23 ms·

Charter schools, social norming and zero-sum games (2010)

64 points by luu 3y ago

monero-xmr 3y ago
> Social norming can work both ways. If you remove all of the students whose parents are willing and able to go through the application process, the norms of acceptable behavior for those left behind will move in an ugly direction and the kids who started out with the greatest disadvantages would be left to bear the burden I went to public school as a kid and the disruptive kids were expelled. Not just kicked out of class - totally kicked out of school and told to find a new one! One reason I send my kids to private school is if you don’t want to learn they will kick you out. In public schools today you get a few bad kids and it ruins the whole class. This is a big reason why teachers are quitting en masse from public schools - they are behavioral consultants rather than teachers. The pay has always sucked - it’s the lack of ability to discipline bad kids that makes it miserable, and then parents blame you for everything when you just want to teach math and go home.
- bannedbybros 3y ago
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- micromacrofoot 3y ago
  “bad” kids don’t need discipline, they need help - of course they don’t behave well when there’s 0 modeling at home, it’s not because someone isn’t yelling at them enough - raising a child “takes a village” and many of us aren’t operating within a village anymore, we’re all stressed out and working too much
  - monero-xmr 3y ago
    This is why if I had to teach I would teach college kids. I don’t want to be a therapist and bear the weight of all parents’ failures. I want to teach math. So if to be a public school K-12 teacher you have to also “model” how to be a functional human (as the kids go home and see the opposite) then I would never accept that job. I was raised by a single mom who worked a million hours and didn’t have a baby sitter when I let myself in after school. Don’t see how “working too many hours and being stressed” is a new phenomenon because most of my extended family is poor and have always been. My mom told me not to steal and don’t be an obnoxious asshole in school, wasn’t exactly rocket science.
    - mbork_pl 3y ago
      While (as a former math teacher, btw) I sympathize with you, let me point out that absolutely every teacher should "model how to be a functional human" (and in fact does, better or worse). This is true for every stage of education, from kindergarten to a university.
  - briHass 3y ago
    Discipline does work; it's ultimately what the 'bad' kids get when they have runins with the criminal justice system. The lack of discipline from the parents, mentors, and teachers early on is why the State has to do it later. Discipline is not orthogonal to 'help'.
    - afavour 3y ago
      > Discipline does work; it's ultimately what the 'bad' kids get when they have runins with the criminal justice system. …and does that work? Recidivism rates would suggest otherwise.
      - monero-xmr 3y ago
        Considering a large experiment has just occurred with progressive prosecutors no longer putting criminals in jail, and the SF prosecutor was recalled and a tough-on-crime mayor was elected in NYC, I think the results are that “throwing criminals in jail” works better than not.
        afavour 3y ago
        As an NYC resident I can assure you in at least one of those examples you are vastly, vastly oversimplifying matters.
        mikeyouse 3y ago
        Both examples are silly and bad. Alameda County (Oakland) elected a tough on crime DA at about the same time as SF’s “reform” one and their crime rate increased more than SFs in that period.. there are no easy answers in policing or discipline.
        monero-xmr 3y ago
        Yes the “crime rate” when no one goes through the hassle to report petty crimes because it’s a pain in the ass and they won’t solve it anyway. The stats are a joke and everyone knows it.
  - goda90 3y ago
    Yelling isn't the only form of discipline. There's withholding privileges. There's physical restraint even. Without cooperation from parents, school staff can't really do either. A teacher I know tells me how some of the violent elementary school children just get put in a room alone when they are having an episode because that's all they are allowed to do. These children (under 12 years old) have sent teachers to urgent care with injuries, and the kids are let back to school not long after.
    - micromacrofoot 3y ago
      physical restraint and discipline addresses a symptom, not the cause — if discipline worked the US wouldn't have outrageously high prison population and recidivism rates
      - goda90 3y ago
        The US justice system isn't discipline. It's punishment. Discipline isn't just giving consequences for actions, but it's also giving tools to choose better actions.
        micromacrofoot 3y ago
        On that I agree, but specifying "discipline" for the average person often means punishment only. This is why the prison system is the way it is... no one wants to pay for things that benefit the prisoners, just the punishment.
      - AlgorithmicTime 3y ago
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  - AlgorithmicTime 3y ago
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  - giantg2 3y ago
    '“bad” kids don’t need discipline, they need help' Some would argue that disciplining is helpful in many cases. Proper disciplining is not just punishment but should include an explaination of why what they did was wrong and what the right thing to do is. Kids having discipline is a slightly different topic, but can be partially built through the process above.
    - micromacrofoot 3y ago
      Discipline without love or some care starts to look like authoritarianism, so if you're not careful you can instill a strong sense of oppositional defiance and make things worse. This is a very difficult problem to solve and people will often support the stick and complain that someone doesn't deserve the carrot. Everyone needs both.
  - MisterTea 3y ago
    A friend taught public school in a poorer area outside of DC for about 8 years until moving into admin. He had one tactic that worked for many "bad" kids - call their parents, in the middle of the class if need be. He said today's young teachers, are non-confrontational and not used to verbal communication over phones as they were raised on social media and texting. So those young teachers sit there helpless while the student runs wild. Now in admin hes some kind of teacher manager and he had teachers come to him, sometimes physically crying, unable to deal with a child with a behavioral problem. His says 99% of the time these problems are corrected with a single phone call to the parents. Just one call but no - young teachers these days don't have the guts or social wherewithal. So his job is now teaching adults how to make phone calls. Another thing to realize is a lot of these kids do respond positively to teachers when they show them that they care and aren't there to simply baby sit and yell at them. He has had many students come to him later on thanking him for breaking their balls and setting them on the right path. Kids aren't stupid - they want respect but are treated like little monsters to be corralled and controlled like cattle. Showing the kids you truly care is incredibly powerful for them - it connects at the human emotional level and those positive interactions boosts the kids moral and they feel more confident or centered in life.
  - JediWing 3y ago
    Agreed, but teachers can't be expected to be the only ones providing this help. Other public institutions outside the school system need to be in place to support the parents who are stressed and overworked and barely have time to parent. And their right to be helped stops at the line where they're causing harm to the learning of others. Discipline in schools isn't and cannot be about holistically reforming the problem kids, it's about making sure those who want to learn can. You can't dump the entirety of systemic poverty, racism, mental health, etc. on the education system and expect it to work well.
    - micromacrofoot 3y ago
      Yep, but also many schools in the US don't even have the basics AND they're getting all of that stuff dumped on them. Teachers are quitting at alarming rates since the pandemic. This is not being treated remotely like the emergency it is, and 10 years from now we're really going to feel it.
- Simulacra 3y ago
  I went to a public school and disruptive kids were NEVER expelled, or kicked out of class, they were just tolerated and placated. I wish I had gone to your school because no matter how disruptive they were, or how much they bullied others in class, the school simply would not expel them. The worst they would get is after school detention. It was hugely disruptive and made life miserable for the rest of us. If only disruptive kids were expelled instead of placated MANY of us might have had a better education.
  - civilized 3y ago
    Too many liberals feel such guilt about expelling disruptive kids, when the reality is just what you've said: if they stay, they don't improve and they ruin genuine learning for everyone else. It is so wrong for adults to fail to protect children who want to learn simply because they want a facade of feel-good egalitarianism.
    - afavour 3y ago
      I think it’s correct to feel guilty about expelling disruptive kids. Majority of cases they’re disruptive as a direct result of their home life, which you’re now throwing them into full time. I agree that keeping them in general education is bad too, though. A caring society would take that kid somewhere with specialised staff that will help them work through their issues.
      - zmgsabst 3y ago
        You should feel more guilty of subjecting twenty kids to the spillover of that one child’s dysfunctional life. The problem is the selective and performative guilt: Why don’t kids who have a terrible home life, but are studying diligently to better themselves and improve their lives equally deserve our help?
        civilized 3y ago
        Exactly - this is the tragic mistake of fixating on only one type of "victim".
- themitigating 3y ago
  What makes a private school more likely to expell children? Since they are a for profit enterprise, unlike public schools, wouldn't there be a financial incentive to have as many customers as possible? In one particular area what is the reason a charter school would be better than a public school. Since the entry factor for most (excluding schools for smart kids) is money why wouldn't the same problems occur at a charter school? Finally, why can't we just fix public schools?
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - mhb 3y ago
    What makes a private school more likely to expell children? Uh, because more customers will leave if the private school is no better than a public school.
  - conception 3y ago
    It’s a business where all the customers interact with one another. If it costs more in complaints, then you drop the bad apple.
  - monero-xmr 3y ago
    Because the paying customers will go elsewhere if they allow another paying customer to ruin it. They want 20 to stay even if they have to lose the 21st payer.
  - giantg2 3y ago
    The private schools are seeking and selling quality. Plus, the majority of private schools are non-profits. Many are religiously affiliated and would like a large population as as a potential source of new religious members, but they also need some way to fund that. If a family is already paying $5k/yr in property taxes it is less likely they can afford another $10/yr for 2 kids to go to private school. The funding is the biggest blocker to increased private and charter school attendance. That's why there's so much talk about things like vouchers, 529s, etc. "Finally, why can't we just fix public schools?" That's a good question without a good answer. Perhaps the best answer is the meta that people don't agree on the course of action that would "fix" the schools since there are numerous opinions on what that is, resulting in no action or half measures.
- JediWing 3y ago
  This is absolutely a huge factor, if not the biggest factor in education: kids who are actively disruptive and harmful to the learning of others being kept in with other kids, draining all of the attention from the teacher. The causes and solutions are not as simple as "these kids are bad, kick them out of school", but any solution needs to involve kids who aren't disruptive and WANT to learn getting an environment conducive to that.
  - stainablesteel 3y ago
    its worse than that, i have some examples of what always annoyed me: - a terrible kid was constantly given presents from a teacher, chocolates, and small things she could give him so that he would stop misbehaving in class. normally these prizes would go to a single student every day, for merit, but once this terrible person kept getting them, everyone else became pissed and demoralized. - the young kids copy the teachers behavior, and it creates this culture of "they have a harder life than you" when trying to complain about the terrible students in their vicinity (which i completely disagree with, they're not trying hard at all that's why they get like this), so when terrible people bully decent, kind, and hardworking students, there's no sympathy for the hardworking students. they get treated like shit and abused from the future-criminals who do nothing but degrade the experience of everyone who attends, then they get told "get over it, you have everything" by their peers who for whatever reason weren't bullied, and refuse to help. its cult-like behavior - you also have kids who are way too old for their grade, by at least 4 years. someone who should otherwise be way ahead of the classroom they're in is 2x the size of anyone else, is a literal delinquent, and is for some reason still allowed in the public school system where they either terrorize their classmates, get them into their same terrible habits, or bully people who express any kind of discontent with their behavior.
  - tivert 3y ago
    >> I went to public school as a kid and the disruptive kids were expelled. Not just kicked out of class - totally kicked out of school and told to find a new one! One reason I send my kids to private school is if you don’t want to learn they will kick you out. In public schools today you get a few bad kids and it ruins the whole class. > The causes and solutions are not as simple as "these kids are bad, kick them out of school", but any solution needs to involve kids who aren't disruptive and WANT to learn getting an environment conducive to that. But it might not be that much more complicated. It's been a long time since I've been in school, but in our district there was an "alternative" high school, which had a reputation among the kids as the place you'd end up if you were too much of a behavior problem. That said, the kids at my schools were well-behaved in class and I never knew of anyone specific who was expelled. If behavior problems are getting more widespread, maybe embracing more of an explicit containment strategy is appropriate.
- jacknews 3y ago
  Indeed, and the assertion that 'only poor kids together' will behave even worse certainly needs backing up with data. It seems obvious to me (since the experiment is repeated over and over within millions of families) that environment plays a major role in behaviour, but tbh I don't see good behaviour rubbing off onto the 'bad' kids in a mixed setting, it's almost always the other way around, or at best, a productive environment is disrupted by a few troublemakers. So 'good' kids should get an environment free of disruption so they can do what they do. And the 'bad' kids should get an environment much more focused on encouraging good behaviour, so they learn to do the good stuff too. Win-win.
  - II2II 3y ago
    Except you run into a few problems when implementing that, especially for public schools. Proactive parents will typically want their children in good schools, regardless of their child's behavioural history. (This doesn't mean they refuse to acknowledge the issue, though some will. It simply means they want their children to have access to better supports.) There is an overarching philosophy within the school system that integration is better than separation. I don't know if this has to be the case, but it has been historically true. Think of it this way: even though some of the best teachers may want to serve the most challenging schools, good teachers almost always want to teach in good schools. Where does that leave the challenging schools? If they're lucky, with a great teacher. More often, with a bunch of mediocre teachers. Related to that, schools rarely have the resources to distinguish between students who would benefit from integration and those who would benefit from specialized and separate programs.
    - deleted 3y ago
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    - jacknews 3y ago
      I don't think you should segregate schools. Just classrooms. That gives students in 'bad' classes something to aspire to, and keeps them on the map rather than being written-off to a 'poor school', and parents should realise that, though their kid is in the 'bad' class, they are getting appropriate help, not just being discarded. In some ways, the 'best' teachers should be assigned to the 'bad' kids, certainly those with the best command of a class. The 'good' kids don't need that so much.
- dehrmann 3y ago
  > they are behavioral consultants rather than teachers During covid, someone observed that it exposed the primary role of public schools to be day care.
  - analog31 3y ago
    Except there must be a difference between school and day care because the kids who stayed home during covid are now way behind academically.
- nonameiguess 3y ago
  I don't get the expulsion discussion here (not just your comment, but responses as well). At least in the US, these kids legally need to be educated somewhere. Expelling doesn't remove them from the school system. It just means they'll be disrupting a different set of kids at some other school. Making something someone else's problem isn't solving the problem. It's like dealing with homelessness by rounding them up and bussing them to a different city. You could conceivably create schools composed entirely of the kids who got expelled from somewhere else, which I think some districts have actually done (continuation schools), but you're effectively creating a juvenile prison system for people who didn't commit any actual crime and definitely never got a trial.
  - sixothree 3y ago
    I think that's pretty much the crux of every argument here - move those other kids somewhere else. Don't worry about improving their situation, but make my situation better. Cite a study, draw incorrect conclusions from it that support your argument, find some exception to the norm and use that as your example, and don't forget - describe how you were brought up and how that was better.
- JJMcJ 3y ago
  An analogy. In a dorm the week before finals, 90% of the students are urgently trying to prepare for finals. 10% are drunk and or high and playing frisbee in the halls 24 hours a day. From friends who have taught high school in poor neighborhoods the situation as similar, only more violent.
bsuvc 3y ago
The author seems to be saying that the reason charter schools are successful is because of self-selection, and that is also why public schools are worse, due to the inverse of self-selection. While there is certainly self-selection occurring here, it would be a mistake for policy makers to dismiss the problems with public schools as just being due to that. They should introspect instead of seeking excuses.
- monero-xmr 3y ago
  Also it’s totally fine for the rich to self-select among many private schools. Apparently it’s only a problem when poor people similarly have choices. Why is having competition among public schools, with parents having a choice as to which to send them, so bad? It doesn’t make any sense.
  - zmgsabst 3y ago
    The professional/managerial class can’t stand being responsible for their policy failures — which become apparent when people have options.
  - cardamomo 3y ago
    The author is suggesting that the self-selection effect is a problem for this and similar studies, because they potentially mask the effect they the learning environment has. In fact, the author sounds quite complimentary, calling the program being studied "an impressive, even inspiring initiative to improve the lives of poor inner-city children through charter schools and community programs." This piece is calling for randomized trials, as opposed to observational studies.
    - fmajid 3y ago
      A randomized trial would probably violate all manner of ethics rules, and be vociferously opposed by parents, at least those who care about their kids' education, and thus we'd fall back to the same self-selection problem the author highlights.
nxm 3y ago
Charter schools are the saving grace to the public schools hijacked by the teachers union and bloated administrations. Recently, these unions succeeded to lowering testing standards for graduation in blue states to mask the worse job they’re doing teaching our kids: Examples: https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/new-york-lowers-bar-student-math-english-17841120.php https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/new-york-lowers-bar-... Meanwhile major cities have the highest per pupil spend for public schools, with frighteningly poor outcomes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/03/30/baltimore-city-public-schools-promoted-student-with-013-gpa-while-spending-a-14-billion-budget/amp/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/03/30/bal... Fix K-12 schools (no, more money on bloated administrations is not the answer), and the need for affirmative action goes away.
- forgotOldLogin 3y ago
  The Times Union piece you cite does not say that the union supported lowering standardized test scores required for graduation. In fact, the article quotes the union funded Alliance for Quality Education as opposing the change. Charter schools create duplicate systems with duplicate costs, reduce funds available for traditional school students in sending schools, and are a waste of taxpayer resources. When students leave traditional public schools for charter schools, the traditional public school is unable to reduce costs in proportion with the loss in per-pupil revenues. Students in public schools are left with fewer resources.
  - davemp 3y ago
    Take a survey of public school board budgets if you want to see a waste taxpayer resources. There is already all the duplication of effort and wasteful initiatives you could ask for.
  - zaphar 3y ago
    If we've learned one thing about education over the years it's that past a certain point more funding doesn't help. Improving educational outcomes requires at least 2 things that the article mentions: 1. Engaged parents. 2. Social Norms that normalize learning behaviours. Parent's can control the first directly and the second indirectly by "choosing" a non public school option or moving to a district that has the proper norms. Charter schools are one of a class of escape hatches that less advantaged parents can choose in order to impact the second factor for their child. I strongly believe that these escape hatches should exist for the Parents who can't easily move or choose a private option. Improving education outcomes for the children of those parents who do care requires giving them tools to support their children whether the environment itself does or does not. It seems unfair to force those parents to fail just because their community is failing around them.
FrustratedMonky 3y ago
The drive to use public tax dollars for private schools is great when it is STEM. Seems good right? Charter Schools for STEM. Who could argue? People miss that the primary interest groups that are lobbying for private schools, that are arguing against public schools, are for Religion. They want to be able to teach the bible as fact, not teach evolution, to allow prayer. By syphoning public dollars, into private schools, they are bypassing the separation of state-church. This then takes dollars away from public schools, which then struggle. Then the awful state of the public schools, is used as an argument for more private schools, and thus more religious schools. Eventually the population wont be able to think in scientific terms anymore, logical reasoning will be gone.
- brightball 3y ago
  My kids go to a private religious school in South Carolina. They are taught about world religions, evolution, have chapel twice a week and allow prayer. It’s also the best school in the entire state. My kids go there because it's a great school. There are a lot of anti religious scare tactics used to push people off of vouchers. The reality is that the only people with true choice in school selection have to either be able to afford private school, afford to move to a house zoned for a better school or afford to have parent who can facilitate a home school group. Voucher proponents want everybody to have all choices available.
  - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
    >"It’s also the best school in the entire state." That is the problem. Why not make public schools better? Why is everyone else at a disadvantage. If our focus was on putting funding into 'all' schools, not just 'rich geographic locations', then everyone could be educated. It isn't about 'Choice', it is about everyone getting a minimal education. If you want to 'choose' to indoctrinate your kids into your particular religion of 'choice', that can be done at home. But everyone should learn the old Reading/Writing/Arithmetic.
    - brightball 3y ago
XVincentX 3y ago
Reminds me a lot what Thomas Sowell says in Charter School and Their Enemies book
h2odragon 3y ago
(2010) > we are thinking about spending an enormous amount of time, effort and money on a major overhaul of the education system when we don't have the data to tell us if what we'll spend will wasted or, worse yet, if we are to some extent playing a zero sum game. ... well, do we have the data now? Seems to me the "education system" keeps having the same debates over and over; surely "data" isn't at issue here? From an outsider perspective it seems like all sides to any debate feel free to make up any data and any reinterpretation of existing data they need, in order to support their position of the day.
- AmpsterMan 3y ago
  That's exactly what they say in the beginning: > First off, this is an observational study, not a randomized experiment. I think we may be reaching the limits of what analysis of observational data can do in the education debate and, given the importance and complexity of the questions, I don't understand why we aren't employing randomized trials to answer some of these questions once and for all.
eimrine 3y ago
Could you ELI5 this article for me? I am amazed by the high quality comments here but the article is not readable for me.
- sixothree 3y ago
  The quality of comments here is pathetic. These are some of the most misleading arguments I've ever seen. Every bit of evidence is some exception to the norm.
  - vacuity 3y ago
    When most people equate emotion-based beliefs to logic, that's what happens. Of course everyone has their biases, but most conveniently ignore theirs.
deleted 3y ago
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WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
I had 3 sons in my county's first charter school. We enrolled when it launched. It was a mistake I regret. My kids were not baseline* and the educators were out of their depth. They took their obligations seriously and made good faith efforts but weren't able make the leap (during our 7 years). We left for the county's public schools and they were a world better - by every measure. I am not overstating that an inch. All that said, I still felt the charter was a good fit for normie students and I recommended it to some parents (but not all). * One was high functioning autistic. Two coped poorly with the limited curriculum.

64 points by luu 3y ago

> Social norming can work both ways. If you remove all of the students whose parents are willing and able to go through the application process, the norms of acceptable behavior for those left behind will move in an ugly direction and the kids who started out with the greatest disadvantages would be left to bear the burden I went to public school as a kid and the disruptive kids were expelled. Not just kicked out of class - totally kicked out of school and told to find a new one! One reason I send my kids to private school is if you don’t want to learn they will kick you out. In public schools today you get a few bad kids and it ruins the whole class. This is a big reason why teachers are quitting en masse from public schools - they are behavioral consultants rather than teachers. The pay has always sucked - it’s the lack of ability to discipline bad kids that makes it miserable, and then parents blame you for everything when you just want to teach math and go home.

bannedbybros 3y ago
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micromacrofoot 3y ago
“bad” kids don’t need discipline, they need help - of course they don’t behave well when there’s 0 modeling at home, it’s not because someone isn’t yelling at them enough - raising a child “takes a village” and many of us aren’t operating within a village anymore, we’re all stressed out and working too much
- monero-xmr 3y ago
  This is why if I had to teach I would teach college kids. I don’t want to be a therapist and bear the weight of all parents’ failures. I want to teach math. So if to be a public school K-12 teacher you have to also “model” how to be a functional human (as the kids go home and see the opposite) then I would never accept that job. I was raised by a single mom who worked a million hours and didn’t have a baby sitter when I let myself in after school. Don’t see how “working too many hours and being stressed” is a new phenomenon because most of my extended family is poor and have always been. My mom told me not to steal and don’t be an obnoxious asshole in school, wasn’t exactly rocket science.
  - mbork_pl 3y ago
    While (as a former math teacher, btw) I sympathize with you, let me point out that absolutely every teacher should "model how to be a functional human" (and in fact does, better or worse). This is true for every stage of education, from kindergarten to a university.
- briHass 3y ago
  Discipline does work; it's ultimately what the 'bad' kids get when they have runins with the criminal justice system. The lack of discipline from the parents, mentors, and teachers early on is why the State has to do it later. Discipline is not orthogonal to 'help'.
  - afavour 3y ago
    > Discipline does work; it's ultimately what the 'bad' kids get when they have runins with the criminal justice system. …and does that work? Recidivism rates would suggest otherwise.
    - monero-xmr 3y ago
      Considering a large experiment has just occurred with progressive prosecutors no longer putting criminals in jail, and the SF prosecutor was recalled and a tough-on-crime mayor was elected in NYC, I think the results are that “throwing criminals in jail” works better than not.
      - afavour 3y ago
        As an NYC resident I can assure you in at least one of those examples you are vastly, vastly oversimplifying matters.
        mikeyouse 3y ago
        Both examples are silly and bad. Alameda County (Oakland) elected a tough on crime DA at about the same time as SF’s “reform” one and their crime rate increased more than SFs in that period.. there are no easy answers in policing or discipline.
        monero-xmr 3y ago
        Yes the “crime rate” when no one goes through the hassle to report petty crimes because it’s a pain in the ass and they won’t solve it anyway. The stats are a joke and everyone knows it.
- goda90 3y ago
  Yelling isn't the only form of discipline. There's withholding privileges. There's physical restraint even. Without cooperation from parents, school staff can't really do either. A teacher I know tells me how some of the violent elementary school children just get put in a room alone when they are having an episode because that's all they are allowed to do. These children (under 12 years old) have sent teachers to urgent care with injuries, and the kids are let back to school not long after.
  - micromacrofoot 3y ago
    physical restraint and discipline addresses a symptom, not the cause — if discipline worked the US wouldn't have outrageously high prison population and recidivism rates
    - goda90 3y ago
      The US justice system isn't discipline. It's punishment. Discipline isn't just giving consequences for actions, but it's also giving tools to choose better actions.
      - micromacrofoot 3y ago
        On that I agree, but specifying "discipline" for the average person often means punishment only. This is why the prison system is the way it is... no one wants to pay for things that benefit the prisoners, just the punishment.
    - AlgorithmicTime 3y ago
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- AlgorithmicTime 3y ago
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- giantg2 3y ago
  '“bad” kids don’t need discipline, they need help' Some would argue that disciplining is helpful in many cases. Proper disciplining is not just punishment but should include an explaination of why what they did was wrong and what the right thing to do is. Kids having discipline is a slightly different topic, but can be partially built through the process above.
  - micromacrofoot 3y ago
    Discipline without love or some care starts to look like authoritarianism, so if you're not careful you can instill a strong sense of oppositional defiance and make things worse. This is a very difficult problem to solve and people will often support the stick and complain that someone doesn't deserve the carrot. Everyone needs both.
- MisterTea 3y ago
  A friend taught public school in a poorer area outside of DC for about 8 years until moving into admin. He had one tactic that worked for many "bad" kids - call their parents, in the middle of the class if need be. He said today's young teachers, are non-confrontational and not used to verbal communication over phones as they were raised on social media and texting. So those young teachers sit there helpless while the student runs wild. Now in admin hes some kind of teacher manager and he had teachers come to him, sometimes physically crying, unable to deal with a child with a behavioral problem. His says 99% of the time these problems are corrected with a single phone call to the parents. Just one call but no - young teachers these days don't have the guts or social wherewithal. So his job is now teaching adults how to make phone calls. Another thing to realize is a lot of these kids do respond positively to teachers when they show them that they care and aren't there to simply baby sit and yell at them. He has had many students come to him later on thanking him for breaking their balls and setting them on the right path. Kids aren't stupid - they want respect but are treated like little monsters to be corralled and controlled like cattle. Showing the kids you truly care is incredibly powerful for them - it connects at the human emotional level and those positive interactions boosts the kids moral and they feel more confident or centered in life.
- JediWing 3y ago
  Agreed, but teachers can't be expected to be the only ones providing this help. Other public institutions outside the school system need to be in place to support the parents who are stressed and overworked and barely have time to parent. And their right to be helped stops at the line where they're causing harm to the learning of others. Discipline in schools isn't and cannot be about holistically reforming the problem kids, it's about making sure those who want to learn can. You can't dump the entirety of systemic poverty, racism, mental health, etc. on the education system and expect it to work well.
  - micromacrofoot 3y ago
    Yep, but also many schools in the US don't even have the basics AND they're getting all of that stuff dumped on them. Teachers are quitting at alarming rates since the pandemic. This is not being treated remotely like the emergency it is, and 10 years from now we're really going to feel it.
Simulacra 3y ago
I went to a public school and disruptive kids were NEVER expelled, or kicked out of class, they were just tolerated and placated. I wish I had gone to your school because no matter how disruptive they were, or how much they bullied others in class, the school simply would not expel them. The worst they would get is after school detention. It was hugely disruptive and made life miserable for the rest of us. If only disruptive kids were expelled instead of placated MANY of us might have had a better education.
- civilized 3y ago
  Too many liberals feel such guilt about expelling disruptive kids, when the reality is just what you've said: if they stay, they don't improve and they ruin genuine learning for everyone else. It is so wrong for adults to fail to protect children who want to learn simply because they want a facade of feel-good egalitarianism.
  - afavour 3y ago
    I think it’s correct to feel guilty about expelling disruptive kids. Majority of cases they’re disruptive as a direct result of their home life, which you’re now throwing them into full time. I agree that keeping them in general education is bad too, though. A caring society would take that kid somewhere with specialised staff that will help them work through their issues.
    - zmgsabst 3y ago
      You should feel more guilty of subjecting twenty kids to the spillover of that one child’s dysfunctional life. The problem is the selective and performative guilt: Why don’t kids who have a terrible home life, but are studying diligently to better themselves and improve their lives equally deserve our help?
      - civilized 3y ago
        Exactly - this is the tragic mistake of fixating on only one type of "victim".
themitigating 3y ago
What makes a private school more likely to expell children? Since they are a for profit enterprise, unlike public schools, wouldn't there be a financial incentive to have as many customers as possible? In one particular area what is the reason a charter school would be better than a public school. Since the entry factor for most (excluding schools for smart kids) is money why wouldn't the same problems occur at a charter school? Finally, why can't we just fix public schools?
- deleted 3y ago
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- mhb 3y ago
  What makes a private school more likely to expell children? Uh, because more customers will leave if the private school is no better than a public school.
- conception 3y ago
  It’s a business where all the customers interact with one another. If it costs more in complaints, then you drop the bad apple.
- monero-xmr 3y ago
  Because the paying customers will go elsewhere if they allow another paying customer to ruin it. They want 20 to stay even if they have to lose the 21st payer.
- giantg2 3y ago
  The private schools are seeking and selling quality. Plus, the majority of private schools are non-profits. Many are religiously affiliated and would like a large population as as a potential source of new religious members, but they also need some way to fund that. If a family is already paying $5k/yr in property taxes it is less likely they can afford another $10/yr for 2 kids to go to private school. The funding is the biggest blocker to increased private and charter school attendance. That's why there's so much talk about things like vouchers, 529s, etc. "Finally, why can't we just fix public schools?" That's a good question without a good answer. Perhaps the best answer is the meta that people don't agree on the course of action that would "fix" the schools since there are numerous opinions on what that is, resulting in no action or half measures.
JediWing 3y ago
This is absolutely a huge factor, if not the biggest factor in education: kids who are actively disruptive and harmful to the learning of others being kept in with other kids, draining all of the attention from the teacher. The causes and solutions are not as simple as "these kids are bad, kick them out of school", but any solution needs to involve kids who aren't disruptive and WANT to learn getting an environment conducive to that.
- stainablesteel 3y ago
  its worse than that, i have some examples of what always annoyed me: - a terrible kid was constantly given presents from a teacher, chocolates, and small things she could give him so that he would stop misbehaving in class. normally these prizes would go to a single student every day, for merit, but once this terrible person kept getting them, everyone else became pissed and demoralized. - the young kids copy the teachers behavior, and it creates this culture of "they have a harder life than you" when trying to complain about the terrible students in their vicinity (which i completely disagree with, they're not trying hard at all that's why they get like this), so when terrible people bully decent, kind, and hardworking students, there's no sympathy for the hardworking students. they get treated like shit and abused from the future-criminals who do nothing but degrade the experience of everyone who attends, then they get told "get over it, you have everything" by their peers who for whatever reason weren't bullied, and refuse to help. its cult-like behavior - you also have kids who are way too old for their grade, by at least 4 years. someone who should otherwise be way ahead of the classroom they're in is 2x the size of anyone else, is a literal delinquent, and is for some reason still allowed in the public school system where they either terrorize their classmates, get them into their same terrible habits, or bully people who express any kind of discontent with their behavior.
- tivert 3y ago
  >> I went to public school as a kid and the disruptive kids were expelled. Not just kicked out of class - totally kicked out of school and told to find a new one! One reason I send my kids to private school is if you don’t want to learn they will kick you out. In public schools today you get a few bad kids and it ruins the whole class. > The causes and solutions are not as simple as "these kids are bad, kick them out of school", but any solution needs to involve kids who aren't disruptive and WANT to learn getting an environment conducive to that. But it might not be that much more complicated. It's been a long time since I've been in school, but in our district there was an "alternative" high school, which had a reputation among the kids as the place you'd end up if you were too much of a behavior problem. That said, the kids at my schools were well-behaved in class and I never knew of anyone specific who was expelled. If behavior problems are getting more widespread, maybe embracing more of an explicit containment strategy is appropriate.
jacknews 3y ago
Indeed, and the assertion that 'only poor kids together' will behave even worse certainly needs backing up with data. It seems obvious to me (since the experiment is repeated over and over within millions of families) that environment plays a major role in behaviour, but tbh I don't see good behaviour rubbing off onto the 'bad' kids in a mixed setting, it's almost always the other way around, or at best, a productive environment is disrupted by a few troublemakers. So 'good' kids should get an environment free of disruption so they can do what they do. And the 'bad' kids should get an environment much more focused on encouraging good behaviour, so they learn to do the good stuff too. Win-win.
- II2II 3y ago
  Except you run into a few problems when implementing that, especially for public schools. Proactive parents will typically want their children in good schools, regardless of their child's behavioural history. (This doesn't mean they refuse to acknowledge the issue, though some will. It simply means they want their children to have access to better supports.) There is an overarching philosophy within the school system that integration is better than separation. I don't know if this has to be the case, but it has been historically true. Think of it this way: even though some of the best teachers may want to serve the most challenging schools, good teachers almost always want to teach in good schools. Where does that leave the challenging schools? If they're lucky, with a great teacher. More often, with a bunch of mediocre teachers. Related to that, schools rarely have the resources to distinguish between students who would benefit from integration and those who would benefit from specialized and separate programs.
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - jacknews 3y ago
    I don't think you should segregate schools. Just classrooms. That gives students in 'bad' classes something to aspire to, and keeps them on the map rather than being written-off to a 'poor school', and parents should realise that, though their kid is in the 'bad' class, they are getting appropriate help, not just being discarded. In some ways, the 'best' teachers should be assigned to the 'bad' kids, certainly those with the best command of a class. The 'good' kids don't need that so much.
dehrmann 3y ago
> they are behavioral consultants rather than teachers During covid, someone observed that it exposed the primary role of public schools to be day care.
- analog31 3y ago
  Except there must be a difference between school and day care because the kids who stayed home during covid are now way behind academically.
nonameiguess 3y ago
I don't get the expulsion discussion here (not just your comment, but responses as well). At least in the US, these kids legally need to be educated somewhere. Expelling doesn't remove them from the school system. It just means they'll be disrupting a different set of kids at some other school. Making something someone else's problem isn't solving the problem. It's like dealing with homelessness by rounding them up and bussing them to a different city. You could conceivably create schools composed entirely of the kids who got expelled from somewhere else, which I think some districts have actually done (continuation schools), but you're effectively creating a juvenile prison system for people who didn't commit any actual crime and definitely never got a trial.
- sixothree 3y ago
  I think that's pretty much the crux of every argument here - move those other kids somewhere else. Don't worry about improving their situation, but make my situation better. Cite a study, draw incorrect conclusions from it that support your argument, find some exception to the norm and use that as your example, and don't forget - describe how you were brought up and how that was better.
JJMcJ 3y ago
An analogy. In a dorm the week before finals, 90% of the students are urgently trying to prepare for finals. 10% are drunk and or high and playing frisbee in the halls 24 hours a day. From friends who have taught high school in poor neighborhoods the situation as similar, only more violent.

bsuvc 3y ago

The author seems to be saying that the reason charter schools are successful is because of self-selection, and that is also why public schools are worse, due to the inverse of self-selection. While there is certainly self-selection occurring here, it would be a mistake for policy makers to dismiss the problems with public schools as just being due to that. They should introspect instead of seeking excuses.

monero-xmr 3y ago
Also it’s totally fine for the rich to self-select among many private schools. Apparently it’s only a problem when poor people similarly have choices. Why is having competition among public schools, with parents having a choice as to which to send them, so bad? It doesn’t make any sense.
- zmgsabst 3y ago
  The professional/managerial class can’t stand being responsible for their policy failures — which become apparent when people have options.
- cardamomo 3y ago
  The author is suggesting that the self-selection effect is a problem for this and similar studies, because they potentially mask the effect they the learning environment has. In fact, the author sounds quite complimentary, calling the program being studied "an impressive, even inspiring initiative to improve the lives of poor inner-city children through charter schools and community programs." This piece is calling for randomized trials, as opposed to observational studies.
  - fmajid 3y ago
    A randomized trial would probably violate all manner of ethics rules, and be vociferously opposed by parents, at least those who care about their kids' education, and thus we'd fall back to the same self-selection problem the author highlights.

nxm 3y ago

Charter schools are the saving grace to the public schools hijacked by the teachers union and bloated administrations. Recently, these unions succeeded to lowering testing standards for graduation in blue states to mask the worse job they’re doing teaching our kids: Examples: https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/new-york-lowers-bar-student-math-english-17841120.php https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/new-york-lowers-bar-... Meanwhile major cities have the highest per pupil spend for public schools, with frighteningly poor outcomes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/03/30/baltimore-city-public-schools-promoted-student-with-013-gpa-while-spending-a-14-billion-budget/amp/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/03/30/bal... Fix K-12 schools (no, more money on bloated administrations is not the answer), and the need for affirmative action goes away.

forgotOldLogin 3y ago
The Times Union piece you cite does not say that the union supported lowering standardized test scores required for graduation. In fact, the article quotes the union funded Alliance for Quality Education as opposing the change. Charter schools create duplicate systems with duplicate costs, reduce funds available for traditional school students in sending schools, and are a waste of taxpayer resources. When students leave traditional public schools for charter schools, the traditional public school is unable to reduce costs in proportion with the loss in per-pupil revenues. Students in public schools are left with fewer resources.
- davemp 3y ago
  Take a survey of public school board budgets if you want to see a waste taxpayer resources. There is already all the duplication of effort and wasteful initiatives you could ask for.
- zaphar 3y ago
  If we've learned one thing about education over the years it's that past a certain point more funding doesn't help. Improving educational outcomes requires at least 2 things that the article mentions: 1. Engaged parents. 2. Social Norms that normalize learning behaviours. Parent's can control the first directly and the second indirectly by "choosing" a non public school option or moving to a district that has the proper norms. Charter schools are one of a class of escape hatches that less advantaged parents can choose in order to impact the second factor for their child. I strongly believe that these escape hatches should exist for the Parents who can't easily move or choose a private option. Improving education outcomes for the children of those parents who do care requires giving them tools to support their children whether the environment itself does or does not. It seems unfair to force those parents to fail just because their community is failing around them.

FrustratedMonky 3y ago

The drive to use public tax dollars for private schools is great when it is STEM. Seems good right? Charter Schools for STEM. Who could argue? People miss that the primary interest groups that are lobbying for private schools, that are arguing against public schools, are for Religion. They want to be able to teach the bible as fact, not teach evolution, to allow prayer. By syphoning public dollars, into private schools, they are bypassing the separation of state-church. This then takes dollars away from public schools, which then struggle. Then the awful state of the public schools, is used as an argument for more private schools, and thus more religious schools. Eventually the population wont be able to think in scientific terms anymore, logical reasoning will be gone.

brightball 3y ago
My kids go to a private religious school in South Carolina. They are taught about world religions, evolution, have chapel twice a week and allow prayer. It’s also the best school in the entire state. My kids go there because it's a great school. There are a lot of anti religious scare tactics used to push people off of vouchers. The reality is that the only people with true choice in school selection have to either be able to afford private school, afford to move to a house zoned for a better school or afford to have parent who can facilitate a home school group. Voucher proponents want everybody to have all choices available.
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  >"It’s also the best school in the entire state." That is the problem. Why not make public schools better? Why is everyone else at a disadvantage. If our focus was on putting funding into 'all' schools, not just 'rich geographic locations', then everyone could be educated. It isn't about 'Choice', it is about everyone getting a minimal education. If you want to 'choose' to indoctrinate your kids into your particular religion of 'choice', that can be done at home. But everyone should learn the old Reading/Writing/Arithmetic.
  - brightball 3y ago

XVincentX 3y ago

Reminds me a lot what Thomas Sowell says in Charter School and Their Enemies book

h2odragon 3y ago

(2010) > we are thinking about spending an enormous amount of time, effort and money on a major overhaul of the education system when we don't have the data to tell us if what we'll spend will wasted or, worse yet, if we are to some extent playing a zero sum game. ... well, do we have the data now? Seems to me the "education system" keeps having the same debates over and over; surely "data" isn't at issue here? From an outsider perspective it seems like all sides to any debate feel free to make up any data and any reinterpretation of existing data they need, in order to support their position of the day.

AmpsterMan 3y ago
That's exactly what they say in the beginning: > First off, this is an observational study, not a randomized experiment. I think we may be reaching the limits of what analysis of observational data can do in the education debate and, given the importance and complexity of the questions, I don't understand why we aren't employing randomized trials to answer some of these questions once and for all.

eimrine 3y ago

Could you ELI5 this article for me? I am amazed by the high quality comments here but the article is not readable for me.

sixothree 3y ago
The quality of comments here is pathetic. These are some of the most misleading arguments I've ever seen. Every bit of evidence is some exception to the norm.
- vacuity 3y ago
  When most people equate emotion-based beliefs to logic, that's what happens. Of course everyone has their biases, but most conveniently ignore theirs.

deleted 3y ago

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WarOnPrivacy 3y ago

I had 3 sons in my county's first charter school. We enrolled when it launched. It was a mistake I regret. My kids were not baseline* and the educators were out of their depth. They took their obligations seriously and made good faith efforts but weren't able make the leap (during our 7 years). We left for the county's public schools and they were a world better - by every measure. I am not overstating that an inch. All that said, I still felt the charter was a good fit for normie students and I recommended it to some parents (but not all). * One was high functioning autistic. Two coped poorly with the limited curriculum.