I earlier posted a letter from a teacher who said that charters give ambitious students a chance to escape their low-performing and disruptive peers. The teacher noted that charters recruit the best students in the poorest neighborhoods. How could anyone blame parents who want their children to be surrounded by others who are equally ambitious?
I invited readers to respond. Here is a thoughtful comment.
This reader comments as follows:
That’s interesting, because I thought one of the major apologies for charters was that they would help close the “achievement gap” by taking our neediest students and making them “competitive” with the most well-performing students.
The apologia in this post basically states as a matter of fact a criticism that charter school advocates have long-denied. At first it was “We don’t get to cherry pick. We’re subject to the same rules as public schools.” Now it is “Yeah, we cherry pick but someone has to serve the gifted students in poor communities.”
It is moving back of the goal post if you ask me. I went to Bronx Science and then to Brooklyn Tech, two of the “best” public high schools in NYC. The public schools and many others like it do a fine job of educating our brightest students.
An argument against what the teacher in this article posits is to expand the opportunities for our brightest students to go to those “specialized” public high schools. As of now, one test determines whether or not a students makes it in. The application process should be diversified with exams only being part of the measuring stick. GPA, recommendations, interviews and essays should also be part of the process, sort of like college.
We have the tools to educate the type of students described in this article. We just lack the will to make better use of them.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Until teacher unions recognize that not all their members are qualified to teach, inner city children especially are screwed.
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What’s that have to do with inner city students? Why are only they screwed? They are def. being screwed by non-union charter schools becasue they can’t keep staff. Have you ever worked in a building that had 6 dif. spanish teachers in one yr? How about over 30 math teachers in 4 yrs. Over 30 English teachers in 4 yrs.? Months with an unqualified sub teaching math? Quit spreading lies and propaganda. Charters don’t care about inner city kids, they care about money.
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This is just Terry F in a different guise. It’s a troll.
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To clarify, because I just realized I could be misunderstood, by “this” I mean that “SkiMission” is a troll, not that “DeeDee” is. Sorry for any confusion!
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Dienne, you are right. “skimission” is “Terry F,” the same person who regularly posts dumb anti-union comments and listens to no one, ever. He does not know how to listen, to discuss or to engage.
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The last time I checked, unions weren’t the ones hiring, evaluating, and tenuring the teachers.
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Exactly! Which not only demolishes the claim by the charterites/privatizers that union mismanagement of public schools is responsible for ‘low achievement’ [English translation: lower scores on standardized tests] but also shows the shameful lengths they will go to when they hype faulty eduproducts.
Remember that paean to charterite/privatizer ideology called “Won’t Back Down”? Union contracts prohibit teachers from working past 3 PM? Even someone as easygoing as Randi Weingarten felt compelled to point out that such a provision doesn’t exist anywhere in the USA.
But when it comes to $tudent$ucce$$, remember that in the edubullies’ struggle for market share lying is only a $in when you get caught and when it doesn’t make the bottom line black rather than red. Other than that, anything goes. After all, $ucce$$ is its own reward.
🙂
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Until police unions recognize that not all cops are equipped to “police”, our inner-city citizens are screwed.
Go pick on some other public service because they are attempting to serve the poor.
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What do teacher unions have to do with placing teachers in particular schools?
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Also, charter schools routinely eliminate (send back to traditional public schools) any students that they feel do not “fit in”. We have such students in our school now. They are left with the best.
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Just like some public schools are horrible, so are some charters. But there are too many charters truly educating and making a difference for students who want to learn.
A truly disheartening reality Love In Abundance came face to face with when we entered our first public school was a grave problem with parents. Parents are ultimately responsible for their child’s attitude toward education, which includes the child’s willingness to prosper instead of barely exist through their public education.
Even the best charter school, with the greatest programs and intentions, will experience problems with a student if their interest is stronger on being entertained than learning the course curriculum.
Parents have got to do a better job at demanding that their child lives the significance of learning in the academic learning environments attended instead of giving their child permission to listen to or not listen to some adults given the authority of control over them.
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More like how do you devise a system where the 80% (or whatever the fraction is) of kids who either want to learn or have the capacity to behave appropriately can get away from the remainder who are destroying education. Granted it is not entirely their fault, based on their home life or economic situation. But, why would you not segregate people who can’t behave appropriately?
Just as the argument goes, if it’s not about money, let’s see Obama or Gates give their children an education for $5,000 a year and see how it works for them.
The reverse argument is true. Let anyone who argues that is not O.K. to segregate a large group of disruptive students walk their talk. Would they want their kids in classrooms with five or ten students whose primary purpose was to create chaos?
I think it is just as true that money does buy better education, that failure to segregate disruptors is a giant drain on education.
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What you find is that those 20% (or whatever the fraction is) of kids who can’t/won’t “behave” are actually doing the work of the other 80% by expressing frustrations and dysfuctions of the whole group. If you get rid of that 20% without addressing the underlying problems, you’ll just have a new 20% (or whatever) acting out instead. Behavior is communication. Until we can listen to the message behind the “misbehavior”, we will continue to have the same behavior.
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Critical pedagogy, caring relationships, classroom community and restorative practices are a few tool teachers can use to reduce anti-learning behaviors. Combine that with engaging, student-centered and differentiated curriculum, relationships with parents and the community, and you have an academic culture. Pulling all of this off is incredibly difficult. It’s why we must advocate that teaching is a highly skilled profession as well as an art. It’s not to be learned in six weeks.
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“More like how do you devise a system where the 80% (or whatever the fraction is) of kids who either want to learn or have the capacity to behave appropriately can get away from the remainder who are destroying education. Granted it is not entirely their fault, based on their home life or economic situation. But, why would you not segregate people who can’t behave appropriately?”
We do segregate them when they reach a certain age; it’s called prison.
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Parents are regularly kept out of the equation. It’s just students and teachers. One would think that children existed only during the school day.
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Amazing that the school reform debate totally ignores the critical issue of minor but endemic student misbehavior, particularly in the low-SES-area schools. This misbehavior disrupts instruction for everyone, burns out teachers, and causes concerned/functional parents to flee to charter or private schools.
But, instead of addressing the student misbehavior issue, the school reform debate focuses on generic teacher quality (high-stakes testing, teacher discharge, TFA, tenure), charters, and vouchers. The rare school reform discussions that even touch on student behavior are the zero-tolerance/too-many-suspensions arguments that themselves largely ignore the separate and much more important issue of minor but endemic student misbehavior.
Perhaps minor but endemic student misbehavior is inevitable in schools serving low-SES families. But, probably not. These same students who are engaging in minor misbehavior in class are able to behave on athletic teams, in school bands, at church services, and at part-time jobs. There are answers — we just have to search for them.
What are the best classroom management techniques? What are the most effective methods for a teacher/administrator to respond to minor misbehavior — in elementary grades? In secondary grades? Are these techniques/methods being taught in teacher prep, in-service, and administrator training programs? What ideas do veteran inner-city teachers/administrators have regarding these issues — particularly those teachers/administrators who seem to experience less misbehavior than their fellow teachers/administrators in the same neighborhoods?
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If we were to have fewer children living chaotic lives, there would be fewer behavior problems in the classroom. More segregation will result in more chaos.
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I struggle with all of this labeling and find Dr. John Dewey’s quote to be especially important in this conversation. “How one person’s abilities compare in quantity with those of another is none of the teacher’s business. It is irrelevant to his work. What is required is that every individual shall have opportunities to employ his own powers in activities that have meaning.
John Dewey
Democracy and Education, 1916”
And let’s not lump all kids in charters are the “great/gifted” kids. All kids are gifted. Our job is to help all succeed to their passions. When we stop this competition/choice fight, we’ll get there. Let’s focus on looking at everyone with equality and bringing them together in a public schools system that allows all to thrive.
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Someone needs to get this message back to Obama. By imposing such strict limitations on public schools because of the testing mandates, he’s pushing the brightest kids out of public education, thereby hurting the public schools. Look at all that research on cooperative and collaborative ed: does no one believe that anymore?
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Obama understands exactly what he’s doing.
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Why not have those gifted schools in the district? Why are we privatizing this? It is discrimination.
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Well said, Stef. I tried very hard to not compare my students but to help them the best I could. I think if the public schools had the funds, an assistant could be in every Title I classroom to assist with those that struggle, no matter how they struggle. Another pair of eyes and ears would be helpful. A young teacher visited me my last year of teaching (2011/12) from England. She told me every school similar to a Title I school in England has an assistant. Teaching to the test is not a great model for those students that have great difficulty focusing on what they are learning. Taking away playground time is not a help either. I took 3rd and 4th graders on at least three fieldtrips per year. If some of my students struggled with behavior, I asked his/her parent to go. Many of my students had never been out of their neighborhood. Going to the symphony downtown, or to a farm on the outskirts of the city, or yes, a day trip to the Grand Canyon opened these young students’ eyes to the possibilities of what is out there. What they can be a part of with an education. I also think we need to assist these struggling students with getting them on a 504 or IEP and finding ways to help them. Some where along the way, we have missed the mark with the Jared Loughner’s, the Adam Lansa’s, etc. There are no throw away children.
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Until many of you face the truth that many parents in desperate situations and bad public schools aren’t going to wait 20 years for someone to maybe get the funding together which will allow every child to be the beam of sunshine that they should be. They also aren’t going to wait 20 years for someone to maybe open enough, and good enough, magnet schools.
Until you admit that you wouldn’t put your own children into the ‘worst’ schools out there (and most of you obviously don’t), the reformers and privatization pushers are going to keep kicking our asses in this war (and it is a war).
Your wishes of a someday joyful future where everything is great isn’t doing anything for the kids who are relegated to schools that haven’t been working for decades. They are last in line for resources, recruitment, admin, and good ideas. Yet you think that these parents and students should stick it out in the name of democratic education while you wouldn’t dream to put your kids in those schools.
Since I made the decision to change careers and work in high needs inner city schools, I also decided that it was important to live in the neighborhoods where I taught. I’m not talking about the safer inner city gentrified neighborhoods, I’m talking core of the south and west sides in Chicago and now in Denver. Now that I have children of my own, I’m facing the same issues about education quality that these parents are. I can tell yo first hand, the nagging that it isn’t the fault of the 5% with terrible homelives who destroy it for everyone else, doesn’t cut it for the children stuck with them. You want to turn it all around, then i’m expecting a huge increase in the applications at the worst of the worst public schools tomorrow.
It would help our cause greatly if you thought about the parents and students without options who are leaving in droves instead of lofty aspirations for public education that clearly are not going to happen in time to help any of us. Can you even try to imagine how your arguments and proclamations on how others should live and sacrifice don’t go over very well with this crowd?
Is it worth losing this war so that you can tell other people how they should feel about how they should raise their children?
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I’m with you. The best way to save the public schools and meritocracy in America is to advocate for excellence in change rather than resist all change on principle. The status qou is a losing position.
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I agree as well. That is why I have thought it important to advocate peer evaluation of teaching as an alternative to other proposed evaluation methods.
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Terrific post, one that really gets to the heart of the matter. There are millions of families who want a great education for their kids and are zoned for schools that have struggled or been ineffective for years. Many of them can’t afford to move to a better district or put their kids in private schools.
I came around on the concept of choice when I realized I could never look one of these parents in the eye and tell them they should just go to the zoned school and make the most of it.
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Hey Wilbert, urban schools have been on the front lines of “reform” for decades – perhaps since the early 80’s. THAT is the status quo.
Teachers want better schools but are hemmed in by politics and incompetent state and local administrators.
But the bottom line is this – until we fix the income inequality, unavailability of class mobility, and the overall effects of poverty (of which the US tops other nations at almost 25%), we can expect the same outcomes as police working in the same areas – low success. The only difference is policr receive extra help, all the help (and more), while schools dont. Our budgets get slashed.
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I thought this also until I spent four years living in the Philippines and saw many, many children if far worse poverty doing anything that they could do to get a good education, including trying hard and behaving as we expect people in society to behave.
Why are some children willing to work to become educated and others are too marginalized even though they have far more material comfort than the first group?
It isn’t a rhetorical question, i’d really like to know. My school doesn’t believe in pushing students too hard. I look back on my four years in Asia with fear for what our uneducated face in the future. There are 100s of millions of people outside our borders who are very hungry and will do anything to get in. What will those students who didn’t want to learn do to compete against the students who are truly ‘hungry’?
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Diane, Did you get a chance to look at the YouTube video I posted. I hope you will respond to the recommendation the professor proposes.
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I do think we have to stop placing students by age and should do by ability. Not all children learn at the same rate, and we have to recognize these differences not as a negative but a chance to find a balance that works for different types of students. We also have to return to a place where learning is a journey, and our primary goal should be to make our students into lifelong learners and appreciate school not hate it. School can no longer be a boring place that will only force those who already need extra help to drop out. Testing does not allow for this.
It time to concentrate on the whole child and not just their academic level. Many students do not want to go to college. They want to work in a field like mechanics, plumbing, styling, etc. We need to provide high school students with alternatives so they feel their choices in life are not looked down upon. And we need to bring back night school for those students who want to continue their education but can’t due to family and financial situations. And we have to look at their emotional level. Many students are placed incorrectly in many special ed classes. These students need special help– a setting outside of what a school might be able to offer.
My nephew was denied such services, His memories of middle and high school are horrible. The school administrators did nothing to help him. The hospitals did nothing to help him. The school just gave him busy work to complete at home and offered him his diploma. It was there way of wanting him out. His self-esteem is very low and his ability to work with others is difficult. He was never offered any life skills. But he was suspended a few times despite having an IEP. They did place him in a special school with students that were suffering from Downs and other challenges, and that was the wrong setting for him. When he finally returned to high school, he was met with scorn from the administrators. My niece had to fight to get the teachers trained for his syndrome. Sometimes the enemy is this screwed up system.
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“I do think we have to stop placing students by age and should do by ability. Not all children learn at the same rate”
What ages are you thinking of? In elementary school at least, isn’t the flip side of this point that measurements of children’s abilities are unstable because things “kick in” with unpredictable timing? In other words, there may be an age by which some kind of sorting of students by ability/aptitude makes sense, but it seems to me that there’s also an age before which it makes absolutely no sense. I may be misunderstanding your proposal, though.
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The school system changed my son’s track when he skipped sixth grade. Not the best solution, but the only one available. That seemed like an age where the skill differences had grown uncomfortably large.
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Finland doesn’t group kids according to ability. I’m guessing they honor differences within the classroom environment, and I understand if skills are needed, they do a lot of preventative work to get that child up on their skills.
But once again. . . what is ability? In our 21st century desire to be innovative, I think we have to stop labeling kids and start seeing their strengths and having a much more open idea of what all are capable of doing.
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Did any of you see the Youtube Video? Even Nikhail Goyal talks about this in his book.
I am just proposing thinking out of the box and changing the way we teach.
Yes, it would be great if a teacher could individualize, but in NYC classroom registers where classroom registers can be over 35 students, the teacher would have to be Superman let alone wait for him. Smaller class sizes would be the best solution, but I don’t see that happening either.
One teacher had a first grader who was so smart, she helped get him into Hunter Elementary–a school for gifted students.
But I am not just talking about reading and math. Some students will do well in a class that can assign special projects that would interest them. Like I originally stated, it’s not only about academics, but the
whole child. Watch the video
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The problem with not placing by grade, especially in the schools that are already having problems, is that the older students become predatory towards the younger students. If you think that parents are unhappy with safety now, see how they feel about having a troubled 8th grade boy in the same class with their 4th or 5th graders. It won’t ever happen. This is one of the big reasons for social promotion.
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I agree that this would certainly be a problem, but perhaps it could be mediated by having separate buildings.
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Placing students by abilities has nothing to do with “predators”. Children could still be placed within their own age groups.
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Charters are also set up in white neighborhoods with no transportation and neighborhood boundaries. Charters are also being used to re-segregate public education.
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By the way, my children did go to the local public school. The percentage of Title I students has grown at the neighborhood school. We are still living in the same house since 1977. My neighborhood was once considered middle class. Not now. So, no I did not send my kids to charters or private schools. My oldest son and middle daughter did great in public school. The youngest struggled with focusing due to ADHD. He did okay until high school. We had to advocate for him. The difference being that we knew how. Many of our Title I parents do not know how to advocate or are so busy with their own problems (struggling to find work, just trying to survive) that they don’t have or take the time. I think my children received good educations in the public schools. I think all the testing, lack of money, etc. has made public education suffer. I would also say that the majority of my children’s teachers were very good teachers. I think I was a good teacher, as well. Another part of public school that I liked was the diversity. I have adult children who have friends from all walks of life. That is the way it should be.
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Carol and Dottie,
Yes, of course. I know white parents in Atlanta who want to get their kids away from other minorities, so their kids now go to the charter school. The charter school is over 90% white, while their district was 50% Mexican. This is another way for segregation. The charter school does this by making the application process lengthy and difficult, etc. This is how the South has always operated. Don’t we all live in our little tribes in America?
Diversity? Here is my story with “diversity.”
I went to a diverse, public middle school in Florida during the era of busing (early 1980s). The school was evenly split: 30% black, 30% white, and 30% Dominican Republic, Cuban, etc. I learned how to street fight very well during those three years. This took some time, and I was beaten up 3 times rather severely at first by other ethnic groups. I then went to a boxing gym, etc., and pretty soon I was the one giving out the beatings and earning respect. I also learned how to be street smart. I was always aware of my surroundings and who was around me. I always looked down at the kid’s hands to see if he had a knife. I learned to strike first and hard if there was any chance that a fight was going to happen and not to stop until the kid was down and broken. I also learned to stick with my ethnic group during the big playground fights (brawls). These are the things I learned from my “diverse” public middle school. These are also things you learn in prison as well (I assume- never been there). They were important lessons for life but not very academic in the traditional sense. I wouldn’t trade it in though. I developed self confidence, and I liked the adrenaline rush of fighting. More importantly, I learned not to be a coward. If you want this kind of education for your child, then send them to the inner city schools, if you don’t then send them to private schools, leafy suburbs, charter schools or Finland.
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It is a publicly known fact that poor children tend to have less than the best schools, but not every child in those school deserves less than the best education offered. There are times when the gifted child is singled out in public schools, but there are other times when even the most gifted gets lost in the shuffle.
The greatest fix to the problem of a less than great public school would be to have every school be a great school, to equalize the probabilities of students instead of having them penalized a second time for being born poor or existing in a house with a parent or parents whose focus is not on their child advancing in education.
Love In Abundance has been in some Title One schools for the last seven years, and experienced extreme anger, intense attitudes, and an overwhelming desire to be entertained in the academic facilities attended. And these are problems experienced with girls, who were once thought of as the softer or gentler gender. We have also experienced truly great students so frustrated by all the nonsense and drama from like students, but have no out because their parent is not fighting for their right to have a great education or life and work is preventing their parent from taking off work to argue their child’s right to a great education.
So instead of nit-picking about charter schools cherry picking, actually giving a gifted or desiring student the opportunity to get to the life deserved without being forced to be bombarded by the noise and nonsense that exist in some public school classrooms; the child should be the priority and given the right to the greatest life and education. Like children are already suffering deficits that should not be their reality. These children should not have to deal with the methods set up by a system already setting the child up for failure, and like children should have the willingness to escape and heighten his or her mind via their education.
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It really is a shame that our kids are in the middle in this debate. Comparisons to Findland make no sense in Detroit, Flint and other cities where education is a battle for students, parents and teachers. A great education in a well run, modern and well funded public school? Of course there are many teachers who make a huge difference and rise above the fray. They change the lives of the kids they teach regardless of what goes on around them. Unfortunately teachers that can reach kids in poor settings can only reach a small number and they are rare to begin with. Parents who care and have the means, act in the best interest of their children. As they should. For parents “cherry picking” is a meaningless term. When disorder, violence, bullying and insecurity are the “choice” we all lose. It isn’t right, and it may not be fair, but try to explain that to a parent of a child who fears going to school. Explain that to a parent who wants their child to learn something. Years of bad policy, racism, segregation, poverty and unchecked deterioration leave many families only one “choice” and that is a crime.
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@Edward: “Comparisons to Findland make no sense in Detroit, Flint and other cities where education is a battle for students, parents and teachers.”
Some comparisons are useful – apples to apples and oranges to oranges. But I agree with your sentiment.
Finland is capable of mixing all levels of students because the students are much more similar to each other than in Detroit, etc…
In Detroit, there may be some very capable hard-working students who are surrounded by drug dealers, etc…
The only place you’d see this in Finland is in Helsinki, which by the way is the only pocket of educational struggle in Finland – and lo and behold if its not the section of Finland in which the most poverty is found.
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ME, Agree. As hard as it is for some people to swallow, America needs some other things MLK advocated. Personal and community responsibility. Public Schools are a community thing and reflect their communities like mirrors. We can’t expect more than we are getting unless parents and the surrounding communities take ownership in and responsibility for the schools. Poverty is debilitating and horrible but it has to be viewed as an obstacle rather than as an excuse.
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