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That's an awfully cynical view of it. An alternate narrative is that public school bureaucracies, perverse incentives for teachers unions, and political meddli

That's an awfully cynical view of it. An alternate narrative is that public school bureaucracies, perverse incentives for teachers unions, and political meddling from government created a system that was failing to offer students a good education. Mix that in with a very American belief in the power of free choice and free markets, as well as a belief that ability to pay should be no barrier to an education, and charter schools are the solution that has emerged. I think there's problems with that narrative too. The impact that good teachers can have on kids from very troubled homes is probably overstated, and teachers unions have often been fighting against performance rating systems that unfairly ignore that. But in defense of charters, a performance rating system that doesn't work won't survive very long in the private sector. Edit: Perhaps a better question, that avoids the nasty politics of the current situation, is: what does the ideal system look like? My inclination is that it would look more like charter schools than like public schools.

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jacobolus 11y ago
The ideal system probably looks a lot like Finland, where teaching is a selective high-status profession with good pay, benefits, professional development, and autonomy; schools are competently managed; students are treated as people instead of numbers in a spreadsheet; and everyone in every wealth bucket receives a solid education. The precise policy details might not apply in extremely different societies/political systems, but the high-level goals should be the same: Highly qualified professional teachers with good career prospects and lots of personal responsibility and a culture of continuous professional development, adequate school infrastructure and materials, focus on the individual needs of diverse children, resource equality for students regardless of wealth or social class, work to solve child poverty and other severe social problems that prevent any education system from functioning.
- dnautics 11y ago
  And in finland there is school choice, which means that the money follows the student. If no students choose to go to school X, the school gets shut down. This is quite similar to what the charters in the US represent.
  - jacobolus 11y ago
    Actually not at all similar to US charter schools. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/ http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-ame...
    - dnautics 11y ago
      These aspects from the article sound like US charter schools. "...teachers are trained to assess children in classrooms using independent tests they create themselves. " "All children receive a report card at the end of each semester, but these reports are based on individualized grading by each teacher." "If a teacher is bad, it is the principal's responsibility to notice and deal with it." "In Finland parents can also choose." But it may be that the finnish model is slipping anyway: http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2013/06/is-finland-a-choice-less-education-miracle/ http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2013/06/is-finland-a-choice-les... "Finnish eighth-graders today perform slightly lower than seventh-graders did in 1999." I give them two decades.
      - jacobolus 11y ago
        > These aspects from the article sound like US charter schools. Some charter schools. A minority. Others are run like tiny military academies, or have gone all-in on high-stakes testing, or profit by relying on low-paid short-term teachers with high turnover, or are mainly financial schemes/scams with schools attached (cf. the alternet link a few posts upthread). All of the bits you listed actually sound precisely like my southern California suburban public elementary school experience in the mid–late 1990s. Unfortunately the school got constant pushback from the school district and state for not being excited enough about letter grades or standardized tests, but was able to mostly persist its culture through support from local parents.

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jacobolus 11y ago

The ideal system probably looks a lot like Finland, where teaching is a selective high-status profession with good pay, benefits, professional development, and autonomy; schools are competently managed; students are treated as people instead of numbers in a spreadsheet; and everyone in every wealth bucket receives a solid education. The precise policy details might not apply in extremely different societies/political systems, but the high-level goals should be the same: Highly qualified professional teachers with good career prospects and lots of personal responsibility and a culture of continuous professional development, adequate school infrastructure and materials, focus on the individual needs of diverse children, resource equality for students regardless of wealth or social class, work to solve child poverty and other severe social problems that prevent any education system from functioning.

dnautics 11y ago
And in finland there is school choice, which means that the money follows the student. If no students choose to go to school X, the school gets shut down. This is quite similar to what the charters in the US represent.
- jacobolus 11y ago
  Actually not at all similar to US charter schools. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/ http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-ame...
  - dnautics 11y ago
    These aspects from the article sound like US charter schools. "...teachers are trained to assess children in classrooms using independent tests they create themselves. " "All children receive a report card at the end of each semester, but these reports are based on individualized grading by each teacher." "If a teacher is bad, it is the principal's responsibility to notice and deal with it." "In Finland parents can also choose." But it may be that the finnish model is slipping anyway: http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2013/06/is-finland-a-choice-less-education-miracle/ http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2013/06/is-finland-a-choice-les... "Finnish eighth-graders today perform slightly lower than seventh-graders did in 1999." I give them two decades.
    - jacobolus 11y ago
      > These aspects from the article sound like US charter schools. Some charter schools. A minority. Others are run like tiny military academies, or have gone all-in on high-stakes testing, or profit by relying on low-paid short-term teachers with high turnover, or are mainly financial schemes/scams with schools attached (cf. the alternet link a few posts upthread). All of the bits you listed actually sound precisely like my southern California suburban public elementary school experience in the mid–late 1990s. Unfortunately the school got constant pushback from the school district and state for not being excited enough about letter grades or standardized tests, but was able to mostly persist its culture through support from local parents.