In this article that appeared in Forbes, Peter Greene reviews the implications of the Network for Public Education’s report of charter school closures.
When parents choose a charter school for their child, they are gambling that the school will be around for another three or four years or longer. The odds are not good.
He writes:
Within the first three years, 18% of charters had closed, with many of those closures occurring within the first year. By the end of five years, 25% of charters had closed. By the ten year mark, 40% of charters had closed. Of the 17 cohorts, five had been around for fifteen years; within those, roughly half of all charter schools had closed (anywhere from 47% to 54%). Looked at side by side, the cohort results are fairly steady; the failure rates have not been increasing or decreasing over the years.
Charter advocates have often argued that charter churn is a feature, not a bug, simply a sign that market forces are working and that weaker schools are being sloughed off. But the NPE report notes that these closures represent at least 867,000 students who “found themselves emptying their lockers for the last time—sometimes in the middle of a school year—as their school shutters its door for good…
Charter supporters may argue that this is all just the market working itself out, but that’s hardly a comfort to parents who must go through shopping, application, enrollment and adjustment to the new school yet again. As the report acknowledges, there are charter schools doing some excellent work out there, but for parents, enrolling a child in a charter school—particularly a new one—is a bit of a risk. It’s one thing to see market forces work in a sector such as restaurants, where new businesses come and go and very few go the distance; if you discover that your new favorite eatery has suddenly closed, it’s a minor inconvenience. It’s another things to see such instability in a sector that is supposed to provide stability and education for our youngest and most vulnerable citizens.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Charter churn is a feature, not a bug. Seriously? It is well know that disruption is not good for poor children. Yet, poor, minority students are generally those targeted by charter companies. Someone should publish some case studies on students and families that have been subjected to repeated charter churn. I recall that in Newark students from the same family were assigned to different schools in different parts of the city. That makes no sense to a family trying to manage children’s lives. It also undermines any sense of community that students experience when they attend a community public school. Company owned charters benefit the investors, not necessarily the students that are at the mercy of a fickle market.
OMG and holy cow … crazy.
Charters sure are BAD.
Many people don’t know that those who work at Charter schools do not have to be certified or even work towards certification.
yes: poor and minority students have the least political clout, thus they are easiest to blame and “fix” — for a price
Disruption isn’t good for any kid! It really shows that charter enthusiasts really are not focused on what should be the primary mission.
SNIP: “Charter supporters may argue that this is all just the market working itself out, but that’s hardly a comfort to parents who must go through shopping, application, enrollment and adjustment to the new school yet again.”
Parents’ problems are one view. Then (as others say above) there is the “churn” (aka: shock) to the children who need the security the school offers just by being there. For the younger ones, it’s a transition between the security of the family, to a mediating place between the cocoon of the family and the greater world “out there.”
But at the foundational level, the comment above that the market is just working itself out tells it all. From that view, it’s about the money and the market.
For public education owned and funded by citizens, it’s about providing a qualified environment, including qualified teachers, to educate children to fulfill their lives and to live well in the world with other citizens.
Public schools need to be frugal, but we don’t open or close them based on the markets. That’s putting the wrong principle in the driver’s chair.
The foundational principles that govern markets presently are massively different from those that govern education in a democracy. Public education aims to be around regardless of what markets do or don’t do.
Some reformers complain that “it’s not an equal playing field.”
NO, it’s NOT. And it shouldn’t be precisely because, to play on a capitalist-only field is to put our responsibility to our children and the next generation at the end of the line instead of at the front. CBK
Like shoe stores. The market decides which ones survive. Depends on cost and location.
diane Exactly the point. On the analogy that has its roots in a different foundational view, children are like shoes. They are there to sell; and if they don’t, or if the shelves they sit on don’t help sales (schools), they lose their “value.” CBK
Diane Addendum: Also, foundations are not abstractions. They are about goals and then how we plan to meet them, e.g., actual SYSTEMS and POLICY decisions.
Capitalism and MARKETING: “This school is not making money or “pulling its weight” for the market; SO it makes sense to CLOSE IT, but first, let’s try getting unqualified teachers or babysitters . . . they are cheaper.”
As distinct from:
Public education for student well-being and their future: This school has a good mission statement, curriculum, leadership, teachers, etc.,” or if it doesn’t,”let’s consult the professional literature and others’ experiences and take steps to improve it.”
The funding is a necessary, but not a sufficient part of overall decision-making where providing education for children in a democracy is the foundational guiding ideal to reach for (value).
BTW, I taught a teacher education class where one section was for teachers to bring in their ACTUAL mission statements from their different schools for review and possible rewrite. What an eye-opener. NONE was about funding. ALL were about provide all sorts of excellent educational experiences for the children to thrive and grow up into a good future.
They ALL were “dusty,” and most teachers had no idea that their school even HAD a mission statement. CBK
Students become a product when they are monetized. Capitalism will never put the interests of students first. It will always put profit over people. That is really what the push to open schools is mostly about, capitalism.
There is no such thing as a “free market” in public goods. Public education is a public good. Police and fire departments are a “public good”. Road repair is a “public good”.
One does not equally divide the costs of running a fire department among all the public and tell them “here is your voucher, you can pay for private fire department or the public one”. And the reason for that is that if a bunch of people decide to pay for the “cheaper” private fire department that sends out an untrained teenagers, they think they are getting a great deal all their lives EXCEPT when their house catches on fire and the fact that the untrained teenager can’t put it out endangers the entire community. And who pays the cost for that? The REAL fire department that has to put out the fire.
There is no comparison to a restaurant because closing a restaurant does not mean that a “government” restaurant has an obligation to feed every patron of the closed restaurant.
Charters are not public schools because they have no real obligation to their students. None. It doesn’t matter if they have a single network bigger than public school systems in mid-size cities — their obligation ends if the child leaves. Thus it is not surprising that the entire charter movement is incentivized to get rid of the children who are not profitable to teach. That is not a bug – it is a feature of the system. It can’t work and the fact that people are still promoting it demonstrates the failure of the education journalists who are too ignorant to ask obvious questions.
Even the tiniest public school system that is a fraction of the size of charter networks is obligated to pay for the education of every student – even if that means paying the private school tuition of a special needs child with such severe learning issues that the public schools can’t teach him. But even the largest charter network has no such obligation and thus they are incentivized to dump students who are more expensive to serve.
Charters are like a corrupt city official giving a franchise to the private fire department run by his friend that uses slick marketing to recruit homeowners to sign up with them and save money, and it all seems good right up until the time a real fire department is needed.
One way to stop charter network lies about being “public schools” is to force them to be public schools. Their CEOs are financially obligated to provide for the education of every student who wins their lottery until they graduate from high school or reach 21 years of age. Once their parent signs them up for the charter lottery, the real public school system has no obligation to them again, period. Because that wonderful charter network was their choice and now has the financial obligation to educate that student until he is 21. No excuses.
A private insurance company that dumps sick senior citizens can claim it is just like Medicare, but that doesn’t make it true.
NYC: Nicely said. CBK
Road repair ( and road construction) is done by private companies under contract with local governments. Do you mean to suggest that what call “public goods” can be produced by private firms?
Teachingeconomist,
Please give me an example of a state giving public taxpayer money to a private company to do road repair in a neighborhood, and that private company decides to pick and choose which roads to repair – or which parts of which roads to repair! — and decides to only repair the sections of roads that have no big potholes and just need repaving, while they make all kinds of excuses about why they can’t repair roads with large potholes or any other issues that make it more expensive to repair it. (Perhaps the private road repair company claims that the residents themselves don’t want their potholes repaired, just like high performing charter schools claim that the parents themselves decide they want their children to have a subpar education. I’m sure if those residents were poor, the state would believe that absurd excuse that it’s all their fault that the private road company can’t repair their road, and if those residents were affluent the state would of course not let the private road repair company get away with lying about how those affluent residents were demanding that their road remain in terrible shape when the company just begged them to let them repair their road for free.)
No private company would suggest that the state should hire them to repair those pot-holed filled roads for less money than they are paying now, and then turn around and decide to pick and choose only the roads in the best condition to repair and claim that the residents of the other roads are to blame for the fact that the private road repair refuses to repair their roads.
Can you imagine a private road repair company getting rich from taxpayer dollars that gets to decide which roads are deserving of repair and which ones they leave to rot, and the state officials refusing to notice that the roads that the private road company claims residents don’t want repaired just happen to be the roads that would cost them the most money to repair? I can. Because that is what happens with charters.
If that sounds absurd, it is. And yet, charters use that argument all the time. If a private road company CEO got rich because corrupt state officials paid his company huge amounts of money to pick and choose which roads were worthy of repair, that would be corruption. Don’t you agree?
I wrote a longer reply that is in moderation so apologies if this posts twice.
Teachingeconomist, there is no state that hires private companies to do road repairs and then allows that private company to refuse to repair any section of road that needs more than a cheap re-paving, using the absurd excuse that the residents of the sections with the most potholes are to blame because they don’t want their roads fixed so the private company is just giving them what they want and not fixing those parts of the roads. is it that private company’s fault that they just happen to only have to repair roads that are profitable to repair and are “forbidden” from repairing the roads that aren’t profitable because the residents keep telling them not to repair their roads?
There is no state that financially rewards such a private company for doing a “good job” by repairing only the roads that don’t need much in the way of repair and using ridiculous excuses to justify why they can’t repair the roads that actually need professional repair — and those excuses are “the people don’t want their roads repaired by us.”
Or maybe the corrupt state officials allow the private road company to just have a little rule that applies to all roads in poor areas — no trucks or cars or any vehicles may be on that road. And it’s all the fault of those poor residents that they can’t follow simple rules and stop driving which is the only condition under which this private road company will agree to be responsible for their roads.
Truly absurd what charters get away with.
Public money has almost always been used to pay private companies to build public roads and other public property. My dad worked most of his adult working life operating heavy equipment for private companies building the public storm drains and freeways around Los Angeles.
Even the DOD spends hundreds of billions on private contractors to supply services to the US military and in recent years even hires private contractors as combatants that go way beyond the usual services the US military paid for in the past. The media reports the death of U.S. Troops but does not often report the deaths of those private contractors that have been hired by the DOD to fight in Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan. I know former Marines that said when they went on patrols out of their basecamp in Iraq that they always wen tout of their way to avoid that areas controlled by those combatant private contractors because they were wild and did not have to follow the same rules o combat, and would shoot at anyone, even them.
However, many cities also have public employees that are hired to maintain those publicly owned roads after they have been built by a private company.
NYC Public School parent,
Here is a website full of them: https://www.findrfp.com/road-ground-work-bids/road-highway-bridge.aspx. Enjoy.
It does seem to me that if repairing roads is a “public good” that building road in the first place would also be a “public good”. Do you disagree?
TE,
You are certain that private management of public schools is a good thing. Have you not read here the long list of charter and voucher scandals? Are you unaware of the large body of research showing that charters are no better than public schools and voucher schools are far worse?
TE, the public sector is held accountable by laws at the local, state, and federal level. The private sector not so much. Public jobs also come with due process rights. Public agencies must be transparent in how they spend money according to the law. The private sector not so much.
I do not agree that the private sector should manage OUR public schools and profit off of it. I support keeping the public schools organized just like they have been with locally elected school boards, and public administrators and teachers held accountable by those elected local school boards.
The PEOPLE should want a government that is held accountable by them and not the CEO of corporations that do not give a shit.
Lloyd,
I think we both agree that governments can contract out to private companies to produce “public goods”.
Yes, it happens all the time, but countries still need the public sector: public schools, public utilities, public postal service, public military, public police, et al.
I do not support privatizing the public sector like turning the US Postal Service over to a private company owned by a friend of Trump or McConnell that will be corrupt and incompetent as hell frozen over.
Lloyd,
I suspect Teachingeconomist would argue that private companies should be able to replace the post office to deliver the mail to whoever they want to deliver it to, while claiming that the rest prefer to have their mail dumped on the ground so that’s why they aren’t getting their mail, because they don’t want their mail.
And TE could not cite a single road repair company that was given a contract to repair roads and then turned around and only paved the parts of roads that they chose to pave while the corrupt state officials never questioned the private road repair company CEO who claimed they tried to repair the parts with potholes but the people who lived there demanded their potholes be left. And when the people who lived there said that they had begged the private road repair company to fix the potholes, the corrupt public officials would say “we believe the private road company, not you, so time to give them a lot more money”.
I’m waiting for that link. TE.
Dr. Ravitch,
I have not mentioned public schools in this comment. I am trying to understand how orthodox posters here use the word “public good” and what implication being a “public good” has for how it should be produced.
Teachingeconomist writes:
“I am trying to understand how orthodox posters here use the word ‘public good’ and what implication being a ‘public good’ has for how it should be produced.”
If you really are an economist, I don’t understand why you cannot answer your own question, even better than others who don’t have your specialized training. Here’s a brief review:
Outsourced services to private companies with genuine accountability to elected governing concerns who are, in turn, genuinely linked to serving the public as set out in long-term governing documents and systems.
I don’t like outsourcing . . . I think it opens too many doors to misuse, fraud, and missing oversight. But there it is. CBK
Economics is not a science.
It is a form of voodoo and/or guesswork. Economists are no better than the handicappers at a race track that sells tip sheets for betting based on their hunches of who will win each horse race, and they are wrong all the time but get it right sometimes because in gambling the betters have to win eventually but never enough to beat the house.
The Nobel Prize in Economics was not one of the original prizes but came later due to pressure from the financial industry. Economics was not one of the original Nobel Prizes because it is not science.
Economists are just more bean counters with a fancier name than accountants.
Lloyd Economics and all of the fields that concern humans can draw from the natural sciences and from their critical tenets, but not slavishly in a way that fails to take into account specifically-human data. But that discussion is a big one and has to do with much more nuance than can be covered here.
I think in many cases you are right about the mess that economics is in, but not because, on principle, they cannot enjoy critical aspects of scientific thought. It’s because they haven’t arrived there in their thinking yet. CBK
Lloyd,
When you refer to “public utilities”, do you mean only water and sewer, which are typically done by local governments, or did you mean to include natural gas service, electricity, and telephone, which are, I think, universally provided by private companies?
When a company like PG&E provides gas and electricity, they must follow the laws and regulations for its public-private partnership industry. Unlike publicly funded, private sector charter schools. that means PG&E and companies like them must be transparent and cannot hide what they are doing and what they charge the people is also in the hands of state legislators.
However, charter schools are not playing by the same rules. They are secretive, riddled with fraud, and in many cases not as good as the public schools they are stealing students from with their exaggerated advertising and lies.
But not all of these companies that provide electricity and gas to the world belong to public-private partnerships. Most distribution utilities around the world are publicly owned.
“1. Most distribution utilities are publicly owned but privatization is more likely in higher income economies
Of the 201 business cities covered by Doing Business, 71% have electricity distribution utilities that are majority-owned by the public sector, while the remaining 29% privately-owned distribution utilities are concentrated almost entirely in middle and high-income economies. This is in line with findings of studies showing that privatization typically takes place in wealthier societies, where efficient stock markets enable firms to issue public debt. At the regional level, private utilities are rare in Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia and Pacific and Middle East and North Africa. In contrast, Europe and Central Asia and the OECD high-income group have a more balanced share of private and public distribution companies (Figure 1).” …
The Conclusion of this report from the World Bank: “Overall, we find no major differences between the efficiency and quality of services which commercial end-users receive from private or public utility companies. This is also reflected by the fact that the top 10 economies in the Getting Electricity indicator of Doing Business have both majority public (e.g. Korea Electric Power Corp and Dubai Electricity and Water Authority) and majority private distribution companies (e.g. CLP Power Hong Kong Ltd and UK Power Networks) represented.”
https://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/private-versus-public-electricity-distribution-utilities-are-outcomes-different-end-users
NYC Parent,
You are quite right that I have failed to “…cite a single road repair company that was given a contract to repair roads and then turned around and only paved the parts of roads that they chose to pave while the corrupt state officials never questioned the private road repair company CEO who claimed they tried to repair the parts with potholes but the people who lived there demanded their potholes be left.”
Private companies are generally to ethical to do such a thing. There are, of course exceptions.
TE, when you said “Private companies are generally to ethical to do such a thing. There are, of course exceptions.” were you implying that public workers like public school teachers are not ethical when they go to work every day and do their jobs?
A distracting troll. If “economist” doesn’t know what this is about, he should. . . . CBK
Even when research and studies repeatedly show that public schools and public utilities around the world perform as well or better than private charter schools and private utilities, what is the justification for doing away with public services and turning them over to private sector companies that in the end make a few people disgustingly wealthy.
Do public companies make any individuals super-wealthy?
Why do we have to have super-rich people like Bill Gates and Suckerberg?
History teaches us repeatedly that wealthy people use their money to buy power and then most of them use it to change stuff for the worst.
Even the Bible warns us what wealth does to greedy people that never have enough.
. . . a camel through the eye of a needle. CBK
I had a conversation with a student of the Bible about what the original Aramaic, the oldest know existing texts that were eventually translated into Greek and from there to other languages like English with the King James Bible in 1611.
He told me that in Aramaic, it says: “It is easier for a rope to enter through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” – Mark 10:25
When the Aramaic was translated into Greek, the rope became a camel.
The New Testament is written in Greek; nearly all the Old Testament is written in Hebrew, while the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the LXX) is significant to biblical studies.
Yet 268 verses of the Bible were written in a language called Aramaic.
Lloyd Okay, . . . . a rope. I don’t even know if they had needles in those times. But I sincerely doubt either a rope or a camel will fit well through anything equivalent in size to, say, the eye of a needle. Metaphors and analogies are known for the limping qualities; and I do know my own checkbook puts me as an outsider to the problems of the rich gaining favor with the ultimate powers that be. (But are you mansplaining . . . or what?) CBK
I admit I like the image of a rich man being compared to a camel when it comes to passing through the eyes of a needle.
I was told the the eye of the needle was actually the name of a specific, very narrow gate into Jerusalem probably designed that way for defensive purposes.
I also read that Hell was the name of Jerusalem’s garbage dump where the ancient city burned all of the stuff that ended up there.
“In Judaism, Gehenna (or Ge-hinnom) is a fiery place where the wicked are punished after they die or on Judgment Day, a figurative equivalent for “Hell.” Gehenna also appears in the New Testament and early Christian writings, and is known in Islam as Jahannam. The powerful imagery of Gehenna originates from a ancient real place; thus Gehenna serves an example of the interplay between literal and symbolic meanings in scripture. …
“The valley forms the southwest border of ancient Jerusalem that stretches from the foot of Mt. Zion to the Kidron Valley. It is first mentioned in Joshua 15:8. Originally it referred to a garbage dump in a deep narrow valley right outside the walls of Jerusalem where fires were kept burning to consume the refuse and keep down the stench. It is also the location where bodies of executed criminals, or individuals denied a proper burial, would be dumped.”
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Gehenna
Ah, yes. I remember that one, too. My husband spent many happy hours scavenging in the local garbage dump when he was a kid. Rehabbed an old TV he found there. Great pickings for a kid inclined to tinker.
Lloyd,
Not at all. Do remember that I have taught at public universities for almost three decades. I sent all my children to public schools as well.
Lloyd,
Do I take it that you include the private companies that provide electricity, natural gas, telephone service, etc as “public utilities”?
Go back and read my last comment for that answer.
. . . He’s baiting you, Lloyd. CBK
Thank you. I know. That’s why I did not answer his last question and told him to read my last comment that already answered that question. I made my point. There is no need to keep asking me the same questions expecting to get different answer.
. . . a pox on him and the horse he rode in on. CBK
He was riding a horse? I thought it was a poor pot-bellied piggy.
Lloyd,
My question is a simple one. Is electricity generation a “public good” or is it not? If so, the fact that the World Bank says that it is equally efficiently done by private firms and and by government agencies is not a strong argument that it must be done by government agencies. If it is not a “public good”, I think your definition of “public utilities” is unusually narrow.
Who am I to answer a question that you apparently do not have an answer to?
Or, is that because you keep struggling to come up with a question that will trick someone into saying what you want them to say?
I say BS to your endless manipulating questions.
The public sector should never be managed by the private sector, and elected officials should always have oversight over those public agencies and the public workers should always have due process rights, so they can’t be fired at the whim of someone like Trump just because those people did not vote for him or spoke out against something he said or did.
This endless assault on private labor unions, public labor unions, public workers, and public agencies is an attempt by wealthy, corrupt, powerful, private sector autocrats to take away any protection workers have in any sector so the public never has a voice.
Lloyd Well said: “. . . so they can’t be fired at the whim of someone like Trump just because those people did not vote for him or spoke out against something he said or did.”
(Back to camels:) The “camel’s nose under the tent” is to actually do good things, at least for awhile while they gain power, often by changing the language around. I heard another term to express what Orwell knew so well and referred to as “double-speak.”
SEMANTIC INFILTRATION. Example: changing the language that concerns the Post Office. Out of the blue (it seems) we were talking about the “losses” that the Post Office undergoes–as if it were a business. In this case, the infiltration is to make common the use of terms of analysis that relate to capitalist rather than public-service entities.
Another example: In education, at some point in our discussions, “students” became “customers.” I’m sure there are many more. CBK
I think the rope metaphor means a rich man cannot get into heaven until he unravels the rope and only has one string left that will fit.
Translation: Give away all but enough to eat and keep a roof over your head before you die. Do not hold on to it all and leave little or none for family and friends that are probably waiting for the rich man to die and dreaming how they are going to be rich and powerful.
Lloyd This, and arrogance, make for the greatest stumbling blocks to living in the full spirit of Christianity. That’s arguable, of course. But it’s been a recurring theme in several Bible study classes I have attended over the years where many who attended were more than financially “comfortable.” At least they didn’t ignore the mandate.
It’s not that the poor have a leg-up. It’s that the poor just haven’t been tested in the way that the “comfortable” have. CBK
I would “LOVE” to see Trump so poor he had to apply for food stamps and Section 8 housing to survive. I wonder if Trump ever paid into Social Security or Medicare.
Katherine King,
It would be extremely helpful if you could give a definition of what is a “public good” and what is not a “public good”.
Teachingeconomist: “It would be extremely helpful if you could give a definition of what is a ‘public good’ and what is not a public good.”
Look it up: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/public-goods?s=ts
That said, and for clarification by contrast, what is NOT a public good, or a good for WE the people, is for some corporation, private or quasi-“public,” with shareholders who are insiders and who hold exclusive power only by virtue of their bought shares or other ownerships or personal connections, have the power to arbitrarily distribute or withhold what is deemed a public good, the absence of which creates a serious decay or elimination of the life, liberty, and well-being (happiness) of the people (the public).
Democracy: DEMOS: people/CRASIS: power.
Insofar as education of the people is well-known, not as a guarantee for the continuance of democracy, but at least as necessary and intimate partner with the qualified furtherance of democracy as a general political framework, and specifically for the U.S. Constitution and our other founding ideas, then education is a public good . . . like defense, water, the Post Office, electricity and other basic services.
You can get into the weeds, if you want, of change, of developments, and of differences as our sciences bring us stuff that we end up requiring (as public goods), for instance, electricity that we didn’t need before, and then access to the internet for common communications, . .
. . . but living communities tend to grow, to undergo change, and to become more and more complex; and so the content, but not the idea of the public good, changes with it. Those changes of content are further questions for those weedy discussions and, ultimately, for congressional oversight and decision-making . . .
. . . and not for dispensing with the fundamental idea of the common good merely because some find it difficult to live with complexity and with the moving uncertainty that accompanies such change. CBK
Lloyd,
I think that a fundamental problem with your thinking about this is that you can not define what makes some things a “public good” and other things not a “public good”. Without some sort of definition, it is difficult to argue that a good ought to be treated as a “public good” and must be produced by employees of the government in a centralized way.
TE,
I have no idea why you are engaged in this pointless discussion. There may be a reason but it is not apparent other than your love of finding someone to argue with.
I think you should debate Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty about what a “public good” is.
Oh, wait, he’s been dead for more than 2,000 years, but you can learn something from him.
Catherine,
The problem with the definition in your link, at least for the folks on this blog, is that it rules out public schools as a “public good”. The definition requires the service to be available to “all members of the public”. As a system, public schools prohibit members of the public from attending if they are too young or too old, so it is not available to “all members of the public”.
If we talk about particular schools, the problem is even worse. Even if a member of the public is of an age that is allowed to attend public schools, they are prohibited from attending almost all of the schools in the country.
TE: Incredible. CBK
What an idiotic response. You allege that that public schools are not a public good because K-12 only accepts 5-year-olds and after a student turns 18, they must graduate or leave after 12th grade.
Your ignorance is incredible unless your goal was to get a trollish response out of someone that would be a waste-of-time because you do not believe your own crap. Just like Trump, I think you are throwing garbage at a wall to see what will stick.
First, some public school districts offer preschool for children younger than 5. If states and the feds funded public preschools, they’d probably exist in every public school district.
Second, some if not all public school districts have alternative high schools for students that are not ready to graduate on time. The district I taught in for thirty years had one and the oldest student they graduated was 24 (that I know of). That alternative public high school was willing to keep any student that kept coming until they graduated at their pace at any age.
Third, free publicly owned and managed community colleges in most if not all states offer classes for older adults that did not graduate from high school on time so they can earn a high school degree at any age.
From the United States Census:
Dec. 14, 2017 – For the first time in U.S. history, 90 percent of the population age 25 and older have completed high school. This is according to new Educational Attainment data released today from the U.S. Census Bureau.
“In 1940, less than half of the population age 25 and older had a high school diploma. Over the years this has increased to the point where we now have 90 percent who have completed high school,” said Kurt Bauman, a demographer in the Social, Economic and Housing Statistics division. “That means out of the 217 million people age 25 and older, 194 million have a high school diploma or higher.”
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2017/educational-attainment-2017.html
Lloyd,
The definition of “public good” offered by Katherine King requires that it is available to ALL members of the public. Pointing out that pre-k education is available to SOME of our fellow citizens does not support the position that public education is a public good by Katherine King’s chosen definition.
Public education has been a Oublic good for many decades. It is free and open to all school-age students and supported by the public for public benefit.
diane I think if he’/she’s not a troll, TE just likes to argue for argument’s sake.
But your point is a good one. Public education, especially for children, is good for all concerned–democracy won’t survive long without it. Also, I understand that Kamala supports free community colleges. That will all come out in the wash, however. CBK
Public education emerged along with other democratic institutions in the first half on the 19th century. Imperfect but essential. The DeVosians would like to turn back the clock by 200 years.
Lloyd My suggestion only: Don’t bother with TE. Waste of your time and effort, . . . and mine. CBK
TE asks rhetorical questions for the sake of baiting someone to engage him in argument. He never makes a productive comment. Don’t take the bait.
I have never heard of Katherine King? Don’t care to know about her, either.
Dr. Ravitch,
I certainly agree that public schools are available to all “school age children”, but that does seem to fall short of the “all citizens” requirement of the definition offered here.
Is it your position that all “school aged children” is that same as all citizens or that public goods, and thus public goods, are not necessary available to all citizens?
I refuse to waste my time falling for your bait.
Catherine King,
There are many things that are good for “all concerned”. Does that mean that the production of food should be undertaken by centralized governments or should it be undertaken by decentralized individual farms?
Seriously, to away.
TE Check your resources. CBK
Someone please explain to me how ‘market forces’ other than not enough profits, result in a charter being closed. How does closing them down improve test scores, if that’s the problem? (We know that’s not why…) Obviously it’s not market forces but the other ‘M’ words, mismanagement & malfeasance. It’s got nothing to do with the kids or the teachers, aka the actual school part of the charter sector.
To avoid that risk is why most if not all countries have public schools because public schools offer stability.
But in today’s capitalist United States, stability has become a dirty word and disruption has replaced it.
Lloyd,
Dr. Ravitch has taught at NYU, founded in 1831, and Colombia which was founded in 1754, making it older than the country. That suggests that private schools can be stable. Of course Bologna was founded in 1088 and Oxford in 1167, so there are much older universities in the world.
NYU and Columbia University are not community schools, they are universities. They were not founded by entrepreneurs to make money or to drive public universities out of business. To compare them to charter schools is very stupid. Beneath you.
If high schools are better, there is the Collegiate School (1628), the Friends Select School (1689), the William Penn Charter School (1689), and Abingdon Friends School (1697).
Do you have a point? Private schools survive by charging tuition from those who can afford to pay. Duh. Also, none of the private schools you mention were created to compete with public schools and steal their students, nor do they seek public funding. What is your point? Do you have a point?
Really, all of your role models for a better high school comes from the 17th century?
Lloyd TE is a classical thinker. The 17th century is where that thinking fits the best. In my view, neither TE nor most in the field of economics, understand science or, with a clear understanding of it, how it actually can inform their thought (again, when they get their data right). And we wonder why economic policies don’t work . . . . CBK
Duh, probably starting with the ancient Greeks, stable private schools have existed because the wealthiest one-to-five percent at the top of the economic pyramid sent their children to them. They could afford to pay those exorbitant prices.
Those private schools should never be supported by public money and private management should never be paid to manage public schools. Why the hell, should the working class pay for the education of children from the wealthiest families?
In 1900, 40 percent of Americans lived in poverty and only 7 percent of the population of the United States graduated from high school and 3 percent from college.
That all changed mostly after World War II, and the public school system built by America’s Greatest Generation is struggling to survive today due to decades of assaults paid for by the wealthiest 1 percent, a small number of greedy, corrupt monsters and anyone that supports what they want.
The public schools built after World War II need to be replaced with new buildings. That means higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans and if they do not lick it “F” them and anyone that agrees with them.
The United States MUST bring back the Eisenhower tax rates. The public highways, electric grid, bridges, public airports, and the public education system [et al] were built on that tax and started crumbling after President Reagan’s tax cuts and trickle-down economics where the wealthy get to piss on the working class. Until Reagan, the U.S. was on track to pay off or pay down its National Debt. With Reagan that debt took off like a rocket and has never stopped growing.
“Income tax rates under Eisenhower were as high as 90 percent”
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/nov/15/bernie-sanders/income-tax-rates-were-90-percent-under-eisenhower-/
“Eisenhower proved higher tax rates could work”
https://apnews.com/2184e9f18f6f4acca1ed007bdcdca818
teachingeconomist If we continue to define any problem ONLY by the details of its manifestation, we’ll never get to the power of general ideas that are embedded in our founding documents (like a public good), or in mission statements, etc., nor will we be able to understand their concrete manifestations or applications (like electricity as a public good NOW, but not when we used candles and kerosene THEN).
Imagine if the sciences never got past actual apples and oranges when trying to understand mathematics. It seems to me, your arguments are stuck in the details (detail-centrism), which you seem to think must be unchanging . . . you cannot seem to get to the general idea, much less its concrete manifestation as historically a changing thing, and you want everyone else to follow suit. I don’t think so.
I invite you to experience post-18th century thinking. CBK