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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

#31

Post by tptacek »

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…

We can debate whether they're good things or not, but they clearly confound comparisons with non-charter schools, which do not get to apply those kinds of selection powers to improve their published outcomes.

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

#32

Post by tptacek »

rayiner wrote: post #29
bsder wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

... because?

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

#33

Post by erichocean »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #7
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"…

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…

> and since Charter schools cannot serve the entire population

Citation please. Seriously, I see no reason whatsoever why charter schools, over time, could not service 100% of the population.

There is no reason per se to reform the public school system, just like there is no reason per se to continue to develop DOS—just use Windows. Or Linux. Etc.

Not everything needs to live forever, including "public schools".

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

#34

Post by erichocean »

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...

> and are usually not obligated to provide special education services

This is 100% false in California.

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

#36

Post by erichocean »

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…

> Our challenge is finding the best model we can that can be replicated at scale

Or we can recognize that each area is unique, and stop trying to force a specific approach on everyone "at scale"?

Seriously, consider that there is no educational approach that works "at scale" across vastly different socio-economic, cultural, genetic, and other factors.

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

#37

Post by erichocean »

tux1968 wrote: post #20
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"…

Isn't there likely a selection bias with the best students more likely to be in a charter school, thus making the school's performance metrics better than district schools?

Of course, but that's a feature, not a bug.

People seem to believe that "the best" students will have identical achievement no matter who their surrounding students are. This is (at best) unproven and seems to defy common sense.

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

#38

Post by erichocean »

crazy1van wrote: post #8

I don't understand why a prerequisite for other types of schools is a lack of privately managed charter schools. Inner city schools are such a disaster, it seems like the last thing we should be doing is blocking any new ideas -- privately managed or not.

> * Inner city schools are such a disaster*

Inner cities are a disaster, full stop. Which probably explains why the schools there are also a disaster.

After all, wouldn't it be strange if inner cities were a disaster but the schools located there were a paragon of academic achievement?

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

#39

Post by rayiner »

tptacek wrote: post #32
rayiner wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need to put the money where it works. Publicly-run schools are structurally incapable of putting money where it works.

... because?

My pet theory is that schools are so dysfunctional because of a massive agency problem. The principals--the kids--lack capacity, so the agents run amok. Actually serving kids' needs becomes a side-show to cosmic debates over the social condition.

Publicly-run schools can't even make basic operational decisions (hiring and firing, closing down unnecessary facilities, etc) without dealing with the last stand of the labor movement or the repercussions of decades of racial oppression. CPS didn't create the excesses of unregulated capitalism, but we punish it by forcing it to pay far more for the same level of credentials than the private sector. CPS didn't segregate the black population of Chicago into the south side, but when CPS tries to close down under-capacity schools, we make it pay for those sins. We impose regulation on the business of educating kids that are so stifling that we'd never dream of imposing similar ones on a private-sector industry, for fear of killing it.

Which is not to say that those cosmic issues are unimportant. Maybe people with English degrees should be paid more and maybe black communities need more resources to deal with the impacts of segregation. But school districts are entirely the wrong level of abstraction for dealing with those problems.

Privately-run education doesn't entirely solve the agency problem, but it insulates the business of teach kids from the irrelevant politics.

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

#40

Post by tedunangst »

tptacek wrote: post #32
rayiner wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need to put the money where it works. Publicly-run schools are structurally incapable of putting money where it works.

... because?

As one hypothesis, because as a "corruption safeguard" the purse strings are kept far away from the people on the ground. Which is how schools end up getting shipments of new computers but no desks to put them on, etc. Can't have the "technology director" getting too chummy with the classroom teachers.
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