I found this article interesting. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features...making-meaningful-gains-but-its-hard-to-tell/
In order to sell computers to schools, bill gates had to placate the teachers. Surprise! If the teachers teach the lessons themselves, you say the teacher doesn't have to care if the student learns anything from it or not. But if the lesson is on video, it is absolutely imperative that the teachers go one on one with students to make sure the kid gets it. I see. That's the kind of logic that would come straight from the nea. There is an inescapable logic to the fact that if the teacher has more time from not teaching the lesson, they can spend more time helping the kids. And they should be able to help more of them than they previously could. I'm not at all persuaded that all roads everywhere seem to lead to more money being transferred out of the pockets of taxpayers and into the pockets of the teachers unions. If teachers don't feel that they are paid enough, then cut out some of the ridiculously bloated administrative expenses and transfer some of it to teachers. Moochelle's school lunch rules led to a 1.2 billion dollar increase in administrative cost to implement. Something that virtually everybody but Moochelle hates. But if a reduction in expenses is required for economic feasibility, these types of things are never considered. They take the money from something that the public will see in a cynical attempt to draw sympathy. No different than when the federal budget was in limbo and they shut the public parks down for maximum effect, while cutting nothing that was truly wasteful. Or the IRS, who is facing a budget reduction right now for their indescretions, so what do they cut? They cut spending on responding to taxpayer requests for help with problems. It's always the same in every area of gov't. And schools are no different. I'm not surprised at all that teachers would conclude that if they don't have to teach classes, more teachers would be necessary. ( and probably at higher pay) But I'm not an ignoramus low info voter that falls for it.
Zuckerberg’s Expensive Lesson http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/08/o...lesson.html?smid=fb-nytopinion&smtyp=cur&_r=2 It’s just hitting bookstores, but Dale Russakoff’s new book, “The Prize: Who’s in Charge of America’s Schools?,” has already become a source of enormous contention, both in Newark, where the story takes place, and among education advocates of various stripes. The plotline revolves around what happened to the Newark school system after Mark Zuckerberg, the young founder and chief executive of Facebook, donated $100 million in 2010 to transform the city’s schools, a sum that was matched by the prodigious fund-raising of Cory Booker, Newark’s former mayor (now the state’s junior senator). The stated goal of the grant, according to Zuckerberg at the time, was to turn Newark’s schools into a “symbol of educational excellence for the whole nation.” Five years later, with the money basically gone, I think it is fair to say that hasn’t happened. Russakoff’s story, in brief, is that Zuckerberg, knowing little about education reform, naïvely put his faith in the charismatic Booker, a champion of the reform movement. Booker advocated the usual things: more teacher accountability, more charter schools and new agreements with the teachers’ union that would allow for the best teachers to be rewarded — and the worst to be fired. She goes on to describe a series of blunders by the reformers, including huge sums for consultants, the hiring of an abrasive superintendent, an unwillingness to fund useful programs that weren’t “transformative” enough, and a top-down approach that infuriated the people of Newark, who felt they were being dictated to by wealthy white outsiders. Almost half of Zuckerberg’s grant was spent (or committed) to help gain new labor contracts; out of the $200 million in his money and the matching grant, a full $21 million went to buying out unwanted teachers and other staff members, for instance. Yet Zuckerberg didn’t realize until too late that New Jersey state law — not teacher contracts — imposed the seniority system he was trying to get rid of. The education reform community is furious at the way it is portrayed in the book; one such critic, Laura Waters, described “The Prize” as “a fairy tale about reform,” basing her comment on a Times review. Others believe that Russakoff overlooked some of the good things that have taken place in Newark, especially in the area of teacher training, and the fact that the public schools are at least marginally better. But Russakoff doesn’t let those propagating the status quo off the hook, either. She describes the schools system as an “employer of last resort.” She shows the enormous impediments to real change imposed by the teachers’ union. Most telling is her comparison between the resources that a very good charter school, Spark Academy, has at its disposal and those available to the public schools. The KIPP charter network, which runs Spark, gets $16,400 per Spark pupil, of which $12,664 is devoted to the school. The district schools get $19,650 per pupil, but only $9,604 trickles down to the schools. Money that the charter school is spending on extra support is being soaked up by the bloated bureaucracy in the public school system. It is a devastating fact. Here is another one: The primary change in Newark has been the increasing number of students — over 30 percent now — who are being educated in charter schools. I realize that many in the education reform community will applaud this fact, especially since those students have, by and large, shown enormous progress in test scores (though Russakoff is quick to note that as in all cities, some Newark charters failed “dramatically”). It’s great for the 30 percent who are learning from charter school teachers. But as Russakoff puts it in the most poignant line in her book, “What would become of the children left behind in district schools?” The original idea behind the charter school movement was that this competition would spur traditional public schools to improve, to better compete for students. Instead, just as white flight drained urban school districts of white middle-class students when their families fled to the suburbs, now is there a new brain drain, with the black and Latino children of ambitious parents fleeing urban public schools now that they see an alternative. There is another way to approach reform, a way that includes collaboration with the teachers, instead of bullying them or insulting them. A way that involves the community rather than imposing top-down decisions. A way that allows for cross-pollination between charters and traditional public schools so that the best teaching practices become commonplace in both kinds of schools. As for Mark Zuckerberg, his experience in Newark does not appear to have deterred him. Last year he pledged $120 million to high-poverty schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. This time, however, he is insisting that he will collaborate with parents, teachers, school leaders and officials of both charter organizations and school districts, according to an op-ed he wrote with his wife, Priscilla Chan, in The San Jose Mercury News. Apparently, Zuckerberg has learned his lesson. What will it take for the rest of us to learn?
I fear he is wasting his money. You have a system with barely literate but highly politicized teachers, bloated and largely incompetent but corrupt beaucracies and students from cultures who do not value education, or discipline and respect for others. Rearranging the deck chairs on this Titanic can only accomplish so much.
don't value education? we have kids in Mali that leave home on Sunday to walk to school and get there by Moday morning. They stay in town all week and get out early on Fri so they can walk and be home by Saturday. All that just to get an education. No my friend it is not a cultural probem. But there is no comparison between the test results of kids in the white suburbs and the kids in the black inner city. White American suburban schooled kids test the highest in the world.
While I have supported traditional non-profit Charter Schools, I have strongly opposed On-Line and For-Profit Charters.... this article demonstrates why... Study on online charter schools: ‘It is literally as if the kid did not go to school for an entire year’ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-kid-did-not-go-to-school-for-an-entire-year/ A new study on the effectiveness of online charter schools is nothing short of damning — even though it was at least partly funded by a private pro-charter foundation. It effectively says that the average student who attends might as well not enroll. The study was done by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes, known as CREDO, and located at Stanford University, in collaboration with the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington and Mathematica Policy Research. CREDO’s founding director, Margaret Raymond, served as project director. CREDO receives funding from the pro-charter Walton Family Foundation, which provided support for the new research. CREDO has released a number of reports in recent years on the effectiveness of charters — using math and reading standardized test scores as the measure — which collectively conclude that some perform better than traditional public schools and some don’t. In its newest report, released this week, CREDO evaluated online K-12 charter schools. There are 17 states with online charter students: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin, as well as the District of Columbia. The study sought to answer this question: “How did enrollment in an online charter school affect the academic growth of students?” Academic growth, as mentioned before, is measured by standardized test scores for the purpose of this study, which evaluated scores from online charter students between 2008 and 2013 and compared them to students in traditional public schools (not brick-and-mortar charters). Here are some of the findings: Students in online charters lost an average of about 72 days of learning in reading. Students in online charters lost 180 days of learning in math during the course of a 180-day school year. Yes, you read that right. As my colleague Lyndsey Layton wrote in this story about the study, it’s as if the students did not attend school at all when it comes to math. The average student in an online charter had lower reading scores than students in traditional schools everywhere except Wisconsin and Georgia, and had lower math scores everywhere except in Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. Layton quoted Raymond as saying, “There’s still some possibility that there’s positive learning, but it’s so statistically significantly different from the average, it is literally as if the kid did not go to school for an entire year.” (More at above url)
I know nothing about this subject, so I am not offering an opinion, only asking questions. Why is the for-profit charter model inherently inferior? Wouldn't a for profit school have every incentive to produce demonstrable results? What about private schools? They may nominally be non-profit but you better believe they are about making money. Any way they can. I see no reason why the on-line model cannot be viable. We know the home schooling movement faces enormous hostility from the public education edifice, yet test results seem to show home-schooled kids do very well. I would think on-line would be a very effective supplement to home schooling. Obviously there are powerful forces threatened by online education, all the way up to the universities. The cost savings seem so apparent however, I believe we need a national effort to develop it as the default approach. Not least in the benefits is freeing our kids from an increasingly deranged public education establishment.
Non-profit Charter schools are funded by the parents and alumni who raise money for the facility while the teacher's salaries are generally funded by the state. The non-profit Charter schools are well tied into the community and have excellent track records. Nearly all of the top 100 High Schools in the U.S. are non-profit Charter schools (the top ranked local one near us is Raleigh Charter). Grubby for-profit charter schools are ran by national scam operators who set up separate companies that sell the for-profit charter school books, desks, supplies, etc. at highly inflated prices. They also rent their facilities from separate for-profit entities at high rent rates. It is all about greed and making money. The educational results are dismal at for-profit Charters. Unfortunately for-profit on-line Charter schools follow the same operational mind-set as for-profit brick & mortar Charter schools. Some are ran by the same companies that operate for-profit brick & mortar Charter schools. All the online Charters are for-profit and financially focused. They hire part-time non-licensed "teachers" to teach, provide limited support and poor educational results. Thy rank last in educational test results. On-line schools have potential if you take the greed for-profit motive out of them. There are numerous free online K-12 education websites with videos that provide excellent content and education which are widely used by many students as supplemental material (e.g. https://www.khanacademy.org/ ). They are also used in public schools in scenarios where tech savvy teachers "flip the classroom". (This might be a good time to mention that all the companies I have worked for view diplomas from for-profit colleges as worthless. These degrees will not help you get hired and are a waste of your money).
I am not familiar with how it is done in NC but up here the charter schools are clearly not funded by parents and alumni. It's apparently a very profitable endeavor, as the DC government gives them the same amount they spend on a public school student, which is enormous. The main issue facing charter schools here is finding suitable real estate for classes. There is enormous demand. Your complaints about for profit schools seem curious. Are you saying they inflate their costs to hide their profitability? What difference does that make? Who decides what they charge? Who funds it? I fail to see why the profit motive isn't as good an incentive in education as in other areas. There is nothing inherently scummy or grubby about making a profit, not unless one is connected to the government educational establishment and fears competition.
Explain to me why all the for-profit Charter schools are ranked last in educational results. Even falling below the worst inner city public schools. The non-profit charter schools are generally ranked better than public schools in educational results. BTW the non-profit Charter school facilities in DC are primarily funded by private grants coupled with non-school public money from the city. This is administered by the DC Public Charter School Financing and Support commission. DC has a very active Charter School program with many students who excel compared to traditional public schools. http://www.focusdc.org/charter-facts I will note that DC is considered a nation-wide model for Charter schools.