Tweet
Thanks chance for your detailed and informed response. I do appreciate the citations, especially citing people I do respect in general. However, despite my esteem for Alter and Warren's intelligence, I don't consider either very well-informed on this specific issue. Just like DeVos seems less informed than you, since she didn't even know the difference between gauging student performance on a proficiency vs growth model. But the rhetorical strategy of citing them, I do very much appreciate, and is a whole lot more than I've come to expect from 99% of the net.
I don't have the time right now to find the sources to back my response, but for right now I'll just speak to my experience and knowledge of teachers who have worked in these areas. My wife has actually worked closely accrediting teachers in New Orleans, for instance.
I know personal experience does not necessarily reflect larger truths, but this is my concerns based on the cases I've seen: In my experience, many of the least qualified teachers I've seen end up teaching in private and charter schools. They also make less money, in general, in such schools. So, why would any teacher want to work in such a school? Because most of them get to pick and choose their students, and that is a MAJOR problem I have with them. Even in the rare cases that charter schools are held accountable close to what public schools are, and even in the rare cases that they perform as well or better than public schools, it is apples and oranges to comprare them, because such schools get to be selective in who they allow to enter them. They get to pick better students with better parents. They get to reject problem students, and those who would lower their performance. I'm sure specific programs in specific areas may not do this to the extent I have seen, but I have seen it, and I think it is a major problem.
The fact is that while many can suggest that the IDEA of charter schools has a lot of merit, how it has actually been implemented has by and large not worked. In aggrate, it has failed to be shown to be a better model than our public school system, which, btw, is unfairly compared to other countries that ALSO exclude and quickly track those students who would lower their overall proficiency scores. It seems unAmerican to me to want to go that route.
And really, that ties into why I'm against them at a deep ideological level, even if we could iron out the issues and make them work, which again, the stats show that they largely haven't yet, over the last couple of decades of trying, when you try to create a free-market and emphasize the choice you empower parents with, inevitably you create inequality. The fact is that the choices work both ways. If a charter school becomes better than public options in the area, inevitably, better students will want to go to it, and better parents will fight hard to get their kids to go to them, leaving behind worse students and/or potentially great students with parents who don't care enough. That means they get left behind in an even worse learning environment than they had, when the schools had at least some students and parents that cared. And it means that those public school are even more likely to fail, because funding is tied to performance, and when the best students leave, performance will suffer even more.
Eventually, I realize, that it would get so bad that the "bad" school would just be forced to close, and in the long term, the idea is that only the best would survive. But it takes a long time, and I have seen that idealistic process corrupted by desperate teachers and admins who taint the numbers by flat out cheating. Instead of teaching, desperate people manipulate test scores by teaching to the test, or flat out giving answers or encouraging the worst students to not take the test. Basically, even if/when the system works, it hurts a lot of kids, and without stringent regulation that doesn't ye exist, in encourages cheating and manipulation.
I don't have the time right now to find the sources to back my response, but for right now I'll just speak to my experience and knowledge of teachers who have worked in these areas. My wife has actually worked closely accrediting teachers in New Orleans, for instance.
I know personal experience does not necessarily reflect larger truths, but this is my concerns based on the cases I've seen: In my experience, many of the least qualified teachers I've seen end up teaching in private and charter schools. They also make less money, in general, in such schools. So, why would any teacher want to work in such a school? Because most of them get to pick and choose their students, and that is a MAJOR problem I have with them. Even in the rare cases that charter schools are held accountable close to what public schools are, and even in the rare cases that they perform as well or better than public schools, it is apples and oranges to comprare them, because such schools get to be selective in who they allow to enter them. They get to pick better students with better parents. They get to reject problem students, and those who would lower their performance. I'm sure specific programs in specific areas may not do this to the extent I have seen, but I have seen it, and I think it is a major problem.
The fact is that while many can suggest that the IDEA of charter schools has a lot of merit, how it has actually been implemented has by and large not worked. In aggrate, it has failed to be shown to be a better model than our public school system, which, btw, is unfairly compared to other countries that ALSO exclude and quickly track those students who would lower their overall proficiency scores. It seems unAmerican to me to want to go that route.
And really, that ties into why I'm against them at a deep ideological level, even if we could iron out the issues and make them work, which again, the stats show that they largely haven't yet, over the last couple of decades of trying, when you try to create a free-market and emphasize the choice you empower parents with, inevitably you create inequality. The fact is that the choices work both ways. If a charter school becomes better than public options in the area, inevitably, better students will want to go to it, and better parents will fight hard to get their kids to go to them, leaving behind worse students and/or potentially great students with parents who don't care enough. That means they get left behind in an even worse learning environment than they had, when the schools had at least some students and parents that cared. And it means that those public school are even more likely to fail, because funding is tied to performance, and when the best students leave, performance will suffer even more.
Eventually, I realize, that it would get so bad that the "bad" school would just be forced to close, and in the long term, the idea is that only the best would survive. But it takes a long time, and I have seen that idealistic process corrupted by desperate teachers and admins who taint the numbers by flat out cheating. Instead of teaching, desperate people manipulate test scores by teaching to the test, or flat out giving answers or encouraging the worst students to not take the test. Basically, even if/when the system works, it hurts a lot of kids, and without stringent regulation that doesn't ye exist, in encourages cheating and manipulation.
), we'd have been better off. And had the left questioned Obama the same way (Do you want President Trump to really have those powers?), we'd have been better off as well.
Comment