4 ms·

Isn't there likely a selection bias with the best students more likely to be in a charter school, thus making the school's performance metrics better than distr

by tux1968 10y ago

Isn't there likely a selection bias with the best students more likely to be in a charter school, thus making the school's performance metrics better than district schools?

erichocean 10y ago
Of course, but that's a feature, not a bug. People seem to believe that "the best" students will have identical achievement no matter who their surrounding students are. This is (at best) unproven and seems to defy common sense.
- tux1968 10y ago
  But the point is that if you sent all the under-performing students to the charter schools instead, in order to remove the burden they represent to the gifted students, we would then say.. look.. district schools are outperforming charter schools. Thus, the results don't show that charter schools have some secret sauce that is unavailable to district schools. What you're saying is, separate the winners from the losers and the winners will do better than they would otherwise. That's a defensible position perhaps, but it undermines any argument that privately managed schools are somehow inherently better than district schools.
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    At the very least, this line of thinking seems to imply that charter schools can pick the best students. It hasn't been demonstrated that public schools can do that. The intelligent teenager whose love for knowledge is crushed by authoritarian public school bullshit is a commonplace. Public schools are famously bad at picking (hiring, promoting, retaining) the best teachers as well.
    - tux1968 10y ago
      Yes, totally agree with you. It wasn't meant as a prescription but rather as a way to highlight what is actually the significant factor in the purported success of charter schools. And the original post made the point that a big factor in getting good teachers was a positive working environment for them that was engendered by having only motivated and behaved students.
    - Jill_the_Pill 10y ago
      Public schools have an obligation to educate all students, even the disruptive pains in the neck.
- tbihl 10y ago
  People seem to take these studies as entirely quantitative, but the basis for scoring is a test that almost certainly saturates before the upper levels of high school. I went to a magnet STEM school for half of every day in my last two years of high school. In my rural county, there was no way I was going to get good calculus and physics classes, let alone any programming, modern physics, or advanced math, without the pooling of resources among the several farm town high schools. It undoubtedly increased what my high school education could provide me. It also would not show up on any testing that would be measured in these studies. I could have watched Netflix instead of taking classes for all of my last two years of high school, and I still would have showed up the same from the perspective of this study: passed every standardized test. But people fall for these metrics time after time, and school rankings are based on them. My public high school was ranked in the bottom 10% because our pass rates are abysmal, which obviously stems from our huge number of impoverished broken families. The 85-90% AP test pass rate told a different story: show up every day ready to work, and they had some good teachers who would really work with you.

by tux1968 10y ago

Isn't there likely a selection bias with the best students more likely to be in a charter school, thus making the school's performance metrics better than district schools?

erichocean 10y ago

Of course, but that's a feature, not a bug. People seem to believe that "the best" students will have identical achievement no matter who their surrounding students are. This is (at best) unproven and seems to defy common sense.

tux1968 10y ago
But the point is that if you sent all the under-performing students to the charter schools instead, in order to remove the burden they represent to the gifted students, we would then say.. look.. district schools are outperforming charter schools. Thus, the results don't show that charter schools have some secret sauce that is unavailable to district schools. What you're saying is, separate the winners from the losers and the winners will do better than they would otherwise. That's a defensible position perhaps, but it undermines any argument that privately managed schools are somehow inherently better than district schools.
- jessaustin 10y ago
  At the very least, this line of thinking seems to imply that charter schools can pick the best students. It hasn't been demonstrated that public schools can do that. The intelligent teenager whose love for knowledge is crushed by authoritarian public school bullshit is a commonplace. Public schools are famously bad at picking (hiring, promoting, retaining) the best teachers as well.
  - tux1968 10y ago
    Yes, totally agree with you. It wasn't meant as a prescription but rather as a way to highlight what is actually the significant factor in the purported success of charter schools. And the original post made the point that a big factor in getting good teachers was a positive working environment for them that was engendered by having only motivated and behaved students.
  - Jill_the_Pill 10y ago
    Public schools have an obligation to educate all students, even the disruptive pains in the neck.
tbihl 10y ago
People seem to take these studies as entirely quantitative, but the basis for scoring is a test that almost certainly saturates before the upper levels of high school. I went to a magnet STEM school for half of every day in my last two years of high school. In my rural county, there was no way I was going to get good calculus and physics classes, let alone any programming, modern physics, or advanced math, without the pooling of resources among the several farm town high schools. It undoubtedly increased what my high school education could provide me. It also would not show up on any testing that would be measured in these studies. I could have watched Netflix instead of taking classes for all of my last two years of high school, and I still would have showed up the same from the perspective of this study: passed every standardized test. But people fall for these metrics time after time, and school rankings are based on them. My public high school was ranked in the bottom 10% because our pass rates are abysmal, which obviously stems from our huge number of impoverished broken families. The 85-90% AP test pass rate told a different story: show up every day ready to work, and they had some good teachers who would really work with you.