NAACP members call for ban on privately managed charter schools • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by newjersey » Mon, Aug 15, 2016, 5:23 PM UTC

pen2l wrote: post #57

tptacek wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> We can debate whether they're good things or not, but they clearly confound comparisons with non-charter schools I don't understand your comment at all, but I am very curious to know what you actually mean. Can you please clarify and expand? To begin, what do you mean by "they" when you say we can debate whether they're good things or not?

I'll try. People often say that students from charter schools outperform students from (other) public schools. If we let charter schools kick students out, we should let all public schools let kick students out so as to level the playing field.

Imagine we compare Denver Broncos against Miami Dolphins. Just a small adjustment. We require Miami Dolphins to let anyone who is a resident of Florida in the team. We put no such restriction on the Denver Broncos (because Go Broncos!) Now, we compare average 40 yard dash between the "average" Denver Broncos player and the "average" Miami Dolphins "player". What do you think will happen?

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

#62

Post by Jill_the_Pill » Tue, Aug 16, 2016, 2:20 AM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #46

tux1968 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the point is that if you sent all the under-performing students to the charter schools instead, in order to remove the burden they represent to the gifted students, we would then say.. look.. district schools are outperforming charter schools. Thus, the results don't show that charter schools have some secret sauce that is unavailable to district schools. What you're saying is, separate the winners from the loser…

At the very least, this line of thinking seems to imply that charter schools can pick the best students. It hasn't been demonstrated that public schools can do that. The intelligent teenager whose love for knowledge is crushed by authoritarian public school bullshit is a commonplace. Public schools are famously bad at picking (hiring, promoting, retaining) the best teachers as well.

Public schools have an obligation to educate all students, even the disruptive pains in the neck.

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

#63

Post by bsder » Tue, Aug 16, 2016, 8:52 AM UTC

noobermin wrote: post #42

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…

> The single biggest improvement in school performance (charter or public) comes from switching to year-round school--especially among minorities. Why is this? This sounds like "keeping them busy"...

Several studies have shown that year round school works, especially for minorities, because the home environment provides insufficient stimulation/reinforcement to consolidate and retain the gains made over the school year.

Several studies have shown that minority students actually show gains very similar to non-minority students over the course of the school year. However, the summer vacation provides a double whammy--non-minority students continue to improve during the summer while minority students actually lose a lot of the gains made.

The easiest way to stabilize this is year-round school.

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

#64

Post by zaccus » Wed, Aug 17, 2016, 6:44 PM UTC

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…

>it's better for both those kids and for everyone else to have education tailored to those kids' needs

OK so who provides that?

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

#65

Post by tssva » Thu, Aug 18, 2016, 3:26 AM UTC

QuarterReptile wrote: post #51

tssva wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The study you reference is only of charter schools in one state. Education policy is decided at the state and local level and varies greatly between states and sometimes even between localities within a state. There is no reason to believe the findings in Louisiana extend beyond it.

The reason is that our similarities are huge, if not complete, throughout the country. Given an imperfect world, finite time, and people needing to do things other than observe themselves so we can play with more data, I think you're in the wrong here. We should assume similarity, try to learn something, and then temper our enthusiasm by recognizing how we may differ. Maybe you have some reason, after reading the stu…

Pig and humans share 98% of their DNA. We should just assume drugs will behave the same in both and get rid of those double blind human drug trials. After all there is finite time and people have other things to do.

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

#66

Post by bsder » Thu, Aug 18, 2016, 2:49 PM UTC

tssva wrote: post #48

bsder wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

The study you reference is only of charter schools in one state. Education policy is decided at the state and local level and varies greatly between states and sometimes even between localities within a state. There is no reason to believe the findings in Louisiana extend beyond it.

> There is no reason to believe the findings in Louisiana extend beyond it.

There is also no reason to disbelieve that the findings don't extend. You don't get to summarily reject presented evidence that doesn't match your agenda/opinion without evidence to the contrary.

There are other studies that show similar results--urban charters are better than public, suburban charters are worse than public. Unfortunately, that demonstrates that the educational facets aren't the deciding factor in educational achievement.

You will note that I said "unfortunately". I really wish charters were better than public schools from an educational standpoint so we would have something we could roll out in the public schools. Sadly, most of the "gains" from charters are from student selection.

There have been lots of attempts to be better than the public school system. None of them have reliably worked, yet. The Gates foundation hasn't coughed up anything better, either, without expending vastly more money than we are willing to.