Charter schools its discontents

Charters don't work--it's that simple!

Charters and its discontents.

News item:

Rhode Island H.S dismisses all teachers and staff in an effort to turn-around a failing school.

The school in question, Central Falls H.S in Rhode Island, situated in a poor minority community with high student transfer rates, has a disappointing 48% rate of graduation.

In this regard it is no different from the rates of most urban high schools and even the rates of the four charter high schools in Boston. Remarkably, even though the Boston Charters get to select their own teachers and students, they do not best the public schools. Diane Ravitch, the leading scholar of the school reform movement and long a critic who argued for choice, charters, merit pay and accountability , no longer feels that way. “Charter schools, she concluded, were proving to be no better on average than regular schools, but in many cities were bleeding resources from the public system. Testing had become not just a way to measure student learning, but an end in itself. New York Times, (Scholar’s School Reform U-Turn Shakes Up Debate By Sam Dillon, Published: March 2, 2010). http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/education/03ravitch.html?scp=2&sq=diane%20ravitch&st=cse... See More

If charters, etc. don’t work their magic on impoverished communities, what might? There has long been a correlation between parents income and student achievement (See SAT scores). In this regard, A good jobs program, when everything else fails, might well prove to be the royal road to educational excellence.

“Disadvantaged children have been cemented into an underclass by third-rate schools” argues the New York Times' Nicholas Kristof in a recent op-ed entitled, “Democrats and Schools.” Teacher Unions and the impossible-to-get-rid-of-bad teachers are the villains and charter schools are the good guys. But let’s wait a minute before we clean out the Augean stables.

In a recent Boston Globe story, it was reported that half of Boston’s Charter school high school students fail to graduate, and, according the Kathleen McCartney, Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education , this is same as the public school rate for urban high schools . Moreover, we have the recent Stanford University study reporting that charter schools do not outperform public schools. This part is really odd, given that the charters cherry-pick their students and teachers. It seems that the "whiz kids" who teach in the charters are no better at their task than the "unionized dinosaurs" in the public schools.

Yet, charters have their fans as well as many parent advocates. Since it is not about academics, it must be about atmospherics. As parent-involvement is a must at the charters, a well-behaved student body will be evident (as any unruly are sent back to the public schools). With the charter movement, we seem to be on the road to a two-track public school system—raucous, underfunded publics and the well-mannered charters. And this just might be the beginning of the dismantling and privatizing of the public schools. And we will still be left with disadvantaged youths.

Schools--what is to be done?

What's up with the schools and no child left behind?

International education expert says US "Schools are inheriting an over entertained, distracted student." hmmn

A Senate panel learned that more students in more countries graduate from high school and college and score higher on achievement tests than students in the United States.

So that's it. US student's minds are not in the classroom (their minds are on hand-held devices) and are too damn twitchy. Just as I thought.

So what's the answer? One answer is to keep the politicians away from the schools. The other answer is to ask: "Do we need smart"? Probably not. Rich can always buy smart from anywhere in the world. Also, since we've left manufacturing behind, how smart do you have to be to sell sub-prime mortgages or credit default swaps? It's not a lack of smarties that are leading us to 2nd tierdom; it is the rich-ies who can't stop gorging themselves on the financial sector that is leading us there.

But what about charter schools, another gleam in the eye of the "we'd rather fiddle than watch Rome burn" crowd? Charters are no better on average than the public schools, report scholars at Stanford U. and Diane Ravitch.

So we're left with the public schools: love them or leave them. I say leave them alone--they're doing the best they can with what they've got to work with.