interesting:
LG,
Because you don’t qualify your criticism of charter schools by saying some charter or corporate run charters, etc., I had occluded that your criticism must hinge on the only thing that unites all charter schools. Can you conceive of a charter school that would serve the interests of the community?
“Because you don’t qualify your criticism of charter schools by saying some charter or corporate run charters, etc., I had occluded that your criticism must hinge on the only thing that unites all charter schools. Can you conceive of a charter school that would serve the interests of the community?”
The whole concept of charter schools comes from the idea that they serve the needs of a special population as collaborators with, not competitors of, the traditional public schools. Unfortunately, the majority of modern charter schools do neither of those things.
Diane lays it out nicely here:
I am no at all comfortable with the requirement that the teachers unions could potentially veto the communities desire to spend education dollars on a charter school. (Point 2 in Dr. Ravitch’s list). That seems to undermine basic democratic principles and local community rule. Union members, after all, might not even live in the community that they teach in.
Would you allow charters to serve any student with an IEP? In my district that would include highly gifted students whom I would argue are difficult to educate as well.
“I am no at all comfortable with the requirement that the teachers unions could potentially veto the communities desire to spend education dollars on a charter school. (Point 2 in Dr. Ravitch’s list). That seems to undermine basic democratic principles and local community rule. Union members, after all, might not even live in the community that they teach in.”
Unions protect the district’s investment, i.e. its teaching staff, from unfair labor practices that break down the transparency of the system that could otherwise weakening it. I have a huge problem with the potential for corruption within the exclusive employment of private, non-affiliated individuals who are hired to “serve” the public.
As well, a unionized teaching staff is comprised of professional educators who have a vested interest (as a collective) in the community regardless of their place of residency. Private individuals may or may not have the community’s best interests at heart since they are not required to have ANY affiliation with the community–they are simply educators-at-large, or “guns-for-hire.”
And further, private individuals who are hired may also live outside of the community–therefore their interests in the community need not be any more vested than those of any union employees that also live outside of their constituent communities.
I don’t know about you, but if I was an employee of a district for the long haul (meaning, I have employment rights and my work is valued), you better believe I would have a greater interest in that district than someone who might not be teaching there when the yearly contract is up or after the two required years are finished (TFA, anyone?). If the district invests in me, I will care about what happens to the district schools regardless of where I live. I believe you do not see the merits of any union’s professional obligations to the communities in which they serve if you are suspect of an affiliated group of employees having a vested interest in their employers’ decisions.
“Would you allow charters to serve any student with an IEP? In my district that would include highly gifted students whom I would argue are difficult to educate as well.”
I am not in charge of “allowing” anything, but I would vote for a charter school within my community if it is subject to and operates in concert with the district policies just as any other school in the district does: beholden to the locally elected school board. When charter schools have to answer to the people and not some CEO or pseudo-educator with a business degree, when charter schools become district school open to all students who need them without enrollment restrictions, when charter schools exist as support of and not in business-model driven competition with traditional district schools, I will support them in my community. Heck, I’d even “allow” them.
What other groups should have the power to potrntially override the results of democratic elections? Should the police union be able to block changes to local laws? Should the Chamber of Commerce be allowed to block some types of business regulations? I am sure both groups would only avt in he best interests of the community.
Law enforcement is not the same as law making, and asking a faction of private businesses to comment on business law is like asking a fox to vote on how best to keep the hens safe in the henhouse. With all due respect, yours is a ridiculous leap. Education is a unique field where collaboration of all experts is valuable for the good of all.
Point 2 is not about collaboration. It would give the teachers union the right to NULIFY any legislation or popular referendum that might be passed. If the teachers union does not agree there would be no recourse.
Law is not a field where “collaboration of all experts is valuable for the good of all”?
“Point 2 is not about collaboration. It would give the teachers union the right to NULIFY any legislation or popular referendum that might be passed. If the teachers union does not agree there would be no recourse.”
Why shouldn’t professional educators have a say in what happens in their schools?
Unions protect a teacher’s academic freedom. Without it, educators have to cowtow to the political ideology of whomever their bosses are at any given moment, and instead of allowing educators to make professional decisions based upon their training and experience, education would be trusted to the ideas that serve the bottom line. You keep trying to make a point based on the false assumption that teachers unions exists merely for the benefit of employees. With employment protections in an academic environment, educators can and do deliver instruction as per their level of expertise without fear of institutionalized politics–this benefits their students and communities. I really think you need to delve deeper into what professional organizations do and stop comparing them to labor unions in a blue collar enterprise. They may share similar functions, but teachers unions are far more complex and professionally-driven than most trade unions.
“Law is not a field where ‘collaboration of all experts is valuable for the good of all’?”
I never said that collaboration is absent in the field of law. I stated that law ENFORCEMENT and law-making are two different things. You brought up police unions, not me. Police officers follow protocol, and while there are instances of personal judgement in police work, there is far more that goes by-the-book in law enforcement in comparison to teaching simply because there are many different approaches in education.
My points are simple: Education as its own professional society is collaborative, not authoritarian, therefore allowing the professional teachers association to have a voice in the structuring of any drastically different type of school is not only courteous, it is smart. Who are the experts in education, the politicians?
It is not a say, it is a VETO. Every member of a community has a say through representative government. Few get to VETO the general will. Perhaps it is correct that teacher union members are just more equal than others.
Perhaps you fail to see the value of including the experts in the decision making.
I think including experts in the discussion is essential. That is why I included police in deliberations about the law and business owners in deliberations about business regulations. My concern is the requirement that these experts must be asked for their CONSENT if the community is to carry out changes in policy.