4 ms·

You can start with supporting charter schools. They're public schools that are allowed to push out of typical restrictions and teach children in new ways. Overa

by beaner 6y ago

You can start with supporting charter schools. They're public schools that are allowed to push out of typical restrictions and teach children in new ways. Overall, they're an excellent investment and the data shows that they work. They face many strong and sad political challenges. There's a recent book called Charter Schools and their Enemies that is a good read about the story of them.

aaronbrethorst 6y ago
The author of the book you mention is a fan of the current, utterly disastrous Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. That's an instant write-off to me.
- DuskStar 6y ago
  Maybe it should be a prompt to look at DeVos with a fresh mind, instead? I've heard very little about her actual actions or policies beyond revoking the "Dear Colleague" letter.
  - aaronbrethorst 6y ago
    Nah, pass. Before joining the Trump administration, [DeVos]...had a strong hand in the spread of for-profit charter schools in her home state of Michigan, which saw a dramatic drop in average school performances after her pet policies were enacted. As secretary of education, she's consistently sidelined student civil rights and worked to make debt relief harder than ever. https://www.gq.com/story/betsy-devos-is-the-worst https://www.gq.com/story/betsy-devos-is-the-worst Even Trump overruled her on plans to gut the Special Olympics https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/27/betsy-devos-trump-republicans-education-secretary https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/27/betsy-devos-... in response to a question about whether guns belonged in schools, she referred to a school in Wyoming and said, “I would imagine that there is probably a gun in the schools to protect from potential grizzlies.” DeVos was confirmed by the Senate — but only, for the first time in U.S. history, after a vice president had to vote to break a tie. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/10/25/betsy-devoss-truly-awful-week-by-headlines/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/10/25/betsy-de...
  - alasdair_ 6y ago
    My initial concerns with DeVos were twofold: first, she had never spent a single day in an American public school and second, that the primary reason she was appointed was the millions of dollars she contributed to Trump’s campaign. It seemed very unlikely that out of roughly 150 million eligible Americans, the very best choice was someone who had zero experience with the public school system. After she began her work, the thing that I particularly disliked was her support of Indiana charter schools to both receive federal taxpayer funding while at the same time being allowed to ban a student for being gay (or their parents being gay).
  - zjs 6y ago
    Her actions and policies aren't well-publicized, but they're not good. As a simple example: in 2017, DeVos and Trump proposed "cutting $1.2 billion for after-school programs that serve 1.6 million children, most of whom are poor, and $2.1 billion for teacher training and class-size reduction" [1]. These cuts also affected efforts such as mentoring, recruitment, and retention [2]. In 2018, she proposed regulations that "require full hearings, cross examination of sexual assault victims, and raise the standard of evidence to hold a student accused of sexual assault accountable" [3], which experts have said "would allow schools and the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights to ignore much of the sexual harassment that occurs in schools" [3]. I don't even know how to summarize this whole mess, so I'm just going to use the subtitle of the article: "The administration wants to keep schools safe by ditching rules meant to prevent racial bias in school discipline" [4]. More recently, she "illegally delayed an Obama-era rule that required states to address racial disparities in special education programs" [5]. [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/trumps-first-full-education-budget-deep-cuts-to-public-school-programs-in-pursuit-of-school-choice/2017/05/17/2a25a2cc-3a41-11e7-8854-21f359183e8c_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/trumps-first-... [2]: http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/Funding-the-Wall-vs-ESEA-Title-II-A-with-State-Table.pdf http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/Funding-the-Wall-vs-ESEA-Titl... [3]: https://www.thedp.com/article/2018/11/betsy-devos-education-upenn-sexual-misconduct-philadelphia https://www.thedp.com/article/2018/11/betsy-devos-education-... [4]: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/12/trumps-school-safety-commissions-strange-focus-on-discipline/578455/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/12/trumps... [5]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/us/politics/betsy-devos-special-education.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/us/politics/betsy-devos-s...
  - johnny99 6y ago
    She tried to defund the Special Olympics. Her brother, Erik Prince, founded Blackwater, the security contractor repeatedly accused of murder and other crimes in Iraq. She had no experience in education prior to her appointment. Her stated goal is to defund public education, and her own department, in favor of using public money to support private "faith-based" schools. She's taking advantage of the pandemic to try and steer stimulus money intended for public schools into the hands of wealthy private schools. Even by the low low standards of the Trump administration, she a notably horrible public servant, defiling the department she's supposed to be leading. There is an endless supply of well-sourced stories trashing her, but here's one more or less at random: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/betsy-devos-stimulus-private-schools/2020/05/21/d790b926-9b99-11ea-ad09-8da7ec214672_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/betsy-devos-s...
- beaner 6y ago
  It really shouldn't be. This is an excellent opportunity to hear a well-reasoned argument for charter schools. If they do help, wouldn't you want to know, and wouldn't you want to be able to argue for it? Edit: Further, the only connection I can find between these two is support before her confirmation [0][1], based on the grounds that she is for school choice. Which is no surprise he agrees with considering the learnings of the book. [0] https://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2017/02/04/education-at-a-crossroads-n2281488 https://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2017/02/04/educ... [1] https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/02/17/education-at-a-crossroads-part-ii https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/02/17/education-...
- beastman82 6y ago
  Your logic is indefensible.
zjs 6y ago
> Overall, they're an excellent investment and the data shows that they work. Searching, I'm finding mixed results. It seems like some studies show that they have worked in specific situations, whereas others show that they have not worked on other specific situations. I wasn't able to find a comprehensive survey that drew overall conclusions. Are you aware of one? I'm also finding little research on the impact of a charter school on students of the public schools which they would otherwise have attended. Are these topics that the book addresses?
- beaner 6y ago
  Yes, these are exactly the topics the book addresses. A lot of it focuses explicitly on the difference in results between charter and non-charter schools in the same building, with the same demographics and student pool. If you're thinking of a "what about x," it is probably considered. The first one or two chapters is sort of dry due to pretty much just listing statistics, but it subsequently gets more interesting.
mturmon 6y ago
This is just not an adequate summary of the decidedly mixed record of charter schools. My kid, now 14, goes to a Los Angeles USD public school that offers specialized magnet programs for gifted and, separately, highly gifted, kids. The highly gifted program is quite accelerated and could accommodate some of the special needs you see evidence of in the comments here. (They are with their peers, not put into classes with older kids.) On the other hand, the charter movement in LA, purports to solve the school choice problem, had a lot of encouragement from the political establishment (both R and D over probably 20 years). But — a lot of people in LA view the charter experiment as generally a failure and a distraction from actually improving the schools we have. This overview (https://laist.com/2018/07/22/do_not_publish_-_ref_rodriguez_resigns_from_lausd_board_amid_charges_scandal.php https://laist.com/2018/07/22/do_not_publish_-_ref_rodriguez_...) provides a good run-down of the sorry end of the "pro-charter" majority that prevailed in the LAUSD board. The pro-charter board president was directing public funds to a private charter organization he was separately paid by. He had support of Reed Hastings, the Gates Foundation, and a host of well-meaning billionaires (and some not so well-meaning). More generally, the whole concept of charters and a market in elementary education has fundamental flaws. Starting with the fact that there are no good ways for parents to really judge the effectiveness or quality of instruction.
- beaner 6y ago
  My comment by itself certainly isn't an adequate summary. That's why I recommended a whole book.
  - mturmon 6y ago
    You claimed that "the data shows they work" and I was pushing back against that because it is false. Charters failed in LAUSD, the second-largest school system in the US. It was honestly tried here, with the backing of several successive mayors, and donations from several rich foundations and billionaires. It turned out the profit motive wasn't as helpful in this setting as abstract speculation had supposed. Speaking personally, I used to defend charters but I changed my mind after this record of failure. As long as we're linking books, here's this book reference from Diane Ravitch (https://dianeravitch.com/about-diane/ https://dianeravitch.com/about-diane/): During the 1980s and 1990s and into the early years of the twenty-first century — as a writer, professor, assistant secretary of education under George H.W. Bush, and member of prestigious conservative think tanks, such as the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and the Koret task force at the Hoover Institution — Diane Ravitch was a leading advocate of conservative ideas for fixing America’s education system, including charter schools, standards, accountability, and high-stakes standardized testing. But about 2006-07, she began to realize that these policies were not working. She began to criticize them, and to criticize the federal “No child left behind” law, with the publication of the book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, she became one of the most outspoken critics of ideas she once championed. Here's a short article of hers showing how for-profit charters in New York City managed to co-opt the education agenda of the mayor: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/03/27/new-york-charters-against-deblasio/ https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/03/27/new-york-charters-a...

by beaner 6y ago

aaronbrethorst 6y ago

The author of the book you mention is a fan of the current, utterly disastrous Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. That's an instant write-off to me.

DuskStar 6y ago
Maybe it should be a prompt to look at DeVos with a fresh mind, instead? I've heard very little about her actual actions or policies beyond revoking the "Dear Colleague" letter.
- aaronbrethorst 6y ago
  Nah, pass. Before joining the Trump administration, [DeVos]...had a strong hand in the spread of for-profit charter schools in her home state of Michigan, which saw a dramatic drop in average school performances after her pet policies were enacted. As secretary of education, she's consistently sidelined student civil rights and worked to make debt relief harder than ever. https://www.gq.com/story/betsy-devos-is-the-worst https://www.gq.com/story/betsy-devos-is-the-worst Even Trump overruled her on plans to gut the Special Olympics https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/27/betsy-devos-trump-republicans-education-secretary https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/27/betsy-devos-... in response to a question about whether guns belonged in schools, she referred to a school in Wyoming and said, “I would imagine that there is probably a gun in the schools to protect from potential grizzlies.” DeVos was confirmed by the Senate — but only, for the first time in U.S. history, after a vice president had to vote to break a tie. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/10/25/betsy-devoss-truly-awful-week-by-headlines/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/10/25/betsy-de...
- alasdair_ 6y ago
  My initial concerns with DeVos were twofold: first, she had never spent a single day in an American public school and second, that the primary reason she was appointed was the millions of dollars she contributed to Trump’s campaign. It seemed very unlikely that out of roughly 150 million eligible Americans, the very best choice was someone who had zero experience with the public school system. After she began her work, the thing that I particularly disliked was her support of Indiana charter schools to both receive federal taxpayer funding while at the same time being allowed to ban a student for being gay (or their parents being gay).
- zjs 6y ago
  Her actions and policies aren't well-publicized, but they're not good. As a simple example: in 2017, DeVos and Trump proposed "cutting $1.2 billion for after-school programs that serve 1.6 million children, most of whom are poor, and $2.1 billion for teacher training and class-size reduction" [1]. These cuts also affected efforts such as mentoring, recruitment, and retention [2]. In 2018, she proposed regulations that "require full hearings, cross examination of sexual assault victims, and raise the standard of evidence to hold a student accused of sexual assault accountable" [3], which experts have said "would allow schools and the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights to ignore much of the sexual harassment that occurs in schools" [3]. I don't even know how to summarize this whole mess, so I'm just going to use the subtitle of the article: "The administration wants to keep schools safe by ditching rules meant to prevent racial bias in school discipline" [4]. More recently, she "illegally delayed an Obama-era rule that required states to address racial disparities in special education programs" [5]. [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/trumps-first-full-education-budget-deep-cuts-to-public-school-programs-in-pursuit-of-school-choice/2017/05/17/2a25a2cc-3a41-11e7-8854-21f359183e8c_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/trumps-first-... [2]: http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/Funding-the-Wall-vs-ESEA-Title-II-A-with-State-Table.pdf http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/Funding-the-Wall-vs-ESEA-Titl... [3]: https://www.thedp.com/article/2018/11/betsy-devos-education-upenn-sexual-misconduct-philadelphia https://www.thedp.com/article/2018/11/betsy-devos-education-... [4]: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/12/trumps-school-safety-commissions-strange-focus-on-discipline/578455/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/12/trumps... [5]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/us/politics/betsy-devos-special-education.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/us/politics/betsy-devos-s...
- johnny99 6y ago
  She tried to defund the Special Olympics. Her brother, Erik Prince, founded Blackwater, the security contractor repeatedly accused of murder and other crimes in Iraq. She had no experience in education prior to her appointment. Her stated goal is to defund public education, and her own department, in favor of using public money to support private "faith-based" schools. She's taking advantage of the pandemic to try and steer stimulus money intended for public schools into the hands of wealthy private schools. Even by the low low standards of the Trump administration, she a notably horrible public servant, defiling the department she's supposed to be leading. There is an endless supply of well-sourced stories trashing her, but here's one more or less at random: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/betsy-devos-stimulus-private-schools/2020/05/21/d790b926-9b99-11ea-ad09-8da7ec214672_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/betsy-devos-s...
beaner 6y ago
It really shouldn't be. This is an excellent opportunity to hear a well-reasoned argument for charter schools. If they do help, wouldn't you want to know, and wouldn't you want to be able to argue for it? Edit: Further, the only connection I can find between these two is support before her confirmation [0][1], based on the grounds that she is for school choice. Which is no surprise he agrees with considering the learnings of the book. [0] https://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2017/02/04/education-at-a-crossroads-n2281488 https://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2017/02/04/educ... [1] https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/02/17/education-at-a-crossroads-part-ii https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/02/17/education-...
beastman82 6y ago
Your logic is indefensible.

zjs 6y ago

> Overall, they're an excellent investment and the data shows that they work. Searching, I'm finding mixed results. It seems like some studies show that they have worked in specific situations, whereas others show that they have not worked on other specific situations. I wasn't able to find a comprehensive survey that drew overall conclusions. Are you aware of one? I'm also finding little research on the impact of a charter school on students of the public schools which they would otherwise have attended. Are these topics that the book addresses?

beaner 6y ago
Yes, these are exactly the topics the book addresses. A lot of it focuses explicitly on the difference in results between charter and non-charter schools in the same building, with the same demographics and student pool. If you're thinking of a "what about x," it is probably considered. The first one or two chapters is sort of dry due to pretty much just listing statistics, but it subsequently gets more interesting.

mturmon 6y ago

This is just not an adequate summary of the decidedly mixed record of charter schools. My kid, now 14, goes to a Los Angeles USD public school that offers specialized magnet programs for gifted and, separately, highly gifted, kids. The highly gifted program is quite accelerated and could accommodate some of the special needs you see evidence of in the comments here. (They are with their peers, not put into classes with older kids.) On the other hand, the charter movement in LA, purports to solve the school choice problem, had a lot of encouragement from the political establishment (both R and D over probably 20 years). But — a lot of people in LA view the charter experiment as generally a failure and a distraction from actually improving the schools we have. This overview (https://laist.com/2018/07/22/do_not_publish_-_ref_rodriguez_resigns_from_lausd_board_amid_charges_scandal.php https://laist.com/2018/07/22/do_not_publish_-_ref_rodriguez_...) provides a good run-down of the sorry end of the "pro-charter" majority that prevailed in the LAUSD board. The pro-charter board president was directing public funds to a private charter organization he was separately paid by. He had support of Reed Hastings, the Gates Foundation, and a host of well-meaning billionaires (and some not so well-meaning). More generally, the whole concept of charters and a market in elementary education has fundamental flaws. Starting with the fact that there are no good ways for parents to really judge the effectiveness or quality of instruction.

beaner 6y ago
My comment by itself certainly isn't an adequate summary. That's why I recommended a whole book.
- mturmon 6y ago
  You claimed that "the data shows they work" and I was pushing back against that because it is false. Charters failed in LAUSD, the second-largest school system in the US. It was honestly tried here, with the backing of several successive mayors, and donations from several rich foundations and billionaires. It turned out the profit motive wasn't as helpful in this setting as abstract speculation had supposed. Speaking personally, I used to defend charters but I changed my mind after this record of failure. As long as we're linking books, here's this book reference from Diane Ravitch (https://dianeravitch.com/about-diane/ https://dianeravitch.com/about-diane/): During the 1980s and 1990s and into the early years of the twenty-first century — as a writer, professor, assistant secretary of education under George H.W. Bush, and member of prestigious conservative think tanks, such as the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and the Koret task force at the Hoover Institution — Diane Ravitch was a leading advocate of conservative ideas for fixing America’s education system, including charter schools, standards, accountability, and high-stakes standardized testing. But about 2006-07, she began to realize that these policies were not working. She began to criticize them, and to criticize the federal “No child left behind” law, with the publication of the book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, she became one of the most outspoken critics of ideas she once championed. Here's a short article of hers showing how for-profit charters in New York City managed to co-opt the education agenda of the mayor: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/03/27/new-york-charters-against-deblasio/ https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/03/27/new-york-charters-a...