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Generally speaking the bad schools are almost always in poor areas. They draw their student bodies from poor neighborhoods. It's rare that you hear about middle class districts "failing." Typically the schools in gentrified enclaves are the saving grace of inner city test scores & other outcomes.
The problem is poverty.
Historically the approach to this was to not worry about educating the poor to a high degree. Up until WWII the average American didn't finish high school.
We take for granted how high of a percentage of the population we attempt to educate.
When my parents were in high school (1950s/60s) they didn't even TRY to get all the poor people through. It was just expected that at least half would not finish 12th grade. There was no pressure to try and help the students who wouldn't or couldn't help themselves. This was Texas so you can guess what half that was.
Look at it historically. This supposed decline in the poor school districts, when did it start? With Brown v. Board of Education and Civil Rights, that's when. Starting in the 1970s is when the various titles of the civil rights acts began to be institutionalized and when schools had to operate differently. Bussing was attempted to address the systemic inequality but it caused a revolt. That policy was stopped and then people began to voluntarily sort, or segregate, themselves. We have problems with certain schools and districts because those NEIGHBORHOODS are crap.
Our education problem is not separate from our overall issues. It is intimately intertwined with our poverty problem, our inequality problem, and our race problem. Vouchers just provide a means for a handful of kids to escape the problems we won't address.
You want another solution besides charters? Here's one.
1)Increase the public transportation system and create dedicated bus lanes that school transportation can use.
2) Start and end school later to avoid traffic.
3) Merge urban and suburban school districts into larger regional service areas, also consolidate their administrations.
4) Randomly assign students and teachers to schools across the service area & randomly reassign both every 2 grades. Use the transport system to get them where they need to go. This would also reveal the bad teachers, because the bad ones would no longer be able to blame systemic problems of their populations.
Essentially, I am proposing bussing, because it was working when tried. If you dilute the influence of the toxic environments that harm the worst schools, the problems will be less severe.
Vouchers to me are just a government subsidized form of white flight.
Overall a good post, although I don't agree with everything, but I bolded what is the bottom line.
It is easy to sit back and say carter schools are not the solution,
or that the solution is deeper than schools without proposing a solution
or proposing what to do with the school problem in the meantime.
I could offer plenty of solution ideas ...and I'm sure you could too.
But in this sort of venue they'll just get drowned out by naysayers.
That and those who want to tout their favorite solve everything approach
(cut taxes or get rid of unions or whatever else)
The most we can hope for HERE is to broach the IDEA that something deeper needs to be done.
That what has been going on isn't getting the job done.
Then perhaps we might achieve some agreement on those points too.
Specific remedy ideas? Not yet.
Quote:
To start with I think we need to...
We generally agree... but we don't decide anything by ourselves.
Generally speaking the bad schools are almost always in poor areas. They draw their student bodies from poor neighborhoods. It's rare that you hear about middle class districts "failing." Typically the schools in gentrified enclaves are the saving grace of inner city test scores & other outcomes.
The problem is poverty.
<snip>
1)Increase the public transportation system and create dedicated bus lanes that school transportation can use.
2) Start and end school later to avoid traffic.
3) Merge urban and suburban school districts into larger regional service areas, also consolidate their administrations.
4) Randomly assign students and teachers to schools across the service area & randomly reassign both every 2 grades. Use the transport system to get them where they need to go. This would also reveal the bad teachers, because the bad ones would no longer be able to blame systemic problems of their populations.
Essentially, I am proposing bussing, because it was working when tried. If you dilute the influence of the toxic environments that harm the worst schools, the problems will be less severe.
Vouchers to me are just a government subsidized form of white flight.
I agree that the problem is poverty and unfortunately poverty is increasing among children in our schools.
In 40 of the 50 states, low income students comprised no less than 40 percent of all public schoolchildren. In 21 states, children eligible for free or reduced-price lunches were a majority of the students in 2013.
Most of the states with a majority of low income students are found in the South and the West. Thirteen of the 21 states with a majority of low income students in 2013 were located in the South, and six of the other 21 states were in the West.
We really need an innovative approach to addressing poverty.
A three-person Turnaround team embeds in a group of schools for three to five years. One works with the principal to create a positive, disciplined culture, where students come to believe they can succeed in school. One works with teachers, showing them tools, for instance, that will allow them to handle disruptions while keeping the other students on track. The third is a social worker who helps train the school social workers to help with the psychological and emotional needs of children in poverty, while identifying the most troubled students, the ones who can drive the entire school.
Last edited by toobusytoday; 03-08-2017 at 02:18 PM..
Reason: please don't quote more than three sentences.
Do not lump charter schools and vouchers together. They are VERY different.
I am agnostic on the subject of not-for-profit charters. Some of these schools can be absolutely wonderful, and some can be awful, the same as with traditional public schools. And although these not-for-profit charters are tax-payer funded, they often raise additional outside funds, just as traditional public schools do.
(And FYI, at least here in NYC, charters cannot "pick" the best students. If there are more applicants than seats, admission is by lottery. It is easier, however, for charters to get rid of weak students, which boosts the school's test scores.)
But vouchers are essentially the state giving money to schools that are often operated privately, which I think is a horrible idea. For-profit schooling generally sucks at ALL levels IMO, from K-12 up, and the government has no business putting money in investors' pockets rather than into the public schools, traditional or charter. Especially when for-profit schools are rife with greed, mismanagement, and lackluster educational achievement.
To quote that NYT story in the OP:
The free market often does a terrible job of providing basic services to the poor — see, for instance, the lack of grocery stores and banks in many low-income neighborhoods. This may also hold for education...Students who use vouchers to attend private schools have fared worse academically compared to their closely matched peers attending public schools
This. 100%
The problem is how the issue of charters and vouchers have become completely politicized (like everything else).
In concept, not-for-profit charters are a great idea and be effective in certain areas when accompanied by oversight and regulation.
Unfortunately, what has happened is the for-profit charters banded together and formed an extremely powerful lobby with the backing of billionaires like Betsy DeVos. They have taken an "us vs. them" mentality and have been incredibly successful in demonizing public schools and public school teachers. Their goal is to completely deligitimize public schools in order to gain market share i.e. students.
In a perfect world we would have a mix of NOT FOR PROFIT charters and public schools, and they would work together to improve education. Because of the antagonistic stance of the charter lobby over the past decade, this no longer seems possible.
The problem is how the issue of charters and vouchers have become completely politicized (like everything else).
In concept, not-for-profit charters are a great idea and be effective in certain areas when accompanied by oversight and regulation.
Unfortunately, what has happened is the for-profit charters banded together and formed an extremely powerful lobby with the backing of billionaires like Betsy DeVos. They have taken an "us vs. them" mentality and have been incredibly successful in demonizing public schools and public school teachers. Their goal is to completely deligitimize public schools in order to gain market share i.e. students.
In a perfect world we would have a mix of NOT FOR PROFIT charters and public schools, and they would work together to improve education. Because of the antagonistic stance of the charter lobby over the past decade, this no longer seems possible.
I agree that non-profit charters & public schools should not be antagonistic. Theoretically I don't see why they couldn't reinforce & mutually benefit each other. The public schools could be the baseline and the charters could provide some kind of step-up or special circumstances, special topics diploma options.
We already have this to some extent in higher ed... Ie: I don't think that private liberal arts colleges, religious colleges, community colleges, and large state universities are in conflict or competing for the same students. They seem to each search out & serve a different population.
But the current political approach is to look at the whole system as a zero sum game, with for-profit charters as the destroyer of "failing" public schools.
Generally speaking the bad schools are almost always in poor areas. They draw their student bodies from poor neighborhoods. It's rare that you hear about middle class districts "failing." Typically the schools in gentrified enclaves are the saving grace of inner city test scores & other outcomes.
The problem is poverty.
Historically the approach to this was to not worry about educating the poor to a high degree. Up until WWII the average American didn't finish high school.
We take for granted how high of a percentage of the population we attempt to educate.
When my parents were in high school (1950s/60s) they didn't even TRY to get all the poor people through. It was just expected that at least half would not finish 12th grade. There was no pressure to try and help the students who wouldn't or couldn't help themselves. This was Texas so you can guess what half that was.
Look at it historically. This supposed decline in the poor school districts, when did it start? With Brown v. Board of Education and Civil Rights, that's when. Starting in the 1970s is when the various titles of the civil rights acts began to be institutionalized and when schools had to operate differently. Bussing was attempted to address the systemic inequality but it caused a revolt. That policy was stopped and then people began to voluntarily sort, or segregate, themselves. We have problems with certain schools and districts because those NEIGHBORHOODS are crap.
Our education problem is not separate from our overall issues. It is intimately intertwined with our poverty problem, our inequality problem, and our race problem. Vouchers just provide a means for a handful of kids to escape the problems we won't address.
You want another solution besides charters? Here's one.
1)Increase the public transportation system and create dedicated bus lanes that school transportation can use.
2) Start and end school later to avoid traffic.
3) Merge urban and suburban school districts into larger regional service areas, also consolidate their administrations.
4) Randomly assign students and teachers to schools across the service area & randomly reassign both every 2 grades. Use the transport system to get them where they need to go. This would also reveal the bad teachers, because the bad ones would no longer be able to blame systemic problems of their populations.
Essentially, I am proposing bussing, because it was working when tried. If you dilute the influence of the toxic environments that harm the worst schools, the problems will be less severe.
Vouchers to me are
a government subsidized form of white flight.
Well said redguard. Addressing the problem has to include addressing societal issues - it's impossible to separate them. Additionally, the very fact that there is this smokescreen of sorts in place where the government is pretending to care about poor students while actually "subsidizing white flight" (as you so nicely put it) leads us to a deeper truth. They don't actually want to educate everyone. That's not politically correct to admit, but it's true.
To diminish the risk of sounding like Kanye, let me put this another way. Half of the population has an IQ below 100. The typically given average of high school graduates is 105. College grads around 115 (an entire standard deviation above the mean.) People tend to be okay with thinking that not everyone can or should get a college degree (although that's fading these days), but to say not everyone should graduate from high school is pretty controversial. Redguard's ideas attempt to give poverty stricken students a fighting chance - one that addresses many of the societal impediments to quality education. But, it seems like in addition to those proposals, we may need to think about another educational component - something along the lines of vocational or trade school - where we can at least give the students that struggle academically (despite any proposed improvements or advantages) an alternative way to be productive citizens.
Education transforms people and we should provide opportunities for everyone. But that means offering various options so that more kids can be served.
Essentially, I am proposing bussing, because it was working when tried.
So, you want families to be forced by the government to attend different schools, but you are not okay with vouchers that let families make the choice?
My response was in regards to NYC charter schools. There are enrollment preferences given at some schools but not based on anything discriminatory or prohibited.
The article you linked to does not speak of NYC charters and the link within that NYT story mentions a blurb about a charter school in NYC back in 2011.
So, you want families to be forced by the government to attend different schools, but you are not okay with vouchers that let families make the choice?
I'm not sure that being "forced by the government to attend different schools" was really what that quote was intending, though I can't speak for the intent since I didn't write it. Essentially, proving transportation to and from poverty stricken neighborhoods to good schools provides a service that vouchers do not. How are poor families supposed to get their kids to school if they work 3 jobs or don't have a car? Let alone to a private school for which the voucher rarely covers even half of tuition? Even if you pair vouchers with charter schools, how does a poor family get across town to even attend the school? From what I've read, research tends to suggest that poorer families prefer convenience, transportation, extended hours and other such components of education most highly. I don't think the vouchers address any of those issues.
I'm not sure that being "forced by the government to attend different schools" was really what that quote was intending, though I can't speak for the intent since I didn't write it. Essentially, proving transportation to and from poverty stricken neighborhoods to good schools provides a service that vouchers do not. How are poor families supposed to get their kids to school if they work 3 jobs or don't have a car? Let alone to a private school for which the voucher rarely covers even half of tuition? Even if you pair vouchers with charter schools, how does a poor family get across town to even attend the school? From what I've read, research tends to suggest that poorer families prefer convenience, transportation, extended hours and other such components of education most highly. I don't think the vouchers address any of those issues.
Nope. Vouchers won't come close to covering the tuition of the truly elite private schools that people like Betsy DeVos send their children to. And those schools can deny admission to or dismiss any students they want for any reason. Vouchers are just a backdoor for private and religious schools to receive taxpayer subsidies and will do little to actually expand opportunity.
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