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NAACP members call for ban on privately managed charter schools

washingtonpost.com

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Re: NAACP members call for ban on privately managed charter schools

#21

Post by krisdol »

rayiner wrote: post #12
newjersey wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see private schools with the same disdain as I see bottled water. People drinking bottled water and refusing to drink tap water is our failure whether it be actual investment in water infrastructure or in "optics" of our water infrastructure. People sending their kids to privately managed schools is a failure of our public schools or the "optics" of our public schools. I remember that I just said the other day that…

Charter schools are public schools, just managed by private organizations. And it's not a situation where only rich people can get their kids into charter schools. For example, in D.C. the public schools in rich white neighborhoods (Georgetown, Capitol Hill) are district-run. Charter public schools are concentrated neighborhoods with mostly minority populations. Nationally, Charters often have comparable proportions…

Charter schools can dismiss students without due process, can kick out or deny students with low grades, and are usually not obligated to provide special education services. They are not public schools. They are corporate-run political organizations that prop up dozens of these PACs pushing an pro-charter agenda.

https://cloakinginequity.com/2016/08/01/breaking-news-aclu-f...

Re: NAACP members call for ban on privately managed charter schools

#22

Post by bsder »

rayiner wrote: post #4

Lesser of two evils. Black communities in the U.S. are in a tough situation: one party is openly hostile and racist, and the other props up teachers' unions and failing school districts (not to mention "think of the children" tough-on-crime policies) that do tremendous real damage too. In D.C.--a city where student performance continues to be abysmal despite nearly double the per-capita funding of surrounding "rich"…

> Indeed, D.C. charters educate about 45% of the students and are outperforming the district schools, despite having poorer students and less funding

This is a common theme that charter schools seem to do "better" than the standard public schools in urban areas while they do worse in suburban areas.

The problem is that this means that the charter schools aren't doing better because of education reasons but are instead sub-selecting the students and leaving the worse students behind (either by selection or expulsion) to poison the public schools.

However, there is a giant elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about. The single biggest improvement in school performance (charter or public) comes from switching to year-round school--especially among minorities. For a modest 25% budget increase, we can make a huge boost in everybody's performance.

But, see, charter schools aren't about improvement. They are about blaming people without actually having to commit more money to solve the actual problem.

Re: NAACP members call for ban on privately managed charter schools

#23

Post by bsder »

milesskorpen wrote: post #10
rayiner wrote: post #4

Lesser of two evils. Black communities in the U.S. are in a tough situation: one party is openly hostile and racist, and the other props up teachers' unions and failing school districts (not to mention "think of the children" tough-on-crime policies) that do tremendous real damage too. In D.C.--a city where student performance continues to be abysmal despite nearly double the per-capita funding of surrounding "rich"…

Charters have a lot of advantages (like they don't have to accept all students, can hire/fire more easily, can kick out bad students) but _still_ don't outperform public schools as a class. I totally agree that there are some excellent charter schools — but there are excellent public schools too, and not only in extremely wealthy neighborhoods. Our challenge is finding the best model we can that can be replicated at…

> Charters have a lot of advantages (like they don't have to accept all students, can hire/fire more easily, can kick out bad students) but _still_ don't outperform public schools as a class.

That's not entirely true. In urban areas, they do better than public schools. In suburban areas, they do almost exactly the same amount worse.

http://credo.stanford.edu/documents/la_report_2013_7_26_2013...

The problem is that tells you that the gain in charter schools is due to student selection bias rather than inherent educational advantage.

Re: NAACP members call for ban on privately managed charter schools

#24

Post by 35bge57dtjku »

newjersey wrote: post #11
ChuckMcM wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to say something similar but with less facts :-) We've talked with a number of charter school efforts and one of the supports for such schools is the notion that the students that attend want to attend so being expelled is an actual deterrent. Further, teachers who want to teach classes of students who want to be there don't want to be fired which provides incentive to be better teachers. I think the NAAC…

I see private schools with the same disdain as I see bottled water. People drinking bottled water and refusing to drink tap water is our failure whether it be actual investment in water infrastructure or in "optics" of our water infrastructure. People sending their kids to privately managed schools is a failure of our public schools or the "optics" of our public schools. I remember that I just said the other day that…

> I see private schools with the same disdain as I see bottled water. People drinking bottled water and refusing to drink tap water is our failure whether it be actual investment in water infrastructure or in "optics" of our water infrastructure. People sending their kids to privately managed schools is a failure of our public schools or the "optics" of our public schools.

What do we since people haven't managed to fix public schools yet? Just outlaw the bottled water?

Re: NAACP members call for ban on privately managed charter schools

#25

Post by rayiner »

krisdol wrote: post #21
rayiner wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charter schools are public schools, just managed by private organizations. And it's not a situation where only rich people can get their kids into charter schools. For example, in D.C. the public schools in rich white neighborhoods (Georgetown, Capitol Hill) are district-run. Charter public schools are concentrated neighborhoods with mostly minority populations. Nationally, Charters often have comparable proportions…

Charter schools can dismiss students without due process, can kick out or deny students with low grades, and are usually not obligated to provide special education services. They are not public schools. They are corporate-run political organizations that prop up dozens of these PACs pushing an pro-charter agenda. https://cloakinginequity.com/2016/08/01/breaking-news-aclu-f...

> Charter schools can dismiss students without due process, can kick out or deny students with low grades

Those are good things. These kids almost always have serious impulse control problems, and it's better for both those kids and for everyone else to have education tailored to those kids' needs. Teachers should be teachers--they shouldn't have to do double-duty as behavioral therapists.

> and are usually not obligated to provide special education services.

That's just false. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act's (IDEA) requirement to provide education appropriate to individuals with disabilities applies to charter schools: https://www2.ed.gov/offices/OCR/archives/charterqa/chardisab....

> corporate-run

Those aren't dirty words. Do you want your school run like an Apple Store, or like a DMV location?

Re: NAACP members call for ban on privately managed charter schools

#26

Post by rayiner »

bsder wrote: post #22
rayiner wrote: post #4

Lesser of two evils. Black communities in the U.S. are in a tough situation: one party is openly hostile and racist, and the other props up teachers' unions and failing school districts (not to mention "think of the children" tough-on-crime policies) that do tremendous real damage too. In D.C.--a city where student performance continues to be abysmal despite nearly double the per-capita funding of surrounding "rich"…

> Indeed, D.C. charters educate about 45% of the students and are outperforming the district schools, despite having poorer students and less funding This is a common theme that charter schools seem to do "better" than the standard public schools in urban areas while they do worse in suburban areas. The problem is that this means that the charter schools aren't doing better because of education reasons but are instea…

> But, see, charter schools aren't about improvement. They are about blaming people without actually having to commit more money to solve the actual problem.

The U.S. spends far more money on education per capita than any other OECD country besides Switzerland. D.C. spends twice as much compared to Fairfax County next door. We don't need more money, we need reform.

Re: NAACP members call for ban on privately managed charter schools

#27

Post by bsder »

rayiner wrote: post #26
bsder wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Indeed, D.C. charters educate about 45% of the students and are outperforming the district schools, despite having poorer students and less funding This is a common theme that charter schools seem to do "better" than the standard public schools in urban areas while they do worse in suburban areas. The problem is that this means that the charter schools aren't doing better because of education reasons but are instea…

> But, see, charter schools aren't about improvement. They are about blaming people without actually having to commit more money to solve the actual problem. The U.S. spends far more money on education per capita than any other OECD country besides Switzerland. D.C. spends twice as much compared to Fairfax County next door. We don't need more money, we need reform.

And the US has far worse socioeconomic areas than most of those. In addition, those same countries are now struggling when they suddenly have bunch of lower socioeconomic status immigrants in their system.

We need to put the money where it works. And year round school is one of the few things shown to actually work.

Re: NAACP members call for ban on privately managed charter schools

#28

Post by ianamartin »

rayiner wrote: post #25
krisdol wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charter schools can dismiss students without due process, can kick out or deny students with low grades, and are usually not obligated to provide special education services. They are not public schools. They are corporate-run political organizations that prop up dozens of these PACs pushing an pro-charter agenda. https://cloakinginequity.com/2016/08/01/breaking-news-aclu-f...

> Charter schools can dismiss students without due process, can kick out or deny students with low grades Those are good things. These kids almost always have serious impulse control problems, and it's better for both those kids and for everyone else to have education tailored to those kids' needs. Teachers should be teachers--they shouldn't have to do double-duty as behavioral therapists. > and are usually not oblig…

Thank you for pointing out the falsehood.

The charter school I work for puts a special emphasis on SpEd. I don't know if we are required to, but we do. And we are pretty damn good at it.

Re: NAACP members call for ban on privately managed charter schools

#29

Post by rayiner »

bsder wrote: post #27
rayiner wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But, see, charter schools aren't about improvement. They are about blaming people without actually having to commit more money to solve the actual problem. The U.S. spends far more money on education per capita than any other OECD country besides Switzerland. D.C. spends twice as much compared to Fairfax County next door. We don't need more money, we need reform.

And the US has far worse socioeconomic areas than most of those. In addition, those same countries are now struggling when they suddenly have bunch of lower socioeconomic status immigrants in their system. We need to put the money where it works . And year round school is one of the few things shown to actually work .

> We need to put the money where it works.

Publicly-run schools are structurally incapable of putting money where it works.

Re: NAACP members call for ban on privately managed charter schools

#30

Post by efuquen »

ianamartin wrote: post #17

Disclosure: I work for Success Academy Charter Schools. I'm a software developer on the Data Science team here, and I'm obviously biased. 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 i…

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

I don't think they made any such statement.

> We applaud the one out of five charter schools that are truly centers of innovation, fulfilling their original intent.

> I suggest they all take a deep breath and read the resolutions again. The NAACP does not want charter schools shut down. It wants a pause on new, privately managed charters.

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