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Yes it's a failure, but Cuomo still pushes it. He is beholden to billionaire hedge fund managers who champion charter schools and ruining the teaching profession and community schools.
Because…public schools are so wonderfully successful that we don't need to try any alternatives?
Because…public schools are so wonderfully successful that we don't need to try any alternatives?
We've tried it. With the same demographics (that is very important), other than a few exceptions, the charter schools do the same or worse than public schools.
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Research on charter schools paints a mixed picture. A number of recent national studies have reached the same conclusion: charter schools do not, on average, show greater levels of student achievement, typically measured by standardized test scores, than public schools, and may even perform worse.
The Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University found in a 2009 report that 17% of charter schools outperformed their public school equivalents, while 37% of charter schools performed worse than regular local schools, and the rest were about the same. A 2010 study by Mathematica Policy Research found that, on average, charter middle schools that held lotteries were neither more nor less successful than regular middle schools in improving student achievement, behavior, or school progress. Among the charter schools considered in the study, more had statistically significant negative effects on student achievement than statistically significant positive effects. These findings are echoed in a number of other studies.
Now, those that are allowed to pick and choose their students do perform better. So would I, as would 80-85% of the educators out there.
You want to improve education? It's really easy, isolate those students whose behavior interfers with everyone else's education and hold the students and parent to greater accountability if they fail, not just the teachers.
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Because…public schools are so wonderfully successful that we don't need to try any alternatives?
As an early adopter for the idea of vouchers and charter schools, I'm feeling pretty silly right now. The data which has emerged has not born the promised results.
Without a doubt, something needs to be done differently. This is not it, though. What I've seen - what many of us have seen - is that when public money is available to private enterprise, the sharks start circling. Not the kind, benevolent entities...sharks. And they are the last ones who will help the group of students who have the most obstacles*. So far, the only player who is willing to offer education to those students is the public school system. Private entities siphon off the better performing students and leave what they consider the chaff in the public school system.
*Students with the most obstacles: SPED (excepting the easy SPED), disciplinary issues, homelessness, truancy, drug users, transiency, abused, disengaged students, disengaged parents, etc.
We've tried it. With the same demographics (that is very important), other than a few exceptions, the charter schools do the same or worse than public schools.
Agreed, Cuomo has allowed a limited number of charter schools and by all accounts they are roughly on par with the worst performing public school districts ... in other words they are absolute disasters.
We've tried it. With the same demographics (that is very important), other than a few exceptions, the charter schools do the same or worse than public schools.
Exactly this ... and worse, in areas where they're popular, they siphon off money from public education by creating a second school system.
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Originally Posted by Oldhag1
Now, those that are allowed to pick and choose their students do perform better. So would I, as would 80-85% of the educators out there.
You want to improve education? It's really easy, isolate those students whose behavior interfers with everyone else's education and hold the students and parent to greater accountability if they fail, not just the teachers.
Virtually no charter school even attempts to deal with special needs students. To them, "special needs" = physical handicaps NOT the real spectrum of special needs that include learning disabilities, psychological
problems, etc.
Most charter schools get rid of the behavior problems in short order, too, sending them back to the local public schools.
Most charter schools get rid of the behavior problems in short order, too, sending them back to the local public schools.
So if I were a low-income parent with a child who is bright and has no behavior problems, I should do what? Send my kid to a public school, or a charter school?
So if I were a low-income parent with a child who is bright and has no behavior problems, I should do what? Send my kid to a public school, or a charter school?
As a parent you send your kid to the charter.
If however you had to run the local school system which would you choose? Would you strip the local school of all the good students?
What is the job of the society or the government? One smart kid or the overall school?
If however you had to run the local school system which would you choose? Would you strip the local school of all the good students?
What is the job of the society or the government? One smart kid or the overall school?
You are pointing out a very serious conflict of interest between a people and its government. This is a democracy and the government is supposed to serve the people.
If I were a school administrator I'd like to think that 75% or more of my students don't have special needs and would benefit from the competition and variety of schooling opportunities. Those can be magnet schools, charter schools, private schools, university lab schools, parochial schools (the last three supported through a voucher system), or for that matter home schooling. I would need to learn more about the other 25% before making a suggestion, but my goal would be to minimize the number of students getting special treatment, not maximize the number so as to support as large a welfare and special-needs bureaucracy as possible.
"We measure compassion not by how many people receive welfare, but by how few need to." - J. C. Watts
Interesting. I can't really argue with the Success Academy founder's philophospy, I just don't think it is fair to compare her students' results with public schools' results as some do and claim she has better teachers or better curiculmn. What she ends up with are better students. The ugly truth is, if public schools could isolate the problem students from the "regular" kids they could teach so much more too. We are sacrificing the many for the couple. The fact that the same students keep getting suspended is not surpring at all, I don't know why the reporter thought he had some gotcha statistic. Any teacher could tell you that 95% of their time spent on discipline is spent on just a couple of students. I wish public schools could isolate students that need a disproportionate amount of the teacher's time into specialized lower student:teacher ratio classes that can focus on meeting their needs or "fixing" their problems enough that they can return to the regular class. Right now everyone is getting short changed.
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