New Charter School Info Out *drumroll*...

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

In Japan, you have to have great grades and very high test scores to even get into the best public high schools.

It's hard to make comparisons when the schools choose their students.

Any school that gets to pick its students and/or kick out the students it doesn't want can't be compared with a school that has to accept every student.

The proper comparison is between policy regimes, not schools. If you fed all the animals in the zoo one standard diet, only the omnivoires would thrive. One size does not fit all.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Several studies have shown that students at private schools perform no better than those at public schools once you adjust for socioeconomic differences of the students, so it's not a big surprise that charter school students don't perform better than those at traditional public schools.

Cite?

 

[Denver]

I think these tests and test scores, while a useful metric, are not enough. I'd like to see graduating students tracked for, say, 5 more years, and their success in life during that period also contributing to a charter school, or any school's, evaluation. Perhaps also down to the teachers who directly contributed to that student's education.

 

[leftysergeant]

I have read otherwise.
Gerard Lassibile and Lucia Navarro Gomez,
"Organization and Efficiency of Educational Systems: some empirical findings"
Comparative Education, Vol. 36 #1Joshua Angrist
"Randomized Trials and Quasi-Experiments in Education Research"
NBER Reporter, summer, 2003Herman Brutsaert compared student performance in government and parochial schools in Belgium (which subsidizes parents' choice of school) and found (a) higher mean scores in parochial schools and (b) a lower correlation between parent income and performance in parochial schools (i.e., government schools exacerbate inequality).
Multi-country comparisons of independent and government schools consistently find a private school advantage both in performance and cost.

This still does not mean that it is a good idea to privatize education. Not everybody is going to have access to a decent school. The poor kids will still be stuck with scholls run as a charity with walking or a short drive from the homes. The best schools will still find it most profitable to operate in Yuppieville. Screw the bumpkins in the hinterlands. They haven't got the money even with a subsidy, and how much book learnin' do you need to plow, plant and reap?

My beef with charter schools is the same that I have with the vouchers that can be used at acedemies for yuppie larvae. They most help those who need help the least and leave those who most need help taking what they can get.

Working poor parents are just not able to keep up their part of the bargain and commit the time that is required by the charter system.

If there is really any difference between the charter schools and the public schools, it makes sense that the public schools could do the same thing and everyone comes out ahead.

But the charter schools are just a back door to privatizing the whole system, a cruel joke played by the vouchers advocates.

What advances a few select kids is not what is best for America. A broad base of educated people able to recognize and resist the blandishments of the corporatist swine who put our culture in the toilet is what we need.

This is, of course, why so much private money is going into the campaigns to replace public schools with vouchers.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

I think these tests and test scores, while a useful metric, are not enough. I'd like to see graduating students tracked for, say, 5 more years, and their success in life during that period also contributing to a charter school, or any school's, evaluation. Perhaps also down to the teachers who directly contributed to that student's education.

More information is usually better, but why is the default option, while we wait, retention of the State-monopoly school system? I don't know if you fall into this category, but one characteristic difference between free marketeers and defenders of the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel's exclusive position in receipt of the taxpayers' sub-adult education subsidy is the free marketeers' implicit assumption that the burden of proof rests on the advocates for the use of organized violence (the State), while defenders of the cartel implcitly assume that the burden of proof rests on the advocates of non-violence.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Seriously?
No recent studies?

Darwin published On the Origin of Species over 150 years ago. Einstein published "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" more than 100 years ago. Research comparing State-monopoly enterprises to firms in a competitive market is beating a dead horse. That argument should have died with the Soviet Union.

 

[tyr_13]

Neither condition describes the work I reference above. The random-assignment voucher lottery is as close to a double-blind trial as you'll get in education research.You can see for yourself that these studies address the question. In any case. I gave the references to two (Lassibile and Gomez, Angrist. et. al) so you can check. I mention also Herman Brutsaert, but you'll have to search with that name, since I don't recall the publication. See also Lockheed and Jiminez (referenced above) and various studies of the Chilean voucher policy.

Andrew Coulson pointed out a defect of studies that "control" for parent income: they use "free and reduced lunch" as a proxy for "poor". Government schools use this classification. If a parochial school does not offer government-subsidized lunch and charges one price, it will have no use for the classification. All such a school's students will be classified as "non-free/reduced price lunch", whatever their parents' income. Caroline Hoxby has pointed out a second difficulty with studies that compare charter schools to the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel's schools (the "public" schools): the proper comparison is to the schools that charter kids would otherwise attend, not to all government-operated schools.

After some digging I did find them. The first you linked to referred to is far to narrow a focus and isn't even attempting to address what you claimed, and thus I would call it not applicable when coupled with the age of the research. Your second is highly criticized, but that doesn't make it invalid. However, I'm certainly not going to at this point trust a study whose very methodology is under fierce debate at least until that's ironed out. At any rate, neither invalidates the more recent data.

Darwin published On the Origin of Species over 150 years ago. Einstein published "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" more than 100 years ago. Research comparing State-monopoly enterprises to firms in a competitive market is beating a dead horse. That argument should have died with the Soviet Union.

Again you're using examples that are simply not applicable. Electrodynamics and the observations made in Darwin's book simply do not change by society to society, by year to year, and by country to country. Trying to make the collapse of the Soviet Union as applicable to all government services is so non-applicable that it's ridiculous, and should give everyone pause as to the validity of any of your observations.

 

[leftysergeant]

Research comparing State-monopoly enterprises to firms in a competitive market is beating a dead horse. That argument should have died with the Soviet Union.

Horse feathers. Some things are supposed to be state-run. Schools should be one of them. They are not intended to maintain the status quo, or to prepare the bosses' larvae to be bosses and the working class kids to be good robots. They are supposed to level the playing field so that those who have potential can achieve it. Private schools just prep the elite hatchlings to grow up to be elite
vultures like their daddies.

We all benefit from public schools because it opens doors for any kid who applies himself to grow up to displace one of the sons of the useless rich. I have no problem with being taxed to subsidize that, although I would prefer that it be from an income tax distributed without regard to the wealth of a community, so that the leaches on Snob Hill pay more to trrain their future work force than does a struggling fry cook in Farmville.

I also want to see all ther for-profit prisons taken over by the states and the managers and executives of the corporations that run them locked up until they can be cleared of the current accusations of abuse of prisoners. That must remain the business of the state. It is abyssmally stupid to think that for-profit prisons achieve the stated purposes for which the law allows incarceration.

I also think that the whole power grid should be nationalized and run by PUDs.
(ENRON.)

 

[leftysergeant]

More information is usually better, but why is the default option, while we wait, retention of the State-monopoly school system? I don't know if you fall into this category, but one characteristic difference between free marketeers and defenders of the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel's exclusive position in receipt of the taxpayers' sub-adult education subsidy is the free marketeers' implicit assumption that the burden of proof rests on the advocates for the use of organized violence (the State), while defenders of the cartel implcitly assume that the burden of proof rests on the advocates of non-violence.

Utter twaddle. Public schools worked for decades, and then went down hill when the racists who didn't want their kids going to scholl with dark-skinned kids and the capitalists who wanted to destroy the ecconomic egalitarianism of the New Deal started screwing with it.

You anarcho-capitalists have to prove that your way is better for ALL socio-ecconomic classes or sod off. We have no reason to subsidize yuppie larvae to a better education than a working class family.

We consent to be governed only because it will allow a better life style than will the chaos of anarcho-capitalism.

 

[WildCat]

This still does not mean that it is a good idea to privatize education. Not everybody is going to have access to a decent school. The poor kids will still be stuck with scholls run as a charity with walking or a short drive from the homes. The best schools will still find it most profitable to operate in Yuppieville. Screw the bumpkins in the hinterlands. They haven't got the money even with a subsidy, and how much book learnin' do you need to plow, plant and reap?

My beef with charter schools is the same that I have with the vouchers that can be used at acedemies for yuppie larvae. They most help those who need help the least and leave those who most need help taking what they can get.

I don't think you have the slightest idea what charter schools actually are.

Not a whole lot of "yuppie larvae" attending the ones in Chicago.

 

[leftysergeant]

Not a whole lot of "yuppie larvae" attending the ones in Chicago.

Last I heard, though, the parents were supposed to be able to participate more extensively in their children's education than is the case in public schools. With the decline in real income among the working classes, how many of them are able to spend more time at it? Is a non-native English speaker who has to work two jobs to feed his kids really going to be able to participate fully in the kid's education?

 

[Alt+F4]

Last I heard, though, the parents were supposed to be able to participate more extensively in their children's education than is the case in public schools. With the decline in real income among the working classes, how many of them are able to spend more time at it? Is a non-native English speaker who has to work two jobs to feed his kids really going to be able to participate fully in the kid's education?

Charter schools are public schools. As for participating in a child's education, that can be done equally in both charter public schools and traditional public schools. As a teacher I can tell you, I don't give a damn if a parent is working 10 jobs, there is always time to take 5 minutes to call school, or write a note. And yes, in big school systems like Chicago, NYC and LA there are translation services available to both teachers and parents for free.

Being poor is NEVER an excuse to neglect what is going on in a child's education.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

... At any rate, neither invalidates the more recent data.

What "more recent data"? Link=___?

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

...Research comparing State-monopoly enterprises to firms in a competitive market is beating a dead horse. That argument should have died with the Soviet Union.

...Trying to make the collapse of the Soviet Union as applicable to all government services is so non-applicable that it's ridiculous, and should give everyone pause as to the validity of any of your observations.

I do not say "all". I have posed the following two questions repeatedly in this forum:...
1. From State (government, generally) operation (or subsidization) of what industries does society as a whole benefit? You may imagine either a dichotomous classification, A = {x:x is an unlikely candidate for State operation}, B={x:x is a likely candidate for State operation}, or a continuum...
(highly unlikely) -1_________.________+1 (highly likely).
2. What features of an industry determine its classification or position on the continuum?
3. The State cannot subsidize education without a definition of "education". The State cannot compel attendance at school without a definition of "school". Compulsory attendance laws mean nothing unless some school has to take students rejected everywhere else. Call these default-option schools "the public schools".
(a)What does society gain from a policy which restricts parents' options for the use of the taxpayers' sub-adult education subsidy to such schools? (b)What does society gain from a policy which gives to private corporations (the NEA, AFT, AFSCME) exclusive contracts to supply labor to these schools?

 

[leftysergeant]

I do not say "all". I have posed the following two questions repeatedly in this forum:...
1. From State (government, generally) operation (or subsidization) of what industries does society as a whole benefit?

Water supply. Electric power generation and distribution. Wire-based communications. Mail delivery. Hospitals. Schools. Railroads.

Manufacturing of consumer goods , food preparation and service and farminng are more appropriately private ventures, altough any of them could be feasibly operated as collective activities. Mining and logging are feasible as private industries as long as certain regulations to preserve the environment are obeyed. Since the last two are dependent on access to the commons, they can, reasonably, be conducted on a leased basis, which is to say that the operator pays the state or whatever collective entity represents the interests of the people as reasonable sum for the right to extract those resources.

2. What features of an industry determine its classification or position on the continuum?

The use of finite resources which cannot be created merely by labor cannot rightly be considered the property of an individual. Nobody created the rain or filled an aquifer with glacial melt water. It passes through or underlies the rightful dominion of entire populations. It is unreasonable to say that any one person or family may own it outright. Power production and distribution and wire communications require transmission facilities that cross the properties of other citizens, sometimes requiring an easement which cannot be refused. Why should any individual be allowed to force another to participate in his venture without a share of the profits of that venture?

3. The State cannot subsidize education without a definition of "education". The State cannot compel attendance at school without a definition of "school". Compulsory attendance laws mean nothing unless some school has to take students rejected everywhere else. Call these default-option schools "the public schools".

You are not going to get away with that seismosaurus-sized, Klieg-light-illuminated, garishly-painted false premise. You are trying to call the public schools loser academies, and you are not going to get away with it. The public schools exist to make available to ALL children the lore and the sciences and the shared knowledge of ouyr repective cultures, whether here in an industrialized nation or in a sparsely-populated agrarian one. It is to the collective advantage of all members of the collective, whether we are talking about a state, a city, a village or just isolated bands, that the young be prepared to contribute to their own upkeep and to the upkeep of their collective. The most efficient way to assure that all children have access to this lore is to cewntralize the transmission of the lore into a few places within easy reach. Since not all citizens posess all the eccessary bits of lore to make it all loook like a coherent and inter-related whole, this usually entails assigning the task of transmitting such lore to a few people with a broad knowledge of all the accumulated and preserved lore. We call them "teachers" and their labor, being a benefit to all of us, should be born by all of us, in proportion to the amount of material benefit we derive from membership in the collective.

Should an individual have sufficient wealth beyond his immediate needs after making his contribution to the commons, in proportion to the benefit he has derived from the commons, to send his children to a distant or separate ceter of learning, by all means, let him. But but no means should this excuse him from making his appropriate contribution to ther collective schools. They are still a part of the commons from which he derives his livelihood. If every snob with money were allowed to remove both his child and his rightful dues to the collective from the schools, it would eventually and inevitably cause the collapse of the collective schools, leaving them unable to function. If the privatge schools set standards which exclude too many children, then, eventually, many of them will have no access to any education worth the effort.

This aint about your just paying to have your own larvae educated. It is about maintaining the health of the entire population. If you are not making your proper contribution to the well-being of the collective, what reason have we, other than your ability to hire violent savages to guard your stash, not to come and take it away from you by force?

(a)What does society gain from a policy which restricts parents' options for the use of the taxpayers' sub-adult education subsidy to such schools?

It won't work any other way. Like I said, it aint all about you and your spawn.

(b)What does society gain from a policy which gives to private corporations (the NEA, AFT, AFSCME) exclusive contracts to supply labor to these schools?

Private corporations my dying ass! They are the representatives of the colective made up of the teachers. They represent workers, not useless bleedin' investors who contribute nothing directly to the process of transmitting the lore of our civilization to our collective children.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

1. From State (government, generally) operation (or subsidization) of what industries does society as a whole benefit?

Water supply. Electric power generation and distribution. Wire-based communications. Mail delivery. Hospitals. Schools. Railroads¹.

Strike "Mail delivery. Hospitals. Schools" and the rest exhibit a common feature--a high degree of "natural monopoly". I don't accept that the natural monopoly argument decides the issue, but it is a reasonable consideration.

Manufacturing of consumer goods , food preparation and service and farminng are more appropriately private ventures, altough any of them could be feasibly operated as collective activities². Mining and logging³ are feasible as private industries as long as certain regulations to preserve the environment are obeyed. Since the last two are dependent on access to the commons, they can, reasonably, be conducted on a leased basis, which is to say that the operator pays the state or whatever collective entity represents the interests of the people as reasonable sum for the right to extract those resources.

With the exceptions of mail delivery, schools, and hospitals, we see the same relative positions on the continuum of regulation or operation (1-3-2), apparently for approximately the same reasons. This does not lead us to the same conclusion.

2. What features of an industry determine its classification or position on the continuum?

The use of finite resources which cannot be created merely by labor cannot rightly be considered the property of an individual. Nobody created the rain or filled an aquifer with glacial melt water. It passes through or underlies the rightful dominion of entire populations. It is unreasonable to say that any one person or family may own it outright. Power production and distribution and wire communications require transmission facilities that cross the properties of other citizens, sometimes requiring an easement which cannot be refused. Why should any individual be allowed to force another to participate in his venture without a share of the profits of that venture?

In practice, "finite" is a matter of degree. The mass of the Earth is finite. The oxygen, water, gold, and iron available to humans are finite. Of course, they are eternally recycleable.

3. The State cannot subsidize education without a definition of "education". The State cannot compel attendance at school without a definition of "school". Compulsory attendance laws mean nothing unless some school has to take students rejected everywhere else. Call these default-option schools "the public schools".

You are not going to get away with that seismosaurus-sized, Klieg-light-illuminated, garishly-painted false premise. You are trying to call the public schools loser academies, and you are not going to get away with it.

No. I'm not calliing the current government-operated schools "loser academies". I'm recommending a transition to a legal regime in which parents determine which institution provides "education" and the State contracts with a few organizations (such as the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel, KIPP, Edison, etc.) to operate default-option schools.

The public schools exist to make available to ALL children the lore and the sciences and the shared knowledge of our repective cultures¹, whether here in an industrialized nation or in a sparsely-populated agrarian one. It is to the collective advantage of all members of the collective, whether we are talking about a state, a city, a village or just isolated bands, that the young be prepared to contribute to their own upkeep and to the upkeep of their collective². The most efficient way to assure that all children have access to this lore is to centralize the transmission of the lore into a few places within easy reach³. Since not all citizens posess all the neccessary bits of lore to make it all loook like a coherent and inter-related whole, this usually entails assigning the task of transmitting such lore to a few people with a broad knowledge of all the accumulated and preserved lore⁴. We call them "teachers" and their labor, being a benefit to all of us, should be born by all of us, in proportion to the amount of material benefit we derive from membership in the collective⁵.

1. This is anti-historical and currently counter-factual. The public school system originated in Protestant indoctrination and anti-Catholic bigotry. The "public" (i.e., government-operated) school system does not perform as you describe.
2. We agree. I do not see that this requires a government presence. Rather, the opposite.
Albert Einstein

To me the worst thing seems to be for a school principally to work with methods of fear, force and artificial authority. Such treatment destroys the sound sentiments, the sincerity and self-confidence of the pupil. It produces the submissive subject. . . It is comparatively simple to keep the school free from this worst of all evils. Give into the power of the teacher the fewest possible coercive measures, so that the only source of the pupil's respect for the teacher is the human and intellectual qualities of the latter.

Albert Einstein
"Autobiographical Notes"
Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist

It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. To the contrary, I believe it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a whip, to force the beast to devour continuously, even when not hungry, especially if the food, handed out under such coercion, were to be selected accordingly.

Marvin Minsky
Interview
Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery (1994-July)

...the evidence is that many of our foremost achievers developed under conditions that are not much like those of present-day mass education. Robert Lawler just showed me a paper by Harold Macurdy on the child pattern of genius. Macurdy reviews the early education of many eminent people from the last couple of centuries and concludes (1) that most of them had an enormous amount of attention paid to them by one or both parents and (2) that generally they were relatively isolated from other children. This is very different from what most people today consider an ideal school. It seems to me that much of what we call education is really socialization. Consider what we do to our kids. Is it really a good idea to send your 6-year-old into a room full of 6-year-olds, and then, the next year, to put your 7-year-old in with 7-year-olds, and so on? A simple recursive argument suggests this exposes them to a real danger of all growing up with the minds of 6-year-olds. And, so far as I can see, that's exactly what happens.
Our present culture may be largely shaped by this strange idea of isolating children's thought from adult thought. Perhaps the way our culture educates its children better explains why most of us come out as dumb as they do, than it explains how some of us come out as smart as they do.

3 (a). "A few places" and "within easy reach" are mutually exclusive.
(b) Again, the State cannot subsidize education without a definition of "education". State operation of an industry implies standardization and uniform job descriptions, which produce a poor fit when the industry operates on highly variable inputs (e..g., individual children's interests and abilities).
4. Elementary school teachers are polymaths? Really? Parents do not need to know everything. There are these amazing resources which experts call "books".
5. If we paid teachers in proportion to their contribution to collective welfare, some of them would hang from streetside lightpoles.

This aint about your just paying to have your own larvae educated. It is about maintaining the health of the entire population. If you are not making your proper contribution to the well-being of the collective, what reason have we, other than your ability to hire violent savages to guard your stash, not to come and take it away from you by force?

That's how a lot of us feel about public-sector compensation.

(a)What does society gain from a policy which restricts parents' options for the use of the taxpayers' sub-adult education subsidy to such schools?

It won't work any other way.

Belgium, Chile, Hong Kong, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, among others, subsidize attendance at independent schools. The education industry is not a natural monopoly.

 

[fuelair]

Lefty - the big problem with your statement above in 35 is that very few of the persons/teachers have a broad enough background to interlink the lore/tie all the factors (or at least the big ones) together - and most students are unhappy with those who do
because- at least at this age/maturity level - most are looking to do as little work as possible yet still be "rewarded" with a good grade. They are not concerned (and, in my experience, neither are their parents) with links and interactions that make up our society/ies.

 

[tyr_13]

What "more recent data"? Link=___?

The OP.

I do not say "all". I have posed the following two questions repeatedly in this forum:...
1. From State (government, generally) operation (or subsidization) of what industries does society as a whole benefit? You may imagine either a dichotomous classification, A = {x:x is an unlikely candidate for State operation}, B={x:x is a likely candidate for State operation}, or a continuum...
(highly unlikely) -1_________.________+1 (highly likely).
2. What features of an industry determine its classification or position on the continuum?
3. The State cannot subsidize education without a definition of "education". The State cannot compel attendance at school without a definition of "school". Compulsory attendance laws mean nothing unless some school has to take students rejected everywhere else. Call these default-option schools "the public schools".
(a)What does society gain from a policy which restricts parents' options for the use of the taxpayers' sub-adult education subsidy to such schools? (b)What does society gain from a policy which gives to private corporations (the NEA, AFT, AFSCME) exclusive contracts to supply labor to these schools?

Maybe you should make a thread on it to avoid being accused of red-herring throwing.

Too much begging the question too. Your base premise and further questions are worded in such a way to restrict the answers you want to argue against, directing the discussion into one about unions, you're pet enemy.

Too many solutions for lagging education gains are put forth as magic bullets, and it simply isn't true. Privatization is just taking it's turn again like block secuduals, year-round, etc have in the past.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Too much begging the question too. Your base premise and further questions are worded in such a way to restrict the answers you want to argue against, directing the discussion into one about unions, you're pet enemy.

The "enemy" are people who want from government services which government (the largest dealer in interpersonal violence in a locality) is ill-suited to deliver. Many of my friends are "the enemy" in this sense.

Too many solutions for lagging education gains are put forth as magic bullets, and it simply isn't true. Privatization is just taking it's turn again like block secuduals, year-round, etc have in the past.

We disagree, here. Charter schools are corporate contractors to the State. The difference between Individual contractors who supply services to the State and State employees is principally a matter of who is responsible for taxes and other paperwork. Employees are contractors to their employer. State-monopoly enterprises lurch from fad to fad because they are State-monopoly enterprises. Federalism and markets institutionalize humility on the part of State actors. If a policy dispute turns on a matter of taste, numerous local policy regimes or a competitive market in goods and services allow for the expression of varied tastes, while the contest for control over a State-monopoly provider must inevitably create unhappy losers (who may comprise the vast majority; imagine the outcome of a State-wide vote on the one size shoes we all must wear). If a policy dispute turns on a matter of fact, where "What works?" is an empirical question, numerous local policy regimes or a competitive market in goods and services will generate more information than will a State-monopoly enterprise. Furthermore, competitive markets align rewards for successful experiments with the stakes involved.

 

[Apathia]

The answer is clear, to improve test scores we as a society need to stop trying to educate the worthless kids.

I was a worthless kid and "never amounted to anything."