The Carpe Diem charter chain started in Arizona in 2012. Google the chain, and you will find articles praising the promise of this school where students sat in cubicles with a computer, looking like a call-center.
Flash forward to 2017, and it turns out that students don’t want to be taught in a call-center.
The Hechinger Report, which wrote about the promise of the charter when it opened, discovered that students don’t like “blended learning.”
“The Carpe Diem schools boasted about their commitment to academics, but they had a bare-bones approach that offered few extras – like a band or athletic teams. Students were often alone with a computer, headphones on, working on programs designed to offer custom-fit lessons that were neither too easy nor too hard. Teachers were there and available on the side for guidance and short, daily check-ins with students to discuss their performance. The student-to-teacher ratio was unusual: 226 students to five teachers and four teacher aides in 2012 at the Yuma school. From the beginning, teachers and students at the Yuma school said that self-motivated students were the ones who would do best.
“The Yuma schools initially posted high marks on state academic achievement tests. That early success prompted the expansion into the three other states.
“But the concept didn’t seem to appeal to a critical mass of students or parents. The new schools struggled, and even the Yuma school has been scrambling to sign students up. Low enrollment might be seen as a marketing problem if not for the fact that too often those who did sign up decided to leave.
“That is just a fundamental flaw,” Sommers said. “Kids just didn’t want to enroll, and when they did, they didn’t want to stay.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
““That is just a fundamental flaw,” Sommers said.”
An unfortunate turn of phrase !!!!!
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That caught my eye too.
So it turns out that the only thing this brand of corporate education reform can claim with some justification to know how to do—attracting and keeping “customers/clients/consumers”—
They can’t even do that!
And their failure to do so was/is completely predictable.
😎
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The relationship is missing.
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What has happened at Carpe Diem confirms what we already know about cyber instruction. It is tedious and boring and can only serve motivated middle class students that can tolerate the tedium. This type of lock step behaviorism may be of some use in some subjects requiring sequential instruction with students that persevere. It fails to understand the bigger picture in education. Many “big idea” courses are better taught from a skilled human teacher in a social setting in which students can bounce ideas around through guided discussions and learn from each other. The goal of education is not to perform well on bubble tests. The goal should be elevate the “whole student” through comprehensive exposure to the arts and sciences that offers lots of opportunity for self expression.
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It’s not just that students don’t like the isolation, but it doesn’t make for a good intellectual education. Bizarre. We know that relationships between adults and students were important part of education, maybe the most critical. And I love the idea that they’ve discovered that’s highly motivated students do better with their approach as they do with all approaches.
Sent from my iPhone
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Charter Schools and Online Education just do not belong in our public school system. Give them to the private sector – where they belong.
What could possibly go wrong when you merged the two?
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The bio of the linked article’s author shows she graduated from a public university. People who receive their opportunities because of the sacrifices of their fellow citizens, repay the debt by working for and/or voting in the public interest. It honors the nation and those who come after. Taxpayers created an alternative to legacy admission colleges, showing that they wanted better for all of us not, just the rich. The latter are trying to destroy the common good with unprecedented and unconscionable fervor.
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“articles praising the promise of this school”
Let’s not forget the definition of “promise”: a declaration or assurance that one will do a particular thing or that a particular thing will happen.
For instance, “What happened to all those firm promises of support?”
And how many millions in public dollars did the Carpe Diem charter chain profit from based on those promises?
If all it takes to make money is to make outrages, unproven promises, then why bother to find a job? Just launch a corporate charter school and send a bill to the state and federal tax collectors.
“self-motivated students were the ones who would (usually) do best”
This is true in traditional public school too. That’s why there are professional teachers, to motivate the unmotivated children, and the more poverty there is, the more unmotivated children there are (for whatever reason). The higher the child poverty ratio there is in a school, the harder the teachers work to find ways to motivate as many children as possible to learn what is taught.
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Per stats available for yrs, computerized-ed for college-students/ adults shows that a minority are ‘self-motivated’ enough to complete computerized courses. Why would one even contemplate such an approach for the K12 set?
Only in order to to take the tuition $ & run to the next venue that buys into blurbs about low-cost but ‘successful’ ed-results.
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More like “Carp” Diem.
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Hey now let’s not involve the innocent fish in this discussion.
I think you meant “Crap Diem”!
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No, “Carpe Aurum.”
Seize the gold.
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You could rearrange the c-a-r-p and come up with a different daily activity.
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Or “Crap Dumb!” Naming such “schools” “Carpe Diem” is simply oxy-moronic (emphasis on the latter).
Watch out, ILL-Annoy–wonderful, miracle charter schools–coming soon, to a city near you (or yours)!
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Many parents are limiting screen time now. They see long amounts of screen time as unhealthy and unproductive. Some families have a screen free day once a week such as my niece’s children do on Sunday. There are some very good educational computer programs out there – but they do not hug you, cajole you, encourage you, wipe your tears, or talk things out with you.
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Better journalism- (a) include the amount of money taxpayers lost to the easily anticipated failure (b) identify who is responsible- politicians?
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