Did you know that African American 8th graders in Massachusetts outscored the Finns in math on last year’s TIMSS tests, the global education equivalent of March Madness? Or how about the fact that between 2003-2011, students in the Boston Public Schools made the the largest gains in math ever recorded in the 30 year history of the National Assessment of Educational Progress? Or that high school graduation rates in Boston are at highest level in history? Or that college enrollment and completion numbers are way up too?
Yawn… Who cares. Now onto what really matters: our public schools suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck and they’re getting worse by the second. And by worse I mean hopelessly failing. As in “F minus,” “fall into the achievement gap,” “vote with your feet” bad.
Here’s what else you need to know: charter schools are excellent and also outstanding and are putting our failing union-stifled public schools to shame in almost every way. Did I say *almost* every way? I meant in absolutely every way. As one of the few remaining readers of the Boston Globe, I can tell you first hand that the charter schools so beloved by Scot Lehigh et al are achieving outstanding results with the exact same students being failed on a daily basis by our failing public schools. I for one cannot get enough stories of excellence and outstandingness amid an ocean of failed and failing failure. Shall we enjoy one together now?
Join me as we traverse the peak up high expectations mountain to Boston’s City on a Hill Charter Public School, recipient of more unmerited hype entirely well-deserved praise than perhaps any other school in Massachusetts. (We will save for a future post the question of how an entirely minority school in Roxbury ends up with an entirely white board of trustees…) Today we care only about excellence: City on a Hill’s unique approach to taking in a sizeable freshman class and running them through the gauntlet of excellence until a few emerge as college-bound seniors, poised for a future of 21st century prosperity.
- Number of ninth graders in the City on a Hill 2012 cohort: 130
- Number in that cohort who made it to 12th grade: 47
- Number of boys in the 12th grade class: 18
- Percentage of 2012 cohort who will graduate: 66%
- Number of students in the 2012 cohort who will graduate from college according to City on a Hill’s own predictions: 23.
- Number of boys who will graduate from college: 7*
And that’s not all. Due to the skyrocketing demand for excellence and the high number of parents who are “voting with their feet,” City on a Hill will soon be producing diamonds at two new high schools, including one in New Bedford, where school administrators estimate they’ll lose 65% of their students between 9th grade and 12th grade (see page 36.)
What’s truly miraculous is that these diamonds started out exactly like the students being failed by our failing union-stifled public schools. This is an essential point and however non-factual should be repeated at least once per news story (twice per editorial) comparing the excellence of schools like City on a Hill with the sad failure of the failing public schools. Note: there is no need to mention that more than 1/3 of students in the Boston Public Schools are still learning English, while future diamonds attending this academy of excellence, this one, this one, this one, this one or this one are almost 100% likely to speak English. This is called an extraneous detail and has no place in today’s feel good story of achievement gap closing and excellence or tomorrow’s feel bad story of public school failure, expectations lowering or feet voting.
Send comments, tips or reports of outstandingness to tips@edushyster.com.
*There is no data about what happens to graduates of charter high schools in Boston once they reach college. Charters were inexplicably left out of a recent Boston Foundation study of college enrollment and completion by city students. City on a Hill executive director Erica Brown claims publicly that 75% of the school’s graduates have completed college or are on track to do so. That’s the figure I used to predict the total number of college grads the class of 2012 will produce.
The education fight is the same fight we are having within the rest of the party. Are we to continue to be the party of smart, sound, good government to help working people achieve their dreams are will we become the moderately socially liberal moderately libertarian party? The choice to me is clear. We have to fight for unions, including teachers unions, as vital to helping working people. And teachers unions, for all their flaws, can be made into partners that create the equitable and enriching education system we deserve. Its time to fight back. I am tired of rolling over.
It’s just tricky to be a partner when your opposite number would rather chase media fawning and easy money from ignorant rich types trying to buy a policy that would never survive an honest discussion.
all their flaws?
I gave you a thumbs up, JConway, but you sound like you’re trying to be part of the sensible center, the milquetoast moderates, the Very Serious People. It’s okay to support teachers unions without the qualifier “for all their flaws.” We are no more flawed than any other organization.
Teachers unions have been partners for a long time, from the late 1980s when changes were made to make Mass teacher retirement completely self-supporting (we’re still on the way) to the new evaluation system, which the NEA opened the door to and the MTA ushered in. Teacher unions tried to warn everyone about the problems of ed reform–the issues with high-stakes testing, the vouchers, the charter schools. We were dismissed as self-interested hacks. You don’t need to preface your votes for candidates with the phrase, “for all of his faults.” You don’t need to do it for teachers unions. You don’t have to support everything or be critical, but don’t feel like you have to qualify your support.
I do think there is a “sensible center“. I also think there exists “milquetoast moderates“. I do not think, however, that they are one and the same: in point of fact, I would characterize them as mortal enemies.
Lumping them together is counter-productive: it elides the value of the center by indicting them for the sins of the milquetoasts…
If their flaws are a barrier to progress, and I’m not asserting that they are but genuinely asking the question, then by virtue of their position in society doesn’t their flaws assume an outsized importance, at least in comparison to “any other organization”.
If, for example, firefighters were obstreperous to the point of hampering actual firefighting then whatever flaws that they exhibited would be far more of an issue than similar flaws in “any other organization.” But the rub is this: I wouldn’t want to be the one to have to come up with a progressive plan to fight fires absent input from a real firefighter, whatever the flaws, for all their flaws, who’s been in real fight with a real fire. Similarly, don’t look to me for an end run around the teachers union, for all their flaws, or indeed any union.
Fair enough. But the ‘we are no worse than anyone else defense’ hasn’t really helped the Catholic Church, the Republican Party, or other organizations battered in the media has it? I also resent the notion that I am milquetoast or squishy on this. I was in the past, you can thank being surrounded by libertarians at U Chicago for that, but now that I have actually had to work for a living, have been screwed over by unfair contracts and bosses, and have seen the sheer decimation in the heartland that outsourcing and globalization have caused you can’t sit on the sidelines you gotta walk the (picket) line. I was with the teachers, many of them my friends, during the CPS fight. But if we want to be honest friends of the worker we have to be self-critical and self-examining.
There are clear flaws in the teachers unions that have contributed to the perception in the media that its a racket protecting mediocre workers at the expense of the public interest. Is this perception true? Absolutely false. Joeltpatterson I know is a hard working teacher, as I am sure are sabutai and other frequent BMG posters. My mom was a hard working clerical support staff at Watertown High and was a proud member of her local. I know Paul Toner as a great ally of mine back when I was a student rep on the School Committee and I wanted to change CRLS grading policies, he is a friend of my sisters, and I am so proud a local Cambridge boy is now leading the MTA and he is a fighter and hard worker with tons of integrity to boot.
That said, if you look at the CPS strike in Chicago it was quite clear that Karen Lewis is a terrible spokesperson/leader for that union. She clearly (the polls confirmed this) looked like a bully out to get the teachers ‘extras’. I am NOT saying this perception is reality, but I am saying that you need leaders willing to play ball and willing to articulate a vision that teachers and unions are partners that put the students first. I am again, NOT arguing that they are not this currently. I am saying the reality is they are getting battered in the media and the perception is that they are not on the side of working families. That is a flaw and its as much a self inflicted one as it is the fault of the corporate media. Stories about rubber rooms and unions protecting bad teachers need to be stifled and quashed and the culture of indifference that breeds them needs to go away too.
My point is I firmly believe that the mission of the teachers union is to educate our kids, but we have to be honest that this mission is not coming across as well as it could be to the public and there is a lot of insularity within the teachers union that allows the charters to become the face of success when they are in reality a mediocrity at best.
that you are part of that sensible center. The reason I called you out on your hedging was because you were appeasing the anti-union arguments and pulling your punches. How many other organizations, or even social programs, would you say “in spite of their flaws..?” Krugman, whom I know you don’t like, called Larry Summers out for doing the same thing.
And honestly, this is pure Cokie Roberts:
It’s not what they do, it’s how they fail to communicate it. It’s not the reality, it’s the appearance that they fail at. This is how the centrist-sounding pundits talk. It’s unions fault for they way they are talked about.
We get battered in the media because there are a number billionaires and conservative business organizations dedicating billions of dollars characterizing us as people only concerned about their jobs. And because neo-liberal business ideology is so rampant in not just the Republican, but the Democratic Party, that we have Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education, that unions are automatically assumed to be bad. Teachers are outspent and increasingly outnumbered. It’s not indifference that breeds bad publicity, it’s our lazy media and a vast anti-labor open conspiracy.
And Karen Lewis, she’s not a gymnast being judged on her balance beam performance. She’s not a television show trying to maximize her ratings. She’s the leader of a democratic–that’s right, democratic–organization that doesn’t necessarily agree with her. Before she can bargain with the city, she has to work with her members.
And insularity, what the hell is that supposed to mean? There are four or five union members on this thread. You know what we did all day? We worked. That’s what most union members do all day. And our leadership? They have organizations to run. In the case of the CTU, very large organizations to run. The MTA has 107,000 members and has tried to get more of them active in getting out our message. As one of the folks who is trying to do this, let me tell you, it’s not easy. We’re not insular, we’re busy. We don’t have the luxury of using our money to buy cities as guinea pigs for our educational policies (Thanks, Mr. Gates, Mr. Zuckerberg). Our staff is miniscule compared to the staffs of those who oppose us. We’re not insular, we’ve been surrounded.
you, and as a teacher can’t help but enjoy having watched your opinions develop. I tend to regard most people in your age bracket from my teacher perspective. I hope that doesn’t sound condescending. I didn’t mean it to be.
I don’t expect we’ll ever see eye-to-eye on everything nor should we. You are, however, worth arguing with.
I take that as a sincere compliment. What you may not realize is that most of my generation coming out of college have been brainwashed by TFA and other programs to think unions are the devil. Elite colleges are certainly contributing to this neoliberal consensus you so rightly deride. And what worries me is your response is to blame the media and big business. This is certainly true, again I am not arguing with your facts at all. And I have come along way, I usually find myself agreeing Krugman a lot more lately at least on substance though I honestly cannot stand his style.
It may have come across as Cokie Roberts esque and for that I apologize. I want unions to fight, what went totally unreported in Chicago is how most working people who actually have to send their kids to public schools supported the strike and the teachers. Most of them know how much the cards are stacked against them in their own jobs. And now of course Emmanuel is closing a record number of schools and cloistering minorities and poverty even worse than the old housing projects did.
But the unions need to do things. Go on the defensive when it comes to the record. Union schools outperform charters. Every time. Period. Sell that story and get it out there. Poverty causes poor education outcomes, lets revive that war instead of starting more in Syria and Iran. Sell that story. And go on the offensive, the same folks that destroyed the housing market and caused the financial crisis are manipulating your neighborhood schools and firing your beloved teachers. They want to make it harder not easier for working people. Make that argument too. I think that can go along way, and I am glad to see so many great teachers on BMG making that fight. The trick is getting them on WBZ and in the Globe.
think Cokie Roberts was insightful. My generation is feeling the effects of the last 30 years of neo-liberalism, but I’m afraid yours will feel it even more. At least we know what’s happening to us and can now take a stand against it.
I understand the frustration, but I’m a little put off by the tone. My wife teaches at a charter high school. She works very hard and it’s not an easy job.
I understand your points fully and I tend to agree. I spent years working with labor. My grandmother was a union teacher, my aunt and several cousins are union teachers. My wife’s friends are union teachers and she’d be one herself if a unionized public school had offered her a job instead of the charter school where she works. As a matter of public policy I support the teachers unions and don’t think charters are a silver bullet. I do think my wife and her colleagues work hard and are doing some good. Same as the union teachers.
But it seems the real problem is, or should be, with the media types and politicians who have jumped on this bandwagon and aren’t open to acknowledging facts that contradict their worldview. Here you seem to be lashing out instead at charters and everyone associated with them. I understand the frustration but it risks alienating me, who should be a natural ally, because when push comes to shove I will side with my wife.
associated policy is terribly flawed.
I’d like to see a moratorium until we get an honest discussion and clear idea of what charters are supposed to accomplish. After 20 years of ed reform, we should be examining the goals set up in the enabling law and move forward from there.
Fenway is right though, charter school teachers and entire charter schools have the best interests of their students at heart. I’m sure many do. It’s hard to be a teacher and not care about your students. Very few people manage it.
One of the most dishonest things about the education reform “debate” in Massachusetts is the failure of charter boosters to acknowledge not just how hard charter teachers work but the staggering rates of teacher turnover at so many of these schools. The same charters that are upheld as models in the pages of the Boston Globe lose between 1/3 and 1/2 of their teachers each year. That isn’t good for kids and it certainly isn’t good for the young teachers who are being burned out and cycled through every school year. An acknowledgement of this should be part of a real debate about the future of education here.
… I’m hard pressed to come up with some political outcome that isn’t terribly flawed. But if we put a moratorium on that which is flawed, we’d probably still be riding horse-n-buggy and lighting our nights with whale oil while we practiced our sums with chalk on slate.
I think that, at the intersection of politics and education, the wedge driven between the charter schools and the existing teachers unions and the over-reliance , and frankly simple-mindedness of, test driven teaching/funding stand out as the biggest flaws. And that’s the beginning of an honest discussion. The former, wedge, won’t be overcome until the charter and the unions decide, simply, not to be wedged on the matter and there are no guarantees on that happening. The latter, simplemindedness, has to be thought through and fought through politically and, likewise, contains no inherent guarantees.
20 years, more or less, is just the view seen from one generation: the process of ‘reform’ in education has been ongoing and continuous. Universal access to education only took off in the wake of reform of society and the implementation of child labor laws: which laws created a need to warehouse the newly unemployed street urchins and teach them rudimentaries as most of them awaited graduation and a laborers position. Why else would the position of public school teacher default to the women in society who were, at that time, enjoying all the benefits of a clear second-class status? Teachers unions have enjoyed greater and greater power contiguous with suffrage and other womens rights and a larger share of men choosing the profession of public school teacher, an altogether reform both separate yet inextricably entwined with education ‘reform’.
All this is to state, again, just the simple and the obvious: the goals have never really been clearly examined, not once, but have changed and morphed, sub-rosa, as the sum of the political and societal forces have changed in a continuous and contentious ‘reform’.
something different to those us involved in educational policy. They are a generic-sounding terms that were captured by the movement that started with A Nation at Risk and led to Massachusetts Education Reform Act in 1993. It is embodied by Arne Duncan and Michelle Rhee. Education reform is less a term than a proper name.
The goals of charter schools, it’s true, have never been examined, but they haven’t changed. Those goals are enshrined in state law:
We now have 20 years of experience to draw from on charter schools. Aside from “(iii) to provide parents and students with greater options in selecting schools within and outside their school districts,” the rest of these goals are either questionable or laughable.
If you observe two men, each with one leg only, over the course of twenty years, you have learned nothing about the use of two legs.
To the extent that we have seen anything over the past twenty years upon which we can draw conclusions… it is the adroitness with which those with an, ahem, native antipathy to public education have easily sundered natural alliances. As well, if you’ll look closely you’ll note a curious thing about charters: even as as expectations are ginned up considerably, concommitant resources are limited by law. Why would that be? The wedge alone, betwixt and between charters and existing unions guarantees that charters exist on a starvation diet straight out the gate. Add in the remaining hurdles, caps and impositions, within the insane context of score driven testing, and it’s a wonder charters have made any progress at all..
But it is all of a piece: the point I was attempting to make earlier is that is was ever thus; the processess, motivations and impeti behind public education, be they inchoate societal upheavals or have specific proper names are always churning, be it over twenty years or one hundred.. We’re caught in a particular shear of this churn, but not in a unique one..
don’t know what you’re trying to say. I suspect you’re trying to rise above something, but I’ll be darned if I know what it is.
Your generalizations about charter schools are demonstrably wrong: some are poor, others aren’t. MATCH, for example, spends $19,000 per student far above the state or Boston average. SABIS is also fiscally secure. Look it up on DESE. Resources are limited by law? Charters can and are supposed to raise money privately. That’s part of their point.
There is now an enormous body of research about charter schools, which can illuminate how well charters have fulfilled their purposes so far.
The BPS will never change until it absolutely has to, and the charters are the only thing right now that is causing change.
The major focus of the BPS teachers union is protecting the 15-20% of veteran teachers who have checked out and are not going to change because they don’t have to.
The charters are closing underperforming schools and reducing the number of teachers in the BPS system. It’s a shame that 5/6 of those let go can actually do the job, but that’s the system the union wants.
The progressives can watch Waiting for Superman all they want, but in the end they just want the union turnout and they will roll over and put bad teachers ahead of the students of the BPS.
“Waiting for ‘Superman‘ ” Is an anti-union propaganda piece. It’s the conservatives watching it and confusing the flick with truth that supports the charters.
Two truths:
1. There is no one widely adopted idea that has improved education that began in a charter school.
2. Since the beginning of this “reform” morass — slender-oversight charter schools, over-testing our students, finding excuses to fire teachers, breaking unions, changing requirements and curricula very year or two — constant standardized measurements of American student achievement have not changed. For all the sound and fury, our students aren’t learning more than they were 30 years ago.
The only charters that showed real success are those that fight poverty. Urban Prep in Chicago, the DC boarding schools, and Canada’s HCZ actually mitigate against the crime and poverty that prevent kids from learning in these communities. And there is no reason public schools couldn’t do this too, and in fact they may do a better job. Lyndon Johnson had the foresight to get free breakfasts into the schools, now we just need to get free dental care, health care, and longer and better after school programs to turn neighborhood schools into real beacons of hope amid deserts of despair. It could certainly work in Chicago and I don’t see how our schools in Massachusetts are any different. Also decoupling funding for property taxes, or upping the federal contribution to mitigate against the difference. We need to focus on equity-not performance.
The BPS spends gobs of money now, a huge percentage of the city budget. They don’t need more money and more services when they can’t do an adequate job educating the kids.
If you send your kid to a BPS exam high school as I did, you can confidently expect them to essentially miss a year of each subject. One or two teachers per year are complete washouts.
Think kids need to learn 9th grade algebra? or English or history? or biology? If they get the wrong teacher they might as well have skipped it.
I went to Catholic high school and it was the same thing. My 9th grade algebra class was an absolute joke. The teacher couldn’t control the room or convey the material. We had to learn all of it over with the next teacher. My wife went to an elite public school in Puerto Rico. Same thing. Our friend’s kid goes to a charter school in NYC. Same thing.
And it’s the same everywhere you go in life. Go to court, some judges are great and other suck. Some doctors are great and others suck.
I doubt that there is a school system in the country that doesn’t have at least one ‘instructionally-challenged’ teacher. I know the one I went through had some, and the one my daughter’s in does, too. This normal failing of human beings is not a reason to cut spending on schools or to withhold additional spending that could improve outcomes. That’s a baby-with-the-bathwater response.
were and are among the highest-rated in our highly-rated state. One bad teacher, or even two in a child’s education seldom makes a huge difference to the outcome for that child. On the other hand, I believe several bad-teacher experiences can be completely undone by one excellent teacher.
Seascraper. He’s not as bad as DFW, but his views tend to be somewhat otherwordly.
made gobs of money on the BPS and other districts. Gotta hand it to them, though, they figured out a way to make millions from public education by peddling their “standards based” curricula, standardized testing, and useless “professional development” I’m forced to sit through. Oh, how I love when an “educational consultant” is flown in from Texas or North Carolina to present new and wonderful teaching methods…
So that’s it, in a nutshell? Due to a belief that 15-20% of “veteran” (nice agism, btw) teachers have “checked out”, and due to a union that stands together and doesn’t allow mobs with pitchforks to take their members out without due process, the entire system needs to be blown up, and the 80-85% of good teachers be damned?
Thanks for laying it out so bare.
It has occurred to me that public sector unions are necessary to protect public employees from the public’s whims. From mob rule, which is what local school boards can devolve into. Critics love to point out that there is little incentive for a public sector union to negotiate with an eye to the health of the system (since it is hard to bankrupt a city), but they fail to realize that there is a similar lack of incentive for a voter to elect a representative with a similar eye to the health of the system because most voters are not closely or directly affected by it. It’s really, really easy to scream “Make them work harder! Make them work longer! Fire them if they don’t get results” when you have almost no skin in the game.
Thanks for protecting washout teacher from those stupid poor deluded black parents who want to send their kids to charter schools.
All the asides, crossouts, sarcasm etc tell me how much emotion the author has tied to his/her point of view.
It is good boston public schools are doing better.
This fact fact by itself does not necessarily mean that Charter schools have no place.
When they suck money from public schools and play by different rules. If we were to change how that works, get the funding sources fr
somewhere else and have to share the same baseline rules that the public schools do than maybe we can get the two models
to work side by side. Small schools an specialty schools and non traditional public schools have been options within the Cambridge system for some time, I know Boston has them too, so we can get a modicum of excellence and diversity within the existing public model without reinventing the funding, teachers rights, or enrollment wheel.
One question that charters try to answer is whether our current set of rules could be changed to benefit our students. I think that some amount of accountable experimentation and competition in this area is valuable: — even if we end up deciding that the traditional model is best.
… renovation and not innovation. When I think of “innovation” with respect to education I think of entirely new ways of educating: think of the scene in “The Matric where they directly download skills to the cerebral cortex (“Whoa! I know kung fu.“).
But renovation is the process of taking something fundamentally sound and strong and renewing the core of it while adding and/or subtracting small components based upon whether or not they add or detract from the strengths of the process. Seen in this manner, charter schools will, ultimately not look all that different from traditional public schools. And, in fact, if we could have a more amicable charter-traditional relationship then some of the renovations in charter schools will (ought to) make their way back into traditonal schools and we’ll re-iterate on the process to perfection (in a manner of speaking).
This is, in my estimation, the signature failing of the ‘sell’ of charters: that they are ‘radical’ and ‘innovative’ when in fact they are incremental and restorative. I think part of that is the charters themselves trying to distinguish themselves in a highly charged and combative environment and part of that is the anti-public school wing of the body politic making the environment highly charged and combative.
Charter schools are public schools.
Say it with me now: “Charter schools are public schools.”
Again: “Charter schools are public schools.”
Aaannndd…. Again: “Charter schools are public schools!”
It’s pretty difficult to “suck money from” public schools if you are in fact giving money to public schools.
The laws in place regarding charters expressly protect existing “teachers rights”, and, in fact, do nothing whatsoever to threaten them. In fact, I argue (you might have taken note, that they could strengthen the teachers unions if the teachers unions decided to play offense against the anti-public school forces instead of directing their ire at those who would be their natural ally.
It’s funny: those who profess being against the charters are continually complaining about not having an honest discussion but they are often the first to proffer dishonest tropes such as ‘charters are not public schools’ or ‘charters directly threaten the teachers unions…’ Why is that, do you suppose?
Yes, charter schools are public schools. But the anti-public school forces you mention are co-opting the original charter school concept to ultimately undermine all public schools. The anti-public school forces ideally want to tax our tax dollars and give parents vouchers where they can use to attend schools of their “choice”. Way to complex a subject to discuss as a comment, but that is one of the end-games of anti-public school forces.
Yes, charter schools are public schools. But the anti-public school forces you mention are co-opting the original charter school concept to ultimately undermine all public schools.
Which is no reason to reject, outright, the original charter school concept. If the bathwater is dirty, toss it out but… please… leave the baby.
That will never happen. I agree that thats what they want. But I tell you now, with ferocious certainty, that vouchers will never happen. Never. Even if the anti-public school forces were in any way competent (they are not) or smart (duh) I would not let that happen. In other words: Over my dead body… and even then I’ll come back from the depths bringing a host of the undead with me to stop it if necessary.
IT. WIll. NOT. HAPPEN.
So… can we PLEASE get back to what IS happening and stop talking about the future plans of fringe idiots.
Splitting hairs about the legal language and policy realities with Mark and when I point out the true agenda of many so-called ed reformers, you dismiss the combined power of the Walton (Walmart) family, Rubert Murdoch and scores of other billionaires. Thank God you will stop them over you’re dead body.
OK, you want to dismiss my point. But for the life of me, I can’t understand your point…that charter schools are public schools? Is that what you’re bring to this discussion? Fine. Given your inability to engage in a meaningful discussion…you just want to dismiss the reality of the incremental privatization of public education (or perhaps it’s ignorance?) and the reality that vouchers may not be a reality in MA, but are becoming realities elsewhere. Over your dead body, huh.
you don’t know what you are talking about. I mean, maybe you know you’re spouting the charter school line, maybe you don’t.
Charter schools are not public schools in any meaningful sense of the word. Call them public schools if you want, or call them ducks for that matter, but neither label will clarify what charter schools are.
Charter schools are independently owned and operated. They aren’t accountable to a local school committee like a public school. Much of their money comes from private donations. There are for-profit charter schools; public schools aren’t allowed to make a profit. They are subject to state oversight and approval, but so will casinos. Charter schools conduct lotteries. Lotteries are a form of gambling. Are charter schools casinos? Regardless of what you think of them, calling charter schools public schools confuses the issue.
Charter schools do directly threaten unionized teachers. If you followed the CTU strike, you’d know that Rahm wants to close public schools and increase the number of charter schools. My research suggests Massachusetts has handled charter schools much better than other states, but they are still problematic.
..4 ..5 ..6 (counting the number of comments above to reach the comment in which YOU quoted state law at me)… 18 … 19
20.
an organization CHARTERED by the state is a PUBLIC organization according to the very law you quoted to me earlier: which law clearly states that, quoting you quoting to me… “(b) The purposes of establishing charter schools are: (i) to stimulate the development of innovative programs within public education;”
al together now:
CHARTER SCHOOLS ARE PUBLIC SCHOOLS!!!!
You are latching on to semantics. They can call it public and it may be funded with public dollars. But there is a clear difference between these schools and traditional public schools that are open to everyone, and the argument is that by sucking dollars and the easiest students to work with out of the system, they are harming what’s left of the traditional system.
The immediate result is to undermine teacher’s unions. Eventually the spin will be that no public school, in the traditional or charter school model, works, and we need vouchers for Christian academies or for-profit corporate schools.
Gaah! No. The teachers union are protected in the law!! It says it. It’s not semantics. These are not issues that’ve crept up of a sudden! These things have been discussed and thought about before you arrived. Charters don’t threaten the teachers unions and the teachers unions only feel threatened because they’ve been wedged into a corner.
When (if) that happens, I’ll take them on also but right now, I’m concerned with what is happening… not what might happen.
While I don’t know about Chicago (and Rahm frightens me…) I do know that in Massachusetts there are no barriers whatsoever preventing, and protections in place providing for, fully dues paying member of the teachers union from working at a charter school. So closing traditional public schools and opening more charters doesn’t, in any way, directly threaten unionized teachers.
The only two thing prevent the teachers union from joining with charters are… ta da… the teachers union and the charters who’ve grown into a mutual animosity stemming from disinformation provided by third party anti-pubic school forces: the very textbook definition of a political wedge… They don’t even have to do the heavy lifting any more: once you’re firmly wedged into your position, your animosity and willingness to divide does all the work and keeps what would be naturally allied participants snarling at each other. Congratulations, you’ve been used.
Petr, you are using a logical fallacy to make a false point. You are redefining “public school” to support your false claim that charters are public schools. They are most definitely not public schools.
Prior to the advent charter schools, the words “public school” meant that a school, among other things:
1) Received public money for funding.
2) Did not charge tuition to students.
3) Did not discriminate in the acceptance of students.
4) Had no capacity limits, i.e. could not say “sorry, you can’t enter”. This is a little more complicated than I’ve described because in systems where there is more than one school, those systems will balance the load, but in systems with just one public school, there is no capacity limit, all students must be accepted.
5) Could not exclude students except in the most extreme cases.
6) This is the most important – were governed by officials who were accountable to the voters.
A “private school” was exact the opposite of those points.
You have redefined “public school” to be “not private”, or perhaps “gets public money and does not charge students tuition” (although there are examples of schools in other states that require parents to do volunteer work, which is a kind of a charge).
Charter schools discriminate in the acceptance of students via their application process. Some national examples are pretty egregious (one charter school in California requires applicants to write a five-page essay – without any gramatical errors – to be considered for admission). However the application process itself is a filter that is designed to keep out certain families – like those who are so dysfunctional that they can’t be bothered to fill out an application.
Charter schools have capacity limits. You can’t force them to expand to meet the population the way public school districts must expand.
Charter schools can exclude students who do not meet their rules. Such a program would have disastrous impact if implemented in schools statewide because there would be a lot of kids who would be banned from attending school. Charter schools also counsel students out.
Charter schools have no local governance structure. They are governed by the State Board of Education, a panel too far removed to have much impact, and with too few tools to be feared (yanking the charter is a severe action and most charters know that this won’t happen unless they really screw up).
Funny how you felt the need to be dishonest here, I wonder why you did that? Charter schools are clearly not public schools using the traditional definition of that term.
Charter schools are public schools. Or read what Mark Bail reads about the law…. you’ll come to the same conclusion.
Quoth Mark Bail…
charterschoolsarepublicshoolsneiderneiderneidercharterschoolsarepublicshoolsneiderneiderneidercharterschoolsarepublicshoolsneiderneiderneidercharterschoolsarepublicshoolsneiderneiderneidercharterschoolsarepublicshoolsneiderneiderneider
irrelevant. We’re not arguing law, we’re arguing policy. Terms are certainly up for debate, and legal definitions could apply, but they don’t.
As such, your definition is less than worthless, it’s confusing. Charter schools are nominally public schools. So what?
Charters are independently owned and operated. Public schools are not. Charter schools can be for profit. Public schools cannot. Public schools are run by democratically elected school committees. Charter schools are not.
Neiderneider? A little too much caffeine today?
So work with that, that’s what. It’s not nothing. It”s a great big pile of honking big something.
It is, in fact, the whole and entire ballgame.
First you say “it’s not true”, then you say “Ok, it’s true, but so what” and then… you say, “I’m confused”. You’re the one tying yourself into knots, no wonder you’re confused: You’re confused because you refuse to work with what is and, instead, try to argue what isn’t… A very simple recipe for confusion.
You are faced with a choice, petulance, diffidence and scorn for charters made possible only by rejecting the notion that they are public schools or recognizing that the very public nature of charters leaves you nothing to rail against and everything to work for…
If it helps to salve your conscience you can think of “democratically elected school committees” as a verbal charter. But I see no distinction between J Random School committee providing oversight of a school for the next five years and a similar committee giving consent to a charter for five years with the proviso that failure to meet the terms of the charter will incur penalties: the former review is ongoing and the latter is episodic… what’ s all that different about that?
Now you may well argue that the present charter granting authority is not democratically elected. OK. Well, if you feel strongly enough, then go ahead and try to make that change and I’ll be right there with you. I don’t see any reason why a democratically elected school committee can’t be the ones to review and authorized charters. But that’s a process question and not a particular flaw inherent to charters.
n/t
I’m rather upset, in case you didn’t notice.
Why? Because the logic behind ‘charter schools are not public schools‘ is the same logic behind ‘keep your government hands off my medicare.‘: a demonstrable untruth used to separate people who, absent the wedge, would be allies and cohorts. The folks who say “keep your government hands off my medicare” ARE REQUIRED to believe that medicare is not a government program, else their arguments collapse. And so it is with people who refuse to admit that charters are public schools: they have no argument if charter schools are pubic schools. They, not I, are the ones shadowboxing.
The teachers union could stand up tomorrow and say “we are the stewards of the public schools and since charter schools are public schools, we want to to ensure good stewardship.” It’s a persuasive argument. Or, they could say “the governor is the steward of public education, but he’s failing in his stewardship. Let us help.” An equally persuasive argument.
But, however, and because, they refuse to accept charter schools as public schools they can feel justified in wiping their hands and say ‘not my problem.’ Bullshit. It is their problem.
Or, conversely, the charters themselves could humble down and say “we need help from traditional public school teachers,” after all, if you want to know something about a profession, ask a professional.
Working together, charters and the teachers unions could, I am certain, do wonderful and amazing things… for all public school students. The only thing separating them is a false semantic duality of public/not-public: a small bundle of words twisted for the sole purpose of raising hackles into actual enmity.
And I’m equally certain that, working apart, both charters and traditional schools will continue to see success only fitfully and fleetingly…
experience, research, or just giving your thoughts? I remember you saying charter schools are public schools a long time ago. I know this isn’t new for you, but while I don’t agree with your analysis of the situation, I don’t understand your vehemence. Referring to charter schools doesn’t do anything to help.
How do you want charters and public schools to work together? Or teacher unions and charter schools? Public schools within the same district barely work together. The MTA may lobby against some charter provisions, but it’s not anything huge on the agenda.
Will I make more sense to you if you knew from whence I arrive? Will I confuse you less were I to turn out to be a public school teacher of 30 years standing? Will I make less sense if I were a 20 year old hipster pishing away my days on a laptop at Starbucks? Maybe I’m an ironworker on disability and I just know a lot about unions? Maybe I’m a chinese hacker?
It’s compassion. What’s not to understand?
When I see someone angrily holding up a sign that says “keep your government hands off my medicare I feel a great deal of sadness for them and even more anger at those users who put them in this positon… and so, too, with those who make the equivalent anti-syllogism: “charter schools are not public schools“: I feel anger at those who’ve created this insane context where good decent people (teachers who teach and charter school admins who both want the best for their, public school, students) are, instead, at each others throats.
I start with the proposition, you see, that teachers who want to teach are fundamentally decent and caring individuals. I mate that to the equally powerful notion that somebody who wishes to start a charter school (most especially in a poor, underserved, community) is equally decent and giving of their time. From those two propositions I regard the notion of enmity between them as foolish and counterproductive. And so I then search for the processes, mechanisms and underlying motivations for that enmity.
What I find sickens me. Why would I not be vehement under those circumstances? Why aren’t you?
That’s not the question. The question is why, if they are both public schools, would they NOT work together? Separating them, falsely, just gives them a convenient excuse not to do so… In the same way that wedging medicare recipients from their government gives them excuse not to support the government. A ready made reason to throw up your hands and despair. I won’t accept that.
but not with the application. It seems to me that you’re trying to unite them – falsely. They’ve been separated not falsely but by the fact that – in significant ways – their interests are not aligned. Hardcore charter supporters have, as their goal, a reform of “public” education that has no place for teacher’s unions. They have pursued that goal by stripping resources and better students away from traditional urban public schools.
To opponents, the problem is that the charters will cook the books – academically speaking (and financially speaking in the case of Gloucester – and perhaps ultimately all “public” schools will follow the charter model. But it won’t work when it has to work for all students. So then the neoliberals will throw up their hands and conclude that the whole public education thing “doesn’t work” and start with the for-profit schools. And so on.
Saying there’s a commonality of interest is like saying Social Security and the fund managers who would have administered George W. Bush’s privatization scheme had a common interest in “promoting retirement security.”
Saying that these two kinds of “public” schools have aligned interests
And hardcore fascists have, as their goal, the fourth reich. What’s your point?
Another generalization: excepting the case of Gloucester, as stipulated, there is only anecdote, often breathlessly administered by already adhered partisans, about charters cooking the books. Nor, even if true, is this an inevitable outcome of or even simple indictment of the core concept of charter schools…
And I can just as easily say that traditional public schools, by allowing such a high dropout rate to begin with, are having their books ‘cooked’… Or, why isn’t that pertinent? If the contention about charter schools is that they ‘counsel students out’ then why isn’t any dropout rate similarly suspect? If your concern is students then the attrition rate at any schools, charter or no, is of concern. Again, how does that redound to the concept of charters? It doesn’t.
Here’s a clue: those would conclude such a thing have already concluded that very thing and are doing so in numbers too large to count on one hand. The whole of the neoliberal coalition, in concert with the hardcore anti-public school fascists, have already chimed in and are a tiny portion of the debate. Yet you act like they are the only ones to deal with. No. You have me: center-left, with nothing but scorn for neo-liberals and conservative privateers, who represents a vast slice of public school parents and advocates who want what is best for students and teachers and who see, in charters, hope for renovation of the public school model with the express purpose of providing a fantastic teaching environment in the surety that such teaching environs will turn into a fantastic education for our children.
Some charters do a good job. Many are worse than public schools. Others are about the same. In that they provide a choice for inner-city parents, they are good. Increasing the number of them does nothing to solve our public school problems.
The difference between public schools and charters and drop-out rates is this: public schools don’t claim to be better. The charter school lobby and its supporters, like the Boston Foundation and the Boston Globe, go to great pains to suggest that they are superior to public schools. Visit CREDO or looked at the flawed study produced by the Boston Foundation or the Boston Globe editorials. Check out Bloomberg’s propaganda about NYC. Look at the unquestioning articles touting the graduation rate of charter schools. That’s been the conversation. And don’t blame the public school teachers or teacher unions for it. We didn’t start it and we’ve been playing defense for 20 years. Here on BMG and across the country, public school teachers are finding their voices and contributing to the conversation.
… that’s an odd defense in a thread such as this since which post that started this thread takes the entirely opposite view; claiming, with aplomb the BPS success with “largest gains in math” and soaring college enrollment and completion before moving on to some rather ugly snark about charter schools. Very certainly the author of this post very clearly thinks that traditional public schools are better than charter public schools. So ugly, in fact was the snark that David, as he was promoting this thread to the front page felt the need to add “Rough stuff. Chime in, charter backers!“…
And I’m saying that playing defense is part of the problem: if you start with fact that charter schools are public schools you realize that the teachers union ought to have, already, both feet, head and shoulders and all else, already in the door. Anything else is capitulation. Who else, in this entire ‘debate’, would have even as much as one tenth the moral standing as a teacher? Politicians? For-profit corporate whores? Who? What a waste of 20 years…
with you any more. I’ve tried to make sense out of what you’re saying, but one of use has fallen short. I don’t know if your thesis is completely your own or if there’s some source you could back it up with, but it doesn’t make any sense to me.
There are several options here:
1) I’m completely off my rocker. whack-a-doodle insane… That’s a distinct possibility. But I’m not the one to judge that since, as Joseph Heller points out, only the sane would be clear minded enough to note their own insane behaviour… and only the insane would be addled enough to assert their own sanity. Somebody else will have to weigh in on my sanity just as you assert that someone else will have to ‘back up’ my thesis.
2) you refuse to even countenance my position: you can’t make sense of it because you cannot or will not accept my basic premise, even as a hypothetical, and thus you leave yourself no choice but confusion. You have never once asked yourself the question: “what if charter schools really are public schools?” so firmly rooted are you in the basic premise that they are not.
Now, of course, I lean towards option #2… but, equally pertinent is to ask if I’m operating under option #1 and, if so, that’s likely what I’d lean towards… so, hey, it could be both since crazy doesn’t always equal wrong.
Here, however, is the thing: you’ve obviously invested much time and effort in thinking “charter schools are not public schools”. And you and others have invested equal effort into defending that position here, and perhaps elsewhere.
But none of you who take the position that ‘charter schools are not public schools’ have ever asserted what, in fact, they are. In all your contention that ‘charter schools are not public schools’ you’ve made great effort to negate, but no effort whatsoever to define. I find that both interesting and highly pertinent. If charter schools are not public schools… what are they? They are surely not private schools. They are, just as surely, not octopuses. What are they? If you make the claim that about what they are not then why not go all the way and say what they are?
But if they are really public schools you are free to call them corruption of the public school model, if that’s what you think they are, (which is my best guess about what you are really trying to articulate).
But if you don’t think they are public schools then you can’t think that the public school model is being corrupted and you, and many others, can rest easy in the knowledge that the public school model is safe and sound, even as you, and many others, are certain that the public school model is under attack and in great peril… wait… what? Exactly: confusion is the only outcome of that line of reasoning.
If you accept that they are public schools and that you care about public schools then you have both the freedom and the moral standing to either criticize them as bad public schools or praise them as good public schools, and thus affect change. If you don’t accept them as public schools then simply saying what they are not doesn’t give you any standing whatsoever. Either you say what they are, in lieu of being public schools, or you keep silent.
You have no idea what you’re talking about. Neither does NoPolitician and Fenway (who has some cause to support charter schools) and most of the people on the thread don’t understand what you are saying. Moreover, you refuse to countenance other people’s arguments.
I was tempted to go with #1, but it’s hard to diagnose people over the internet.
… since I’ve been there: I once thought, as you do now, that ‘charter schools are not public schools’. Then I looked into it… because, you see, that position confused me greatly, as it does you. I had to let go of my pride and say, I was wrong.
pride… she’s a real ball buster she is.
Petr, I do think you’re off your rocker in this situation. It should be clear, based on what I posted above, that charter schools and traditional public schools do not have much in common. Yes, the law says they are public schools and that seems to be what you’re resting your hat on. That is meaningless because the word “public school” is not defined anywhere in the law.
If you want people to believe they are public schools so that the public becomes more invested in them, I think you are wasting your time because the very structure of charter schools prevents this from happening.
First, I can’t guarantee a place for my kid in the school by moving to the town or neighborhood, so that takes away some of my connection. I have, at best, a chance in a lottery.
Next, if I don’t have kids, I might still have concern for a neighborhood school because its reputation affects my property values. However, acceptance into the charter has nothing to do with my neighborhood, so that takes away more connection.
Let’s say I can get past the neighborhood connection and I want to see the school do well because it affects my town’s reputation (or because I’m an anti-tax/good government type who wants to make sure the schools are running efficiently). I might run for school committee or town council in my town to have an impact on the schools. I can’t do that with a charter school because charters operate outside the school committee – even though they are spending my tax dollars.
The charter schools behave in ways that would constitute corruption in the public sector. For example, the fees they pay to their for-profit parent corporations. Imagine if a principal was to hire his relatives to do work at a school? Or if the school committee bought land from one of their members relatives? In Springfield, the Robert M. Hughes charter school purchased computer equipment from a company owned by one of their directors, they leased a building from a corporation that was also under the control of their board of directors, and they were dealing with a bank that was under the control of their board of directors. If they did that as public stewards, I think they would probably be in jail. As a member of the public, I had zero local say in this matter. The best I could do would be to petition the state board of education.
So in any meaningful sense of the word, charter schools are not public schools. They are schools which receive public money, which are overseen by a state appointed board, and which are outside the control of the communities they exist within. And they were set up this way on purpose – so don’t offend my common sense by pretending that they are public.
are policies and court decisions across the country that say charter schools are, if not private, not quite public.
But that doesn’t matter because Petr has a tautology.
No. I believe, and have said as much (repeatedly) that charters CAN succeed if the teachers unions joins them (“becomes more invested…”). But I also say that the only way for you, if you think they are bad, to change, or indeed to abolish them, them is to A) call them what they are and B) use the moral highground that comes inherent to that position to affect that change.
I’m perfectly content to let charters flail or flourish on their merits: I’m not wedded to their success and never once did I say that charter schools being public schools automatically ensure their success. In fact, if they are as bad as you say, they’ll probably fail. Experiment over. However, there is no way to measure their success or failure without being public because the words “public school” means sunlight. All else is gray and shadowy area where slime and mold grows.
You don’t like that charters are not subject to local school committees…? Guess what, instead of simply saying their not, if you say that they are public schools every like-minded parent and public-school co-religionist will also have to wonder why they are not subject to school committee oversight and you are that much closer to victory. Me, I personally am fine with a state approved charter in place of school committee oversight… it’s a difference in process and not in kind, as I see it. (And, BTW, school committee’s aren’t guarantors of good oversight: most of them are unpaid positions and judicial rulings have made their proceedings reccomendations only: in my town, Leominster, in the 90’s the school committee took the mayor to court because the mayor refused to submit their school budget to the city and instead submitted a drastically reduced school budget he had drafted himself. They lost the court case and they lost the appeal.)
The only way to change the structure of charter schools is to thoroughly embrace the notion that charter schools are public schools and then stand up and say whether or not this is the kind of public school you want. I think you’ll be surprised to find a large majority of people supporting you in this. However, If you persist in saying that they are not charter schools then whomever it is who wants them to succeed can turn around and tell you to fuck off and you’ll have nothing to say in return because you’ve already conceded their right to do whatever they want.
that your background would bring authority to your argument or not. I just do not get where you’re coming from at all. Neither are several other people who participated on this thread. That doesn’t mean you’re wrong, but I’ve been unable to make sense out of what you’re saying, and you conveniently avoid refutations of your argument.
For example, you quote:
The fact is that public schools don’t work together either. As I said, schools within the same district rarely work together. So how would charters and public schools work together?
As policy, charters were intended to compete with public schools. The opinions of public school teachers vary on charters. As the many BPS people on here are demonstrating, charters present a lot of issues for inner city schools. In Massachusetts, we do a better job, but you can see the kind of problems they present in Chicago, New Orleans, and New Jersey.
Keep your government hands off my Medicare Advantage.
If you think charter schools are a scam, you should say that outright, and it should make no difference, if they are a scam, whether they be public or private. But if they are a scam then they pose no more of an existential threat to traditional public school teachers unions than does Medicare Advantage to doctors. So, your argument continues to collapse.
Your notion of government and seniors being further wedged by third parties (insurers) only makes my point for me as I’m willing to wager a great deal of money that, if the great and powerful dictator Fenway the 49th, had complete discretion over medicare now you’d probably, as would i, cut out the third party (insurers) altogether.
The analogy would work if (1) Medicare Advantage diverted scarce dollars to private companies (which it does) and (2) it forbade those dollars from going to any doctor who accepted traditional Medicare.
In any event, I see the Medicare Advantage thing playing out like this:
1. Create inefficient program lining coffers of private insurance companies.
2. Thereby increase cost of Medicare.
3. Thereby increase budget deficit and national debt.
4. Rail against budget deficit and national debt for entire Obama presidency.
5. Rail against Obamacare reduction of Medicare Advantage and win House in 2010.
6. Use budget deficit and national debt to create momentum to reduce or eliminate traditional Medicare. Raise the age, vouchers, whatever floats your boat.
7. See coffers private insurance companies (aka campaign contributors) further lined by people no longer receiving Medicare.
No harm?
Not in Massachusetts. If I thought you were being deliberate in your use of misinformation I’d not even bother replying to you, so consider my scorn a result of disappointment.
The law says differently
Just to clarify: Massachusetts law allows charter schools to contract out their management to for-profit EMOs like SABIS®, which operates schools in Springfield and Holyoke, was granted a charter in Lowell and has applied repeatedly to open a charter in Brockton. In addition to hefty management and licensing fees, SABIS® also has a sweet deal that enables the company to hold onto annual surpluses, something that traditional charters cannot do. In Springfield, for example, one of the poorest cities in the Commonwealth, SABIS® has collected surpluses as high as $1 million in a single year.
there are all sorts of charters for profit. Thanks for the info on SABIS, I thought they were using their EMO as a loophole.
(Petr seems to be in need of someone to look at while he shadowboxes. I’m it).
The distinction between nonprofit and for-profit EMOs is increasingly murky in Massachusetts as both collect substantial management fees. I was shocked to learn how much money SABIS® was holding onto in Springfield so requested a copy of their arrangement with the City. Nice work if you can get it! Btw: the Pioneer Institute has mad luv for SABIS® and actively promotes the expansion of the for-profit charter sector. If Massachusetts law prohibit for-profit charters Pioneer hasn’t gotten the memo.
the Gulen schools. One of my good friends is Turkish American from the European side of Istanbul, a liberal here and Turkey, and like much of Turkey, he’s very suspicious of Gulen and the movement. The guy’s sketchy. Aside from getting a slew of Turks in to work for slave wages in their charters, I haven’t seen anything overly damning.
Can’t undo a silly mistake…Keep at it, Mark, your posts are right on point! Thank you for fighting the fight.
There is a lot of misinformation out there about how and whether charters get appropriately reimbursed for incoming students. Conversely, there is a real question as to whether it is fair for the so-called sending public school district to be the sole source of those funds. Let me answer the latter question only.
The assumption is that if you have students who leave the public schools and go to charter schools, the sending district has fewer students and ought to have proportionately fewer financial needs. So, if you have three students, and lose one, then your costs to education the two remaining students is 1/3 less than it had been. In the abstract this works, and it is on this foundation that the formula is predicated. But some costs do not proportionately decrease when student numbers drop, so as an example, you still have to heat the classroom even if only 31 of 32 students remain. And this is a real problem, inasmuch as most educational costs are not necessarily proportional. Long story short, if we take the position that decreased student enrollment leads to decreased costs, then we are correct—but the drop is not proportional, and to reimburse charters on a pro-rata basis may therefore be good for charters, but not so kind to the sending school district.
But there is more to this equation, which works—even with the limitations cited—only if all the students who arrive at charters come from the public school district. This is not what happens in the real world.
An estimated slim majority of students entering charter schools come not from a sending school district BUT from non-public placements housed in the city. Here’s where the reimbursement formula falls on its head. Why should the sending district lose funds for a student who has gone straight from a private or parochial school to a charter? That’s what happens. Sure, someone has to give the charters tuition—after all, that is the law—but not necessarily the home school district, which may never have housed the child.
Given both of the above flaws in the reimbursement process, it ought to be clear that sending districts, whether they are truly ‘sending’ or not, ought not to be solely financially responsible for students who attend charters in their district. Let’s fix these flaws to better help our truly public schools.
There is another reimbursement angle that people tend to ignore.
Each child has a virtual cost to educate. It’s not possible to calculate it, but I think that people would tend to agree that there are children who are easy to educate and there are others who are harder to educate.
Public school funding is based on the average. Let’s say you have 4 teachers who can educate 40 students effectively. Common sense says that if you take away 30 students, the other 10 could be educated equally as well by just 1 teacher, right?
That is wrong because it presumes that those 40 teachers spent their effort proportionally across all students. That isn’t reality. Some students need little guidance, others need more.
If your classroom is left with the 10 students who need the most guidance, then one teacher will not be enough. Maybe you need 2 teachers for those 10 students.
That is the magic of the charter school. They get paid on the average but they have expenses that are lower than the average. This leaves the original district with a huge problem.
This is a classic market strategy – economic cherry-picking. It’s like someone saying “lobster is $20/lb, I’d like to buy that lobster, but I only want the tail and the claws at $20/lb”. No merchant would allow that. We should not allow that practice with our public dollars either.
The fact that there is demand for charter schools signals an imbalance in how student funding is even calculated.
Not much to add to the critique of charters here. As a retired teacher I can honestly say that there hasn’t been a stitch of effort to share their pedagogical discoveries (relentless test prep?) with anyone. Nor has the state provided any mechanism by which this can be done. That’s because that was just a bogus rationale to facilitate the charter-i-zation of education. Laboratories of Innovation my rear. Not that I feel a great loss. But the really infuriating thing (well, there are so many infuriating things) was totally the total ignoring of public schools that worked well and had a history of innovation. I mean, isn’t that where you would start with any reform effort? That is, checking out the public schools that seemed to be successful? Guess not. That would have thrown a speed bump in front of the charter juggernaut. It was so necessary to make it appear all public schools were “failing”. I do fault the BTU for obstructing the creation of pilot schools. That was very shortsighted. That took an important idea out of the public school reform quiver. We are rightly against a lot of things that we know undercuts meaningful education reform. But wouldn’t it be nice to also be for something? Something like an idea that predated charters, an idea we know can work well for students and teachers. Can’t really support the BTU on that one. Come on folks, schools are being closed all around us. They may lift the charter cap. Time to stop fighting over who has a right to the deck chairs on the Titanic? How about fighting for the deck chairs, while we also chart a new course.
The best way to show the general public that charters are bad is to expose the general public to their effect.
Just allow a charter school to be opened in Weston or Waltham.
Surely a charter school can educate a child from Weston or Waltham for less than $20k per year?
Won’t the taxpayers of Weston LOVE to see the money leaving their school system and going to a pseudo-public school over which they have ZERO CONTROL?
Now do that in every community in the state rather than the ones where the people tend not to vote regularly.
Maybe a legal challenge could be mounted to the restriction because charters are being forced on communities that are primarily poor, primarily minority. Seems like a ripe opportunity for a challenge.
What you might not be aware of is the Boston Public Schools (BPS) “Office of Strategic Planning” historically set-up traditional BPS school populations inequitably so that they would fail. A school with a high Special Ed population and a high ELL population would not pass MCAS. These “under-performing schools” would qualify Boston Public for more Federal, State, and foundation Grants. The BPS would move failing programs around the city, and schools would take turns housing them. This money didn’t go to the failing schools directly, but was “absorbed” by BPS and “filtered” out to all schools. Even now, this is the case with many of the BPS closed and turnaround schools, just look at the data on the Department of Education site.
For example, the Emerson School community disproved the BPS District student data, and was still closed, only to open the following September as an “in-district” Horace Mann Charter School by John Barros, a Boston School Committee Member! Then a short time later, that same BPS School Committee member Barros, as part of his non-profit Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI), submitted an application, which was approved by the state to open a Horace Mann Charter School in the Emerson Building! It appears that the DSNI received a “Promise Neighborhoods Planning Grant” for $500,000, which Barros applied for on October 25, 2010! What a conflict of interest, and what a slap in the face to the Parents and Teachers of the Emerson School Community! Emerson teachers were demonized and sent to the excess pool, and where did many of the Emerson students land after closing? The forever spinning and now “up and coming” Orchard Gardens Pilot School…it’s a miracle turnaround!
I don’t see how you can fault the Boston Teacher’s Union (BTU) for obstructing the creation of pilot schools. There are 21 Pilot schools in Boston Public “portfolio of schools” including the Boston Teachers Union School K-8, which is run by BTU teachers. Now, it is hard to think of teachers in pilot schools having a “voice” when the principal at that school can decide year-to-year whether that teacher is the “right fit” for the school. Many pilot school teachers are returned to traditional Boston Public Schools because they cost too much, so much for their contribution to the schools “innovation!” You have to remember that principals at pilot schools, like charter schools, have “budget autonomy!”
As a former teacher in a Boston “co-pilot” school, I think the BTU has bent over backwards to accommodate the school districts pilot school network vendor Center for Collaborative Education (CCE). CCE receives a sizable chunk of change for “supporting” the Boston pilot schools. It has gotten to the point that, in addition to getting paid by the BPS, CCE has written and received grants, in their organizations name, not the schools or districts, to “service” us! WOW! The school doesn’t have the “autonomy” to decide to change vendor’s midstream! Talk about double dipping, pilot schools are tethered to grants and held hostage by an ed vendor who is promoting school autonomy! You would think after 19 years of CCE “targeted support” you would think, in this economy, that the pilot schools could support themselves and use that money to retain a long-term stable staff who are in direct service to the children! How many other ed vendors out there are vigorously writing grants, in their own names, to service our public schools?