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As long as the public and legislatures believe that it is the job of the teacher to MAKE KIDS LEARN, and that the kids do not have any responsiblity in this, then we will have "failing schools".
As long as the public continues to have the media keep harping on bad teachers as if they are all over the place, when in my career of 40 years I only met one, we will be putting the blame in places where it doesn't belong.
I agree with this.
The number of good teachers that I have encountered far outnumber the bad teachers.
There will always be bad teachers. It certainly can't hurt to try to weed out as many of them as possible, but at the end of the day we need greater centralized curriculum planning to reduce the harms resulting from poor teaching.
No matter the curriculum/how it's planned, teachers are going to be somewhere on a continuum of ability to effectively teach it...some will be better at it than others. And some will be great for some learners, and not so great for others. Again, for every teacher I had that I thought was awesome, I'm sure you could have dug up other students/parents who thought they were crap. And, doubtless, the teachers I had that I had a harder time learning from were likely very good teachers for somebody else. Happened all the time in college, too...one person's awesome prof is an instructor somebody else finds inept.
So you say. Except that nobody monitors their lottery policies and in reality they do take whoever they choose based on their charter.
No, they don't. They'd be sued if they did. I'm sure, the occaisional desired child is let slip in but they can't get away with doing it on a regular basis. One lawsuit will shut down a charter school. If a school is desirable, trust me, the parents are monitoring who gets in and demanding explanations if something seems fishy.
Charter schools actually have more than their share of problem students. Parents don't uproot kids who are doing well where they are planted. Rather they move kids who have been uprooted or for some reason have been unable to put down roots. The problems range from being behind grade level to behavior problems that have negatively impaceted a child's education. What you fail to realize is parents don't run towards charters so much as run away from problems in the local schools. There is NOTHING that could have resulted in my moving my kids to a chater if they had been doing well in their school. There'd be no need for me to move them. It's not the kids who are doing well who are moved. It's the ones who aren't. THOSE are the kids the charter schools are getting.
No, they don't. They'd be sued if they did. I'm sure, the occaisional desired child is let slip in but they can't get away with doing it on a regular basis. One lawsuit will shut down a charter school. If a school is desirable, trust me, the parents are monitoring who gets in and demanding explanations if something seems fishy.
I hate to disagree with you because what you say is usually correct, but on this point my wife's private school was virtually destroyed by one and their "lottery policy". Isn't odd that though they had a waiting list, every student who applied from their competing private school got accepted.
I hate to disagree with you because what you say is usually correct, but on this point my wife's private school was virtually destroyed by one and their "lottery policy". Isn't odd that though they had a waiting list, every student who applied from their competing private school got accepted.
Many parents see charters as a way to get out of the local schools without paying for private school. Again, you are dealing with parents who are running from the public school.
And no it's not odd. If the waiting list is big enough, sometimes, the best thing to do is add a class so you can accept more students.
Now if you tell me every student from a private school got in while every student from the public schools did not, then I'd believe there is a problem and I believe it would be all over the press.
How many extra applicants did this school have? Did they have 100 slots and 105 applicants? Or did they have 100 slots and 500 applicants? Not all lotteries are created equal.
We have two charters in our area that use lotteries. One has the same make up and issues of every other charter school. There is no reason to believe they are cherry picking. The other is a G&T school, while they can't cherry pick on the way in, many students don't survive their program and drop out making more room for applicants on the waiting list. Serious weeding goes on there in the first year. They are the only charter I know of that looks different than the areas they feed from.
That said, I do see parents moving kids from private schools to charters. Not having to pay tuition while avoiding your local schools is a plus.
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