Joe Biden was very clear about his position on privately managed charter schools during the campaign.
In this video, he was asked by Lily Eskelsen Garcia what he would do about charter schools, and his position was clear: Charter schools should not be funded at the expense of public schools. No federal funds for privately funded charter schools. Charter schools should be subject to the oversight and governance of school boards. Charter schools should be held to the same standards of transparency and accountability as public schools.
Will he keep his promises?
At least there is video to hold him accountable. I’m trying hard to be optimistic, but where I live, we had some politician declare there would be “no new taxes” if re-elected and then he tacked “fees” onto everything.
I am super disappointed with Randi w performance on gma this am…it is like the dems are using the Trump talking points about reopening the schools.
On Tue, Dec 29, 2020, 8:01 AM Diane Ravitch’s blog wrote:
> dianeravitch posted: ” Joe Biden was very clear about his position on > privately managed charter schools during the campaign. In this video, he > was asked by Lily Eskelsen Garcia what he would do about charter schools, > and his position was clear: Charter schools should not be” >
Whether he’ll keep his promises on charters is interesting, but I fear the FOCUS on charters always ends the same way- with nothing positive or productive accomplished for public schools.
I see this most vividly in my state, Ohio, where the majority of our legislature and our governor are so focused on the ed reform charter/voucher agenda they contribute absolutely nothing of value to public schools. My state government never gets around to public school students- ed reformers dominate the agenda and ed reformers lobby exclusively on behalf of charter/voucher students.
We’ve seen this now under the last three Presidents- an exclusive focus on pushing and promoting charters and vouchers and little or nothing accomplished or even offered to public school students and families other than testing.
Biden has an opportunity to put some real effort into public schools. I hope he isn’t sidelined by the ed reform lobby and we end up spending another four years ignoring and neglecting the schools the vast majority of students attend because ed reformers demand an exclusive focus on charters and vouchers.
It isn’t fair to public school students that the federal government treats their schools like a disfavored afterthought simply because public schools are unfashionable in elite education policy circles. I know these folks have no interest in our schools or students- I don’t care. Our schools should be supported anyway.
You’re getting right at the Achilles’ heel here, Chiara: charters schools are a creature of the state. The rules under which they operate depend on the state, not the fed. Residents of states like Ohio where officials are captured by the charter lobby will have a hard time taming them or putting them down. But it will be a help to many states if the fed backs out of them altogether. No fed funds for charter schools.
If you want to see what happens when government is utterly captured by the ed reform lobby look at Ohio. Ninety per cent of students in this state attend public schools. We can’t even get a public school funding formula passed. Year after year after year public school students are passed over in favor in the ed reform agenda on charters/vouchers. There’s so little interest in our schools in Columbus we can’t get lawmakers to work on them long enough to pass a funding scheme.
The sum total accomplishment of ed reformers in Ohio the last decade has been a vast expansion of private school vouchers. They have done absolutely nothing for public school students and families.
This approach has been replicated at the federal level by Bush, then Obama, then Trump. Enough. We’re paying these people. They should exert some effort and perform some actual work on behalf of the public schools most children attend.
Biden has a chance to change that, but it won’t happen if he hires the same old crowd of ed reformers we got for Bush, then Obama, then Trump. The anti-public school crowd aren’t going to offer anything for public school students- they never have.
We love our charter and magnet schools in Philly, and all of them have been very diverse. We wish we had more charter schools because of the choices we get in method and philosophy that suit our different kids interests and personalities. If we wanted conventional public school, we’d move to the suburbs. I have 3 nieces that live in West Philly that all went to a charter montessori and then one went to a charter performing arts high school, one went to an academic magnet high school, and one is at Science Leadership Academy, a project-based magnet high school.
You will start to see the cracks in the shiny, new veneer. You have William Hite and he came to you from PG County in MD where he paved the way for charter schools in the MD suburbs of DC for poor children of color. It looked promising, but the shiny new buildings and fancy technologies have faced the same budgetary shortfalls that the public systems have faced for years. You simply CANNOT run 2 education systems with the budget of 1. The corruption in the PG Co school system is horrendous and the physical harm that has been done to some students is deplorable (Head Start $$$ were pulled). All well documented by the local papers. What parent doesn’t want their child/children to go to a clean school with shiny new things and a catchy name? Buyer Beware!
I have a different take on Philly charters (this is a 15-yo story). My middle son’s hisch gf was raised in our hi-income NJ town & flourished in our excellent pubschsys. Mom became divorced w/custody of two, & eventually was forced to transfer to downtown Philly to keep her job. Son & dghtr were plunged into a dangerous, crowded inner-city school & quickly found a way out thro Philly’s nascent charter system. Theirs was online ed, w/ wkly in-person attendance at a central hub. Both kids were way above peers & quickly were tapped to be helpers/ tutors for others at the hub’s study center. This was an OK substitute for what they’d had in NJ, & no question superior to the zoned pubsch. Neither were able to follow their previous trajectory, ed-wise, landing in comm colleges & taking more yrs to get 4yr degrees as they moved w/their mom from place to place to keep that good job.
It’s just one anecdote. It shows Philly charters provide an avenue forward for best students—probably leave the rest of rejected SpEds, ELL’s, homeless et al in the notoriously underfunded & overcrowded tradl Philly pubschs. I don’t see this as any way to run a public school system. It just divvies the kids up according to ability/ opportunity. It also illustrates a sort of inequitable serendipity, public-ed-wise, that applies to kids who have to move around as parents pursue living wages — which is increasingly the way many hanging onto the middle class by fingernails have to live.
The Philadelphia school system has been criminally underfunded for years by the Republicans in Harrisburg. Creating a safety exit for a few kids is a way to normalize the destruction of the city’s public schools.
I actually urge public school parents and supporters to read ed reformers. Go to any ed reform site and look for anything they offer to PUBLIC school students- anything at all positive or productive or an improvement in existing public schools.
You won’t find anything. They simply don’t serve students in public schools. Our schools are treated as an obstacle to be gotten around to realize the ideological dream of privatized charter/voucher systems. What this means for public school students the last twenty years? They get nothing. And they have gotten nothing. The single contribution of this “movement” to 90% of schools and students in the country is endless standardized testing. That’s all we got.
100% negative agenda for public school students and lavish funding, promotion and praise of charter and private school students.
It’s a raw deal for students in public schools. No one should accept it. It sucks for them.
Here’s one ed reform outlet, The 74:
https://www.the74million.org/
Read it. Look for any positive idea, proposal or effort on behalf of students in PUBLIC schools.
There is nothing. This is consistent across ed reform. They offer our students nothing.
If we continue to hire the ed reform echo chamber in government we will continue to get nothing- they simply don’t support our students. They return no value to them.
“Read it”
Sorry but I prefer to keep my breakfast.
Ditto Duane. Got any others?
I’m amused that ed reformers have now decided that remote learning widens the achievement gap.
The same people who spent the last decade marketing and promoting cheap online systems to replace (more expensive) live instruction in public schools now criticize public schools for online learning.
Are they still selling cheap online instruction? Is Jeb Bush planning on decrying remote learning WHILE running his lobbying shop that sells garbage online gimmicks to public school systems?
Once again, completely and utterly incoherent. I guess if your main objective is not “education” but is instead “bashing public schools to achieve the ideological agenda of universal vouchers” coherence and consistency don’t matter.
I agree with ed reformers. Live instruction is higher quality. I’m glad they changed their minds. Maybe now they’ll stop marketing this garbage.
Don’t bet on it. They don’t even look inconsistent to their dumb-bunny followers at the moment—hey, it’s all pubsch/ teacher-bashing, right? I fully expect them to do another 180 when post-pandemic schools are fully open again. They know which side their bread is buttered on.
I was pleased to see this article:
“The question will be what that “reimagination” looks like, and how Cardona will try to make it happen. Will he focus on resource inequities? A national campaign to make up learning loss through tutoring? Diversifying the teaching profession, something he’s written about? Expanding access to bilingual education, which he has a degree in and has advocated for in Connecticut? More technology? School infrastructure? School integration?”
Something that is relevant to public schools that is not a demand for more testing!
I almost fell off my chair. They remembered our students exist! Twenty years these folks have been working on behalf of the privatized system they hope to put in instead of working on public schools, and it shows. Maybe that changes with a new President.
https://www.chalkbeat.org/2020/12/23/22197906/5-big-questions-miguel-cardona-education-secretary
Politicians know how to play the game, and Biden is a career politician. At least Biden’s DOE finalists all believe in public education. The least objectionable candidate to the charter lobby got the job. Now it is our job to pressure Cardona and Biden to live up to Biden’s campaign promises. As Diane has said we may have to push, pressure and protest in order to get the Democrats to make good on their promises. Our complaints and noise have to be more uncomfortable for Biden and Cardona than the money they get from the charter lobby. That is what MLK did, and what BLM is doing today. Sometimes politicians have to be nudged into doing the right thing.
“nudged” being a very generously kind word
I say [a la the point Chiara was making above] we rope conservative anti-pubsch types into our cause. They seem to have a new-found awe for the value of qualified in-person teachers on needy kids. Discussion is actually good for kids! IRL socio-emotional learning beats cheap canned SEL sw! How can anybody learn anything without the give & take of social interaction?! Perhaps their words can be taped & replayed when they, post-pandemic, counsel a return to test&punish regurgitation of memorized whatever for all tradl pubschs, folded-hands/zero soc interaction for the ‘grit’/’self-control’ charters, & warehouses full of kids head-setted Matrix-style to CBE sw.
“No federal funds for privately funded charter schools.”
In respect to funding, while he started to say “no privately funded charter school” he corrected himself to adjust that to “no private charter school”.
Chiara, I agree with a lot of your points about ed reformers and traditional public schools. But, I’ll add that it’s hard to find anyone with a pro student teaching and learning agenda. It seems like the only alternatives you here are more testing or more money. This is part of what led me to a charter; it just doesn’t seem like traditional public education has a plan for improving instruction for black and brown kids. It’s hard to even get TPS supporters to agree there’s a problem let alone doing anything about it.
I hope Cardona does focus on all schools serving low income kids and avoids the polarized wars over which type of great schools our kids need. I’m hopeful that he will listen to the families that are in charters and will continue to support them, but the focus really should be on title 1 and improving the schools that serve the kids who need school the most.
I hope all charters are subject to oversight by the local school board to root out the greedy entrepreneurs and charter leaders who pay themselves outrageous salaries.
Local school boards would seek to end charters, not responsibly oversee them (you have that in common with them). Support strong state laws and authorizers if you want to get something done about the few bad apples as we all do. If you only use your power to get rid of all charters, you lose the ability to try to improve them.
That is simply not true. Many charters operate subject to the accountability of local school boards. If a charter is not wanted or not needed, it should not open.
Too much fraud and embezzlement.
I prefer to let families decide whether charters are needed vs. letting the traditional public school board that they may be unhappy with deciding that for them.
I prefer to have public money overseen by public authorities. Not by self-serving greedy entrepreneurs.
You prefer to let families self-segregate, John. You prefer to let families rob their neighbors of resources. You prefer to let families stab society in the back by allowing education to be an individual pursuit in a social Darwinian free market, a privilege instead of a responsibility. You prefer injustice and inequality.
LeftCoastTeacher,
I could use similar language and say that you prefer that traditional public schools take the money of low income parents without being responsive to them or their children because they get the money regardless of what they do. And that higher income parents don’t care because they decide where to live primarily based on schools. That sounds like a Darwinian free market to me. Where is the justice and equality in that? Did you make decisions about your own or your children’s education or were you forced by circumstance to accept something you were unhappy with?
Students deserve quality schools, and IMO, schools that are accountable to families and which get no income if no parents choose them have to be responsive to parents, where traditional public schools do not.
John,
I will let Left Coast Teacher speak for himself.
But I must say you are spouting sheer propaganda.
The charter industry includes some of the nation’s lowest performing schools. In some states, like Ohio, the charter sector as a whole is far worse than urban public schools.
You must be sad to see DeVos go.
You sound like her mouthpiece.
Personal attacks are the tool of people without arguments.
Charters also include some of the nation’s best schools.
I’m for more great schools, traditional or charter.
You are for more traditional schools and no charter schools.
You have a litmus test that is based on what’s best for adults.
I have one that is based on what’s best for kids.
I’m comfortable with that.
I made no personal attacks, John.
Charters are a farce (don’t take that personally unless you are a charter school).
The “best” charters select their students and families with care.
Charters come and go with rapidity.
The average charter is no better than the public school it drains money from.
A new kind of three-card Monte, fleecing parents and the public.
Read this: https://networkforpubliceducation.org/stillasleepatthewheel/
You’re creating a false choice, John. We do not have to choose between having the wealthy pay taxes to support public services and having democracy. Sheesh! Public schools, ALL public schools need to be fully funded and run by publicly elected, accountable and transparent school boards. How is that Darwinism? Come on, this discussion is regressing into nonsense.
LeftCoastTeacher,
That ideal doesn’t exist. In the meantime, in reality, we have school choice for those who can afford it and in many cases, substandard education for those who can’t. Sure, let’s work for full funding of all schools, but let’s not pretend we currently have a just or fair system that charter schools are ruining.
John,
Thank you for stating that growing Title I, not testing, rating, and privatizing schools, would be the focus of the federal government if anyone in D.C. cared about students. Improving instruction for Black and Latinx students can be accomplished with smaller class sizes. It’s simple common sense that does not need explanation. Even the general public understands the value of smaller classes. It takes monetary investment to hire more teachers, build and maintain more classrooms, and support the investment with decent salaries, healthcare, and pensions, which means supporting teachers unions that stand up for smaller classes as part of better working conditions. You say no one has a pro-student agenda, but that’s not true. Teachers unions have a pro-student agenda. Teachers unions have a smaller class size agenda.
LeftCoastTeacher,
Saying that smaller class sizes are the only and best solution just isn’t enough. While that intervention has been shown to work, it is hugely expensive and is not necessarily the best use of additional funds. It also ignores the issue that we currently have trouble recruiting the best and brightest into teaching so it is unclear where these additional teachers come from.
Since it also aligns with the interests of unions that want to grow membership and teachers who would prefer smaller classes, it requires extra scrutiny. Where is a comprehensive plan that addresses teacher education, perverse incentives in compensation plans, the dearth of professional development and coaching, etc? In short, who is focused on improving the profession and teaching and learning, not just offering simplistic solutions that will cost a huge amount and won’t necessarily improve things?
Average class sizes in the US are 16.6 for grade schools and 19 high school. In Finland, grade schools are 19.6 and high schools are 19. If this were a simple issue, do we get their results by decreasing grade school class sizes by 3? While it certainly would be a great thing to do that, I think it’s overly simplistic to think that would solve the issue.
Those figures are not accurate. They lump together teachers who are in classes for children with disabilities, where the mandated class size may be 5:1 or even smaller.
Los Angeles had a teachers’ strike over class size, some of which were more than 40:1.
This is from NCES. Do you have a better source?
NCES may say that the US class size average is 16:1 but that’s because they are lumping together special education classes with regular classes. I have never seen a class in any big city that had only 16 students. Where are the classes of 12-15?
John @ 1:18 pm: see my reply below under general replies (getting more margin space)
He he. You were faster than I, Diane. Thank you.
I hope you will support the students and families in your charter school by working with teachers to foster the birth of a new chapter, affiliated with the local teachers union, at the school. It would benefit the students and families at your school and also the students and families in the rest of your city, NYC if I remember correctly. It would be something you could truly be proud of doing. My thoughts are of and with you.
LeftCoastTeacher,
Our teacher retention and satisfaction is very high and I’m very proud of how we’ve supported them. Would you care to list the benefits of union membership for our students? That’s how we make our decisions and I am truly proud of that.
Perhaps you might explain to Left Coast Teacher that more than 90% of all charters are non-union and are designed to be so because so many were funded by rightwing libertarians like DeVos and Waltons and Koch. They hate unions.
LCT: I think you are pulling John’s leg. His kids attend a non-union charter.
I thought John was on the board of a non-union charter. Maybe there are two Johns. I don’t mean to pull anyone’s leg.
A. It would be a great improvement of public education to ban charter schools, but regulation is all that is sought at this stage. Pandora’s Box is open and cannot be easily closed.
B. During the semester I went on strike, I had multiple middle school English classes with 42 students each. With the strike settlement, I now have 32, capped.
C. The reason we have trouble recruiting and retaining teachers is the lack of job stability. It used to be a low paying but at least stable job. With competition from charters using low paid often temp labor, it’s neither. And with test scores often being used to publicly berate us, it can be difficult to remember that the public respects us. They do, by the way. We have been publicly slandered for twenty years. I’m a great teacher, one of the best, but I am not sure even I would be a teacher if I had known what was going to happen to the profession before I joined.
D. What is this nonsense about perverse incentives for teachers? You mean getting paid more as one ages to be able to retire with a decent pension? That’s perverse? You want teachers to have no job security or reliable raises, but you want more people to become teachers and remain in the profession? So you don’t value experience? You don’t value postbaccalaureate education? You should read the chapter in Slaying Goliath about intrinsic versus extrinsic rewards and stop trying to claim that teachers only want to be good at teaching if there’s a one-time test score bonus or a pat on the head for test scores. Test score incentives degrade the quality of teaching.
E. The benefit of having charter teachers join a union is simple: a stronger union. It means a stronger collective bargaining stance for better schools for all instead of for some.
LeftCoastTeacher,
Yes, you’re right. FYI, I think we can all agree that 42 students is too many, and regardless of the national averages, there is lots of variability.
Regarding perverse incentives, I think teachers should be paid more and that regular raises forever are less important than more pay early in the career. I also think we should be able to pay teachers who opt for more challenging placements more. I’d support paying board certified teachers more, but I haven’t seen evidence that we get our money’s worth paying for post-baccalaureate degrees; curious if you have data to the contrary.
Re E, I think there are more effective ways to improve education than stronger unions and we can agree to disagree on that.
John comes here to defend charters. He does not like unions. He does not view teaching as a career. His favorite charter chain has high turnover of teachers every year.
I forgot to list the benefits for students of having strong unions:
•lower class size
•more resources
•opposition to underfunding
•better teachers: more experienced and more satisfied
•a profession they might want to join when older as part of a resuscitated middle class
•the survival of unions generally as part of a resuscitated middle class
•professional autonomy for teachers to make better decisions than Bill Gates, and grassroots professional development
•fighting for funding based on need instead of prosperity (test scores)
LeftCoastTeacher,
We agree on most of those outcomes. I just don’t see the current management/labor working relationship in this country delivering on those as it seems more like a power struggle that has devolved into micromanagement and contractual protections. I know most here refuse to believe it but most high performing charter schools are led by educators and teaching and learning are front and center.
Are you referring to the BASIS charters, where the owners pa themselves $10 million a year?
Or the Academica for-profit charters, whose owners have assembled a real estate empire worth more than $100 million?
And no, I don’t need data, I have a brain.
I’m sure you do, but a brain with data is more powerful than brain with anecdotes.
The current management-labor working relationship is unacceptable because teachers unions are so weakened that management forces labor to use scripted test prep lessons on cheap software. That must change and eliminating unions would only make teachers more complacent and compliant in the face of the cheapening of teaching. The teachers at charter schools are not leaders. They are just too inexperienced to know better.
LeftCoachTeacher,
I think both sides are so weakened and constrained as to make a dysfunctional relationship. I’d love to see it improve, but I don’t see a vehicle for that. If more power for unions in that equation was the answer, I’d embrace it, but I don’t see evidence for that.
As for charter educators, I’m confident I know way more of them and way more about them than you do. Your dismissal of them is disappointing but not unexpected. Like Diane, you think a union teacher is a good teacher and a non-union one is bad, and likewise that a traditional public school is a good school and a charter school is bad. Very self-serving and narrow definition that says nothing about teaching or learning.
You twist words.
Neither I nor LCT said that union teachers are better than non-union teachers.
We said that unions are good for education because unions fight for funding and smaller classes.
“I’d support paying board certified teachers more, but I haven’t seen evidence that we get our money’s worth paying for post-baccalaureate degrees; curious if you have data to the contrary.”
I keep thinking about that comment. Diane, did he really ask me if I have data as evidence of higher education being worthwhile?
Education is worthwhile. Full stop.
Why does he need data to know that? How can people call themselves education reformers when they don’t even believe education has value?
Yes, more education is better, but it isn’t a given that public education dollars should be spent on more pay for those degrees vs other uses of the money. Also, what’s important here is whether that degree has a positive impact on students.
How do you measure “positive impact”?
How do you decide if it’s worth paying more for advanced degrees vs other ways of spending money? I think those that support the policy should be able to demonstrate that it’s worth something for students to justify it.
Why do university professors get paid more for advanced degrees?
Why do we pay those with an M.D. more than nurses?
Clearly, you don’t think education has any value.
LCT, you are hearing a watered down version of Eric Hanushek’s theory that teachers don’t raise test scores (his definition of an “effective” teacher) by getting a master’s or any other additional degrees.
Happy to look at data to the contrary. Are we better off paying for advanced degrees or simply paying teachers more or lowering class sizes?
Left Coast Teacher,
Do you think that my having earned a doctorate 30 years ago means that I am a more effective K-12 teacher than you? That I deserve to be paid more than you?
That’s the wrong question: the question is whether you should be paid more because you earned a doctorate.
If you don’t think so, refund a portion of your salary to your 7niversity.
Dr. Ravitch,
My salary is less than 1/4 of what the highest paid member of my department is paid. She and I both have doctorate degrees. Is that unjust? Do you think that adjunct professors like me should be paid more? Do you think she should be paid less?
I oppose the system by which 70% of all professors are hired as adjuncts. It’s unjust. I think it’s a way of cheating people like you. You need a union to fight for your right to earn a decent salary based on your credentials and experience. .
It is well worth it to incentivize staying in school and staying in the teaching profession. Yes, it is well worth it. Yes, someone who has more education deserves to get paid more than someone who has less education. Yes, I would rather be taught by a professor than by a two-bit used car salesman. And damn it, I wish the fools who publish textbooks nowadays agreed with that and would start paying more for professors instead of sales reps. I am tired of having everything done by amateurs pretending to be intellectuals.
I am getting so tired of people who clearly do not have a full grasp of what education is, what it’s for, or how it works calling teachers effective or ineffective, as if those words mean something. Diane, how effective is the weather in your neck of the woods today?
Do you own an effective dog? What’s your most effective movie? What’s your most effective food? Most effective song? Who was the most effective painter or sculptor? What’s the most effective culture in history? How effective was your grandmother?
Are you trying to make the case that there is no difference between teachers?
Dr. Ravitch,
As my adjunct’s salary is about 3 times the median individual income in the United States, I do not feel cheated.
A comprehensive universities could not function if it attempted to pay people based on education and years of experience. If we paid all faculty the amount we pay faculty in our medical or even our engineering school, we could not afford to have humanities departments. If we paid all faculty the amount we pay to faculty in the humanities, we would not be able to hire any medical or engineering faculty.
Left Coast Teacher,
If it does not make sense to talk about effectiveness in teaching, it follows that it does not make sense to require any particular level or type of education for teachers.
Economists clearly — willfully — do not understand how education works. The way it works is, you get educated, then you pass on what you learned. Simple. Understand? I know you don’t. If teachers take fewer classes, then we have less wisdom to share. Teachers should keep taking classes and learning more about our subjects, but the wisdom we gain from going to school cannot be measured by testing the students. Measuring wisdom is like measuring love. This is not a difficult concept to grasp. Are postbaccalaureate units an accurate reflection of wisdom? No, but we still want teachers to take more classes and we want teachers’ salaries to rise over the course of a lifelong career. Are student test scores accurate reflections of teacher wisdom? No, and paying for high test scores does not improve teaching. You economists just refuse to try to grasp it because
all
you
ever
do
is
twist
logic
to
come
up
with
excuses
for
austerity
so that wealthy corporations can stay on welfare.
Left Coast Teacher,
It appears that you believe the more educated and more experienced a teacher the more effective a teacher.
I have a doctorate and over 30 years in the classroom. By your standards, that makes me a very effective teacher.
Maybe you are a very effective teacher.
Do you get better every year or worse as a teacher?
Dr. Ravitch,
It is hard to tell. I certainly have far more technological tools now than I did at the beginning of my career. The bespoke videos that I make (I have a library of 157 currently, and will be adding more this break) for them were impossible to make until the last 10 years or so. The many low stakes assignments would also have been impossible to grade without the help of recently developed technology. If you put me back with the tools I had 32 years ago, basically an unconnected computer, an impact printer so I could produce ditto masters, chalk, and a red pen, I think most students would probably say the younger me was more energetic, and more relatable.
If you are a less effective teacher than 32 years ago, perhaps you should take a salary cut.
Dr. Ravitch,
Perhaps you are not experienced with how salaries are determined at large research universities. Initially there is a negotiation over salaries, course releases, summer salary, start up costs (these can be over a million dollars for some faculty), etc. Annual increases, if any, come from a pool of money allocated to the department. A committee of the faculty decides how to allocate that money across members of the department, and with the dean’s approval, that determines who gets how much. Large increases in salary can come from the dean, with the provost’s approval, if a faculty member has an outside offer from a competing university.
This system often results in what is called salary compression, where full professors make only a little more than assistant professors. In economics this has resulted is salary inversion, where new assistant professors earn more than associate or even full professors.
Universities pay what they have to pay to keep the faculty that they wish to keep.
John, re: 11:50am post: That is absurd. Why would local school boards “seek to end charters”? School boards are locally elected, & the interest of the local populace is in the best ed for their kids.
Our particular town- a hi-income one- enthusiastically supported a charter under the district umbrella for certain SpEd midsch kids [devptlly delayed, autistic]. It didn’t make it after 3 yrs’ trial—there weren’t enough enrollees to justify separate bldg, & due to low enrollment, SpEd teachers had to spread themselves too thin moving from there to the other pubsch bldgs PT. But it was a success in the sense that the public learned about needs not being met, & the schsys responded, expanding its offerings. At this point we have a special program bridging the transition from midsch to hisch for devptlly delayed kids, & now teach autistic kids w/n our own schsys instead of farming them out to spec schs.
The key to this IMHO is keeping districts fairly small & locally controlled. The district has to be big enough to have (in this example) enough devptlly-delayed & autistic kids to run either a charter or a ‘school-w/n-the-school.’ At least (as in our case), 30k pop town [6500 kids pubschsys]. Local control ensures parent/ taxpayer buy-in. This can also work at the county level, depending on the county pop size. We’re successful here at hisch level w/ vo-tech et al career-oriented & hi-tech [STEM] & arts magnets (7 total, for a county of 1/2 million).
No question K12 charters are more popular in our county’s poorest cities, but they do not “proliferate”—i.e., they’re not imposed by the state willy-nilly, nor are they allowed to pop up just cuz: every charter start-up is subjected to town scrutiny, & locally-elected B of Ed has a strong voice, delineating for the public how projected enrollment changes will affect local taxes & quality of tradl publics.
No!
I’d prefer to eat my word, maybe make it a part of a word salad, but I doubt that I will.
I think his stance is basically ‘let both sides reach out and fix the problem together.’ He’s not confrontational, but I don’t know how that will be seen by many public school teachers. The least thing they want from him is giving charter vultures and deformers an ammo.
Response to John’s 1:18pm post: about small classes…
“ While that intervention [smaller classes] has been shown to work, it is hugely expensive and is not necessarily the best use of additional funds.”
Surely you jest. Are you a teacher?
I came up in the ‘50’s, in a rural village. Our one-room schoolhouse K-3 had 25 kids total, including a spectrum from professor’s kids to somebody’s cousins just moved up from Appalachia. (The only thing we didn’t have was developmentally-delayed kids; they were educated separately or not at all.) 4th-6th in the next village was similar: two grades in each classroom, about 12 kids per grade. What we got was individualized education. One teacher for 2 or more [tiny] grade-groups, but separate activities/ reading circles/ math circles, often run by a more advanced kid from a higher grade. This prepared us for full-bore baby-boom jrhi & hisch, which was rarely more than 25 kids per class– with all the time you needed after school for teacher tutoring/ individual attention. It was a fabulous education. My rural village was strictly wkg/lower-midclass – maybe the professor’s families verged on uppermidclass – but 2/3 of us went on to college. That was in days when 1/2 on to college was normal. (& of course given the econ of those days, there were good career paths for the other 1/3.}
40 yrs later, my kids got a similar small-class-size education: in elemsch the typical class size was 18. Maybe 25 tops in hisch. Only because hubby & I met late & had the $ to put our late-born kids into a fab [hi-funded] pubschsys in the town we moved to for that reason. Even better: 2 of my 3 were SpEd & got teeny-class resource room daily, & in hisch, several 6-person [‘self-contained’] classes. Also great: middle [non-SpEd] son was seen to be floundering academically & was able to choose alternative ‘school-w/n a school’ project-based curriculum [also, no duh—small]. For these small-class reasons, all 3 despite hurdles/ learning differences went on to successful college achievement.
Why? Because small classes. Why small classes? Because we were well off & could afford it. Please note back in ‘50’s one got small classes w/o being well-to-do [at least in the vast rural hinterlands], because the US economy was booming & $$ was put into pubschs (at least for the whites). Please note that today small classes are considered “hugely expensive and is not necessarily the best use of additional funds” only because the top 1% holds more wealth than the entire middle class [since 2010] – the top .001 alone owned 11% of US assets. Even by conservative estimates, the 1% pay 20% less taxes than they did in the 1950’s. “Holds” means what it says: it ain’t trickling down into public education.
bethree5,
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I certainly understand that average means average and that for every 5:1:1 or 8:1:1 there are corresponding bigger groups. My understanding is that the NCES data is at least group size vs. the misleading student:teacher ratio.
In case it isn’t clear, I’m not arguing that smaller classes aren’t wonderful or that educators with more education are better. While more money to do all these things would be great, we have to determine how best to spend money. For example, would it be better to pay teachers more or have smaller class sizes. Better to pay for advanced degrees or to have smaller class sizes. Everything has a trade-off. I know this group understands this, but everyone’s go-to is overly simplistic “solutions”.
My sole point was that smaller class sizes aren’t the only issue and that there are things we can do to improve education without that while we are working on increasing funding.
Everything has a trade-off when we keep cutting the budget to pay for-profit testing and charter management companies and not even taxing their profits. Everything has a trade-off when it’s heads the billionaires win, tails everyone else loses.
During the last Great Recession, my union agreed to salary cuts to stave off layoffs and class size increases. We did what we had to do. We shouldn’t have had to do it. Wall Street got a bailout. We paid for part of it. As a result, many good teachers retired early and many potential teachers did not become teachers.
Why should the working class have to make cuts when the investor class does not?
Right. John’s is zero sum budgeting.
LCT,
I agree with you about taxation of investors relative to taxation of people who work for a living.
John, I expect you know (or have just learned from Diane) that ave teacher: student ratios in the US don’t give you an accurate picture of typical class size because the average includes all the “specials”—teachers who work part-time with students for reading or math interventions or occupational/ speech therapy etc, SpEd teachers who teach small specialized classes or even work 1-on-1 w/ the severely disabled. The typical US class size ranges from 25-40.
When comparing to other nations, it’s always apples to oranges. Many do not teach SpEd kids w/n their public schools [if at all]. Finland (which you compare) as well as other Euro socialist democracies provide much of what we consider special ed services as part of national health services under a separate budget from public education. This info demonstrates that in US many ‘extra services’ are provided to our more needy kids only via the pubschsys – our so-called ‘safety net’ barely supports health/ housing/ food needs, let alone specialized ed needs.
We can be proud we manage to meet some of these needs via pubschsys—where we actually manage it—but at the same time need to recognize that it’s a fragile structure, unsupported by the larger society. Every time we slash school budgets, we’re condemning kids not only to larger classes, but to fewer social supports which they’re not likely to be able to find outside school walls.
Ginny, thank you for your clear explanation of the falsity of the 16:1 “average class size.” That number is totally misleading, as it implies that half the classes are less than 16. I have visited many schools in many states , and the only small classes I saw were for children with disabilities. Elementary school classes, the smallest, are usually 24-28. Middle school classes are larger, high school classes are larger still.
Ditto on the thanks.
We should all agree that the charter school “experiment” is over.
We should, but the people funding them will still pour money into charters.
Families in them will not allow you to cancel charter schools.
No one said cancel charters.
I said make them accountable and transparent.
Put them under the oversight of the elected school board.
Require them to take the same demographic as public schools.
Cap salaries so no charter leader is paid more than the local principal.
At least in MN I would disagree about the charter school experiment being over. As of the 2020-21 school year MN has 173 charter schools, serving over 62,000 students, with another 10 planned to open in 2021. 70% are located in the Twin Cities metro area, with the other 30% spread across rural areas of the state. There are 15 authorizers from colleges/universities, non-profits, school districts and single purpose authorizers. Authorizer are the authorizing authority and oversight body of the school. All schools have publicly elected school boards that are subject to all open meeting laws and the majority of them have a teacher majority. Charter schools receive less per pupil funding than traditional public schools. Charters may not levy property taxes, and receive no funding from local property taxes. Charters in MN serve a higher percentage of Limited English Language Proficiency students, as well as Native American and students of color than district schools, and a similar percentage of special education students. Many charter schools have specific program focuses such as language immersion, project‐based learning, environmental education, arts education, expeditionary learning. All teachers are required to have a MN teaching license. Most importantly, charter schools provide students and families with options that their home districts may not be providing for them.
Doesn’t Minnesota have the most segregated charter schools in the nation?
One for blacks; one for Somalis; one for Hispanics; one for Germans? etc.
As John Hechinger wrote in Bloomberg News some years back, visiting charters in Minneapolis-St. Paul makes it seem as though the Brown decision never happened.’
Is there a special fund allotment for charters or do they suck money away from public schools?
Peter, why don’t you read my essay-review in the current New York Review of Books about “The Dark History of School Choice”? Be informed.
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/01/14/the-dark-history-of-school-choice/
Diane – As you know, charters are public schools so it’s impossible for them to suck money away from public schools – the dollars follow the student as it should be. Minnesota has had open enrollment long before we even had charter schools. Parents have been making the best educational decisions for their children like it should be. It is true that all parents, not just well to do parents, can chose the school they decide is best for their children as is their right. There is a huge difference between bipoc families choosing schools that are culturally affirming and welcoming to them and force segregation. Have you ever considered that some bipoc families would rather send their children to schools were the teachers/staff look like and value them? I previously invited you to visit MN to talk with charter school students, parents and teachers for yourself to understand the value and importance for many folks – the offer still stands. Once the pandemic ends we’ll even start a Go Fund Me to pay for your trip.
Peter,
Public schools were not allowed to apply for Paycheck Protection Program.
But charter schools could because they are not public schools.
1200 charters got over $1 billion that was not available to public schools. Private and religious schools got another $5 billion.
I repeat: Public schools were not allowed to apply for PPP.
It’s true that there is a difference between de jure and de facto segregation; that doesn’t make either one acceptable. The fact that people naturally self-segregate, what you, Peter Snark, wrongly call “choosing cultural affirmation” is not something government should allow, let alone aid and abet. Integration benefits all students individually and collectively. You are wrong.
LCT, let’s face the facts, white families have been “choosing” culturally affirming schools forever, they’re called tradition public schools (as well as elite private schools). A growing number of bipoc families are tired of waiting for district schools to properly support, love and educate their children. Also, did you say the Government shouldn’t allow families to choose – that sounds rather tyrannical.
Peter, these “culturally affirming” schools are called segregated schools.