NAACP members call for ban on privately managed charter schools

I remember that I just said the other day that we can train and retrain law enforcement all day long but we won't see any meaningful improvement without enforcement with "teeth" and that unions are actively hurting their members if not because of what they do then because of the "optics" of what they do. I think the same applies for teachers' unions as well.

We talked about the case of interns being fired en masse a little while ago and some of not many people in that discussion agreed that it didn't look good that the interns were riled up over something (dress code) that didn't help the business much. When teachers bring up the issue of low pay, I can't help but feel a lot of parents and voters see it as selfish in the same way. "The teachers should not spend so much time thinking about their own pay but rather about the students and what they can do to help students."

> I think the NAACPs primary agenda here is that they feel Charter schools create a policy "out" for the history of being unwilling to take the steps necessary to make public schools work (and union reform is high on that list).

Absolutely! I kind of want to go back to the topic of tap water versus bottled water. The people who can't afford to buy bottled water are unlikely to have much of a voice in local government to have their issue fixed. The parents who can't get their kids in chartered schools or who don't care enough to get their kids in chartered schools are unlikely to have much of a voice in local government to make public education better either. Now that I think about it, it sounds just like segregation. The only difference is that instead of an official policy, it is a little more latent.

Your analogy just doesn't work if you don't allow for any actual (not optic) deficiency in tap water. And if you do, it actually works against your point.

From the perspective of liberty and freedom giving government a monopoly on education (a powerful propaganda device) seems like a terrible idea. It already has monopoly on violence.

Every social justice initiative nowadays seems to involve sacrificing liberty in some way. That's why Trump's doing so well.

Most of the "bad" schools get the same (or even more) amount of funding, resources, coursework/material, as the "good" schools.

The difference that separates the two categories are the students (and their parents).

Charter schools simply don't have to put up with the same destructive students - and are able to create a productive environment for learning for the constructive students.

The problem is they tend to also not follow the NAACP approved racial demographics/splits.

We were specifically called out in the article for having a board composition that is not diverse and also not representative of parents. It's not clearly stated but is implied that this combination of elements cannot lead to good outcomes for the students involved, and the NAACP is specifically saying that charter schools in general are bad for minorities.

I don't know the education landscape well enough to argue that charter schools are, in general, a good thing for society.

But I do know specifically about what we are doing and how we are doing it and how effective we are at it.

State testing results were released a couple of weeks ago, and we scrambled to make sense of the numbers. Results are here:

http://www.successacademies.org/results/

I can't speak for charter schools as a class, but I can talk about ours. We do outperform public schools consistently and by a wide margin.

There is no spin to these results. We--as a data science team--are ruthlessly and brutally honest with ourselves and with the organization and with the public about how we are performing.

Our organization is guilty as charged in the article of having a board full of mostly white, male, wealthy individuals. Facts are facts, after all.

What doesn't get mentioned is that we target our schools to the areas in NYC that are served the worst by public education. And we are out-performing not only the public schools that are closest in proximity but almost all public schools in NYC and NY state.

The kids that go to our schools are overwhelmingly minorities, overwhelmingly in poor socio-economic circumstances, and overwhelmingly beating the odds and getting one of the best possible educations that's available anywhere. And they are getting that education as close to home as possible or, if they choose, as close to where they would like to be. That's the data that can't be argued with.

The personal anecdotal information that has no bearing on this situation is what I see on the subway day in and day out. I see kids in little SA uniforms with their little SA backpacks on the subway with each other or with a parent, talking about what they learned in school today, what they are excited about learning tomorrow.

None of this represents the official stance of SA, by the way. I'm just a guy writing code and posting on HN. But my opinion is that quality of education is one of the major factors driving inequality in this country right now. I think that we--Success Academy--are a positive influence.

I think that the NAACP stance as stated in the resolution would hurt us, our mission, and the students that we teach every day. I'm not an expert on education in general, and I'm not an expert on race-relations or equality. And I will happily accept critiques about how we can do things better and how we should.

But the NAACP ban on charter schools isn't something that helps the situation. As I see it, the situation is bad. Public schools are not getting the job done. Reform isn't working. We need innovation in this space, and that can't happen within the strictures of the DOE and unionized teachers.

This country needs a better, more equitable education model. And we are trying to find that model. And we are doing it with a data-centric attitude. Every decision we make is based on data. From where to open the next school to how we use technology in the classroom to how we decide to skip or hold back a student.

The article makes it sound like it's impossible for an organization run by wealthy white males to do anything other than make life better for other wealthy white males. It makes an implicit assumption that we are all incapable of working toward a goal of better for everyone. That is clearly not true. The real data does not support that at all.

To be very squishy and not data-centric about it, I devote my life to making the world a better place for minorities. I work hard on my nights and weekends to make life a little better for kids I don't know. Kids who probably wouldn't have a chance in the world if they went to a public school.

Everyone at SA does that. A blanket judgement that all charter schools are bad is wrong in at least one instance.

Schools are being used to:

* Warehouse children while their guardian(s) work.

* Train young animals that they are more than wild animals.

* Educate children so that they can be functional in society.

* Allow society to examine children it's members are raising to make sure that things are going well.

The problem is a lack of recognition that these are the actual tasks being formed and the lack of positive feedback loops designed to promote success in these tasks.

I think it would also help if 'schools' were more like an MMO-RPG quest/leveling system than an assembly line.