I was a very good test taker. I figured out the system. The night before the test you just had to remember everything in the book that was italicized and every date. They even sent me to the principal's office to be investigated for cheating because I kept getting 100% on every test. I told the principal, "You'd have to be an idiot not to get 100% on one of his tests." The next test had an essay question, "What was the importance of the Magna Carta?" worth 20% of the test. I had no idea. Couldn't even fake an answer. That was the first test I ever got with an 80%
I know what you mean. I became expert at scoring well on essay tests on books I'd never read. Now I'm in the process of going through all those books I was supposed to have read and didn't. But now they actually mean something.
Philadelphia’s school reform debacle: Despised governor crosses the line Gov. Tom Corbett has slashed funds and closed schools. But his latest move is the unpopular governor's most brazen SARAH JAFFE The Philadelphia school district has become the prime example of the problems with a corporate-style school “reform” agenda. Parents, teachers and students have resisted full privatization, New Orleans-style, and have found themselves punished for resistance as Gov. Tom Corbett, who controls the schools after a 2001 takeover by the state, slashes school budgets, wipes out thousands of jobs, and shutters dozens of schools. The latest move by Corbett and the Philadelphia School Reform Commission (SRC), which replaced an elected school board after the 2001 takeover, is to unilaterally cancel the city’s contract with the 15,000 members of the Philadelphia Federation of teachers. Monday morning, the SRC held a surprise meeting—announced, not on their website as usual, but with an advertisement in the legal section of the newspaper over the weekend. Normally, said Kati Sipp of the Pennsylvania Working Families Party, the commission meets on Thursday evenings, at a time when parents and students can attend, rather than at a time when school is in session and many parents are at work. “It was clearly designed to not be a public event,” Sipp said. The state takeover in 2001 came in the wake of a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by then-Philadelphia Superintendent David Hornbeck, claiming that state funding favored affluent white suburbs over the children of color who attend Philly public schools. Pennsylvania state politics often pit the city, portrayed as a hotbed of crime and poverty, against the white suburbs and center of the state, and this was no exception: the state government reacted furiously, Daniel Denvir reported at The Nation, taking over the district and eliminating the teachers’ union’s right to strike. (It’s worth noting that the laws enabling the state to take over Philly schools only apply to Philly schools, not to any other district in the state.) Those laws also allow the SRC to impose terms on the union, but, Sipp said, this is the first time they’ve done so. “Everyone’s always seen it as the nuclear option. Today they pushed the red button.” more . . .
While support teachers, I believe that unions for public employees are absurd. Corbett was quite right to cancel the city’s contract with the 15,000 members of the Philadelphia Federation of teachers. I will also note that Philadelphia is a national model of high performing charter schools despite efforts from the left to continually demonize these schools.
Another Study Finds Unaccountable Charter Schools Dogged by Corruption October 6, 2014 by Joshua Holland Students line up to be served lunch at the Thatcher Brook Elementary School in Waterbury, Vt. (AP Photo/Toby Talbot) In today’s Washington Post, Jeff Bryant, director of the Education Opportunity Network, writes about the promises that were first offered by advocates of the charter school industry: When former President Bill Clinton recently meandered onto the topic of charter schools, he mentioned something about an “original bargain” that charters were, according to the reporter for The Huffington Post, “supposed to do a better job of educating students.” A writer at Salon called the remark “stunning” because it brought to light the fact that the overwhelming majority of charter schools do no better than traditional public schools. Yet… charter schools are rarely shuttered for low academic performance…. In a real “bargaining process,” those who bear the consequences of the deal have some say-so on the terms, the deal-makers have to represent themselves honestly (or the deal is off and the negotiating ends), and there are measures in place to ensure everyone involved is held accountable after the deal has been struck. But that’s not what’s happening in the great charter industry rollout transpiring across the country. Rather than a negotiation over terms, charters are being imposed on communities – either by legislative fiat or well-engineered public policy campaigns. Many charter school operators keep their practices hidden or have been found to be blatantly corrupt. And no one seems to be doing anything to ensure real accountability for these rapidly expanding school operations. But in May, BillMoyers.com looked at a report issued by Integrity in Education and the Center for Popular Democracy — two groups that oppose school privatization. The study examined charter schools’ performance in 15 states, and revealed $136 million in fraud, waste and abuse in those states. The authors of that study wrote that, “where there is little oversight, and lots of public dollars available, there are incentives for ethically challenged charter operators to charge for services that were never provided.” Last week, they released a follow-up study of charter schools in Pennsylvania. It found that “charter school officials have defrauded at least $30 million intended for Pennsylvania school children since 1997.” Yet every year virtually all of the state’s charter schools are found to be financially sound. While the state has complex, multi-layered systems of oversight of the charter system, this history of financial fraud makes it clear that these systems are not effectively detecting or preventing fraud. Indeed, the vast majority of fraud was uncovered by whistleblowers and media exposés, not by the state’s oversight agencies. The authors found that while the auditing techniques used by Pennsylvania regulators could identify inefficiencies, oversight agencies don’t use tools “specifically designed to uncover fraud.” It also found that oversight agencies were understaffed and underfunded. “With too few qualified people on staff, and too little training, agencies are unable to uncover clues that might lead to fuller investigations and the discovery of fraud,” write the report’s authors. They also noted that their findings weren’t unique: Numerous government entities have raised the flag about the risk of fraud nationally and in Pennsylvania. Reporting in 2010 on the lack of charter-school oversight in states throughout the country, the Office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Education raised concerns that state-level education departments were failing “to provide adequate oversight needed to ensure that Federal funds [were] properly used and accounted for.” Also in 2010 in Philadelphia (which educates 50 percent of all Pennsylvania charter-school students), the Office of the Controller performed a “fraud vulnerability assessment” of the city’s oversight of charter schools and reported that the Charter School Office… made the city’s more than $290 million paid to charter schools “extremely vulnerable to fraud, waste, and abuse.” A 2014 follow-up report found that the School District of Philadelphia continues to provide “minimal oversight over charter schools except during the charter renewal process.” You can download the entire report on Pennsylvania charter schools at The Center for Popular Democracy.
So despite charter schools showing the best academic records in Philly, North Carolina, etc. across all racial demographics, you jump immediately to the Moyer's hit piece on charter schools - associated with a set of articles based on the report on the Pennsylvania charter schools from The Center for Popular Democracy that was funded by school unions. Why don't you dig into the statistics information on the educational results from charter schools.... you know the test scores, etc. compared to equivalent public schools. You do know that more than half of the top 100 high schools in the country are charter schools including Raleigh Charter down where I live. Let me make it clear that I support traditional charter schools that are non-profit. I do not support the for-profit charter schools including the on-line K-12 institutions that corporate entities are driving.
The point of charter schools is to provide competition for public schools. No one is forced to use them, yet they are fully subscribed. Liberals prefer to restrict private education to themselves. Poor whites and blacks can make do with the public schools. Good for the unions, good for the army of highly paid administrators and good for liberals. Not so good for the students but since when did liberals care about the results of their policies?
As long as they've controlled all the variables to provide true equivalency, I'd be happy to look at a comparison. Link?
Why don't you search all the previous threads on ET regarding charter schools - plenty of links and information.