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I see private schools with the same disdain as I see bottled water. People drinking bottled water and refusing to drink tap water is our failure whether it be a

I see private schools with the same disdain as I see bottled water. People drinking bottled water and refusing to drink tap water is our failure whether it be actual investment in water infrastructure or in "optics" of our water infrastructure. People sending their kids to privately managed schools is a failure of our public schools or the "optics" of our public schools. I remember that I just said the other day that we can train and retrain law enforcement all day long but we won't see any meaningful improvement without enforcement with "teeth" and that unions are actively hurting their members if not because of what they do then because of the "optics" of what they do. I think the same applies for teachers' unions as well. We talked about the case of interns being fired en masse a little while ago and some of not many people in that discussion agreed that it didn't look good that the interns were riled up over something (dress code) that didn't help the business much. When teachers bring up the issue of low pay, I can't help but feel a lot of parents and voters see it as selfish in the same way. "The teachers should not spend so much time thinking about their own pay but rather about the students and what they can do to help students." > I think the NAACPs primary agenda here is that they feel Charter schools create a policy "out" for the history of being unwilling to take the steps necessary to make public schools work (and union reform is high on that list). Absolutely! I kind of want to go back to the topic of tap water versus bottled water. The people who can't afford to buy bottled water are unlikely to have much of a voice in local government to have their issue fixed. The parents who can't get their kids in chartered schools or who don't care enough to get their kids in chartered schools are unlikely to have much of a voice in local government to make public education better either. Now that I think about it, it sounds just like segregation. The only difference is that instead of an official policy, it is a little more latent.

rayiner 10y ago
Charter schools are public schools, just managed by private organizations. And it's not a situation where only rich people can get their kids into charter schools. For example, in D.C. the public schools in rich white neighborhoods (Georgetown, Capitol Hill) are district-run. Charter public schools are concentrated neighborhoods with mostly minority populations. Nationally, Charters often have comparable proportions (and in some cases, a larger proportion) of students from disadvantaged groups: http://www.publiccharters.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/NAPCS-2010-2011-Race_Ethnicity-Details-from-the-Dashboard_20120516T152831.pdf http://www.publiccharters.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/NAP....
- krisdol 10y ago
  Charter schools can dismiss students without due process, can kick out or deny students with low grades, and are usually not obligated to provide special education services. They are not public schools. They are corporate-run political organizations that prop up dozens of these PACs pushing an pro-charter agenda. https://cloakinginequity.com/2016/08/01/breaking-news-aclu-finds-many-illegal-policies-in-charter-schools/ https://cloakinginequity.com/2016/08/01/breaking-news-aclu-f...
  - rayiner 10y ago
    > Charter schools can dismiss students without due process, can kick out or deny students with low grades Those are good things. These kids almost always have serious impulse control problems, and it's better for both those kids and for everyone else to have education tailored to those kids' needs. Teachers should be teachers--they shouldn't have to do double-duty as behavioral therapists. > and are usually not obligated to provide special education services. That's just false. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act's (IDEA) requirement to provide education appropriate to individuals with disabilities applies to charter schools: https://www2.ed.gov/offices/OCR/archives/charterqa/chardisab.html https://www2.ed.gov/offices/OCR/archives/charterqa/chardisab.... > corporate-run Those aren't dirty words. Do you want your school run like an Apple Store, or like a DMV location?
    - ianamartin 10y ago
      Thank you for pointing out the falsehood. The charter school I work for puts a special emphasis on SpEd. I don't know if we are required to, but we do. And we are pretty damn good at it.
    - tptacek 10y ago
      We can debate whether they're good things or not, but they clearly confound comparisons with non-charter schools, which do not get to apply those kinds of selection powers to improve their published outcomes.
3speech 10y ago
What if the tap water was poisonous, or perhaps more realistically—the government was in habit of adding mind controlling substances to it? Your analogy just doesn't work if you don't allow for any actual (not optic) deficiency in tap water. And if you do, it actually works against your point. From the perspective of liberty and freedom giving government a monopoly on education (a powerful propaganda device) seems like a terrible idea. It already has monopoly on violence. Every social justice initiative nowadays seems to involve sacrificing liberty in some way. That's why Trump's doing so well.
prostoalex 10y ago
From the parent's point of view their interaction with the school system is very transactional - they have a limited number of years to interact with any given school (elementary, middle, high) and they would like the best experience for their child. Changing the school system in its entirety requires a mainly lifelong commitment and mainly suits activist organizations, such as NAACP, who has time for these multi-decade battles. Think about other limited-time transactions, such as car ownership. Yes, one can spend countless years petitioning Dodge and Kia to improve its quality standards, or just buy a Toyota and call it a day. I agree with you on water, as it's not a limited-time engagement, and therefore the attitude people have towards it is not transactional.
35bge57dtjku 10y ago
> I see private schools with the same disdain as I see bottled water. People drinking bottled water and refusing to drink tap water is our failure whether it be actual investment in water infrastructure or in "optics" of our water infrastructure. People sending their kids to privately managed schools is a failure of our public schools or the "optics" of our public schools. What do we since people haven't managed to fix public schools yet? Just outlaw the bottled water?

rayiner 10y ago

Charter schools are public schools, just managed by private organizations. And it's not a situation where only rich people can get their kids into charter schools. For example, in D.C. the public schools in rich white neighborhoods (Georgetown, Capitol Hill) are district-run. Charter public schools are concentrated neighborhoods with mostly minority populations. Nationally, Charters often have comparable proportions (and in some cases, a larger proportion) of students from disadvantaged groups: http://www.publiccharters.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/NAPCS-2010-2011-Race_Ethnicity-Details-from-the-Dashboard_20120516T152831.pdf http://www.publiccharters.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/NAP....

krisdol 10y ago
Charter schools can dismiss students without due process, can kick out or deny students with low grades, and are usually not obligated to provide special education services. They are not public schools. They are corporate-run political organizations that prop up dozens of these PACs pushing an pro-charter agenda. https://cloakinginequity.com/2016/08/01/breaking-news-aclu-finds-many-illegal-policies-in-charter-schools/ https://cloakinginequity.com/2016/08/01/breaking-news-aclu-f...
- rayiner 10y ago
  > Charter schools can dismiss students without due process, can kick out or deny students with low grades Those are good things. These kids almost always have serious impulse control problems, and it's better for both those kids and for everyone else to have education tailored to those kids' needs. Teachers should be teachers--they shouldn't have to do double-duty as behavioral therapists. > and are usually not obligated to provide special education services. That's just false. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act's (IDEA) requirement to provide education appropriate to individuals with disabilities applies to charter schools: https://www2.ed.gov/offices/OCR/archives/charterqa/chardisab.html https://www2.ed.gov/offices/OCR/archives/charterqa/chardisab.... > corporate-run Those aren't dirty words. Do you want your school run like an Apple Store, or like a DMV location?
  - ianamartin 10y ago
    Thank you for pointing out the falsehood. The charter school I work for puts a special emphasis on SpEd. I don't know if we are required to, but we do. And we are pretty damn good at it.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    We can debate whether they're good things or not, but they clearly confound comparisons with non-charter schools, which do not get to apply those kinds of selection powers to improve their published outcomes.

3speech 10y ago

What if the tap water was poisonous, or perhaps more realistically—the government was in habit of adding mind controlling substances to it? Your analogy just doesn't work if you don't allow for any actual (not optic) deficiency in tap water. And if you do, it actually works against your point. From the perspective of liberty and freedom giving government a monopoly on education (a powerful propaganda device) seems like a terrible idea. It already has monopoly on violence. Every social justice initiative nowadays seems to involve sacrificing liberty in some way. That's why Trump's doing so well.

prostoalex 10y ago

From the parent's point of view their interaction with the school system is very transactional - they have a limited number of years to interact with any given school (elementary, middle, high) and they would like the best experience for their child. Changing the school system in its entirety requires a mainly lifelong commitment and mainly suits activist organizations, such as NAACP, who has time for these multi-decade battles. Think about other limited-time transactions, such as car ownership. Yes, one can spend countless years petitioning Dodge and Kia to improve its quality standards, or just buy a Toyota and call it a day. I agree with you on water, as it's not a limited-time engagement, and therefore the attitude people have towards it is not transactional.

35bge57dtjku 10y ago

> I see private schools with the same disdain as I see bottled water. People drinking bottled water and refusing to drink tap water is our failure whether it be actual investment in water infrastructure or in "optics" of our water infrastructure. People sending their kids to privately managed schools is a failure of our public schools or the "optics" of our public schools. What do we since people haven't managed to fix public schools yet? Just outlaw the bottled water?