4 ms·

I feel like you are presenting a fake contrast. When I was in public schools, there was a lot of differentiation in education, and students definitely weren't

by dalke 11y ago

I feel like you are presenting a fake contrast. When I was in public schools, there was a lot of differentiation in education, and students definitely weren't taught all the same, including different levels (eg, AP vs. non AP history), different tracks (eg, extra courses for those interested in practical arts, or interested in programming, for a career), and special support for students with more specific needs, including in my case speech therapy. Nor do I get the sense that my school system was special in that regard. "getting a school to run properly is hard in todays environment" When was it ever easy to run properly?

ThomPete 11y ago
No fake contrast. I am responding to the OP who seem to want charter schools to go away based on a claim that they are somehow bad. Success Academy was started because the public school system failed to educate kids in Harlem. The philosophy have since then been copied at other schools with success my son is in Williamsburg. This isn't only about the curriculum but about the very approach to teaching the kids AND the parents involvement in their kids education. The difference between today and back then I feel is best illustrated by this http://i.imgur.com/LglSapk.jpg http://i.imgur.com/LglSapk.jpg Success Academy fights this with tooth and nail but in return require quite a lot from their teachers. It's not a perfect system but I prefer it compared to the public school he first went to exactly because its focus on getting parents back on the side of the teacher and their goal and method for getting the kids to love learning.
- dalke 11y ago
  Which OP is that? You responded to comments from two accounts, which said: galby: "there are some truly awful charters out there" exelius: "To be fair, not all charter schools are for-profit, and there are good charter schools and bad ones. But the entire system stinks; it cuts funding to struggling districts, leaving them in a perpetual budget crisis." Neither say charter schools are categorically bad. Exelius's point is that the funding system to support charter schools is what stinks. Your illustration has no historical basis. You are viewing history through rose-colored glasses. I'll demonstrate with a classic, the 1955 book "Why Johnny Can't Read: And What You Can Do about It". This placed the blame on teachers and the school pedagogy for poor childhood literacy rates, not the students. Parents reacted to that by pushing for policy changes. That book reverberated for decades. At https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=qtZQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ORMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=2065%2C1980872 https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=qtZQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ORME... you can see: > Since then, other arguments [besides teachers 'simply using the wrong techniques'] have cropped up. Those who sympathize with teachers blame overly-defensive administrations and boards of education. Still others say parents are responsible for having abdicated social duties to the schools, transforming them from educational institutions into huge day care centers. Sound like a familiar discussion? Here's an example of a letter to the editor from 1976, https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=VdYeAAAAIBAJ&sjid=nVYEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6890%2C3120348 https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=VdYeAAAAIBAJ&sjid=nVYE... , where a teacher places the blame on school boards for not letting the teachers apply real discipline to the "hoodlums" who get to pass because of "social promotions." This teacher doesn't think the students are getting any discipline from their parents over poor grades. This Ann Landers humor piece from 1984 reflects the idea that the students are doing poorly because the parents don't care; both parent and child veg in front of the TV: https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=zbUfAAAAIBAJ&sjid=htcEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5781%2C297333 https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=zbUfAAAAIBAJ&sjid=htcE... My comment here is surely no strong proof, only suggestive that you may need to research the history which brought us movies like "Blackboard Jungle".
  - ThomPete 11y ago
    Exelius claim was that charter schools in general are bad but there are exceptions. He wasn't just attacking the funding system. Read his post again. You are ignoring his actual critique of the charter system. Galby and I agree, again I would urge you to actually read the exchange rather than cherry picking what you think they basically said. With regards to the past. No one is glorifying anything. But if you want to launch an attack on charter schools and claiming that budgets and teacher salaries are the reason why public schools are doing bad and that charter schools are stealing things then you aren't being true to the discussion. The reason why charter schools work when they work is that they are putting a lot of the effort onto the parents. That bad schools existed before is no secret but it's now almost the rule more than the exception in the public school system. All I can see is that a Charter School like SA changed things for the better in very socially challenged areas while still functioning by the budgetary constraints as a normal public school and that by it's lottery actually is a much more fair way than ex. the zoned principles in NY.
    - dalke 11y ago
      Exelius made three critiques. All are valid concerns, from what I can tell from various sources. 1) As far as I know, only one school principal has broken the $500k+ barrier, and that is a charter school principal from a failed school in Florida. I do not believe this specific detail was that convincing. On the topic of graft, this is hard to pin down but it's not insignificant. See http://neatoday.org/2015/06/04/can-charter-schools-be-rescued-from-the-charter-industry/ http://neatoday.org/2015/06/04/can-charter-schools-be-rescue... for one commentary: > Some charter advocates may dismiss reports of malfeasance as the shenanigans of a few bad actors, but the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) exposed the massive scale of the sector’s shoddy practices in a series of startling reports. In April, CPD revealed at least $200 million in 15 states had been squandered or misused through various activities – everything from the use of taxpayer funds to support other businesses to outright embezzlement. That total is probably higher, but, according to the report, it’s difficult to pinpont “because the federal government, the states, and local charter authorizers lack the oversight necessary to detect the fraud.” If the books are private, it's hard to really tell if there's graft, no? At least with public schools it's easier to see where the money goes. Charter school supporters should push for more transparency, as this veil of corporate secrecy makes a great target. 2) "Funding often comes directly from the local school district, most of which are already severely cash-strapped." There's no question that this is true for many districts. For example, in Pennsylvania, the local public school system must reimburse charter schools based on their own per capita costs per student. Students on the autism spectrum are more expensive to teach, as are students who are emotionally disturbed. At Chester Uplands those students make up 8.4% and 13.6% of the student population, respectively. At one local charter school, those are 2.1% and 2.8% respectively, while at two other charter schools, those are 0%. As a result, the school district sends more money to the local charter schools than it gets from the state, and may soon be bankrupt. See http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2015/08/pa-charter-vampires-on-loose.html http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2015/08/pa-charter-vampir... for a summary. In Ohio, according to this report http://innovationohio.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Unfair-Funding-IO-charter-schools-report-1.pdf http://innovationohio.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Unfair-... , "Because of the $774 million deducted from traditional public schools in FY 2012 to fund charters, children in traditional public schools received, on average, $235 (or 6.5%) less state aid than the state itself said they needed." I therefore think this is valid critique by exelius about how charters are funded, independent of the quality of the education provided. 3) "Educational standards are different" Isn't that also true? https://www.the74million.org/article/whitmire-5-ways-to-stop-bad-charters-from-derailing-education-reform https://www.the74million.org/article/whitmire-5-ways-to-stop... comments, in defense of good charter schools, that opponents to charter schools have some valid arguments. One is: > Identify the low bar, and enforce it. > This is another lesson from California, which leads the nation in actively trying to boost charter quality. There is no agreement on what makes a great charter; depending on the student population being served, that will vary greatly. But there should be an agreement on the low end of the bar. So set that bar, and enforce it. > That low bar has to be precise about what constitutes academic achievement. If charters have a lower bar than public schools, then there's inventive to teach to that lower bar, which lowers cost for a charter school, and leads to profit for the charter owner rather than savings for the taxpayer. I believe this a valid critique, though I do not know the evidence. 3b) "Also, most states offer some sort of funding incentive based on test scores -- which just encourages schools to play the numbers game by finding reasons to suspend/expel struggling students, encourage cheating on tests, etc." There are any number of sources which say that the charter schools cherry pick students. There are any number of those which say the opposite. You can dismiss it the claim, but all evidence is that it's part of a valid critique of the charter system, and intimately tied with the funding question. You commented: "and that charter schools are stealing things" By stealing, do you mean violating the law? I liked this text from https://preaprez.wordpress.com/2013/02/15/in-chicago-98-million-in-charter-school-graft-is-like-picking-your-nose/ https://preaprez.wordpress.com/2013/02/15/in-chicago-98-mill... : > When the story broke last week that Juan Rangel’s United Neighborhood Organization funneled $98 million dollars in state grants to friends and relatives of higher ups in the organization, Patrick O’Connor, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s aldermanic floor leader said, “Nothing being reported means they’ve done anything illegal or improper. It might sound crude, but it’s kind of like picking your nose in public. It looks bad. It’s not classy. But it’s not illegal.” Or do you mean the metaphorical sense, like "stealing a child's future"?
vonmoltke 11y ago
In my district ~20 years ago "mainstreaming" and "well-rounded" were the buzzwords of the day. That meant, aside from a few honors and AP courses, everyone went through more-or-less the same path in high school. I had 28 classes over four years; 20 were proscribed by the general graduation requirements. There was little wiggle room for "tracks"; those boiled down to "Do I take four years of math and science or just three?" and "Do I take four years of foreign language or stop at two?".
- dalke 11y ago
  "Mainstreaming", which dates became a buzzword around 1980, refers to putting special needs in the same classes as other students. It does not generally mean that everyone was on the same track. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstreaming_%28education%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstreaming_%28education%29 For example, this 1995 article describes how a school for the blind was closing because of the mainstreaming of blind students. https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=_DRQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=pVUDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5274%2C8662108 https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=_DRQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=pVUD... . Here's a recent example of a teacher using the term 'mainstreaming', http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2015/10/pa-shutting-down-special-ed.html http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2015/10/pa-shutting-down-... , and doing so only in the context of special ed. Either your school district was using its own definition, or you misunderstood the context. "Well-rounded education" was a bigger buzzword in the 1940s and 1950s. See https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=well-rounded+education&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cwell%20-%20rounded%20education%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=well-rounded+e... . It's part of the American education system that students are required to take course in a diverse set of subjects. It doesn't require that everyone take the same classes. That clarification aside, and assuming I'm completely wrong, how does a charter system, which presumably has the same general graduation requirements, change things? Anything more about your circumstances requires understanding more about your district. Eg, was everyone in the same level of math, so that no one (or everyone) took calculus by the time they graduated? Were there only 25 students in the class? Did everyone take the same foreign language course? Wow! My school has changed. There's a "Drafting / Illustrative Design Technology" track, a "Fashion Design" track, which includes "Fashion Marketing Management", an "Arts, A/V Technology & Communications" cluster, and more http://www.coralgablescavaliers.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=202886&type=d&termREC_ID=&pREC_ID=403143 http://www.coralgablescavaliers.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uRE... .

by dalke 11y ago

ThomPete 11y ago

No fake contrast. I am responding to the OP who seem to want charter schools to go away based on a claim that they are somehow bad. Success Academy was started because the public school system failed to educate kids in Harlem. The philosophy have since then been copied at other schools with success my son is in Williamsburg. This isn't only about the curriculum but about the very approach to teaching the kids AND the parents involvement in their kids education. The difference between today and back then I feel is best illustrated by this http://i.imgur.com/LglSapk.jpg http://i.imgur.com/LglSapk.jpg Success Academy fights this with tooth and nail but in return require quite a lot from their teachers. It's not a perfect system but I prefer it compared to the public school he first went to exactly because its focus on getting parents back on the side of the teacher and their goal and method for getting the kids to love learning.

dalke 11y ago
Which OP is that? You responded to comments from two accounts, which said: galby: "there are some truly awful charters out there" exelius: "To be fair, not all charter schools are for-profit, and there are good charter schools and bad ones. But the entire system stinks; it cuts funding to struggling districts, leaving them in a perpetual budget crisis." Neither say charter schools are categorically bad. Exelius's point is that the funding system to support charter schools is what stinks. Your illustration has no historical basis. You are viewing history through rose-colored glasses. I'll demonstrate with a classic, the 1955 book "Why Johnny Can't Read: And What You Can Do about It". This placed the blame on teachers and the school pedagogy for poor childhood literacy rates, not the students. Parents reacted to that by pushing for policy changes. That book reverberated for decades. At https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=qtZQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ORMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=2065%2C1980872 https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=qtZQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ORME... you can see: > Since then, other arguments [besides teachers 'simply using the wrong techniques'] have cropped up. Those who sympathize with teachers blame overly-defensive administrations and boards of education. Still others say parents are responsible for having abdicated social duties to the schools, transforming them from educational institutions into huge day care centers. Sound like a familiar discussion? Here's an example of a letter to the editor from 1976, https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=VdYeAAAAIBAJ&sjid=nVYEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6890%2C3120348 https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=VdYeAAAAIBAJ&sjid=nVYE... , where a teacher places the blame on school boards for not letting the teachers apply real discipline to the "hoodlums" who get to pass because of "social promotions." This teacher doesn't think the students are getting any discipline from their parents over poor grades. This Ann Landers humor piece from 1984 reflects the idea that the students are doing poorly because the parents don't care; both parent and child veg in front of the TV: https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=zbUfAAAAIBAJ&sjid=htcEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5781%2C297333 https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=zbUfAAAAIBAJ&sjid=htcE... My comment here is surely no strong proof, only suggestive that you may need to research the history which brought us movies like "Blackboard Jungle".
- ThomPete 11y ago
  Exelius claim was that charter schools in general are bad but there are exceptions. He wasn't just attacking the funding system. Read his post again. You are ignoring his actual critique of the charter system. Galby and I agree, again I would urge you to actually read the exchange rather than cherry picking what you think they basically said. With regards to the past. No one is glorifying anything. But if you want to launch an attack on charter schools and claiming that budgets and teacher salaries are the reason why public schools are doing bad and that charter schools are stealing things then you aren't being true to the discussion. The reason why charter schools work when they work is that they are putting a lot of the effort onto the parents. That bad schools existed before is no secret but it's now almost the rule more than the exception in the public school system. All I can see is that a Charter School like SA changed things for the better in very socially challenged areas while still functioning by the budgetary constraints as a normal public school and that by it's lottery actually is a much more fair way than ex. the zoned principles in NY.
  - dalke 11y ago
    Exelius made three critiques. All are valid concerns, from what I can tell from various sources. 1) As far as I know, only one school principal has broken the $500k+ barrier, and that is a charter school principal from a failed school in Florida. I do not believe this specific detail was that convincing. On the topic of graft, this is hard to pin down but it's not insignificant. See http://neatoday.org/2015/06/04/can-charter-schools-be-rescued-from-the-charter-industry/ http://neatoday.org/2015/06/04/can-charter-schools-be-rescue... for one commentary: > Some charter advocates may dismiss reports of malfeasance as the shenanigans of a few bad actors, but the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) exposed the massive scale of the sector’s shoddy practices in a series of startling reports. In April, CPD revealed at least $200 million in 15 states had been squandered or misused through various activities – everything from the use of taxpayer funds to support other businesses to outright embezzlement. That total is probably higher, but, according to the report, it’s difficult to pinpont “because the federal government, the states, and local charter authorizers lack the oversight necessary to detect the fraud.” If the books are private, it's hard to really tell if there's graft, no? At least with public schools it's easier to see where the money goes. Charter school supporters should push for more transparency, as this veil of corporate secrecy makes a great target. 2) "Funding often comes directly from the local school district, most of which are already severely cash-strapped." There's no question that this is true for many districts. For example, in Pennsylvania, the local public school system must reimburse charter schools based on their own per capita costs per student. Students on the autism spectrum are more expensive to teach, as are students who are emotionally disturbed. At Chester Uplands those students make up 8.4% and 13.6% of the student population, respectively. At one local charter school, those are 2.1% and 2.8% respectively, while at two other charter schools, those are 0%. As a result, the school district sends more money to the local charter schools than it gets from the state, and may soon be bankrupt. See http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2015/08/pa-charter-vampires-on-loose.html http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2015/08/pa-charter-vampir... for a summary. In Ohio, according to this report http://innovationohio.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Unfair-Funding-IO-charter-schools-report-1.pdf http://innovationohio.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Unfair-... , "Because of the $774 million deducted from traditional public schools in FY 2012 to fund charters, children in traditional public schools received, on average, $235 (or 6.5%) less state aid than the state itself said they needed." I therefore think this is valid critique by exelius about how charters are funded, independent of the quality of the education provided. 3) "Educational standards are different" Isn't that also true? https://www.the74million.org/article/whitmire-5-ways-to-stop-bad-charters-from-derailing-education-reform https://www.the74million.org/article/whitmire-5-ways-to-stop... comments, in defense of good charter schools, that opponents to charter schools have some valid arguments. One is: > Identify the low bar, and enforce it. > This is another lesson from California, which leads the nation in actively trying to boost charter quality. There is no agreement on what makes a great charter; depending on the student population being served, that will vary greatly. But there should be an agreement on the low end of the bar. So set that bar, and enforce it. > That low bar has to be precise about what constitutes academic achievement. If charters have a lower bar than public schools, then there's inventive to teach to that lower bar, which lowers cost for a charter school, and leads to profit for the charter owner rather than savings for the taxpayer. I believe this a valid critique, though I do not know the evidence. 3b) "Also, most states offer some sort of funding incentive based on test scores -- which just encourages schools to play the numbers game by finding reasons to suspend/expel struggling students, encourage cheating on tests, etc." There are any number of sources which say that the charter schools cherry pick students. There are any number of those which say the opposite. You can dismiss it the claim, but all evidence is that it's part of a valid critique of the charter system, and intimately tied with the funding question. You commented: "and that charter schools are stealing things" By stealing, do you mean violating the law? I liked this text from https://preaprez.wordpress.com/2013/02/15/in-chicago-98-million-in-charter-school-graft-is-like-picking-your-nose/ https://preaprez.wordpress.com/2013/02/15/in-chicago-98-mill... : > When the story broke last week that Juan Rangel’s United Neighborhood Organization funneled $98 million dollars in state grants to friends and relatives of higher ups in the organization, Patrick O’Connor, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s aldermanic floor leader said, “Nothing being reported means they’ve done anything illegal or improper. It might sound crude, but it’s kind of like picking your nose in public. It looks bad. It’s not classy. But it’s not illegal.” Or do you mean the metaphorical sense, like "stealing a child's future"?

vonmoltke 11y ago

In my district ~20 years ago "mainstreaming" and "well-rounded" were the buzzwords of the day. That meant, aside from a few honors and AP courses, everyone went through more-or-less the same path in high school. I had 28 classes over four years; 20 were proscribed by the general graduation requirements. There was little wiggle room for "tracks"; those boiled down to "Do I take four years of math and science or just three?" and "Do I take four years of foreign language or stop at two?".

dalke 11y ago
"Mainstreaming", which dates became a buzzword around 1980, refers to putting special needs in the same classes as other students. It does not generally mean that everyone was on the same track. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstreaming_%28education%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstreaming_%28education%29 For example, this 1995 article describes how a school for the blind was closing because of the mainstreaming of blind students. https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=_DRQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=pVUDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5274%2C8662108 https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=_DRQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=pVUD... . Here's a recent example of a teacher using the term 'mainstreaming', http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2015/10/pa-shutting-down-special-ed.html http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2015/10/pa-shutting-down-... , and doing so only in the context of special ed. Either your school district was using its own definition, or you misunderstood the context. "Well-rounded education" was a bigger buzzword in the 1940s and 1950s. See https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=well-rounded+education&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cwell%20-%20rounded%20education%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=well-rounded+e... . It's part of the American education system that students are required to take course in a diverse set of subjects. It doesn't require that everyone take the same classes. That clarification aside, and assuming I'm completely wrong, how does a charter system, which presumably has the same general graduation requirements, change things? Anything more about your circumstances requires understanding more about your district. Eg, was everyone in the same level of math, so that no one (or everyone) took calculus by the time they graduated? Were there only 25 students in the class? Did everyone take the same foreign language course? Wow! My school has changed. There's a "Drafting / Illustrative Design Technology" track, a "Fashion Design" track, which includes "Fashion Marketing Management", an "Arts, A/V Technology & Communications" cluster, and more http://www.coralgablescavaliers.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=202886&type=d&termREC_ID=&pREC_ID=403143 http://www.coralgablescavaliers.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uRE... .