Those who understand the dangers of privatization and the fraud perpetrated when charters claim they do a better job with “the same kids” can take heart whenever someone in the mainstream media sees what is happening.
Here is a journalist in the Connecticut Post who has figured out what is going on. The charters are skimming the kids in poor communities who are least expensive to educate, then crying that they don’t get enough money. Hugh Bailey has a commonsense idea: Send the money where the needs are greatest. Not to the charter schools, but to the struggling inner-city public schools, which have the kids the charters don’t want.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Don’t forget the rural areas. The inner-city schools are not the only schools who are under funded.
This columnist is onto something: money makes a difference. This is a disagreeable truth. The agreeable fantasies are all based on the premise that we can get more without paying more. Sorry folks: higher quality req
It seems to me that it is time to rewrite Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense”. We need a concise, highly readable book about what is REALLY going on in education in America. This vital information needs to be presented to and read by everyone in this country. This is our foundation….a foundation of democracy. Teachers are being set up to fail then kicked in the teeth for failing. I’m required to spend all of my free time doing frantic data assessment rather than preparing inspiring lessons. Every year, morale among teachers declines. We sit through meetings about how we’re not measuring up, yet they expect us to leave those meetings fired up to do better. Where is the logic? There was a time I felt respected in my profession, recognized for my drive, my talent and my compassion. Now I have to fight relentlessly to shake off anger and frustration at the mounting insanity.
So so true Sward. That’s the part I don’t understand, hours and hours of continuing ed on what? Reading? NO! Math? No!
It’s all on APPR, local assessments, Common Core.
Such a travesty. Hang in, it does seem like the tipping point may be sooner than thought given recent events reported by resources like Diane Ravitch, CTU, Wear Red for ED, Change the Stakes, NPE, Chalk Face, Jersey Jazzman , etc.
Thank you, mom/educator! I found your reply very heartening. I have been so grateful to have found the Network for Pubic Ed and Diane Ravitch’s blog.
Hugh Bailey tells the truth again. Poverty is the defining factor in student performance so a new War on Poverty would be an effective remedy. About a year ago Bailey wrote that zip code generally can telegraph best school districts in Bridgeport CT and anywhere else. Thanks Diane for sharing this in your vast network.
Hugh Bailey has a correlation, but not a causation. Poverty is a good indicator of poor test scores, for sure. Does that mean money makes higher test scores…don’t think so. People are poor for bad decisions and lower competence. Bill Gates is not rich because of expensive public ed. Teachers were flummox with the kid and sent him to the library whereupon he reorganized the library per dewy decimal system. Oh, another indicator of poor nations and citizenship is poor morals, ethics, respect, and values. Do you realize the most consistent successful business espouse Christian principles? We need to focus the poor on ancient and sure principles and core precepts of success. They need the basics of hard work, frugality, moral precepts, home economics, etc.
“Do you realize the most consistent successful business espouse Christian principles? We need to focus the poor on ancient and sure principles and core precepts of success.”
Ahhh, the good ol prosperity gospel at its finest. Be saved, ask jesus for prosperity (oh maybe with a little work on the side) and praise the lord and pass the ammunition. Gag me!
It irritates me when people seem to immediately infer that “more money” on schools is automatically “bad”. Or that it is spent unwisely. The extra money is needed to make classrooms smaller, to provide tech education, to provide for ESL students’ needs, to deal with poverty and lack of supervision. I know that locally it is difficult to get teachers to work in districts with high crime rates. So, districts try to lure them with higher salaries. I am not sure that works, but that is the reason people think we “throw money at the problem”. I know of several districts where teachers are told they can’t take papers home to check because of bedbug and lice problems. I know of several districts where teachers must have an escort when the leave the building after dark. Sometimes some people live in little ivory towers in suburbia. They still complain, but they know nothing about the realities of trying to educate students in some districts. Then we have the above idea of the “prosperity gospel”. Sorry, Jesus would roll over with that idea. Besides, with so many religions in the United States, schools have NO business trying to force feed one particular religion.
Diane, I am a teacher in Queensland and read your blog with interest. I only just found this article from the “Sydney Morning Herald” today. It is about attempts to start for profit schools in Australia with the accompanying argument that it is about parental choice. We have never had these in Australia but it seems they are coming – the thin edge of the wedge. The link to the story is:
http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/forprofit-schools-to-cash-in-20130119-2czzc.html
Ian Fraser
My condolences to the folks in Australia!!
Please look up a sage voice from down under, that of Noel Wilson. Read his “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at:
http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700 .
Duane,
It might be just a little too complex (and long) for my feeble brain at the moment.
Ian
Also read his take on the testing “Bible”: “A Little Less than Valid: An Essay Review” found at: http://www.edrev.info/essays/v10n5.pdf which contains one of my favorite Wilson quotes on educational standards, standardized testing and even the “grading” of students as being “vain and illusory” or as I say chimeras, duendes, phantoms, delusions, etc. . . .
Sorry, that testing “Bible” is “Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing” (2002) put out by American Educational Research Association; American Psychological Association; National Council on Measurement in Education.
“. . . the thin edge of the wedge.”
Actually it is the sharp point and edge of the blade that will be going into the backs of those who resist and into the belly (a la hari kari/seppuku) of those who go along.
Ian, do not let for-profit schools into Australia. They will take taxpayer money to pay off their investors instead of using it for education and students.
Yes, I believe you are correct, but I haven’t seen anything else about it since that one article in the SMH a while ago. I’ll keep looking.
Spread the word and tell everyone you know that the for-profit schools are nothing but a con. The money flows upward to a CEO and family and the school children and staff get short-changed. It is a complete rip-off!!!!!
Yes, I’m sure you are right – I’m trying to find out more about the story in the SMH which was a few weeks ago.
Has anyone ever thought about who devises these tests and measurements and evaluation standards? Most of them have never been responsibility for the “outcomes” of any classroom of learners, and those who might have been responsible left the classroom long ago because doing a classroom was far too difficult. Let the teachers in the building determine the standards of evaluation. They will be much more accurate and, by the way (from my experience), much tougher in terms of reality. I know this from 40 years being responsible for the learning (as well as some teacher evaluations) in classrooms, grades 9 through graduate school.