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Basically the author is claiming that we have to hold all variables equal to compare charter schools and traditional public schools in order to 'be wise' and 't

Basically the author is claiming that we have to hold all variables equal to compare charter schools and traditional public schools in order to 'be wise' and 'think critically' about charter schools. Why is that necessarily the case? What if the expulsion rate (dropping disruptive students) and parent engagement is part of the 'secret sauce' of charter school success? Why should data that is based on these factors be considered 'bogus statistics'? There is some good, common sense advice in this article but it considers too many fundamental factors 'bogus'. This is a bit of a tangent but my fundamental problem with the traditional public school system is this: why should my child's education be primarily determined by where our domicile happens to be located?

scott_s 12y ago
To answer your first questions: because in the US, we typically assume our mandate is to educate everyone. If the "secret sauce" is to marginalize the students who are in the most need to help, then that does not achieve our goal.
- mattmcknight 12y ago
  It does if the problem students are denying a quality education to students who can't afford to move away from them. It only takes a small percentage to disrupt the effectiveness of a traditional classroom.
- clavalle 12y ago
  Why is it assumed that to educate everyone to the best of their ability that the traditional public school system, where everyone is thrown together based on where they live, is the best to achieve that goal and anything else leads to marginalization? I used to work at educating blind children. Most of those I worked with also had other disabilities as well. The school I worked at was a boarding school and first rate. It concentrated experts into one place and offered continuity of instruction beyond anything a public district could provide. Student progress was, on the whole, amazing compared to their progress at a public school. This is an extreme example, granted, but why wouldn't a similar approach work with other kids who need extra help and attention? Why not have behavior specialists at one charter school working with disruptive kids and engineers teaching kids that are interested in STEM?
  - MacsHeadroom 12y ago
    > Why is it assumed that to educate everyone to the best of their ability Nobody assumes that. That's not what public school is meant to do. Public school is meant to give the minimum level of education to the largest amount of students possible. "Best of their ability" is too costly- that's what private schools are for.
  - scott_s 12y ago
    We already have that kind of a model in public schools. The difference between the two is money. Public schools have special education teachers, and sometimes have entire sub-schools within existing schools just for special education kids. (My mother was a special education teacher.) Since your school was a boarding school, I imagine it also cost significantly more per-child than we currently spend in public school. A lot of the gain from your experience, I think, was probably from having good instructors trained in how to teach students with those particular disabilities, and probably a good teacher-to-student ratio. If we were willing to pay public teachers more, public schools could attract the same experts, and if we were willing to employ more public teachers in total, we could achieve a similar ratio. We could then achieve the same thing in public schools as in the boarding school.
    - clavalle 12y ago
      >We could then achieve the same thing in public schools as in the boarding school. No we couldn't. There are only so many experts to spread around.
humanrebar 12y ago
A related but slightly different line of thought is that higher education mostly serves as a filtering mechanism, and some serious people are investigating this hypothesis. At the risk of being heretical, this makes me ask, if there turns out to be merit in that proposition, is it so bad that primary and secondary school serve the same ends to some degree? If the criticism is that it doesn't give a fair chance to some kids, why aren't we focusing more on giving more chances and more types of chances to people instead of forcing everyone into the same mold?
japhyr 12y ago
It's not that you have to hold all variables equal. One of her core arguments is that people need to be transparent about these variables when comparing charter schools to open public schools. If the expulsion rate and parent engagement is part of the 'secret sauce', then everyone needs to be aware of that. Charter schools are impressing people because they claim to get results, and people assume they're getting better results with the same students. This would be interesting if it were happening, but it doesn't seem to be happening. Anyone can take the most motivated, compliant, best-supported students and do well with them.
- humanrebar 12y ago
  > If the expulsion rate and parent engagement is part of the 'secret sauce', then everyone needs to be aware of that. What if the key variables are harder truths? What if it's the education level of parents, implying that natural intelligence (or something correlated) is the most important thing. What if it's the marital status of the parents, implying the stability of their homes is the most important thing? What if it's the crime rate in their neighborhood they live in? Honestly, it's incredibly important to know if we're wasting our time and should be concentrating on lead paint, exercise levels, or healthy marriages. It seems to me that reporters don't really approach those kinds of issues either. We like to control for those sorts of variables as it they don't matter.
- clavalle 12y ago
  >Anyone can take the most motivated, compliant, best-supported students and do well with them. The question is: are charter schools doing better with these students than is being done with them in public schools? On the other end of the spectrum: would it be better to filter kids with behavior issues to their own school where it would be easier to concentrate experts to help them? How do we maximize the area under the student education curve? I don't claim to know but at least under the charter school system we have the ability to tweak the dials.

scott_s 12y ago

To answer your first questions: because in the US, we typically assume our mandate is to educate everyone. If the "secret sauce" is to marginalize the students who are in the most need to help, then that does not achieve our goal.

mattmcknight 12y ago
It does if the problem students are denying a quality education to students who can't afford to move away from them. It only takes a small percentage to disrupt the effectiveness of a traditional classroom.
clavalle 12y ago
Why is it assumed that to educate everyone to the best of their ability that the traditional public school system, where everyone is thrown together based on where they live, is the best to achieve that goal and anything else leads to marginalization? I used to work at educating blind children. Most of those I worked with also had other disabilities as well. The school I worked at was a boarding school and first rate. It concentrated experts into one place and offered continuity of instruction beyond anything a public district could provide. Student progress was, on the whole, amazing compared to their progress at a public school. This is an extreme example, granted, but why wouldn't a similar approach work with other kids who need extra help and attention? Why not have behavior specialists at one charter school working with disruptive kids and engineers teaching kids that are interested in STEM?
- MacsHeadroom 12y ago
  > Why is it assumed that to educate everyone to the best of their ability Nobody assumes that. That's not what public school is meant to do. Public school is meant to give the minimum level of education to the largest amount of students possible. "Best of their ability" is too costly- that's what private schools are for.
- scott_s 12y ago
  We already have that kind of a model in public schools. The difference between the two is money. Public schools have special education teachers, and sometimes have entire sub-schools within existing schools just for special education kids. (My mother was a special education teacher.) Since your school was a boarding school, I imagine it also cost significantly more per-child than we currently spend in public school. A lot of the gain from your experience, I think, was probably from having good instructors trained in how to teach students with those particular disabilities, and probably a good teacher-to-student ratio. If we were willing to pay public teachers more, public schools could attract the same experts, and if we were willing to employ more public teachers in total, we could achieve a similar ratio. We could then achieve the same thing in public schools as in the boarding school.
  - clavalle 12y ago
    >We could then achieve the same thing in public schools as in the boarding school. No we couldn't. There are only so many experts to spread around.

humanrebar 12y ago

A related but slightly different line of thought is that higher education mostly serves as a filtering mechanism, and some serious people are investigating this hypothesis. At the risk of being heretical, this makes me ask, if there turns out to be merit in that proposition, is it so bad that primary and secondary school serve the same ends to some degree? If the criticism is that it doesn't give a fair chance to some kids, why aren't we focusing more on giving more chances and more types of chances to people instead of forcing everyone into the same mold?

japhyr 12y ago

It's not that you have to hold all variables equal. One of her core arguments is that people need to be transparent about these variables when comparing charter schools to open public schools. If the expulsion rate and parent engagement is part of the 'secret sauce', then everyone needs to be aware of that. Charter schools are impressing people because they claim to get results, and people assume they're getting better results with the same students. This would be interesting if it were happening, but it doesn't seem to be happening. Anyone can take the most motivated, compliant, best-supported students and do well with them.

humanrebar 12y ago
> If the expulsion rate and parent engagement is part of the 'secret sauce', then everyone needs to be aware of that. What if the key variables are harder truths? What if it's the education level of parents, implying that natural intelligence (or something correlated) is the most important thing. What if it's the marital status of the parents, implying the stability of their homes is the most important thing? What if it's the crime rate in their neighborhood they live in? Honestly, it's incredibly important to know if we're wasting our time and should be concentrating on lead paint, exercise levels, or healthy marriages. It seems to me that reporters don't really approach those kinds of issues either. We like to control for those sorts of variables as it they don't matter.
clavalle 12y ago
>Anyone can take the most motivated, compliant, best-supported students and do well with them. The question is: are charter schools doing better with these students than is being done with them in public schools? On the other end of the spectrum: would it be better to filter kids with behavior issues to their own school where it would be easier to concentrate experts to help them? How do we maximize the area under the student education curve? I don't claim to know but at least under the charter school system we have the ability to tweak the dials.