An experienced researcher saw a story in the Economist about charter schools. It was, as is typical among news stories, incredibly naive. The writer didn’t ask the right questions. Maybe he already believed in the charter “miracle” story and didn’t ask any questions.
So my correspondent–who requires anonymity– decided that it would be helpful to reporters and members of the public to explain how to read stories about charter schools. Mainly it involves the ability to decipher false claims.
They do not have a “secret sauce,” the phrase once used by Mayor Rahm Emanuel to describe the Noble Network of Charter Schools, each of which is named to honor a very rich patron.
They do have a secret recipe, however, for manufacturing the illusion of success.
Be wise. Think critically. Read carefully.
Here is expert advice:
How to Read News Stories about Charter Schools
Reports and stories about charter schools are in the media every day. The majority of these stories praise charters, while often demeaning public schools. We propose that every reader of such stories ask the following questions before taking the claims of such articles seriously.
Does the story compare the demographics of the student population served by charter schools to the demographics of local public schools? Does it include data on the charter school attrition rate? Does it include data on how the students who leave the charters compare to students who leave public schools? Does it include numbers of students expelled? Does it include numbers of students suspended? Does the story focus exclusively on test scores? If so, has someone, with educational expertise, visited the school to determine if the school focuses on test prep at the expense of a rich curriculum? Are the test scores reported outside of school assessments such as the SAT/ACT or does the story only report test scores of exams that are proctored in-house? Does the story account for the fact that, due to the need to apply to the charter school, parents of the students at charters are, on average, likely to be more engaged in education than the parents of students at public schools? Does it exclusively or primarily cite reports funded by pro-charter or conservative think tanks? Does it include quotes from academic scholars or does it just cite charter school advocates? Does it identify advocates or simply call them “experts” or “researchers”? Does it compare the resources available to charter schools to those available to public schools? Let’s call this approach “identifying charters’ bogus statistics” or the ICBS strategy.
It grows tiresome to dispute every tendentious article written on charter schools. But let’s see how the ICBS strategy would help us evaluate a sample story. The Economist recently ran an article praising charter schools and attacking Bill de Blasio for proposing to charge rent to charter schools that use public space in New York City.
The Economist presents the Noble Network of charter schools in Chicago as a paragon of charter school excellence. “Around 36% of the…children enrolled with Noble can expect to graduate from college, compared with 11%…city-wide.” What does the data actually tell us about the Noble Network? As is, unfortunately, standard practice across many charter schools, the Noble Network does not serve equal proportions of the neediest students. In fact they serve 35% fewer English Language Learners and 22% fewer special education students than Chicago Public Schools. This lack of inclusivity extends to other areas too, such as their ban on a Gay Straight Alliance student group.
An op-ed by Congressman Danny Davis noted that the Noble Network suspends 51% of its students at least once during a school year. This includes suspending 88% of the African American students who attend its schools. It might be hard to understand why a school would want to suspend so many of its students…until you realize that this encourages students to leave. And it specifically encourages the more challenging students, the ones most likely to bring down test scores and college graduation rates, to depart. This is not the only such strategy they employ. One exposé revealed that the Noble Network’s “discipline system charges students $5 for minor behavior such as chewing gum, missing a button on their school uniform, or not making eye contact with their teacher, and up to $280 for required behavior classes. 90% of Noble students are low-income, yet if they can’t pay all fines, they are made to repeat the entire school year or prevented from graduating. No waivers are offered, giving many families no option but to leave the school.” The data show that this strategy works. The Noble Network loses over 30% of the students in each class that enters its schools.
As has become all too common, the public school district officials refuse to acknowledge these facts. The former CEO of the Chicago Public Schools told a reporter that he’d turn over data showing that charters don’t “have policies that systematically weed out weaker students.” But as the story notes “the district didn’t keep that promise. WBEZ did obtain an internal CPS memo. It’s titled “Memorandum on Charter School Myths.” The four-page report actually finds that traditional schools held onto more kids than charters did for the year CPS examined.”
The other set of Chicago charter schools praised by the Economist had their contract shortened from 3 years to 5 due to poor performance. Despite the Economist’s claim that “charters have worked well in Chicago,” the actual data show that charters are not working well. As reported by the Chicago Sun Times, “The overall passing rate at two city charter franchises — Aspira and North Lawndale — was below the city average at every campus those two groups operate. Four other chains — Betty Shabazz, Perspectives, North Lawndale and Chicago International — saw the majority of their campuses with over-all pass rates that were below the citywide average.” Even the Walton Foundation-funded CREDO report cited by the Economist, which did not account for the numbers-gaming we noted above, showed mixed outcomes by Chicago’s charters. “In reading, 21 percent of charters performed worse than traditional schools, while 20 percent did better and 59 percent showed no difference. In math, 21 percent of charters did worse, 37 percent performed better and 42 percent showed no difference. Black and Hispanic students continued to lag behind white students in reading, and received “no significant benefit or loss from charter school attendance” compared to students in traditional schools.”
And let us not even mention Chicago’s largest charter chain, called UNO, which received a state grant of $98 million to build new campuses. Its politically powerful CEO–who was co-chair of Mayor Emanuel’s election committee–resigned after revelations in the media of multiple conflicts of interest in the award of contracts and jobs.
But enough about Chicago. The Economist also claimed that “New York City’s charter schools generally outperform their neighbouring district schools.” The data do not support this. According to the data set on the New York City Department of Education’s website, when compared to similar elementary and middle schools, charter schools rank at the 46th percentile in English growth, the 41st percentile in English growth for students who start with scores in the bottom third, the 53rd percentile in Math growth and the 45th percentile in Math growth for students who start with scores in the bottom third. Not only do they not outperform they don’t even match. This past year charter schools saw bigger drops in performance on the Common Core exams than public schools. Additionally charter schools performed worse on average than public schools in English and the same as public schools in math. As do Chicago charter schools, New York City charter schools have extremely high suspension and alarming attrition rates. In fact a recent analysis by the NYC Independent Budget Office found that charter schools selectively attrite students with lower test scores. “The results are revealing. Among students in charter schools, those who remained in their kindergarten schools through third grade had higher average scale scores in both reading (English Language Arts) and mathematics in third grade compared with those who had left for another New York City public school.”
A school from the Success Academy network was singled out for praise by the Economist. What does Success Academy do? They seem to employ the same strategies as the Noble Network in Chicago. In one neighborhood, Success Academy serves 18% fewer impoverished students, 9% fewer English Language Learners, and 13% fewer team taught and self-contained special education students (at a negligible .01% of their student population) than the local public schools. What’s worse Success Academy seems to push out the few special education students that they do admit. Success Academy suspends students at rates well in excess of other public schools in the same district. According to one newspaper report “at Harlem Success 1… 22% of pupils got suspended at least once… That’s far above the 3% average for regular elementary schools in its school district.”
Success Academy has very, very high attrition rates. The data show that over half of each entering class disappears over time. The 2012 data reveal that there were 482 third grade students tested in 2012 but only 244 students were tested at the highest tested grade. The 2013 data reveal that 487 third grade students were tested in 2013, but only 220 students were tested at the schools’ highest testing grade. Assuming similarly sized entering classes at each school and only looking at schools for which we have data across years (i.e. excluding schools that have had only one testing grade which would not permit comparative analysis) over 55% of Success Academy’s students are lost from each grade. Success Academy’s strategy for “success” seems to be to get rid of students who are identified as not succeeding.
The Economist cites a report by “the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think-tank” on the rent question. Bruce Baker, of Rutgers University, has debunked that report. His conclusion, “it makes little sense for the district to heavily subsidize schools [i.e. charters] serving less needy children that already have access to more adequate resources. It makes even less sense to make these transfers of facilities space (or the value associated with that space) as city class sizes mushroom and as the state indicates the likelihood that its contributions will continue falling well short of past promises.”
Using the ICBS strategy it appears that the claims made by the Economist are unsupported by evidence. Stories like this will continue to be published but, armed with the ICBS strategy, readers should not fall prey to such propaganda.
A friend sent me that article in the Economist.
It was pretty snarky.
I’m glad to see this post.
It’s hard to not respond to articles like the Economist one with a quick and defensive reflex, that ultimately probably does not gather the respect and listening needed to actually make the point that charters weaken the overall effort of a public school system. Also, we are so far down the charter school road I just don’t see where we’re going to go from here.
¿Dónde está MS cuando la Academia de Triunfo y Prosperidad lo necesita?
Sounds like the anonymous correspondent was Michael McGrew. I’m sure he’s a happy camper this morning now that Ms. Moscovitz has been “put down”
The anonymous correspondent has worked as a data analyst for the Bloomberg administration for many years.
Mark Twain: “Facts are stubborn things.”
Ronald Reagan: “Facts are stupid things.”
So-called Reformers: “We don’t need no stinking facts!”
Former GW Bush Cabinet member Judd Gregg once said: “The facts are wrong.”
Brilliant: the so-called reform snake eats its own tail!
Another famous quote was when Arne Duncan complimented Steve Barr—former head of Green Dot, currentt head of “Future is Now” schools—on his “success”… again a “success” that does not hold up to scrutiny.
Duncan complimented Barr, saying that Barr had “cracked the code”, regarding educating impoverished, inner city minority kids.
Well, we all know how well his “code-cracking” went in New Orleans recently:
Reminds me of the “Texas Miracle,” where EduFraud Rod Paige famously claimed his drop-out rate when down to ZERO. Upon investigation, they found that all Rod did was manipulate data. So well, in fact, that he was later named Secretary of Education under Dubya (another kind of “Texas Miracle.”)
YUP. And then he became the overseer of NCLB before the scandal broke and he had to leave office. Now he sits on the board of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute for Education Deform, and Michelle Rhee chose him as her second for a debate with Diane Ravitch that she then chickened out of. Rhee said she couldn’t debate because she couldn’t find a third. I guess that the former superintendent in Atlanta must not have been available.
I ran across some interesting thoughts in Jaron Lanier’s “You Are Not A Gadget” that seemed relevant.
“We ask teachers to teach to standardized tests so a student will look good to an algorithm.”
“Information systems need to have information in order to run, but information under represents reality.”
And we have recently observed all too much evidence of this last point he makes:
” . . . the exercise of treating machine intelligence as real requires people to reduce their mooring to reality.”
Thanks, GE2L2R, those are good ones-tagos.
I nominate “information under represents reality.” for quote of the year.
Just a consideration about Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s observation about a secret sauce . . .
McDonalds used to advertise that they had something similar on their Big Macs:
Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun. Could it be the same?
Perhaps it would be useful to look at a single charter school in some detail to explain why it should be closed. I think the only charter school I have set foot in (I walked with a friend who dropped his children off there in the morning) would be a good candidate. It is the Community Roots Charter School in Brooklyn. I think it has much to offer as a case study. As it’s name suggests, for example, it believes that it is uniting the local community, yet charters here are condemned as destroyers of the local community. It claims to be open to students with disabilities, yet charters are condemned for not being open to such students. The board of directors has several people from the financial services industry, always viewed with derision here. One of the co directors of the school is even a TFA alum.
I know it is difficult to get information about a particular school, but there are a number of sources on the web that would be a good place to start. It is even possible that Dr. Ravitch knows some members of the board of directors personally (I know New York is a big place, but I think it is possible that Dr. Ravitch has run into either Beth Lief or Katharine Darrow over the years)
Or perhaps the Academie Lafayette could serve as a case study. I believe Joanna Best has some first hand knowledge about that charter school.
teachingeconomist, your observation of, “The board of directors has several people from the financial services industry” should tell you all you need to know.
No case study needed.
Interesting.
What does having Amy Fontaine (Librarian), Beth Lief ( Executive Director of The Carroll and Milton Petrie Foundation), Katharine Darrow (former attorney at the New York Times and longtime board member of Resources for Children with Special Needs), Ellen Cogut (a speech pathologist who has worked primarily with pre-school-aged children with a speech and language impairment), Kate Rodgers Smith (a Sackler Educator at The Guggenheim Museum), and Katherine O’Donnell
(Ed.D. Educational Leadership Department, Bank Street College of Education) tell you about the school? These are the members of the board that are not obviously connected to financial markets.
Perhaps it would not be useful to look at one charter school. Perhaps this one particular school actually lives up to its claims. We are concerned with the bastardization of what was once a promising model. There are examples of charters that are true to the original concept. There appear to be many more that are not. By the way, TE my school board has several people who are in the financial industry. However, most if not all of them either have had or still have children in the schools. They are balanced by educational expertize on the Board and by their respect for the professional quality of the teaching staff. It is not smooth sailing since some of the them are overly enamored with metrics for describing teaching and learning, but they are critical to keeping the district financially healthy. They are volunteers elected by the community and are aware of their responsibility to the community. They receive no compensation for their service and they do not benefit from any district contracts.
It seems to me that if the orthodox opinion is that all charter schools should close, the argument against charter schools should actually apply to all charter schools. If it does not apply to all charters, perhaps we should do the hard work and try to figure out how to differentiate between charter schools that should be celebrated and those that should be closed.
Exactly, 2old2teach. In my state, charters were capped at 100 for the entire state. Now that our legislature removed the cap, there are 11 new charters that have been approved just in my city alone. When there was a cap, charters were forced to be legit. But our lovely legislature introduced senate bill 337 that wanted to create a separate charter school board for oversight, weaken already weak licensure requirements for these charter schools, eliminate background checks, etc…To contrast, Academie Lafayette’s school board members are required to have background checks. Now, to me, it’s pretty obvious what the results of green-lighting this bill will have on public education in my state, for I have been blessed (or cursed) with a keen sense of foresight. You know foresight…every staunch republican’s Achilles heal (and yes, I’ve coined that phrase). Once the floodgates are open, charter companies with ties to hedge fund managers become the norm. If anyone thinks that this formula will improve our public schools in any way, shape, or form, I’ve got a boat with a hole in it I’ll sell you.
I’m so sorry bad people exist. But remember may good people exist at the same time 🙂
Good to see someone else posting here that thinks well regulated charter schools are legitimate. What about the previous set of regulations do you believe made those charter schools legit?
All charters sap funds from public schools. That’s an argument to close them all.
I take this to be the mainstream position of folks on this blog.
But I usually sense a reluctance to close charter schools that are designed to serve special populations. Do you share that reluctance?
It is my understanding that there are charters that have been authorized by public school districts and integrated into the district. The district controls their continued existence. Am I wrong? I am thinking of more suburban and rural situations rather than urban where the scale brings out the profiteers. Urban districts are more frequently controlled by uberlords rather than the local communities. The situation today demands close scrutiny of all charters; that obviously is not the case. I am not for any charter that is free of local control. In that case, it is just a clever ruse to use public funds to the advantage of the charter operators and investors. Seeing what charters are doing to Chicago with the consent of the bought and paid for school board, I agree with your sentiment in like situations and under like conditions. We have certainly seen a pattern of greed and corruption.
I am so tired of the Noble St “secret sauce” lie. I meet these kids at my psych hosp all the time, these schools are doing great harm! Noble kids are becoming depressed, anxious, and in some cases suicidal. Here is a copy of a speech I gave to the Chicago BOE (I did not pick that title!!) http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=4757
Excellent speech and comment to the article. More people need to hear this.
Katie Osgood: so good to see a comment by you—
And insanely krazy props for all you do for so many.
Dienne: what you said. I wouldn’t change a word.
To the viewers of this blog who have not closed their hearts and minds to the vast majority of children in order to benefit a select few:
The link provided by Katie Osgood is a cautionary tale about figures and mathematical intimidation. If you go to the blogs of numbers/stats folks like Mercedes Schneider, Bruce Baker, GF Brandenburg and Gary Rubinstein—and, drum roll, Jersey Jazzman aka Mark Weber—you will notice a refusal to torture numbers, massage context, and peddle deceptive definitions.
On the other hand, the leading charterites/privatizers and their accountabully underlings mistake ethical (and humorous) admonitions for gung-ho endorsements of misleading and squishy use of data:
“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp posts — for support rather than for illumination.” [Andrew Lang]
A very few examples. Michelle Rhee: in her brief teaching stint, took her students from the 13th to the 90th percentile. Bill Gates: 98% of teacher evals are vapid documents with nothing more than a “satisfactory” on them. Numerous charters: 100% graduation rates.
The only thing new for the leaders and enforcers of the self-styled “new civil rights movement” is the use of numbers and stats—
“In ancient times they had no statistics so they had to fall back on lies.” [Stephen Leacock]
In tribute to Ms. Katie, I end with one small example of the misleading and squishy use of data. During the 2012 teachers strike in Chicago, I read a comment on this blog and another one somewhere else questioning how the CPS educrats and other opponents of public education came up with their claim that the average Chicago teacher made just shy of $77,000@year—hence, teachers are not just lazy and incompetent but greedy, having inordinate amounts of money taken from the kids to be spent on their frivolous luxuries. Actual teachers and others familiar with the situation didn’t have access to the data held by CPS but online kept writing that the figure seemed far too high.
CPS absolutely refused to provide the context necessary for accurately assessing the deceptively precise figure being thrown around that painted teachers as venal extortionists. One of the two commenters had a very simple but reasonable and likely explanation: if by “average” the CPS meant “mean” [not the median or the mode], and they literally counted all employees holding teaching certificates—
Then they were counting in numerous highly paid educrats who held teaching credentials [current? expired?] but were not in the classroom. Not to mention others who might have said teaching credentials [current or expired] but were nowhere near a classroom. The mean is sensitive to outliers so the higher salaries could very easily gravely distort the final result.
So, strictly speaking, they wouldn’t be “lying” but the effect, IMHO, is worse. The mere appearance of a trustworthy figure but without the danger of showing how misleading and squishy it was.
So just as Dr. Mercedes Schneider wrote about the AFT poll on CC: how did you come up with the numbers? For example, how did you define what you wanted to measure and how did you measure it? And what [inevitable] trade-offs were involved? And how imprecise were the final results?
Full context, complete information, transparent procedures…are poison to the numerically pompous.
Again, thanks to both of you for commenting.
😎
Facts are fickle. It’s all about whose reporting them. There’s some misinformation here in Diane’s post about charter schools.
But perhaps the discourse should not be about methods or test scores, but about whether or not the students are happy and making headway. Charter schools might not be for everyone, but they are a reasonable option that parents should have access to.
Denying parents the right to an alternative if they are not satisfied with their local school is unethical.
There’s no right or wrong. There’s no good or bad. There are different choices for different people.
For individual familes, charter schools may be a useful choice, although their claims have been proven to be grossly exaggerated. However, schools are social institutions that serve many purposes and interests, some of which go beyond the needs of individual children or families. Your attempt to reduce that to a matter of individual choice reflects an attitude that charter and privatization proponents work hard to cultivate, since they benefit from an, “I’ve got mine, you get yours” attitude.
That’s bad enough, but since charter schools thrive only in proportion to how many resources they divert from real public schools, in essence, you are effectivelyu saying to public school parents and children in your district, “To get mine, I’ll take yours.”
Some students – a small minority – may benefit from charter schools, but in terms of the broader public good, they are a disaster. They both reflect and worsen income inequality, racial segreation and the de-skilling of the teaching profession.
Are you suggesting that the title of this blog, a better education for ALL, is not achievable? Close the charters and a minority of students will lose, the majority would win, keep them open and a majority of students will lose, a minority of students will win? If this is your view, it seems very possible you are correct, and suggests we should think hard about how the design of our school system creates winners and losers, no matter how we design our school system.
Muddying the waters, as usual, as per your apparent self-determined role on this site.
You know full well what I mean, as I comment frequently on this blog and am quite clear about my viewpoints: that a better education is possible for all, but not when private interests spend immense sums to fragment, destabilize and ultimately get captive elected officials to hand over to those same interests the public schools.
So when you stated “Some students – a small minority – may benefit from charter schools” you actually meant that no students benefit from charter schools?
No, as you well know, I said that a small percentage of students may attend charter schools that give them a good education, unlike the overwhelming majority of them, which have been shown to equal to or worse than neighborhood public schools.
The small minority of students who benefit from charter schools are doing so at the expense of the overwhelming majority of children in real public schools, and only do so because of the purposeful and long term underfunding of urban public schools.
So, are you proposing that the overwhelming majority of public school students have their facilities and services cut back in favor of a small percentage of students? Or are you willfully misstating what I wrote, in order to muddy the waters, as per your usual comments?
I am not proposing anything. It may well be that the good of the many outweighs the good of the few. But if we are making that kind of decision, we should be explicit about it. You are being explicit about it, and I appreciate that.
“But perhaps the discourse should not be about methods or test scores, but about whether or not the students are happy and making headway.”
Oops. Let me try again… “But perhaps the discourse should not be about methods or test scores, but about whether or not the students are happy and making headway.”
I couldn’t agree more. Why can’t the powers that be use those factors when deciding to close a school or impose more high-stakes testing?
My problem with charter schools is that they have access to public funding, but don’t operate under public rules. Charter schools should have to accept all applicants and provide the same services that public schools are required to offer. School alternatives are a good thing and will help some children, but the playing field should be level.
Do you think charter schools, as a group, have more restrictive admission systems than, say, public magnet schools?
A frequent, but false, analogy on this site.
Unlike charter schools, which deceptively claim to be public schools open to all, while gaming their student populations in numerous ways, magnet schools – whose public funding is a separate debate – are quite clear that they do not accept everyone.
Michael,
The post I responded to was very clear on this point: “Charter schools should have to accept all applicants…”.
We can ask poster Jamie if he/she thinks that public schools should have to accept all applicants. I hope the poster responds.
If the poster wishes to hold schools run by local school boards to the same standards, it is an argument to close magnet schools first, as they are the farthest from accepting all applicants, often requiring multiple written exams as part of the application process.
I don’t believe any public schools should be exclusive to some and closed or with limited access to others, whether it’s a charter or magnet school. In other words, I’m not a fan of magnet schools either. I do believe that if there was the will, that public schools could find a way to provide alternative types of education within the public school system, similar to what Cambridge MA schools used to have when I lived there (don’t know how they are now).
For specialized kinds of education it is a matter of scale. Thomas Jefferson High School in Fairfax County offers students there the opportunity to take the first two years of college math classes while in high school (through differential equations). It is far more cost effective to put all the students in the county who are able and interested in these classes in a single school than to offer this curriculum in every high school in the county.
In the right place now.
College courses are not what I am talking about when I talk about alternative education. I am thinking of k-12. I believe that college courses should be taken in college, and high schools should offer high school courses. Why not just send high school students who need/want college courses to a local community college? This is how it is done in areas where magnet schools don’t exist, and it is very cost effective.
This is how it worked at the public high school where I taught. The district partnered with a local college so high school students who wanted to take college credit classes that were offered by the local college could do so. The district set up a video link in the library for these students who came at a scheduled time and attended the class through the video link. The students could ask real time questions, do the work, and submit it through the district to the college where it was corrected before being returned.
There was more to the program than this brief explanation but I’m not sure of all the details because I wasn’t connected to the program. In homeroom, I made announcements about the program and I saw it in operation more than once when I visited the library at lunch or after school.
Those students earned college credit for those classes that could be applied both toward highs school graduation and as college credit at the college of their choice when they went to college. I think one requirement was the student had to be at least 16.
This sounds exactly like the program Joe Nathan, a sometimes poster here, is working towards in Minneapolis St. Paul. It seems like a good idea to me.
I live in a university town, so the strongest high school students do take courses at the university (physically going there) while still in high school. They do not count towards high school graduation however, and the student is responsible for paying tuition at the university.
I think the age requirement you describe is unfortunate, however, as my middle son began taking university classes at 15 and profited greatly from them.
The public schools where I taught were not located in a university town. They were surrounded by a barrio dominated by violent mulch-generational Latino street gangs.
For instance, when I was teaching 8th grade at one of the roughest middle schools in the San Gabriel valley, I home taught a thirteen year old girl who was suspended and up for an expulsion hearing for beating up a student in her English class and then knocking the teacher out when the teacher tried to stop the fight.
I think the principal asked me to work with her after school because I’m a former US Marine and Vietnam vet. I also stand 6’4″.
This girl was only allowed to come on campus after school was out and we would meet so I could correct any work she did the night before and then assign new work for that night. I think she read about third grade level so I had to come up with work that was appropriate.
One time she came with her baby brother who was maybe two or three and she was so proud to show me that he had learned the hand sign for her street gang before he had learned to say mommy.
Another time when teaching a 7th grade class, I had a twelve year old boy who had a price on his head from a rival gang because he’d shot about twelve of their members and had killed a few. I still haven’t forgotten his first name. it was Gonzalo, and he didn’t think he’d live to see 18—-that was 1980. I know his last name, but I’ll not share that here.
When I retired in 2005, I asked one of the members of the gang Gonzalo had belonged to to ask the older members if he had survived and a few days later I was told yes. He was married, still lived in the barrio and now had kids of his own. He was also probably one of the adult leaders of the gang. Most of them don’t grow up to graduate and leave the gang.
Yet, the high school still offered programs like the college video classes or the career pathways program and there were always students who signed up. These classes were developed and implemented in the 1990s. In fact, the HS offered daily tutoring in English, science, math and history almost every afternoon starting after school let out until 5:00 pm when the library closed its doors and locked up.
The main issue with that dividing line is our tracking of students by age. But I agree that students should be allowed to take appropriate courses from schools that are not their assigned high school, even if they are not run by the public school system.
College courses receive college credit though, and high schools don’t usual pay for students college. My husband did this in HS to take computer programming and foreign language classes that were not offered at his rural Idaho HS. He just considered them extracurricular activities since he wasn’t into sports so much.
I believe many colleges and universities are reluctant to take transfer credit from incoming freshman. A Stanford admissions officer told that Stanford does not accept it for example.
Stanford is a private university but state colleges usually accept credit from other state colleges—especially in the same state.
And most college bound students don’t have to worry about Stanford not accepting that category of college credit earned from a state college near the high school because most who apply won’t get into Stanford
For 2011-12, Stanford had 34,348 applications and only admitted 2,437 for an acceptance rate of 7.1%
Stanford does have a very low acceptance rate, especially for those who are not D1 athletes. As I said, it does differ from institution to institution.
also from state to state
True.
Stanford: “The students who thrive at Stanford are those who are genuinely excited about learning, not necessarily those who take every single AP or IB, Honors or Accelerated class just because it has that name.”
My husband went to Stanford (and MIT) but he got in on his grades from a small high school and the classes he took at the local community college. His school did not offer AP, IB, or accelerated classes but had some really good teachers who knew the students well. They helped him find the community college and register there when they could offer him no more. It didn’t matter that he didn’t get credit for the courses at Stanford. He took them because he wanted to learn. And as I mentioned earlier, he is not an athlete, at all.
Without taking a stand on charter school policy in this comment, the analysis of the Success Academy attrition rate is very suspect. It’s not exactly clear what is being compared but different grade levels are often in no way the same size. There are often only 2 sections of a higher grade, and 4 of the lower, for example.
The obvious comparison would need to be made of the number of third graders who took the test in 2012 and number of fourth graders who took the test in 2013 in the same schools. From a very quick browse of the data, I don’t think the data shows anywhere near the levels of attrition claimed, if any.
“The Economist” is a biased British newspaper. Basically it’s almost all propaganda and it’s possible that conservative talk radio shows like Rush Limbaugh modeled their shows after them.
A few years ago, I read enough issues and fact checked enough claims to verify this for myself. Many of the pieces they publish are opinions of the writer or publication masquerading as news or feature articles. Cherry picking facts is common.
And it is almost impossible to even identify who wrote what because “The Economist” (unless the policy has changed since I stopped reading that yellow-journalism rag) doesn’t reveal the writers of each piece. No transparency!
“The Economist” is more opaque than Bill Gates, Rupert Murdock, the Koch brothers, the Walton family, etc.
If Rush Limbaugh modeled his show after the Economist, they would seem to have parted company long ago. At least I don’t think Rush regularly calls for a carbon tax to address the obvious problem of global warming (The Economist has held this position for at least a decade), nor did Rush endorse Obama in 2012 and 2008, endorsed Kerry in 2004, Clinton in 1992, and refuse to endorse Reagan in 1984. I may be mistaken about Rush though, as I don’t listen to his radio show.
Don’t mistake any stand The Economist takes on the issuse. When it chooses sides, its pieces about issues it doesn’t agree with are often biased and it cherry picks facts to make its point.
As for the Rush Limbaugh comparison, I was trying to make a point. Honestly, I don’t think Rush Limbaugh reads The Economist. Maybe he’s seen it sitting on magazine stands on his way to eat a two pound steak with sour cream drenched baked potatoes, but that’s probably about it.
In addition, anyone who reads The Economist and agrees with their stand on any issue probably isn’t going to fact check their claims to discover if they left anything out.
It doesn’t matter what issue it is.
One might say that about readers of almost any publication, including the readers of this blog.
True. But then, I , for one have already fact checked many of these facts before I even read “Reign of Error”.
I taught for thirty years (1975-2005) in schools surrounded by a barrio infested by violent street gangs. The high school where I settled and spend the last sixteen years had student population that was 74% Latino, 8% black, 8% Asian, and 8% white with 1% other.
In the 1980s I stared to notice that a lot of the policies that kept flowing downhill to restrict and influence how teachers taught were almost always counterproductive and destructive. One roadblock after another to thwart the success of teachers.
Before the 1990s, I started to suspect that maybe there was a unified plot to destroy public education but said “No!” because that idea was so far fetched. I wanted to know more and so I spent years reading about what was going on in education and decided the root of the problem was the popular, politically correct parenting method to boost a false sense of self-esteem in kids.
After all, as teachers, we were constantly running into the wall of self-esteem over and over—for instance parents with kids earning poor grades who weren’t concerned with the child’s grades or what they were not learning because they weren’t studying, but what those grades would do to their child’s self esteem. This constant pressure was like a Tsunami from the School Board through the parents and administrators to drench us teachers and that eventually led to grade inflation and dumbing down the curriculum.
And over the years, teachers came under attack from parents repeatedly with accusations that you don’t like my kid; your too strict; your too demanding; your this; your that, etc. And as the years went by, the public perception grew that the reason kids weren’t leaning because it was the teacher’s fault for one reason or another but never the failing kids fault.
Kids don’t learn because the teacher isn’t teaching. Kids don’t learn because they don’t pay attention; they don’t cooperate in class; they don’t do class work; they don’t do homework and they don’t read.
In every class I taught, there were kids who worked and learned and succeeded but the ratio of kids failing grew as the blame all was piled on teachers with no responsibility on kids or parents.
It wasn’t until I read “Reign of Error” that it all came together and I realized that my first suspicions that there was a plot behind what was happening to weaken public education was real. Over the years, I’d read enough about what was going and experienced the changes taking place in public ed to accept what Diane said in her book as she connected all the dots.
So, I have a question?
Do you support public education or the robber barons and Wolves of Sesame Street?
Right now, Robin Hood is all but dead and King John rules supreme without much of a challenge.
I support the notion that different students have different needs, so assigning students based on street address does not make a great deal of sense.
It seems to me that everyone here agrees that students should be able to choose some classes in high school, for example, but few agree with me that they should be allowed to choose classes (perhaps all their classes) from outside the assigned building. I have suggested that the participants try to explore the ground between class choice inside a high school and school choice between schools to understand where and why consensus breaks down, but there was no take up for the project here.
I am more tolerant of alternative school organizations than many here because I believe that schools can be run privately and still do an excellent job educating students. The “robber barons” and “Wolves” that run the Lab Schools, Phillips Exeter Academy, and Sidwell Friends schools provide what I think all would agree an excellent education despite the lack of an elected school board to supervise them. There should clearly be a good set of regulations in place for choice schools and those regulations enforced they should be enforced, but allowing student choice in a building can substitute for some regulations that are in place in schools where students do not have any choice of building to attend. Some types of schools, for example for profit on line virtual schools, maybe too difficult to regulate and reasonably be band (though we do need organizations that will offer virtual courses), but others, like the Community Roots Charter School in Brooklyn, NY, would seem to be a welcome addition to the schools in NYC.
Does that answer, at least in part, your question about what I support?
Thank you, you answered my question and it is obvious that you are not a friend of public education. I think you have been brainwashed by fifty years of propaganda.
Why, because you said, “I support the notion that different students have different needs, so assigning students based on street address does not make a great deal of sense.”
Yes, kids do have different needs and the district where I taught worked to meet as many of these needs as possible. Much of the annual workshops and services teachers must attend to improve their understanding of how the mind works also focused on methods and strategies to achieve teaching kids who learn in diverse ways. It doesn’t matter what address the school has because the learning takes place in the classroom.
However, there’s a big difference between a child who has literacy and one who doesn’t. A child without literacy can’t take advantage of programs that exist in the public schools that offer choices that would improve future lifestyles.
For instance, at the high school where I taught, there was a career pathways program that allowed students to select the path of their choice. The district partnered with local businesses to discover areas where better paying jobs would be available and then created a program in conjunction with the state requirements for graduation. Graduates in the career pathway program not only earned a high school degree but a certificate for completing a pathway program that included internships in businesses.
This is the page from that high school’s website:
“Imagine getting hands-on experience in a career while still in high school! The award-winning Career Pathways program at Rowland Unified is one of a kind – students at both Nogales and Rowland High schools have the opportunity to learn and experience first-hand about six different career field areas:
Arts & Communication, Business, Family & Consumer Sciences, Health & Medical Services, Technology and Public & Human Services.
http://www.nogaleshs.org/apps/cross.jsp?wREC_ID=621&crossPath=/apps/events/show_event.jsp%3FREC_ID%3D190174%26id%3D2%26d%3D2007-11-21
No student is forced to join a career pathway. That’s a choice.
Everything that you think can only be achieved through private education may also be achieved in public education if the support is there from the government who funds the schools.
That brings me back to the primary job the public schools are expected to perform and that’s to educate willing students to be literate in reading, math, science and history. And the key to achieving that is the world “WILLING”.
I think you are like many of the brainwashed and assume that every student who attends mandatory public schools is hungry to learn and the reason kids fail is because public school teachers aren’t doing their jobs
But that’s wrong.
Every profession has incompetent people. Studies have actually pegged a number on that. I think it’s about 7% or less. Our daughter had at least 50 different teachers in four different school district k – 12. After her first year at Stanford, I asked her how many were incompetent. She thought about it and replied “Two”—that’s 4%.
And those two incompetence teachers didn’t stop her from being accepted to Stanford where she graduates this year. She started making lifestyle choices at 14 in ninth grade and the public high school she attended offered her a wide variety of choices. That’s when she started to make mature decisions in her life. There were so many choices, she actually overdid it and was off to school before 7:00 am and not back home until after 8:00 pm. She graduated from high school as a scholar athlete. She also volunteered to tutor kids who needed help in English, math or science in the school library at lunch and after school.
The public schools gave her the basics necessary for the next step in her life and she was willing to pay attention, cooperate, ask questions, do the work, etc.
But what I think you’re subscribing to is a false assumption—reinforced by fifty years of increasing propaganda—that all kids are hungry to learn and are ready in kindergarten to make lifestyle choices and that the public schools aren’t giving them the freedom to do that.
Most kids are not ready to make those decisions until they are much older than five, ten or even sixteen. I don’t think many parents want their seven year olds to go out and get married and find a job.
I am a bit confused by your response. I certainly think that the importance of choice grows as a student ages, so that more choice is necessary for a high school student than a first grader. That would be part of the discussion I wanted to stimulate with the exploration of where and why the near universal agreement that at least some choice of classes within a high school building starts to become a disagreement about educational choice.
I do think that specialized environments like language immersion programs or Waldorf or Montessori approaches to education can benefit some students, and do not see how those can take place in a traditional zoned school. While there may be enough parents in a district to warrant a French immersion elementary school, for example, they are not all going to be in the same catchment area and there may well be others in that catchment area who are strenuously opposed to sending their children to a French immersion elementary school.
I think the career pathways program at your high school is very laudable, and wish that more high schools had programs like that. My local high school, for example, has a very active Future Farmers of America chapter. Does your high school also provide a curriculum comparable to Thomas Jefferson High School in Fairfax County (here is a link to the mathematics courses: https://fcps.tjhsst.edu/coursemgmt/courses/300/) ? Surely some of the students at the high school would benefit from access to this curriculum.
Democratically run public schools reflect their community’s needs. Because elected school board members are also usually parents, these elected officials want what’s best for their children and their community. Special programs that high schools offer, therefore must prove they serve the community and the students to be approved by an elected school board.
For that reason, comparing high school programs between Fairfax County in Virgina and a high school in an area of the San Gabriel Valley in Los Angeles County in California would be like comparing the taste of a bitter melon to a overripe banana and then failing the banana because it wasn’t bitter.
Today, more than 80 of the students at Nogales High School are Latinos and many live in poverty and are immigrant children where the only language at home is Spanish because many of the parents don’t speak English.
78.4% of the students are Socioeconomic disadvantaged and 41.5% are English learners.
Click to access 2012%20Nogales%20High%20School%20Accountability%20Report%20Card.pdf
I clicked the link you provided and I didn’t see the information that the school accountability report care from Nogales High School has on it.
To find a demographic socioeconomic comparison, I had to turn to:
http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/demogrph/gendemo.htm
And I discovered that Fairfax County in Virgina has 16.1% listed as Hispanic; 62.8% white; 9% black, 18% Asian/Pacific Islander. In addition. the 2012 Household and family income distribution shows that 18.5% of the country population earns earn under $50,000 annually, and only 7.2% live in poverty.
91% are high school graduates and 58.3% are college graduates.
What this data tells me is that there is no way to compare Nogales High School with any high school in Fairfax County Virgina. Schools that have a high percentage of white and Asia/Pacific Islander students perform much higher than schools such as Nogales with a high percentage of Latino students living in poverty and only 5.3% white and Asian students.
I also suspect that Fairfax County doesn’t have a strong street gang culture. When I was still teaching at Nogales, I witnessed a drive by shooting from my classroom doorway as school was letting out. The community that surrounded the high school was dominated by a violent street gang called Happy Homes or Puente 13. In fact, the first grade school where I taught a fifth grade class full time had concertina wire on the roof to keep the gangbangers off the roof. One night while working late, one gang killed a rival gang member (age 16) outside my classroom by shooting him in the stomach. The streets around Nogales and all of its feeder schools, it was so dangerous we were told not to chase students off campus and the police often stopped patrolling those streets at night to avoid getting shot.
Do you really believe that a voucher program is going to make a difference in a community lie that? All a voucher program will do is allow a few students to run away from that community during the day while they are in school but they have to go home eventually.
And Nogales is part of that community. The teachers and administrators have developed relations with community leaders and with many parents who learn to trust them. A voucher school outside of that community would never be able to do that. I worked with principals who went out of their way to developed friendships with the leaders of some of the most violent street gangs to gain their support to keep the violence off the campus and it worked most of the time.
Great points, Lloyd. Does teachingeconomist really believe the magic of the market is the cure for what ails the Nogales community?
I don’t think there is any single thing that is the cure to poverty and despair. I do think giving families the opportunity to make choices that they think best is helpful.
Wrong.
Literacy is one of the most important skills that might help a motivated and disciplined child grow up and escape poverty. But where do they become literate if the parent is not supportive?
The answer is early childhood education and maybe mandatory parenting classes for the parent or parents.
Without literacy, I would’ve been stuck in minimum wage jobs. With literacy, I had the skills to go to college and succeed.
I told my students every year that if they wanted to escape, the school offered after school and summer programs to help them. All they had to do was cooperate and do the work and take advantage. And if they didn’t have the money to go to college like me, they could do what I did and join the military because the military offers financial support programs. Mine was the GI Bill for Vietnam. Today, it’s different but it’s still there.
I know of at least one of my students who did just that. She did what I advised and to escape, she joined the air force right out of high school. Five years later, she dropped by for a visit and told me she had been taking classes from a four year state college in California through her laptop while she served in Israel on a Patriot missile battery, then in South Korea, and last Japan and the military picked up all of her tuition and trained her in electronics. She said she stay in the air force until she earned her Masters in electrical engineering and then she’d get out.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way and the public schools—if they don’t lose funds to the private sector profiteers—usually use some of that money to set up tutoring programs and other support for the kids who want it. But we can’t force them. No one can force them. The law doesn’t allow it.
And every year I taught, I saw a few kid cross over from failure caused mostly by the heavy burden of poverty to success and start to work their way out of poverty.
No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, Common Core do nothing to alleviate poverty. Instead, these laws and programs were all designed to make public school teachers look like failures with one goal—to get hold of that money the taxpayers shells out to support the public schools and profit from it.
If you believe most or all of these billionaires actually care for those kids, then I have an acre on Mars I can sell you for a great price. I’ve known many a teacher who arrived at school hours before the first class and were there hours after the last class. How do I know this, because I was one of them. Work weeks were often sixty to 100 hours.
Maybe.
I think that many people in the United States who were born into the middle class or above and never lived in or near poverty look at the world from a different perspective wearing rose colored glasses.
These people have no idea what poverty and/or a dysfunctional family does to a kid. Instead, these people probably think that every kid is like them and most of their friends with homes that are rich in reading material and plenty of food and goodies around all the time. To these middle class kids from this enriched environment, school work is easy because most of them are reading at or above grade level.
The average self-esteem obsessed parent is probably a middle class or above parent who has the luxury of raising a kid in this utopian environment. However, the opposite is true for kids living in poverty who might have parents addicted to drugs or booze.
For instance, my brother who was about twelve years older than me spent more of his life in poverty than I did. By the time I was seven, our dad had managed to land a union job and slow up his drinking and that pulled us up and out of poverty.
My brother was illiterate and worked hard labor jobs for low pay most of his life. He was a drug user and an alcoholic who spent 15 years of his life in prison. He often lost his temper around his kids and they would actually swing at each other. When he got physical abusive with his kids, they slugged back just as hard. My brother had seven kids and most of them grew up to be just like him or worse. He died at age 64 in December 1999. K – 12, he was a horrible student who cut class, got his girlfriends to call the school and pretend to be our mother and lie about him being out sick.
And most of these people in the middle class that don’t have a clue what its like to grow up in a family mired in poverty also probably don’t know what it’s like to grow up in a house where your father is a chain smoking alcoholic and gambler who might vanish for weeks at a time when he’s on a bender.
According to the FBI, there are 38,000 street gangs in US urban areas with more than one million members. They deal in violence, drugs, sex slavery, pornography, gambling, etc.
We can be assured that most if not all of the billionaires who are out to take over public education and profit off of it, have never even lived close to middle class lifestyles let alone poverty.
They don’t have a clue and even if one of them did, the rest wouldn’t. Instead, they probably think what works for them should work for everyone. They can’t conceive of a kid coming to school with no intent to study or cooperate.A kid who may be from a home where the only language is Spanish and the parents are illiterate in that language too. Only a third of Mexico’s population graduated from high school and most of the illegal immigrants from Latin America are not the educated portion of the population.
I have some idea about the impact of poverty.
My foster son was born to a household servant in in the middle of a civil war in what was, according to the UN, the worst country in the planet for humans to live. His adoptive sister (in the first family that adopted him) would dismiss news reports of atrocities by saying that everyone has a friend whose hand or foot has bend cut off by a machete. My foster son suffers from a variety of learning disabilities.
Then your foster son is fortunate that you plucked him out of that hell hole to live in a middle class or better family. He doesn’t live in poverty anymore. That may make all the difference.
When you have lived in poverty instead of know someone who has, then you might understand what’s its like for the 20+ million American children who still live in poverty because no one came to rescue them.
What you may not understand is that when your foster son came to live with you he escaped poverty and that offered him a way out of it. And if you expect the schools to do all the work to overcome his learning disability, think again. Education is a process that takes a teacher, the child and a parent to make happen.
What confuses me is that 23% of American kids live in poverty and many of them are foster children. Why didn’t you help one of the kids already living here in the US?
According to this report, there are 114,000 children in foster care in the United States waiting to be adopted.
http://crazynormaltheclassroomexpose.com/
Outside of the US about a billion people live in poverty and there are other hell holes in the world where life is risky everyday.
A few that come to mind: Syria, North Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan to name a few.
Otra vez, “¿Dónde está MS cuando la Academia de Triunfo y Prosperidad lo necesita?”
Just once — how about a charter taking over an established low-SES/low-test-score inner-city school keeping the same student population (no students eliminated, no students added) and operating the school for a few years. In other words, force the charter to teach the same students (not just the same mix of income/race) as the neighborhood school.
To my knowledge, the only time this happened was a few years ago when KIPP took over a middle school in Denver. After a few years, KIPP pulled out — scores stayed flat and KIPP conceded defeat.
Or — how about the elected officials and editorial writers who are supporting charters so strongly demanding that the charters run this experiment as a condition of continuing the charter programs?
Labor Lawyer: what you said.
😎
Well said, Labor Lawyer, but as we all know, they can’t/ won’t do that, else they be revealed as the frauds they are.
Charter schools have more involved parents point blank. Why don’t you and some of these other anti-charter monsters devise a study on the parent effect? And just to be fair test for traditional schools performance…oh wait…that was done and most failed.
Can you cite a report that supports what you say? The Boston Charter School study showed that students who attended charters did better than students who were not accepted in charter school lotteries. Same parents, better outcomes.
As usual on this page, lots of “conventional wisdom”, but little fact. If you start with a supposition and then look for supporting facts (or repeat the contentions of others), you’re not being intellectually honest.
JPR, the Boston charter school study included only charters with waiting lists. Those without waiting lists were left out. If you only study successful schools, guess what you discover?
Tough to design a good study. If they looked at schools without waiting lists, the criticism would be the skimming of the application process means that charter school students are not compatible to other students. Is there no way to study this issue?
Diane, I brought up the Boston study only to counter the argument that charters are successful because of more involved parents. That study shows that it isn’t true by comparing the performance of students who won lotteries to get into charter schools with those who didn’t and attended neighborhood schools. The fact that it doesn’t include charters without waitlists doesn’t have any bearing on that particular issue, true?
JPR, there have been many charter studies. Very few show charters outperforming public schools even though they have fewer children with disabilities and fewer English language learners. On average, charters do no better than public schools.
“But perhaps the discourse should not be about methods or test scores, but about whether or not the students are happy and making headway.”
Tall order there. An even greater focus, or measure, of the social purpose of ANY cultural appartus, involved in establishing consciousness, is whether “It” produces the society
we want.
“Horace Mann argued, like Aristotle, that education is “the balance-wheel of the social machinery” in a democratic society.”
““the supreme end of education in a democracy is the making of the democratic character.”
“reflective reconstruction of knowledge, insights and values” –– essential to the maintenance of a democratic society.”
“the democracy which proclaims equality of opportunity as its ideal requires an education in which learning and social application, ideas and practice…are united from the beginning and for all.”
The “Orators of stunning talent” have steered the vast armies “of the clueless”
towards a balanced-democratic society in which equality of opportunity serves
as the “Proof” of the strategy of why public education and democratic government were inextricably linked.
Well written!
I made a brief but positive statement about Charters and a brief but critical comment about McGrew and I was moderated out. Does one have to drink the kool aid before being allowed to post?
Gipper, that’s absurd
There are many pro charter comments here
http://gippersblog.com/?p=31#comment-4
Zak: thank you for the link and your comment on the linked piece.
dianeravitch: you stand in line with a genuinely admirable American tradition—
“A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.” [Frederick Douglass]
More and more, the charterites/privatizers show their inability to deal with the “power of your ideas” by resorting to innuendo, smears and jeers.
Or they commit a Rhee Flee like David Coleman and Michelle Rhee.
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” [Mahatma Gandhi]
This third stage is a difficult one but it’s the last one before—
a win for a “better education for all.”
Krazy props.
😎
Reblogged this on 21st Century Theater.
As an experienced mother of 2 I will now teach you how to analyze false claims…1st you have some children of your own 2nd you pray your little future brain sergeons are zoned to a good school #3 you try not to be insulted by a blogger trying to unteach everything you learned in your freshmen statistics coarse. Every adult should know that facts reflect what ever they are being used to promote. The only truth that matters is the progress a parent witnesses within their scholar. Whether a parent is happy with a charter or a zone school how dare you attempt to shed your misguided 1/2 truths on their happiness. The only propoganda parents should avoid is this childless nonsense you have wasted 5 minutes of their valuable time with. We have homework logs to fill out!
LOL, pretty shocking how sad this thread is. Diane just copied and pasted every anti Success Academy rant she could find on the internet and pasted it. I think this is meant to get the comments section going and get more ‘hits’ on her site so she can cash out when the time comes. In reality, I have already addressed every single one of these false claims in a dozen different threads. Just look back and read folks. I will point out the most obvious misconstruction, that the 36% attrition rate at SA over 3 years is some how out of wack. The IBO put attrition rates at zoned schools over the same period at 39%! So, if attrition is so bad at SA why is it HIGHER at zoned schools? Don’t you find it interesting this thread makes claims about attrition rates without comparing them to the schools in the same district? Do you think this omission is random?
As for the rest, posting the Gary Rubenstein nonsense (Open the link you will see I deconstructed his magic math on his own website) is pretty lame.
Oh, Audits? Yeah, when the state comptroller announces his audit of an individual school, something that has never been done (you audit districts) from the teachers union headquarters, you know something is up. The fact is, public charters like SA already have to submit annual financial reports the the Regents Board and have yearly independent audits conducted with results sent to the Department of Education for their review. This is the law and written into their charter agreements which are overseen by the state government. Why doesn’t DiNapoli just request those audit findings from the DoE? Special Interests perhaps?
Instead of wasting my time retyping that which I’ve already educated most of you on, here are the facts showing the above post to be utter bunk.
DiNapolis frivilous audit:
http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/07/11/59266.htm
Fraudulent reporting of Charter costs by the IBO:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/173211810/NYC-School-Funding-White-Paper-FINAL
Attrition rates higher at zoned schools:
https://reportcards.nysed.gov/
Stanford Study showing Charter school kids get more education
Click to access CredoReport2013.pdf
IBO admittance of higher attrition at zoned schools
http://www.ibo.nyc.ny.us/iboreports/2014attritioncharterpublic.html
Independent blogger from Atlanta explaining why SA works so well
SA test results and the failure of colocated zoned schools
http://nypost.com/2013/08/11/schooling-the-critics/
Rich zoned schools that dont pay rent
Most importantly…………Dispelling the ‘attrition myth’ at Harlem SA
http://parkslope.patch.com/groups/jarod-appersons-blog/p/bp–the-attrition-myth-at-harlem-success-academy
I doubt these facutal websites will ‘sink in’ with most of the anti choice extremists on this website, but that is not why I post them. Anyone with a sound mind and clear judgement, do your reading, check the facts. You will realize that Mrs Ravitch is nothing more than a union mouthpiece trying to protect a failing establishment fearful of change.
Dear MS, your remarks are highly insulting. I do not accept any advertisements on the blog. Unlike Success Academy, I am not “cashing out” by getting hits on the blog. If you want to stop attracting readers, stop reading the blog and eliminate your own hits. I am 75 years old, and no one pays me to write the blog or hold opinions. They are my own. If you don’t like them, go start your own blog. You have become a crashing bore and I don’t want you in my space anymore. I always welcome dissent but not insulting and uncivil behavior. Please scram.
DR…But you do advertise. You advertise the status quo! Far more sad than SA’s supporting innovation but at 75 years olds that seems understandable. What is clear now is that you have no stake in this countries future. The real education of our children is at risk at most public schools which merely provide free babysitting. How dare you blog about something you have no right to. You really are insulting. You blog anti-charter and won’t even be around to witness the consequences…SHAME ON YOU!
You have no idea what you’re talkign about.
Where’s your evidence that teachers are just sitting around babysitting? Did that happen to you when you were in school? If it did, then that means about 50 teachers over a period of thirteen years did nothing and in my experience teachers like that lose their jobs because administrators come into the class on an annual basis to observe and then write an evaluation. Plus the good kids—-and there are always good kids—complain to their parents or other teachers or even administration.
Contrary to the myth that teachers can’t be fired, they can. A teacher who is considered incompetent must be put on an improvement plan and they are observed mercilessly by administration. If they don’t improve, then they will be fired and the union will do nothing about it.
That is a bald faced lie perpetrated by an endless stream of propaganda from a handful of greedy, power hungry billionaires. And you either work for them and are one of their shills or you are one of the fools Abraham Lincoln talked about.
Lincoln said, “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
I taught for thirty years and never knew one teacher who babysat. We taught five hours a day on average and worked 60 to 100 hours a week and that included weekends.
When do you think we plan lessons and correct work?
There are more than four million teachers working in 50 states and territories in 13,600 school district out of almost 100,000 public schools teaching more than 50 million children with elected school boards and you have the audacity to claim they are all babysitting.
If what you say were true, then there would be no colleges in the United States because no one would be able to do the work.
In 1940, less than 40% of 25 to 29 year olds had completed high school. Today that number is 90%. In 1940, less than four million Americans by age 25 had a BA degree or more. Today that number is about forty million.
Again Llyod…where do your kids go to school? I have one in nyc district 3 charter school after a “brief stay” in district 9 and another in district 10 in the bx. My last name is Melendez! (God i hope your not a killer) A real minority family in nyc. Unlike your 30 years of teching for 6 hours a day and then going home to read your books on povery I grew up in it and fight against it everyday at my little more than minimum wage job so my kids don’t suffer. So happy you don’t know any slacker teachers so happy to hear non of your coworkers have been so bad they were fired. When you have some time to come out of your bubble come visit a nyc zone school or better yet have a child in the inner city and let us know where you decide to send them so we may all follow your all knowing path! GET A CLUE UNION REP!
There you go again with your libel.
You accused me: “Unlike your 30 years of teching for 6 hours a day and then going home to read your books on povery.”
My teaching day usually started an hour, on average, before my first class arrived because teachers have to prepare for lessons. And when I went home at least an hour or more after school ended, I carried school work home to correct. I also worked on developing lessons at home.
My wife and daughter can attest to that fact because they witnessed me coming home every day during the school year and sitting down at the kitchen table after dinner to correct papers for several hours every night and on the weekends.
You’re ignorance of what it takes for most teachers to teach is incredible. A recent study revealed that the average public school teacher works 56 hours a week including the 25 to 30 hours teaching. My work weeks were often 60 to 100 hours including teaching, planning and correcting.
At the high school I also shared the adviser position with another teachers with the environmental club and the chess club. My room was open at lunch for kids who enjoyed playing chess and at least one weekend a month, several teachers joined me to drive kids from the barrio around our high school into the local mountains around Los Angeles so they could go on hikes in the wilderness there.
Your personal experience in one sector of the NY public schools, the largest public school district in the country, is not the norm for most schools in America. There are 13,600 democratically run public school districts operating almost 100,000 schools There are more than 4 million public school teachers teaching more than 50 million students from every walk of life.
In no way, was your own personal experience indicative of a nation with the third largest population in the world.
However, you seem to demonstrate the trumpet of the so-called (fake) reform movement by blaming the public schools, public school teachers and their unions for your lot in life–for the decisions you made as you grew up.
You have condemned more than 4 million public school teachers and stereotyped them to match your image of the public schools in the US.
You may not know it, but you are a bitter person who has become a troll and possibly an unwitting ally of the robber barons and wolves of Sesame Street. Your life is not the fault of teachers and the public schools. If anything, the reason the schools you attended didn’t offer better choices is because of the robber barons who have waged war against the schools for almost fifty years until many in the public believe their lies.
I’m no doefool Llyod. How many hours you Work has nothing to do with how many hours you TEACH! Again I was a NYC DOE enployee for 10 years districts 9,10,3 & 5…i’m the UFT’s worst nightmare. Eyes when they thought no one was looking. My loyalty is now for my kid alone I will never pay union dues that go toward attacking parent choice again. I resigned the week my son won the lottery into SA this August. Live your life and i’ll live mine but have enough respect for this countries right to choice. You children are no longer children so why are you still in this debate. Your grandchildren’s education will be their parents choice. It’s time to step down.What happened to that oath you took because my son’s only enemy seems to be bloggers like this and the UFT. Which charter school is attacking your parental rights exactly?
“I’m no doefool Llyod. How many hours you Work has nothing to do with how many hours you TEACH!”
Of course you are not a doefool—whatever that is. But I think you are a fool—fooled by the robber barons and wolves of Sesame Street.
Teachers can only teach so many hours a day. If you teach five periods, that’s five hours. But the rest of the hours a teacher spends on the job is still part of being a teacher even if you have to stay up until midnight to correct all the work turned in that day during class.
A teacher’s job goes way beyond class time with students. In addition, there are morning and afternoon meetings. Then there are night classes teachers have to take to keep their teaching credential active. Those classes are all designed to improve teaching skills and an understanding of how the brain works.
A survey through the Washington Post says, “Teachers work 53 hours per week on average.”
“A new report from Scholastic and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, called Primary Sources: America’s Teachers on the Teaching Profession, finally quantifies just how hard teachers work: 10 hours and 40 minutes a day on average. That’s a 53-hour work week!”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/survey-teachers-work-53-hours-per-week-on-average/2012/03/16/gIQAqGxYGS_blog.html
Many teachers spend time calling parents from the teacher’s home because there’s little or no time at school. I called parents from my home and my classroom.
It’s great that you won a lottery for an alleged fake charter school because the original intent of charter schools was to serve students who were at the highest risk of dropping out of the system. A lottery doesn’t achieve that purpose. Instead, the Charter School concept that originated with public school teachers in the 1970s has been hijacked to siphon tax payer money into the bank accounts of billionaires.
Stop changing the subject and challenging my right to be part of this debate. As long as I’m a citizen of this country and pay taxes—-and we pay lots of taxes—probably more than you earn in a year—-I have a right to be part of any debate over an important issues that’s taking place in this democracy. Every tax payer even if they don’t have children may be contributing taxes to the public schools and should have a say in where that money is spent.
Through voting, the majority decides. Parents with school age children do not have an exclusive right to decide what happens in public education and where that money is spent. In a democracy, the majority of voting age adults make that decision at the ballot box and they don’t need to have school age children to vote.
Yet, that isn’t happening in many of the districts in this country where the robber barons and wolves have gained a foothold. The tax payers and public is being cut out of the process.
Again, I urge you to shut off the TV at home and start reading as a family. Also lock up the video games and mobile phones if your children have them. Reading at home is one of the most powerful tools to achieve a high level of literacy. And once that is archived, the child who becomes an adult has the skills needed to be a life-long learner.
So i took some of your advice and googled you and Diane… You haven’t even taught since before the iphone was invented! Your perception is so outdated I don’t know why I let it upset me. At your age and scioeconomic status traditional even when failing would feel like the right thing to support. Funny thing is i’m not the only one pointing out Diane’s status quo approach to education. And what was really interesting ws Stanford University’s Center for Research on Educational Outcomes recently found that low-income students, minority students and students still learning English attending charter schools outperform their peers at district schools. Isn’t that interesting? You have no idea what parents and teachers are really up against these days. Your next book should be on what not to do in education reform… That way you don’t have to really have any ideas of your own just sit at your computer and pick apart others ideas. I am satisfied now. Good bye Lloyd enjoy the up coming summer in your summer home while many NYC charter school parents scramble to find good schools for their kids as Diane’s friend de blasio stops middle school openings to fund Pre-K! At his rate we should maybe see a change in poverty in about 16 yrs! Hope you and Diane are around to witness the consequences of holding on to your bygone era.
The mama troll strikes again with her insults and libel. You remind me of many of the gang kids I taught who got into these verbal bash fests where where they insult each other (usually laced with lots of exaggerated lies) to see who’d come out the insult king or queen.
I retired from teaching in 2005. I didn’t retire from life. After teaching for thirty years, I’ve kept up with what’s going on in the world and in education. In addition, I have friends I stay in touch with who are still teaching. They tell me things—lots of things about what’s going on.
For some people when they retire from a profession, that doesn’t mean they curl up and move to a couch and stare at a TV screen all day.
Life goes on. You reinvent yourself. You stay active physically and intellectually. That’s what lifelong learners do.
As far as the Stanford study is concerned, you’re cherry-picking facts to load the dice so they favor your opinion. The overall results of that study were not favorable to most Charter schools.
But loading the dice and cherry picking facts is what the robber barons and wolves of Sesame Street have been doing for about fifty years. You’re in good company but that doesn’t mean they will win this war.
Anyone who knows US history knows these crooks come and go in a cycle.
Jen,
I did what you suggested and took another look at the 2013 CREDO analysis to make sure my understanding of it was not in error. I did find the quote that you were alluding to and you are correct that for some minority children from poverty and ELL did well in some charter schools. But as Lloyd notes that study certainly does not give a rousing support to the effectiveness of charter schools and you only picked the one line of the study that said what you wanted to hear. It did say they are a little better than in 2009 but here was their main reason why: The schools that did well stayed open those that did not closed. But since 31 % of charter schools were worse than their public school counterparts (40% were the same and 29% were better) it is hardly a mandate to throw out public schools and us all run to charter schools.
I have no idea why you are so insulting to a man who already told you his service to our country and to students for 30 years. Just because he and Diane disagree with you about charter schools your assumptions are quite offensive. I hope when you retire you are treated with more respect than you have shown Lloyd or Diane. I find I learn from everyone if I am open to the possibilities. I even learned from you Jen- since you had me reread a study that further confirms that charter schools are not a viable widespread alternative at this time. http://credo.stanford.edu/ Please reread the study when you get a chance.
I’m almost 70 and Diane is in her 70s. Jen’s insults focused on our age and indicated we were useless because of it.
I think it is arguable that Jen506 is a racist and she is discriminating against more than 43.9 million Americans age 65 or over insinuating because we are older we are useless and should keep our mouths shut and stay out of politics and decision making that should be made by people that think like her.
For sure, her heroes, the robber barons and wolves of Sesame Street may think the same way. But wait:
Bill Gates turns 59 this year
Fred Koch turns 81
Charles Koch turns 79
David Koch turns 74
William Koch turns 74 too.
Samuel Walton turns 69 (he’s a year older than I am)
Alice Walton turns 65
James Walton turns 66
Michael Bloomberg turns 72
Ronald Reagan (who it could be argued started this war on Public Education due to his policies to privatize and profitize everything) was 70 when he took the oath of office and 78 when he left the White House.
George Washington was born in 1732 and was 57 when he became our first president.
John Adams was 62 when he moved into the White House
Thomas Jefferson was 58
Franklin D. Roosevelt was 51 and was still in office when he died at age 63.
Jen506’s thinking is what led to the Holocaust in Germany starting in the 1930s and the concentration camps that gassed, shot or burned 11 millions people of all ages and 1.1 million were children.
If you are real and not a shill or a Troll, then you are a bitter person who is unwilling to accept responsibility for the education of your children. Instead, you focus your anger on teachers—over 4 million of them and blame them for your shortcomings as a parent.
You dish out libel and lies as if they are as if they are flies.
If you were a parent who shut off the TV (and removed the video games and mobile phones if your children have them) and then read every evening for an hour or more as a family in the same room, you wouldn’t be complaining and blaming teachers for what’s happening to your children because they would be students who are learning no matter the environment of the school they attend.
Wow howdid you getyou hands on the UFT handbooks? Lol my kids thank goodness are super smart and above grade level. My son got a 98 on nyc’s g&t test my daughter is a published poet with a 132 IQ. I’m fighting for a right to choose my childs school what does any of what you just wrote have to do with that. All parents have right to choice Llyod. Wanting a choice doesn’t imply i’m slacking on my part in the partnership between parent teacher and scholar. Maybe you should read less and come visit NYC zone schools and get a braoder view than you seem to be getting from your bubble.
With MS and jen 506 carrying Eva’s slops and accusations on this site, the Lie-O-Meter has not just surged, it has exploded.
I unlike many of you old *** childless nay sayers actually have a child that attends one of the schools you people are attacking! While you need to get a life this is my real life you people are messing with! All this support for the status quo is a direct threat to my son’s future and I will attack right back to defend our choice a choice you have no right to judge or attenpt take interupt! I don’t care if the sabta clause started SA! It is working for my son! I witness it every night as I help with his homework! How many kids are you helping with homework????
This comment is further evidence of the total disregard for facts, the willingness to repeat oft-debunked lies, and the capacity to make-up numbers that seems to be a common characteristic of charter school supporters.
Let’s address the falsehoods one by one:
The audit: As the largest charter school chain in NYC Success Academy’s use of PUBLIC MONEY is and should be subject to audit. To quote the actual information in the link ” DiNapoli cited a 2010 amendment to education law that said charter schools, in addition to submitting to audits by authorizing entities, “shall be subject to audits of the comptroller of the state of New York at his or her discretion.”” Cant get much clearer than that. Again, what is Eva hiding? Why the refusal to be transparent?
Charter costs: The Independent Budget Office already replied http://ibo.nyc.ny.us/cgi-park/?p=763 to the paper cited by the commentator. Note that the paper was written by a charter advocacy group NOT independent researchers. This is one of the standard charter tricks noted in the essay above. Citing biased groups and organizations and not independent ones does not do much for your cause.
Attrition rate: As per the Independent Budget Office report charter schools in NYC as a sector lose many more students with low test scores, student with special needs, and English Language Learners than nearby public schools. They get rid of the kids who bring down the test scores. This makes any flaunting of test score results by charters a ridiculous fiction. Of course your test scores are high if you get rid of kids with low test scores.
Comparisons to public schools: All the other links cut and pasted by the commentator betray the flaws specifically called out in the essay. They don’t account for any of the questions in the ICBS strategy and are therefore irrelevant.
Thank you for your reply to MS. I did not fully understand how the pension numbers were manipulated until reading the memo you had at the link. That will help me to understand some of the school finance budget reports I have been reading. I already knew the attrition issues but the pension and future costs sleight of hand was very illuminating.
MS, I don’t have time to read the links about attrition. But looking at raw numbers doesn’t tell the story. Who gets released from the school matters more than how many. And by who, I mean in terms of academic quality.
If one school loses random students and another “counsels out” or discourages continued enrollment from occurring with particular students, well, that matters.
Also, and again without looking at the numbers, does each school have decreasing enrollment. Because if enrollment is flat, then it’s transiency. If enrollement decreases, that’s a different story.
Steve K,
Matthew Still has already been exposed as a liar and troll on this site, since he initially claimed to be a SA mother. Thus his claims have zero validity.
On the issue of charter vs. public school student attrition, MS is being typically deceptive – something well-rewarded in the financial industry from which he emanates – as is Eva Moskowitz, for whom he is splattering these lies.
The key point, which so-called reformers will never acknolwedge, is that while public schools do have high attrition rates, those students who leave schools are replaced by other incoming students.
With charter schools, the departing students return to the public schools. More importantly, the students who leave charter schools are not replaced, so that it’s common for class cohorts to shrink by a third or more.
So much for those “miracle” schools… all just marketing hype and lies.
I doubt very much that it is even DIane posting on this website very often. There is no way one person can post this much and often as well as cover all of the coments sections while also teaching at a major university and traveling and speaking (for a fee) while also writing and selling books (for a fee). I will bet anyone here that Diane does little of the acutal work on this thread, its done by others (on salary). If I am wrong, than Mrs Ravitch, you are one super woman and I admire your stamina!!!
Dr. Ravitch has the title of research professor, so it may well be that her teaching duties are very limited at NYU.
She’s a “Research professor” ?!?
That’s far worse than her teaching classes filled with this distorted mumbo jumbo! An entire department relies on this kind of unresearched research that’s horrible. Not only are out charter kids at risk so to are some of our college students! We are indeed still waiting for Superman.
The superman in “Waiting for Superman” was the anti-Christ and his name may be Bill Gates.
Jen506, I think you are a Troll and should be blocked from leaving comments on this site.
Lloyd i’m not sure what kind of troll you think I am but i’m sure it’s not a positive comment . So since we are stating our opinions on one another… I think you are a childless blogger with no real stake in the educational future of this country. Unlike Bill Gates you have nothing to offer other than nah saying! Get a real clue the kind if clue that comes only from having a child ZONED to a crappy school not merely reading alot of crap like this blog! The pic I have up by my name is of my Kindergartner on his was to school with his dad! I am walking behind them! Sad thing is we are walking away from our zone school PS 163 at 7:30 am an hour before they open towards SAUW where he WON the lottery for a better education! I was up super later because the mayor is now thrying to take that away from him do I am reading different blogs trying to understand how a grown wealthy man would do such a thing to my financially struggling family. I also can’t understand why childless misinformed people like you and this dr lady care what avenue I as a loving concerned mom take to insure my son’s future! GET A LIFE LLYOD.i also have a teenager that unfortunately didn’t have access to SA my struggle with her future continues! Can you give me your link to all that funding you provide for anykind of hope? I DIDN’T THINK! Superman you are not!
Wrong!
I have had two children and they both attended public schools. Our youngest is in her fourth year at Stanford and when she gets married and has children, then we’ll have grandchildren.
My son is in his thirties and he attended three different school districts as a child. He chose not to go to college. He’s married and has a job.
Our daughter attended four public school districts all in California. And when I asked her after her first year in Stanford how many incompetent teachers she had during her thirteen years in the public schools in four different school districts, she thought about it and then said two. She had more than fifty teachers total so 4% of her teachers were incompetent. The rest taught her and she learned because she did what students are supposed to do. When she needed help at any time during her thirteen years in the public schools, the teachers were always there and she made friends with several of them and has kept in touch sending them birthday cards, etc.
You see, the help was always there if she wanted it because teachers are required to provide office hours before and/or after school and she always took advantage of that. And when she knew a teacher also opened their doors at lunch, she took advantage of that too.
How can you tell when someone is a Troll? When they make personal attacks and outrageous and libelous accusations of others. For instance when you accused me: “You are a childless blogger with no real stake in the educational future of this country.”
I’m not a childless blogger with no real stake in the educational future of this country. I have children who will have children and those grandchildren will have good public schools with good caring public school teachers just like I did when I went to the public schools.
My parents were roll models when it came to reading. They both were high school drop outs and I was born to poverty. To survive during the great depression as a single mother after divorcing her first husband who was abusive, my mother collected food stamps. Then she met my dad, also a high school drop out who had no choice during the Great Depression.
My parents both wanted to stay in school but the depression was harsh. When they dropped out in ninth grade, they already knew how to read and loved reading books so I grew up in a house where there were always books, newspapers and magazines and I saw them reading all the time.
My mother worked in the laundry at City of Hope and my dad in construction. After he joined a labor union, we moved out of poverty and into the lower ranks of the Middle Class. Our first house was literally a tar paper shack with no windows where windows should be and no doors where doors should be, because my parents found an unfinished house and paid cash for it. Owning a house was one of their biggest dreams.
That first house was framed with a roof, no windows, no doors and tar paper for outside walls. We moved in and live din that house as my parents finished it themselves.
All the interior framing was open. My dad bought plywood to finish the walls for the one bathroom so we’d have privacy on the ceramic throne. Each time he was paid, he’d buy a window or door on the way home and it took two years to finish the walls with plaster.
My investment in the US goes back to when I got out of high school and joined the US Marines where I took an oath to defend this country against all enemies both foreign and domestic. Then we were sent to Vietnam for a combat tour. That I was in the 1960s after the Tonkin Gulf Incident. After the Marines, I attended college on the GI Bill and achieved my parents dream for me. I graduated with a BA in journalism and later earned an MFA in writing so I’m not some a blogger who has nothing better to do.
I’m a writer and my wife is a writer who has published eight books that have sold more than a million copies in English alone in addition to being translated into more than thirty languages. Last Tuesday, she returned from a literary festival held in Perth, Alaska where she lectured to hundreds of her fans. Her first book that was published in 1992 was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and won the Carl Sandburg Award. Several of her books have been national and international bestsellers. Her fifth book was nominated for the British Book Awards and she shared a table in London where the awards ceremony was held with J.K. Rowling.
When the National Book Festival was held near the White House, the 1st Lady was in charge of inviting authors to lecture to audiences. My wife was one of the authors invited to that festival. Her books have been reviews by the New York Times, The London Times, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, etc. Her latest book was named one of the top ten books of the year by Entertainment Weekly. My wife’s name is Anchee Min. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to find proof that I’m her husband—the first person who gets to edit one of her rough manuscripts before it goes off to her agent or editor.
My wife also has assured me that she is on the side of public education in this issue.
I think you are an enemy of the people of the United States and as a Troll you serve the interests of few billionaires who think they have every right to steal from American working class taxpayers to enlarge their huge fortunes.
I don’t want our future grandchildren taught by schools owned and controlled by the likes of Bill Gates, Bloomberg, the Walton Family, the Koch brothers or any other billionaire oligarch. I want our grandchildren to attend schools where there is a democratically elected school board that answers to the people and parents of the community that they serve—not to Wall Street and short term profits.
Elected school boards are servants of the people. CEO’s serve no one but themselves and the wealthiest stock holders of their corporation and the only mandate they have is to make sure that profits grow, grow, grow—-always grow just like cancer grows, and Trolls are no better than malignant tumors.
I was born with severe dyslexic and when I started school and was tested in the early 1950s by administration, my mother was told that I would never learn to read or write.
But she went to my first public school teacher and asked for help and that teacher told her what books to buy and what to do at home to make sure I learned to read and write. That one teacher guided her and I sit here as living proof that the public schools work for those who work. But we can’t teach kids who refuse to cooperate and learn.
Good for you Llyod. Model citizen from a model family and you became a model parent(daughter in standford) wow! Again good for you! Now what about the rest of us? I’m from a single parent home educated in the Bronx during the 80’s I didn’t go to Stanford but maybe my son will. You have no right to attack my families choices and that is what this blog does and any of it’s supporters. Let me rephrase my statement…you are minority-inner city-childless nay sayer. Not familiar with Cali but here in NYC as asub-para in districts 9,10,3 and 5 I can for a fact tell you that even if only 4% of teachers are not doing their job it is enough to cause heartbreaking consequences!
The more you say, the more you brand yourself as a Troll. You read nothing. You mock me and cherry pick what facts you want.
My dad was an alcoholic, a chain smoker and a gambler. We lost a house to bankruptcy after he ran off for a few months on a bender. He cheated on my mother many times even with her best friend.
My brother, who was a dozen years older than, me grew up illiterate and ended up spending fifteen years of his life in prison.
Like I’ve said, if you are not a shill or a troll, you are a bitter person who has to blame someone else for the shortfalls of your live and the loss of your dreams.
Look in a mirror. If you want your kids to have a different future, shut off the TV and lock up the video games and mobile phones. Than start reading every day and every night as a family in the same room. It doesn’t cost a cent to go to the local library and check out books. In fact, it will probably lower your phone bill to shut off any extra mobile phones your kids might have and the electricity a TV uses when it’s on several hours a day.
In thirty years of teaching, I had one mother—-ONE—who asked my advice when she found out her daughter was reading below grade level, and this is exactly what I told her and she followed my suggestions to the letter—the only parent of thousand over thirty years who did this.
A year later, her daughter’s literacy level had climbed five years in one school year. She was dumbfounded.
It takes a community to raise and teach a kid and that community starts with parents in the home. Teachers can not do it alone.
As for my wife, your suffering will never compare to the world she grew up in. Never! I doubt if any child in America suffered as she did along with hundreds of millions of other children in the country of her birth—-China, under Mao.
If you want to know what that world was like (and I don’t think you will), I suggest you read her first book, a memoir called “Red Azalea”. “Red Azalea” book is used in universities across the Western world in Asian studies programs. Like the “Diary of Anne Frank”, it reveals a world full of horrors that most Americans will never experience unless they were born in another country and grew up there before immigrating to the US.
Again what does any ofthis have to do with “How to Analyze False Claims about Charter Schools” which is a half ass attempt at an attack on them and therefore any parent that has choosen them and any student benefiting from them? By your definition the only troll here is you Lloyd. How is by pro charter statement open invitation to insult my parenting? One parent asked you for advice and how many did you offer help too? How many scholarships to private schools do the proceeds of your wifes book provide.?exactly! Again you are nothing but a nay sayer. I wonder what your students think of you up their on your pedestal.
Boy, you sure do assume a lot.
You said: “I also can’t understand why childless misinformed people like you and this dr lady care what avenue I as a loving concerned mom take to insure my son’s future!”
Out of total ignorance, you’ve stereotyped me and Diane Ravitch. And it is obvious that you make no attempt to learn who we are before you libel us with her slurs in an attempt to discredit us and the cause we believe in.
Diane Ravitch is one of eight children. She has had two sons, a third son died of leukemia at the age of two. Do you honestly believe that Diane as a mother didn’t feel the loss of her 3rd son deep down in her core?
Her second husband, Richard Ravitch, served as Lieutenant Governor of New York.
I already revealed who I really am in a prevues comment to you in this thread.
If you want your children to succeed in school, stop blaming teachers and look in a mirror.
It takes a village to educate children. In this case, the village is the teacher, the student and the parents.
Turn off the TV in your house and replace those TV’s with books, newspapers and magazines and institute a family reading hour (or more) each evening. Also start taking your kids to the local library once a week or at least once a month but no less.
If your kids have mobile phones and video games, get rid of them and replace them with books. If your kids hate reading books, there is the problem. Kids who hate to read do not do well in school and no matter how hard a teacher struggles to teach, most of those kids do not learn.
I think you should know that teachers have nothing against Charter schools as a concept. In fact, it was two teachers—one of whom would become the president of one of the two major teacher unions—who came up with the concept of Charter schools back in the 1970s as part of public school districts to address the needs of kids who were at the most risk of dropping out without an education.
The school district where I taught had one. They didn’t call it a charter school. They called it an alternative high school and it’s still there serving kids who are identified at risk of failing and dropping out. They don’t use a lottery to get their kids because a lottery isn’t the way to identify these kids. These kids are recommended by teachers at the two regular high schools in that district. At that alternative high school, the age of eighteen isn’t the magic bullet. Kids at that alternative high school are allowed to stay as long as it takes for them to qualify and graduate with a HS degree. When I went to work in that district in 1975, that alternative high school was there. They even work around the fact that some of these kids have to have jobs to help support their families and to do that they offer very flexible schedules.
In a public school district with a democratically run school board, these sort of changes are always possible. I think the problem with New York and Los Angeles is that they are too large for this sort of thing. I think smaller school districts are much more responsible to the needs of parents. The district where I taught had about 19,000 students and about 700 teachers.
New York has 75,000 teachers and 1.1 million students. What you should be protesting and fighting for is to break up this monster into at least forty to five smaller public school district that will then be more responsive to the needs of parents.
I meant to say forty or fifty smaller school district. not forty to five.
A real stupid move, jen, attacking Diane ifor her scholarship. Others may disagree with her conclusions; they seldom question her rock solid research.
You seem to be attacking people for their supposed childlessness. I guess you will be polling all Eva’s teachers to find out how many of them are qualified to teach using your own criteria. Your own research skills are sadly lacking. We all speak to a certain extent from our own experience. Certainly the defunding of public schools has had a major impact as has the rise in poverty. Go ahead and fight hard for your children, kids notice when their parents care about their education. We choose to fight for quality public schools that are not called on to support private schools as well. You have nothing but abuse to offer. I suppose that works in some circles, but I doubt anyone hear cares to listen if you have nothing substantive to offer. There isn’t one answer that is going to lead us to the golden age of education. If you have read Diane’s latest book and the agenda for improving public education, I find it hard to understand your feral anger.
As a parent that has made the choice of a charter school for my child I am angry at nay sayers! Every parent has a right to decide based on their own criteria whether or not a teacher is fit to spend 5+ hours a day with their child! Duh! My childs education is serious lady why would I attack an attack. Again maybe only a parent of a school aged child could understand this. That is what is meant by childless. Ifyou don’t have children in todays educational climate how could you attempt to question judge or attack a parents right to choice and a childs right to learn. How is this concern not substainial?!?! Who the heck are you? What exactly is at stake for you?
Warning, jen506 is a bitter person blaming more than 4 million dedicated teachers for her alleged failings as a mother who may expect teachers to do all the work of raising and teaching a child for her, and that may have has turned her into a troll.
Do you seriously believe that you will have no interest or stake in the education of children when yours are grown? No matter how short we fall of living up to the ideals of this country, we still need to strive to achieve them. Education is a public good. When choice interferes with the ability of everyone to be educated, it becomes a problem. You are right to advocate for your children, but unfortunately many charters are in it for the children only if they can make piles of profit from tax dollars with absolutely no responsibility to taxpayers. I don’t deny there are some awful public schools. I have rolled my eyes at really stupid union rules. Mostly we just ignored them and did what we needed to do for our students. That particular school system was too large to keep their fingers on everyone’s neck. I agree with another poster that NYC is much too large to be run as one district. Both administration and unions are more responsive when they control a smaller portion of the pie. Get too big and they start acting like they were crowned. So go ahead and fight for your children. Good charters run by responsible individuals who are truly in it for the children are not going to disappear. You are not going to hear anyone singing the praises of charters here. We are focused on the abuses perpetrated by corporate reform groups. If you are only interested in your children’s schooling and charter schools, this is probably not the blog for you. Neither you nor the other bloggers here need to hear a continuation of abuse.
I meant to say Pert, Australia—not Perth, Alasak.
Curse this automated spell check/fixer. And curse this dyslexia that does reversals and sees what isn’t there on the printed page.
dianeravitch: IMHO, crudely pushing eduproducts and slandering you is sufficient grounds to bar someone from this blog.
Sadly, by this point I am no longer surprised by anything that edupreneurs and edufrauds and edubullies do and say and write in defense of the corporate education establishment. It seems that the heedless pursuit of $tudent $ucce$$ emboldens the self-styled “education reformers” to abandon all restraint and decency.
Your blog is like your online living room. We are guests. You allow very wide latitude in what people write but you have made it clear—and it should be obvious in any case to people with even a modest sense of decency and respect—that “not everything goes.”
Your blog. Your call.
And you are not denying these “schoolyard bullies” a forum. Let Eva M take her $140@student@year—as opposed to Carmen F and her $0.50@student@year—and her edubully enforcers elsewhere. She and they can create their own blog—EduEchoChamber—and talk to each other until they‘re blue in the face. And let the rest of us get on with the serious business of trying to ensure a “better education for all.”
Just my dos centavitos worth…
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And real parents of real scholars are not invited?!?! So you childless statistics analysist can sit back and talk about the sinking ship instead of pulling up your sleeves and doind any real good. I will actually be proud of myself if i get blocked from this bullcrap! I will be rallying with hundreds of other real parents on tuesday…a real step in fixing our childrens future! If any of you have a link to your site that gives our kinds scholarship to private schools please post it asap. Oh yeah this bunch is the nay sayer bunch not the innovation bunch. How did I get lost in this pit of future grave dweller. I hate old childless people that have no real stake in education future! Go blog about knitting and leave the real issues of today and tommorow to the young. This “Dr.” Is 75 years old with no kids in inner city schools and she belongs here more than me?!?! You guys are amazing thank goodness my now 5 yearolds taxes after he is educated by SA and then on to college will not be going to take of such a hateful woman! I don’t care how much $ any school is getting to educate him because atleast they are doing what they are paid to do unlike the zone schools in NYC! STOP FOCUSING ON THE GROWNUPS AND FOCUS ON THE SCHOLARS! Have any of you even gone to visit a charter school…walk away from the computer and really form an enlightened opinion! I have to go make breakfast now. My fellow parents warned me against this time stealing useless blog…i should have listened but the level of nonsense begs my real life experience.
Eva worked to get private donationfrom thos that believe in inovation. Why don’t you put on your big girl panties and do they say for your zone school?!?! There are zone schools in wealthier areas that raise thousands inorder to supplement what the city/state give them. PS 166 not to far from SAUW does it! Unfortunately people like you want to focus on what EVA does instead of what the children in the schools she created do. They are our schools now not only hers! And i definitely don’t even make $100,000 a year so why are you attacking my family while trying to get at Eva?!?! while you are doing all this math make a phone call or right a letter demanding every city school get what they need…not merely by trying to cut off Eva but my allocating more city/state funding into education period. Oh wait why would the rich want to be taxes inorder to educate their kids future competions while their kids go to private school! Just curious where do your children go to school “crazyTA?
Congrats, Jen. You’ve had a good experience with SA.
However, you fail to acknowledge the experience that those of us working in public schools have had with many, many charters. By only reflecting on your own experience, you have failed to recognize that others have had different experiences.
For example, here in Michigan, I have had 23 students enter my classrooms mid-year from a charter school. In every case, it’s during their junior year which is the prime year of high school state testing. In every instance, these students have been horrible academically. I mean years behind. None of them were special ed. None of them had been expelled. In each instance they had been counseled out. Why? Because their test scores were awful. So the charter ditched these kids who “chose” the school. The charters de-selected those very kids who wanted to go to that school. School choice?
Then consider the fact that those same students would have damaged the school’s overall test scores. But we had no choice but to take them. (And I’m glad we did because I’ve liked each and every one of those 23.) And instead they hurt our test scores. Then I have to read some of these very same charters getting congratulations in newspapers for their high quality due to, you got it, their test scores.
And I’m just one teacher in one high school. If I’m getting 5 or so per year, how much is this happening?
This is my problem with charter statistics. Maybe that happens at SA. Maybe it doesn’t. But this is why I find SA’s numbers a bit unbelievable. Perhaps you can understand that from my perspective.
SA onlyhas upto 5th grade right now so we will see but my main point is my right as a parent to choose and that choice be respected especiallly by those with no children in todays educational system. Here in NYC parents are in tears as their kids are stuck in failing zone schools. I was looking for a second job during the lottery process just incase my son didn’t get a seat we were prepared to pay for catholic school…my son wasn’t even baptized but they have a far better teack record than his zone school. I have to laugh now..I was willing to get my son baptized and a second job for a quality education. And some ofthese people think this is not a serious enough attack on charter schools as a whole for a parent like myself to get defensive. I’m sorry that there are bad charter schools but there are good ones. I don’t need numbers to tell you that alot of kids won’t be able to get to school at 7:30 am and be picked up 1/2 day every wed for many years. Those kids may end up back in a zone school that is closer opens later and doesn’t have 1/2 day every wed. Misguided people on here really don’t know what they are taking about. Look up how many students get metro cards and that will let you know many kids can’t simply walk home alone after school. 1/2 wed also lead to after school payments from parents that may not be able to pay from year to year. These numbers alone say nothing! But as a parent of SA I didn’t pay for school supplies or school trips so i was able to take that $ and sign my son up for ice skating lessons! We love SA and Eva and all the staff we have come incontact with I wish this for all NYC students but that is ideal so for now I am happy we made the lottery. We should be respected and celebrated for taking a leap of faith into innovative progressive movement not judged and attacked. When did trying to make better choices become looked down upon? 😦
Steve K: thank you for your comments.
Keep posting. I’ll keep reading.
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Trolls often support each other.
As do useless nay sayers. All info is useless unless action is taken. I will rally and write my political officials and testify to the amazing things my son’s charter school is accomplishing. You Lloyd continue to type away 😦 only amongst those with the same sideways opinions. I have courage for being on this blog you sadly need to work on your ego. Poor students of yours. You would never be hired by a SA principle.
Ah, the mother troll and her bitter insults keep coming. No surprise there.
And I have to agree with you.
I’m sure that no corporate run private sector school designed to siphon off taxpayer money into the bank accounts of billionaires would want to hire me because I’m a real teacher with a track record as proof.
http://www.mysplendidconcubine.com/teachingyears.htm
If you bother to click the previous link. scroll down to see what kind of teacher I was. Read the quotes from a few of my students who cooperated and worked.
Before you go off again with more insults and accusations, here’s a few facts about where I taught:
Percent of Total Enrollment
Hispanic of Latino 81.5%
Asian 3%
Filipino 10.4%
Black 2%
White 2.3%
Socioeconomically Disadvantaged 78.4%
English learners 41.5%
Students with Disabilities 10.6%
Click to access 2012%20Nogales%20High%20School%20Accountability%20Report%20Card.pdf
And a peek at the community where I worked hard as a teacher helps. The gang that dominates the community around Nogales is Puente 13.
According to the 2008 census, the total population of La Puente is 43,107 people. The racial makeup of the city is 1.11% White, 1.96% African American, 1.28% Native American, 7.16% Asian, 0.17%. Hispanic or Latinos are 93.10% of the population. 10.9% of residents have a bachelor’s degree or higher and 56.9% have a high school degree. 9% of families and 9.7% of individuals live below the poverty line.
Click to access 2012%20Nogales%20High%20School%20Accountability%20Report%20Card.pdf
“I will actually be proud of myself if i get blocked from this bullcrap!”
Relevant.
Everything else—
Irrelevant.
Fish gotta swim, bird gotta fly, haters gotta hate…
Swim. Take flight. Hate elsewhere.
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Question answered…I knew you didn’t have kids! Please keep it that way. The only hateful people here are you anti-charter anti-education of minority students monsters. My son has no idea the real boogie man/woman exists. Use a real photo on your profile I can guarentee I know your complexion and parental status.
Casper’s all grown up now.
And the odds are no longer 10 to 1.
I needed a good laugh.
Thank you.
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I’ll add my own two cents.
Your questions can be broken down into a very user-friendly format for parents. Thanks for dissecting the issue. Hope you are doing well.
To Matt and Jen and any other resident charter school supporters, I finally had a few moments to say hello.
For those of you who believe you are “moderated out” I have some information for you. It appears if you put in more than one link on your post the site automatically puts your post in moderation. So when it happens to me I take out all but one link or post in a couple of posts to divide up the links.
For those of you who have had success with charter schools for your children I am very happy for you. But you misunderstand why we are suspicious here. Most of us are stakeholders of one kind or another. We are parents, teachers, educators, administrators, researchers, professors, and/or taxpayers. To clump us all in one homogeneous group is silly, bigoted and incorrect. I happen to be a member of all of these.
But regardless of how we came here, most of us have one commonality about charter schools. We examined the research of charter schools – and came up with the same conclusions. And for me personally it was really difficult since I was one of the people who started with some the first charter schools in the country. There is no miracle. Every highly successful charter school is playing with numbers or students and draining resources from the public schools.
I know how to make a successful school. We all do. I know how to teach children of all types of needs. But I cannot do it on the cheap, without highly prepared professionals, wraparound services and adequate resources. I cannot do it if we only care about test scores and do not allow differentiation, well-designed curriculum, arts and career/tech education.
Some children survive without it all, but for all children to thrive- not just your children and mine, I had to open my eyes to the problems with charter schools as a whole- not just individual one’s here and there. We cannot allow charter schools to overtake the public schools since the end result is to segregate our children, drain resources that are already inadequate from the public system and to destroy a system that served everyone. There were already inadequate funds and when we divide them up it hampers the public system from meeting the needs of students who have additional needs and that never were fully funded like ELL, Special Education and Gifted Education. I applaud you for fighting for you own children. But most of us are fighting for all children. We all agree there was a lot of problems and needed improvements in public schools. And the education reforms have really made things much more difficult. But name calling and insults are not necessary since we are fighting for your children too.
I have the utmost respect for Diane who has dedicated her time to support public education, to all the people who post here and contribute their knowledge and time and energy. No one here is getting rich off of education. It would not even occur to us. The fact it occurs to you says more about you than us. Please do your research and at least read Reign of Error. Then we will be happy to discuss these issues with you.
Very well said. Thank you.
I consider that high praise Lloyd. I have learned a lot from many of your posts and your blog. I wish I had told you so before now.
Thank you. Unless someone leaves a comment, I have no idea who reads what on any of my Blogs.
That’s pretty much the way it goes in teaching too.
Kids come and go and maybe—if we are fortunate—years later we run into a former student and find out if we actually helped them in life. I figure that over the thirty years that I taught, I worked with about 6,000 students and I’ve maybe talked to half a dozen who thanked me and specifically pointed out something they learned in my class that benefited them later. Those are golden moments. Especially if they hated you as a student but later were rewarded from what they learned through all that challenging work in class.
Now I have another reason to admire you. I am very fortunate that I get a lot of thanks for my students who I have presently and whom I had years ago. I stay in touch with many through the years. I hope I do not just teach for the “glory” but I am very rewarded for my efforts on a regular basis. Part of it is my fault for getting a little too attached to everyone I teach. But I admire people who still taught for years and did not always get the hugs and thanks and kudos they deserved. I will try to say more thanks to people who have touched my life even if it is just a blog post. I am grateful to you sharing about Shanghai and your knowledge of history on other posts. Also for your service to our country and working in the barrios of CA. You are correct- those are golden moments when we know we made a difference for someone. You deserve more of those. 🙂
Thank you.
After I retired, I stayed in touch for a few years with several of my former high school journalism students. One year when my wife and I went to the Los Angeles Times Book Festival at UCLA, several of the former editors made the trip and we all went out and had lunch in Westwood. They brought boyfriends and cameras and took lots of digital shots. Every once in a while, I get an e-mail from one of them.
They’ve graduated from college, are getting engaged, getting married, having kids. Amazing.
And on a rare occasion a former student goes online to look me up and finds me then drops an e-mail my way.
The, do you remember me.
Janna: thank you for your comments.
One very small point: I concur with your second paragraph re “moderated out.” It has happened to me a number of times.
What is odd is that those who disagree with the POV of the owner of this blog—and IMHO they are free to do so—don’t seem to actually read comments besides their own and those of the people that agree with them. So even following your sensible and elementary observation, there are continued assertions that somehow the owner of this blog and/or others are engaged in some sort of nefarious activity deleting critical comments.
Unfortunately, IMHO, this is another example of the pro-charter/pro-privatization folks shooting themselves in their collective foot. When people can’t even be bothered to be careful and honest about such very small details—but reacting with such inappropriate fury—they do major damage to their arguments about substantive matters.
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Krazy TA, You are another person here who has not only been insightful and informative, but always fun to read. I agree that Matt and Jen are not very careful readers when they are upset (which may be often when they post here). If I was clever like you I would insert joke here about how they need some of Coleman’s CCSS close text reading skills. 🙂
But I will not generalize that to all pro privatization people. On the Charlotte News Observer I have had some interesting debates with some pro charter people who were very well read. Unfortunately, most seem to read news from think tanks that come more from ideology than peer reviewed research. I am quite concerned that even educated people do not seem to be able to know the difference.
And even though I am a fan of Diane and Mercedes Schneider and Bruce Baker and several others, I also take the time to double check a lot of their claims. In the vast majority of cases I end up agreeing with them but in a few cases I see that the data or information could be interpreted in alternative ways.
I enjoy the debates and discussions with some of our more informed dissenters, and I try not to get to incensed when provoked. You usually handle masterfully, you make a biting joke that demonstrates the absurdity of the opposing view.
Janna: thank you for your kind comments.
Let me add that we seem to think alike. I have learned to have confidence in “Diane and Mercedes Schneider and Bruce Baker and several others”—we might have the same “several others”!—but
I take absolutely nothing as gospel. I hold everyone’s feet to the fire, first and foremost my own. I cannot in good conscience ask others to question their POV if I am not willing to question my own.
And even after over five years on ed blogs, Robert Schumann was dead on:
“There is no end to learning.”
Last point. Leaving aside the necessary task of defending oneself from the sneers and jeers of the most vitriolic edubullies, I profoundly believe that genuine heartfelt disagreements are a welcome fact of life. And that, where possible, one should separate a judgment about another person’s POV from a judgment of that person’s character.
For example, I usually find myself in very sharp disagreement with Mr. Harlan Underhill. However, when the owner of this blog faced a very serious health problem and many folks were posting get-well wishes, instead of following the lead of other severe (but frequently posting] critics of “Diane Ravitch’s Blog A site to discuss better education for all” and remaining silent, he wrote two comments that showed a decency and respect that—in such situations—should transcend ideological clashes.
He did the right thing. That’s means a lot in my book. I don’t anticipate agreeing with him any more in the future than I have in the past, but credit where credit is due.
IMHO, generally speaking those struggling to ensure a “better education for all” are profoundly attached to the notion of “fairness”—and that means being fair to someone even if no agreement on important issues seems possible.
Just my dos centavitos worth…
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To Jen:
You said, “All parents have right to choice.”
That is your own opinion. It is not the law.
The fact is that what we do as parents is based on what the law allows us to do and for more than a hundred and fifty years, there was no school choice and the public school system worked as the law intended with steady and constant improvement.
If you read Diane’s book, “Reign of Error”, you’d know that.
For instance, (and I don’t recall if Diane mentions this in her book) the fact that in the 1970s, two teachers came up with the Charter School concept to help at risk kids and that concept was accepted by the majority of teachers in education and it was implemented cautiously to make sure it worked within the public school environment where there was accountability as to how the money was spent and how the kids were taught. Outcomes of any experiment in the public schools must prove themselves to continue.
But back to your point that all parents have the “right to choice”: And when the minority manages to get laws passed that later are unpopular, the majority often overrules them and has them voided.
What happened to “Prohibition” is a perfect example. It was in and then years later, it was out.
But right now “school choice” is not widespread. It’s creeping in and gaining steam thanks to hundreds of millions of dollars being spent by robber baron billionaires to game the political system.
Even free speech has its limits. One of those limits is libel and slander.
I think it is kind of funny when people say they want choice for their children so they choose private or charter schools. I am so overwhelmed with the choices at the public school it almost makes a limited charter or private school almost tempting. Would you like to hear all the choices I have for my daughter who will be entering high school next year?
1. We could apply to two early college high schools. If you get in you get 2 years of free college.
2. If you do not go to a early college high school you still can take several classes for free at the community college or university including trade classes. They are paid for by the state.
3. We have specialized programs at different high schools. They include International Baccalaureate, Lyceum, Marine Science, and Biomedical programs.
4. If you want to learn a skill you can get Microsoft certification or your Certified Nursing Assistant certificate. In fact you can do cooperative learning, apprenticeships, job shadowing, mentoring, service learning, Internships, or start an entrepreneurial enterprise. Several of these options give you college and high school credit.
5. Of course we also have honors classes and AP classes.
6. We also have virtual high school online and credit recovery programs.
7. I did not even start listing all the options for electives like foreign languages (Spanish, Latin, French or German), arts (printing, ceramics, painting, drawing computer graphics . . .), music, (orchestra, band, choir) Technology . . . .I could go on and on – I forgot athletics . . .
Thursday we had a Career Technical conference and I got to hear about all types of exciting programs at the public schools in my region. They included NASCAR, Fire safety, Film and TV production, construction, and engineering. At a CTE fair I saw there were options to become an interpreter, medical technologies, early childhood care, dental assistance, automotive, HVAC, plumbing, masonry, truck driving, cosmotology and pretty much anything you can think of.
Some programs are at the high schools, some are in conjunction with community colleges and universities or trade schools.
So I wonder- why do I need more choices for my daughter?
Public school options are all very local.
No qualified admission early college high schools in my state.
No free college or university courses in my state.
Seven IB programs in my state. Non within 40 miles of my home, none in the wester half of the state
No Microsoft certification in my state
Some AP courses in high schools in my state. The median high school has 250 students. Many of the small high schools (typically county wide high schools) have no AP classes.
Virtual classes through K-12 and charter schools in the state (Is this considered a good thing?)
Should I go on?
Wow, the options in your region sound sad. Are the schools underfunded compared to some national average?
Density matters.
LA Unified has a budget greater than my state government’s budget. LA Unified educates more students 469 square miles than are in the 82,000 square miles of my state.
But LA Unified is only one district.
Sure, it’s the second largest district in the nation, but California has 1,043 public school districts with 10,296 public schools teaching 6.2 million students. There are also 1,128 charter schools teaching 438,474 students.
How many public school teachers (not counting charter schools): 300,140.
Let’s compare the rest of California to LA Unified (not counting charter schools):
655.5 thousand students (10.6% of state total)
31,749 teachers (10.2% of the state total)
TE- I agree each state is different, each district is different, and even each school. I worked in high schools in several states across the country and saw a wide variety of services and lack of services. But I also find that almost everyone is unaware of all of the options available to them (including me). Though I am in the high schools several days a week and it is my job to prepare high school teachers I had no idea of many of these options! I only learned about them recently when I was researching for the CTE conference I was running and then I went to a CTE fair for my daughter. I suggest looking up the Career and Technical Education for your state. The Carl Perkins Act of 2006 is national so all states have some of these options. If you tell me your state I will even look it up for you. 🙂
All education decisions are all relatively local. What matters is the choices a student has available locally.
In my town a real actively wealthy family can send a student to a private Waldorf, a private Montessori, a private progressive school, and several religion affiliated school. The public schools are the traditional zoned schools. Students can take classes at the local university if they can pay the tuition, but they do not count towards high school graduation.
My children’s time in secondary education has nearly ended, but thank you for your suggestions.
There were similar choices in Rowland Unified.
Kids who were enrolled at Nogales could take classes only available at the other high school in addition to classes at Nogales. And then there were the video college conference lectures offered for both high school and college credit (for state colleges).
And that’s not even mentioning the Career Pathways options at Nogales that included internships in local businesses and an added certificate to the high school diploma.
There were also the after school tutor programs and special summer school classes offered to help kids catch up and/or improve reading, math, etc.
Then there was the Academic Decathlon class at night about once a week (or maybe more) that lasted until 8:00 PM.
For sure, I’m missing some of the options/choices.
Lloyd is correct- Career Pathways is a joint effort of the Dept. of Education and Dept. of Labor. It is in all states.
Career Clusters™ are broad groupings of occupations/career specialties, organized by common knowledge and skills required for career success. There are 16 Career Clusters™ and 79 related pathways (subgroupings of occupations/career specialties). Supported by the 2006 Perkins legislation, Career Clusters™ are an organizing tool for curriculum design, school guidance, and a framework for seamless transition to career and college.
Here are the 16 areas:
• Agriculture, Food & Natural Resources
• Architecture &Construction
• Arts, A/V Technology & Communications
• Business Management & Administration
• Education &Training
• Finance
• Government & Public Administration
• Health Science
• Hospitality & Tourism
• Human Services
• Information Technology
• Law, Public Safety, Corrections & Security
• Manufacturing
• Marketing
• Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics
• Transportation, Distribution & Logistics
I forgot about Academic Decathlon. There is also Robotics and Science Olympiad and Math Counts and National Honor Scholarships and . . .
Our daughter was involved in both Academic Decathlon and Science Olympiad at her high school in the Bay Area. She also went out for Pole Vault and attended practice every morning and every evening in addition to a few hours every Saturday. She was obsessed with Pole Vaulting and when she was 16 she ranked in the top five (tied for the position) in the state of California for her sex and age.
The opportunities and choices are there but if a student doesn’t take advantage of them because of their choice then there is no advantage for that kid. They lose out because they made a choice to lose out. Why blame that on teachers?
Whoops I meant National Merit Scholarships.
Thanks, Anonymous, for this great post!
I’m a charter school supporter who thinks that the ICBS strategy for asking questions about charter schools is fair. Surprised? You shouldn’t be, because I find that most of my charter school colleagues ask the same questions about their own schools all of the time.
Where I *never* see conversations about these issues it at District school board meetings. Another place where I never see similar objective criteria is in Diane’s writings. Note that she never provides complete information in her rebuttals, but cherry picks the parts of the data that support her argument. It’s a status quo echo chamber, so there’s no surprise that the comments tend to run to polar for and against instead of nuanced discussions that would actually be helpful to public education.
For example, Diane always cites the same charter school study that supports her criticisms and never discusses the ones that don’t. I looked at the IBO link that she referenced regarding attrition, and the first conclusion I see is “On average, students at charter schools stay at their schools at a higher rate than students at
nearby traditional public schools.” The same is true independent of gender race/ethnicity, poverty and ELL status. However, in this space, you will only read about what the report refers to as the “one major exception”, which is special education students. Oh, and the words “one major exception” will never be part of the quote.