There doesn't seem to be a real market type motivator to encourage charter schools to operate legitimately. I'm sure many do operate legitimately, but just hoping the proprietors do so and then expecting local school districts to dedicate resources to police them (something that is far outside their core competency) seems like a recipe for things going sideways.
The check on charter schools is that if they provide a bad education, the students will leave. If they create a bad working environment for teachers, the teachers will leave. The latter actually seems to have checked the subject of the article effectively: teacher turnover was high, and the teachers profiled here both ultimately did leave.
The problem is that kids don’t really get catch up time to learn more at their grade level, and switching schools comes at huge cost (costs of applying, costs of transferring schools, arranging new transportation, shifting schedules around, the child losing their existing social networks etc.)
I know - I switched schools (from public to charter) in 8th grade. It was a drastic move (particularly since the new school was 23 miles away and so it meant I had to be driven 45 minutes to see any of my new friends), but well worth it - IMHO it literally saved my life.
Usually if someone is thinking of switching schools catching up is the least of their concerns, because they're not learning anything anyway in their current situation.
I guess what I'm saying is that applying the market to schools is suboptimal, because the market "correcting" means you've fucked up one year's worth of schooling for a bunch of kids, and it's not something that is easy to recover from.
That's the case with all market "corrections", though - when the stock market corrects people can lose their life savings, when the mainframe market corrects skilled professionals lose their whole careers, when the coal market corrects whole towns find themselves in poverty.
What I'm saying is that without that market correction, the consequences are worse: instead of fucking up one year's worth of schooling (which is not easy to recover from), you fuck up 12 years worth of schooling (which is impossible to recover from). And that is actually the status quo right now - there are large swaths of America that are essentially unemployable because they are lacking basic skills needed for today's economy.
The problem is that good schools that are outcompeting other schools do not scale up to absorb their competitors' customers, like you would see in a normal market. Education is hard to scale up; even if you get the approvals, school space isn't cheap, maintaining standards with more teachers, staff, and students can get more chaotic, etc.
It's why, for example, this particular charter discussed in the article didn't see a drop in enrollment; spots at good schools can be hard to come by. And because enrollment doesn't drop the market doesn't actually correct, and you're still fucking up childrens' schooling for at least a year.
> The check on charter schools is that if they provide a bad education, the students will leave.
It sound estrange for me. But, I think that you are right that this is the intention.
Are the kids responsibility to evaluate the validity of the education system? Aren't they just kids that are in school to learn the most basic stuff?
There is a reason why kids are not legally adults. And it is their lack of maturity and experience to take decisions.
> If they create a bad working environment for teachers, the teachers will leave. The latter actually seems to have checked the subject of the article effectively: teacher turnover was high, and the teachers profiled here both ultimately did leave.
It is interesting that the adults where the ones actually leaving.
Kids know when they're not getting a good education - it usually comes out in unexplained bad behavior, withdrawal, refusal to do the work because it's bullshit, etc. If you're lucky they might even tell you as such.
Students aren't the customers, they don't write the checks and make the decisions. A charter school can provide a bad education and convince parents to fund them anyways - touting religious stuff seems like the easiest path for this.
In fact, what most people would consider "a bad education" in some cases might even be the parents' reason for putting their kids in such a school to begin with. Like, they'd really rather homeschool them for religious or tribal indoctrination reasons, but for whatever reason they can't, so a charter school might be the next best thing to them.
There's a principal-agent problem with all parenting: you're making decisions on behalf of another human being and hoping that those decisions line up with the best interests and wishes of the person in question.
Obviously this isn't always the case, but both common sense and Western legal traditions assume that the parent's interests will be most closely aligned with their child, and that they're better suited to make those decisions than a bureaucrat, a CEO, or even a teacher. Societies that assume the state is better qualified to make decisions on behalf of children than the parents are have gone to dark places.
"Alt.Ed gone bad"? That's far more of an attack (and clickbait) than the article's title. As for discussion, nothing wrong with posting your opinion in the comments -- we all can discuss.
Hi...So, if you read the article, it does talk about how charter schools in CA are managed and how extensive govt involvement is and how there is no oversight. So I still stand by my title. Maybe I could add ‘California’ (if I have enough words left) but otherwise I am comfortable with my choice of words for change in title.
I read the article (well, 75% so far). It's primarily how this couple gamed the system; I don't see that it casts the LAUSD policy or leaders in a bad light.
We all know any sufficiently byzantine bureaucracy can be gamed by motivated players. Such is the case here, it seems.
Contrast with my son's school: it's well-run, has strong leadership and wonderful teachers ... and they still have to work hard, year over year, to stay right with the LAUSD policies.
Tl;dr This story isn't about charter schools so much as it is a public outing of the weirdo couple who runs (and profits from) one specific charter in the LA system.
[..]Twenty-seven years ago, when California became just the second state to enact a law establishing charter schools, state leaders framed the experiment as a modest one that would allow only 100 schools at first. Free-market advocates saw charters as a way to empower all students to choose from a variety of schools. Other supporters envisioned them as laboratories for testing new teaching methods and then bringing successes back to traditional public schools.
The new, privately operated schools would be government-funded and tuition-free. They would unleash creativity by liberating schools from many of the state education code’s rules. But to ensure that they lived up to their promises and spent public money properly, they would have to be vetted and overseen by governmental bodies, beginning with the school districts in which they were located.
That was sufficient check and balance for the civic-minded individuals who ran many charter schools. But as the number of charters in the state grew, the same law that allowed many founders to try new ideas with great success created opportunities for others.
The law allowed for a multitude of different bodies to serve as “authorizers,” watching over the new schools. It gave oversight power not just to the state board, but also to each of the state’s many school districts and county boards of education — regardless of whether they had the ability or inclination to properly police the independently run schools.[..]
[..]About 330 government entities have the authority to authorize and supervise charters in California. By contrast, Texas, the state with the second-largest number of charter schools, has 18, according to its state education agency. New York has two active authorizers.
Los Angeles Unified, the nation’s second-largest school district, has an entire division devoted to overseeing the charters it authorizes and is considered one of the state’s most robust monitors. But the roster of charter authorizers also includes school districts with colorful histories of corruption and financial mismanagement. Some are so small that they have fewer than a dozen employees in all, with insufficient resources to be effective watchdogs.[..]
I honestly don’t have the bandwidth for this. It’s my opinion. You could have changed my mind. You didn’t.
Unless a mod changes it, its likely not going to change. Re: my stance. I stand by my original impression of the article and I can live with the title I gave. It encapsulated the import in as few words as possible and I am ok with it.
I think I am done here. I appreciate you taking the time to share your opinion. But I don’t know what else to say because I remain unconvinced by your argument. Perhaps just continue with the discussion about charter schools instead? Have a great rest of the weekend.
Charter schools are vastly superior with only one exception: school districts like to keep them underfunded. Which is absurd considering how much better they are in every way.
Charter schools live or die on their own merits, which means (a) they're likely to be more variable in terms of quality than public schools, and (b) the best charter schools will far exceed public schools in quality. As long as we're trading anecdotes, the charter schools I know of near me are extremely high quality. Several kids I know attend some of them, and their experience has been phenomenal.
Why not institute whatever's necessary to weed out those that are abusing the system (i.e. embezzling, failing to educate, etc.), and give people the freedom to decide on the rest?
I suspect a lot of the attacks on charter schools are coming from folks who view education primarily as a means of propagating their political viewpoints.
I don't necessarily agree with your (b) but I'll concede it if you agree to a (c) the worst charter schools can fall far short of public schools on quality ... in agreement with your point (a).
Just read the linked LA Times article to see what I mean.
It’s still funded by Big Gov and doesn’t have oversight.
And whatever is necessary to be implemented isn’t and hence it’s an effort gone bad. The article is pretty extensive about the issues of CA charter schools.
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[ 0.25 ms ] story [ 73.8 ms ] threadUsually if someone is thinking of switching schools catching up is the least of their concerns, because they're not learning anything anyway in their current situation.
What I'm saying is that without that market correction, the consequences are worse: instead of fucking up one year's worth of schooling (which is not easy to recover from), you fuck up 12 years worth of schooling (which is impossible to recover from). And that is actually the status quo right now - there are large swaths of America that are essentially unemployable because they are lacking basic skills needed for today's economy.
It's why, for example, this particular charter discussed in the article didn't see a drop in enrollment; spots at good schools can be hard to come by. And because enrollment doesn't drop the market doesn't actually correct, and you're still fucking up childrens' schooling for at least a year.
It sound estrange for me. But, I think that you are right that this is the intention.
Are the kids responsibility to evaluate the validity of the education system? Aren't they just kids that are in school to learn the most basic stuff?
There is a reason why kids are not legally adults. And it is their lack of maturity and experience to take decisions.
> If they create a bad working environment for teachers, the teachers will leave. The latter actually seems to have checked the subject of the article effectively: teacher turnover was high, and the teachers profiled here both ultimately did leave.
It is interesting that the adults where the ones actually leaving.
It's up to the adults in their life to listen.
Obviously this isn't always the case, but both common sense and Western legal traditions assume that the parent's interests will be most closely aligned with their child, and that they're better suited to make those decisions than a bureaucrat, a CEO, or even a teacher. Societies that assume the state is better qualified to make decisions on behalf of children than the parents are have gone to dark places.
My son is having a great experience at a well-run LA charter school and the current headline seems in violation of HN rules. [edit; now flagged tfa]
I didn’t want the discussion to be about the couple but about charter schools.
Eta: looks like I can’t edit it now.
We all know any sufficiently byzantine bureaucracy can be gamed by motivated players. Such is the case here, it seems.
Contrast with my son's school: it's well-run, has strong leadership and wonderful teachers ... and they still have to work hard, year over year, to stay right with the LAUSD policies.
Tl;dr This story isn't about charter schools so much as it is a public outing of the weirdo couple who runs (and profits from) one specific charter in the LA system.
The new, privately operated schools would be government-funded and tuition-free. They would unleash creativity by liberating schools from many of the state education code’s rules. But to ensure that they lived up to their promises and spent public money properly, they would have to be vetted and overseen by governmental bodies, beginning with the school districts in which they were located.
That was sufficient check and balance for the civic-minded individuals who ran many charter schools. But as the number of charters in the state grew, the same law that allowed many founders to try new ideas with great success created opportunities for others.
The law allowed for a multitude of different bodies to serve as “authorizers,” watching over the new schools. It gave oversight power not just to the state board, but also to each of the state’s many school districts and county boards of education — regardless of whether they had the ability or inclination to properly police the independently run schools.[..]
[..]About 330 government entities have the authority to authorize and supervise charters in California. By contrast, Texas, the state with the second-largest number of charter schools, has 18, according to its state education agency. New York has two active authorizers.
Los Angeles Unified, the nation’s second-largest school district, has an entire division devoted to overseeing the charters it authorizes and is considered one of the state’s most robust monitors. But the roster of charter authorizers also includes school districts with colorful histories of corruption and financial mismanagement. Some are so small that they have fewer than a dozen employees in all, with insufficient resources to be effective watchdogs.[..]
<<<<<- Gone bad.
“problems exist” != “gone bad”
I have heard it he said that charter schools were started as union killers, but have morphed to become headaches of their own.
Public education needs overhauling and more decentralized.
> please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.
That’s literally what the article is about. The article is not an editorial; it’s journalism. How is that misleading?
Unless a mod changes it, its likely not going to change. Re: my stance. I stand by my original impression of the article and I can live with the title I gave. It encapsulated the import in as few words as possible and I am ok with it.
I think I am done here. I appreciate you taking the time to share your opinion. But I don’t know what else to say because I remain unconvinced by your argument. Perhaps just continue with the discussion about charter schools instead? Have a great rest of the weekend.
Both my kids go to charter schools.
Why not institute whatever's necessary to weed out those that are abusing the system (i.e. embezzling, failing to educate, etc.), and give people the freedom to decide on the rest?
I suspect a lot of the attacks on charter schools are coming from folks who view education primarily as a means of propagating their political viewpoints.
Just read the linked LA Times article to see what I mean.
And whatever is necessary to be implemented isn’t and hence it’s an effort gone bad. The article is pretty extensive about the issues of CA charter schools.