Suburbs and charter schools: More room for innovation

Public schools can be perceived as inflexible with regards to their curriculum, much of what is established by states. Borrowing from an old ad campaign for Burger King, we are finding more parents that want to have it their way for their children. Charter schools could provide that opportunity as long is they don’t create barriers for others to participate.

It will be interesting to see if the use of a growth model as a measurement tool will cause some further the move of charter schools. At the end, it will be determined by what is being measured. Though a child may have become more fluent in Mandarin over the school year, it that isn’t being measured and considered, growth won’t be reflected through any testing.

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Well written article. I agree completely. Expecting a gifted child to be a “second teacher” so he isn’t bored and piling more work on him aren’t right and these approaches in no way fully develop his talents and help him grow.

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@dc…excellent point. I think single gender options are a really interesting area for charter schools to explore. A big issue, I think, is often how to select the kids who are chosen for these schools. Clearly, the “choice” options in DeKalb are less about choice and more about luck.

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The state of Georgia has failed in its function of funding education and prescribing and enforcing what public schools ought to be about. We all know about the massive budget cuts of the past ten years that have all but shut down many school systems to the point that many systems are in the mode of “just getting by.” As the money has stopped flowing from the state, local taxpayers in most counties have refused to kick in more local taxes for public education. This has resulted in the state suspending public instructional and operational rules that systems were once required to follow under QBE. Consequently, kids suffer and local school systems face the bleakest future since the 1930s when many systems actually did have to shut down. There is money available to fund public education, but there is no courageous majority in the legislature willing to approve the funds. So, charter schools have actually turned out to be a diversion to suck the remaining life out of public schools while we all watch from the sidelines.

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Charter schools already pick and choose the best students and do not have to take on all students like public schools. The article is simply a disguised argument to move to better areas knowing how poorly they have done educating the cream of the poorer student body. Once they move to the high end suburbs, they will say “look how much charters are better than public schools” and demand more public financing, and the public will fall for it one more time.

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I think the notion of “massive” budget cuts over the past ten years is an illusion. I would love to see how per pupil expenditures changed in the past ten years.
The old game of proposing a huge increase and then enacting an increase that is only large but calling the difference a “cut” needs to end.

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@Another View,

Nice try. Fortunately, everyone here knows that: (1) Charter Schools are public schools; (2) they are open to all students within their districts; and (3) charters only randomly choose their students via lottery. We also know that there are plenty of high performing public charter schools that are doing a great job with the same poor students that some traditional public schools can’t reach.

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The beaurocracy in the public school system has gotten totally out of hand! Teachers (and I come from a family of them) spend more time subscribing to the “feel-good” rule of the day and fooling with a bunch of melarky, from “sensitivity-training” to Lord knows what. All the talk in the world will not solve this cluster until somebody steps up and says “Hey Guys, all this mess is NOT what the Founding Fathers had in mind when a free public education was mentioned!” Hire teachers that can speak proper English (accents okay, but general proper enunciation is a must) and give then back the classrooms. When parents are not responsible, teachres SHOULD NOT BE BLAMED!

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@Maureen Could you possibly do a FAQ on charter schools? From posts here, it is obvious that people tend to be (somewhat) familiar with whichever iteration of charter is in their community but not that others exist. For example, Erica at 9:32, that all charters are public schools that serve student in their district and select by lottery. That IS true for a public conversion charter, but not for an independent (profit or non-profit) charter, local or state. An overview of the different types of charters would be very helpful to many. Thanks!

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I have no issues with Charter schools, but they must not be allowed to become publicly funded private institutions.

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Jane W.

So you think people are atheists because their “parents didn’t hug them enough”? I’m guessing you learned that in your Christian Academy along with a ton of other nonsense.

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Once again, a recommendation for Charter Schools because they can ‘innovate’. I have been hearing this for years, but not once have I heard what those innovations actually are (besides Mandarin Chinese). Let me explain to the uninformed what makes a Charter, or Private school work (not all of them actually do).
1. Very strict rules. Very strict (no exceptions, my way or the highway)
2. They remain small. Notice that they don’t have 1,500 kids like some public schools because you can monitor individuals better when you are small.
3. Motivation. Either the kid, the parent, or both are very motivated to get out of a public school that is not managing well. They are grade motivated and ambitious. Give me that ability in my public school and you will see marked improvement.
All you have to do is pick up the phone and call a few of the successful ones.
By the way. How do we know that these kids that get into charter schools were not already outscoring their peers on tests taken in the public schools?

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The rich get richer, the poor have babies.

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This is an interesting article.

I don’t think the article is arguing for ‘charter’ schools. Rather the article is asking why don’t wealthy school districts with large budgets attempt to provide more variety/experimental schools within the school system?

Instead of 3 standard elementary schools, why not 1 traditional curriculum school, 1 school with a language immersion program, and 1 with another focused approach like math and science or fine arts or montessori?

Maybe all parents might decide to go with the foreign language immersion program and the school system shifts all 3 schools to that type of program. Or 2 traditional schools and 1 math/science magnet school. Or any other variation/combination based on the interests of the parents/community.

What would be so bad about such a “pick your focus” style of public school system?

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I think more people need to read Diane Ravitch’s book The Death and Life of the Great American School system before creating anymore charter schools. Its scary what could happen to the schools in America if we let this movement continue.

You can find out more about Georgia Charter Schools here:

http://www.doe.k12.ga.us/External-Affairs-and-Policy/Charter-Schools/Pages/default.aspx

Here you can find the annual reports on each charter school – SOME DO NOT MAKE AYP

http://www.doe.k12.ga.us/External-Affairs-and-Policy/Charter-Schools/Pages/Annual-Reports.aspx

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No talk of charters is complete without referencing the Stanford University study comparing charters to similar public schools:
Only 17 percent had students who did any better on the whole than their public school peers, in 37 percent they did worse, and in 46 percent there was no statistical difference. (This study was large and well constructed bit of research).
Think on this. Only 17 percent of charters do any better at all (statistically significant difference) than the correlating public school.
The “school reform” crown continues to push charters, but the results are just not there.

When groups like Fordham, The Broad Foundation, The Gates Foundation etc. perpetually push charters, one has to wonder what they are really up to.

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I thought the article was very interesting. I live in Forysth County and am the mother of two sons – one is of average intelligence and the other one is gifted. My average son has received a great education and I have no complaints. My gifted son, on the other hand, has been very poorly served by Forysth County schools. He just completed 10th grade and is still pretty unchallenged in school. The only class he had this year that involved any sort of effort was AP World History. He “coasted” through the remaining classes (all Honors) on his schedule.

I spent all of my son’s elementary years begging his teachers to do something to challenge him. It was exhausting and to no avail. For whatever reason, he didn’t test into the gifted program until 5th grade so we didn’t even have that resource. I will never forget my second grade parent teacher conference at Sharon Elementary where my son’s teacher shrugged her shoulders and told me that second grade was just too easy for my child. I felt trapped. My husband doesn’t believe in paying for private schools and I don’t believe that homeschooling is the right option for our family. (I’m not criticizing anyone who homeschools. I think many people do a great job. Its just not the right option for us. I don’t have the right personality or skills to effectively homeschool.)

I think Forsyth County does a great job educating average and below-average children; however, there is definitely a void (that could be filled by a charter school) when it comes to educating the gifted and high-achieving students.

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I am surprised Maureen has not posted a blog regarding the sanctions against Penn State. Perhaps she is working on it now. I felt they wre appropriate and swift and Penn State isn’t fighting them. I breathed a very heavy sigh of relief. Maybe, just maybe, we are turning a corner where our society realizes football is not more important than the safety and security of children. Maybe.
Just Maybe those who don’t agree with what I just said will do the right thing, not for the right reasons, but because if they don’t do the right thing, the consequences will be too great to endure. My heart aches for the known victims and those who cannot come forward but maybe they’ll get some tiny relief knowing they were heard and they were believed.
I wish Joe Paterno would have lived to see his stature taken down and his “winning” records abolished.

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Whether charter or public,when we begin making decisions from the bottom up, based on assessed needs within a school, then we’ll see the kind of success we all wish to see. Regardless of type of school, when a top-town approach where decisions made by politicians and administrators with no direct classroom input are the norm, then little effective change is likely to occur. If we can get around the politicians and extremists on either end via charter schools, bring them! A much simpler approach would be to do it in the schools that already exist. One major reason Tech High in APS failed was because they brought in a program that didn’t address the needs of their population. Rather than alter it, they paraded their “plan” around like it was the newest gospel of education, and we see the results.

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Pride and Joy, 12:03 pm

I understand your position.

However, as a retired teacher with no children presently in public schools, I do not want to have the taxes on my home spent to further dismantle public school systems in Georgia, which would happen if public vouchers are used to send students to private schools. I am looking long-ranged, down the road, and for all of the students. I see students and teachers – if public schools are dismantled for private ones, massively – being used mainly for profit purposes, with curriculum that doesn’t meet acceptable standards in many of these schools, where progress will not be monitored effectively in many of them, nor teachers’ credentials verified adequately in many cases. How as a conscientious and effective former public school teacher could I, ever, want my tax dollars used to create that scenario for schools in America – not to mention the very poorest in that socio-economic class who will be left behind in resource deprived and segregated (by class) public schools? A better answer for all, long-ranged, imo, is to improve our traditional public schools, using some limited charter schools, working with our present school systems, to aid in that improvement for all students.

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@JANEW: Thanks! A man is known by the qualities of his enemies! Though, for the record, I’m not an atheist.

TYPE OF BLOGGER I MUST ENDURE: Small-minded, small-world “experts” on education who dabble in it when the whim strikes them.

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@MB (9:49),

You seem to confuse the privatization of services with the privatization of schools. There are various school-related services that are contracted out to private, for profit companies (for example, catering). The fact that a private company cooks the meals for a public school system does not make the school private. In the same way, contracting out the management function of public charter schools would not make those schools private.

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@Biologist, and others (excepting our ever-present teachers’ union plants):

1) Charter schools are public schools.
2) Attendance at a charter school is entirely voluntary.
3) What groups like Fordham and Gates Foundation are “up to” is a search for solutions to public school systems stuck in failure.
4) Traditional public schools aren’t “free” of cost to taxpayers, nor free of “profit” for those securing lifetime employment in them.
5) A sizable percent of Americans look at the stagnation in test scores, and decades of education establishment excuses—and deduce that authentic reforms are called for.
7) Unlike traditional public schools, charter schools which fail to perform will fail to attract students. Period.

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“Unlike traditional public schools, charter schools which fail to perform will fail to attract students. Period.”

While you’re right about that point, my question is, who should be responsible for those failures? Is it wise though to fund any charter school because of a promise to be better than a similar traditional school? We’re throwing lots of money down the drain now, I’ll give you that looking at APS and Dekalb as examples. But I wonder how much money we should be willing to give to charters, when their success rates aren’t overall looking much better. We need redo the way we fund schools and systems like APS and Dekalb need to be gutted and rebuilt from the top down. What I don’t see, and am looking for, is how charters will be any better at guaranteeing success and how we’ll keep from throwing more good money at something that we can’t be sure will succeed any better in the long run. I get the whole parent control and local influence idea, and it sounds good in theory. But why aren’t charter schools faring better if they are supposed to be the best new thing out there?

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What is really missing in Georgia is the Votech option. My siblings school districts in upstate NY still offer two to three tracks in high school. They offer Regents/AP; Regents ( which is the College bound diploma) and then a General Diploma where in the Junior and Senior year students spend the afternoon at a VoTech school which is shared by two small one high school districts. The students who finish this program are career ready or they can go on to a two year technology college program. These districts have a very high High School Graduation rate, over 95%. Once out of the massive New York City School district, New York City is made up of mostly high performing small districts of less than 5,000 students.

School Districts that have more than one or two high schools don’t work, they are too top heavy.

Private Schools and Charter Schools are successful because they can demand discipline. They can demand parent participation.

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Just make all public schools charter schools.

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The U.K. has had 100% parental choice for education since the late sixties. Their education system and standards of literacy don’t seem to have slipped. Just wondering why parental choice would be the death knell for public education in this country . . .

(This is a real question, not rhetorical snark. Why would 100% choice not work? What checks and balances would we have to put in place?)

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@”Prof”:

If it’s too distressing to imagine that you and your liberal friends aren’t actually representative of the American mainstream … then you also won’t want to read this recent PolitiFact article on Gallup and other widely trusted polling: http://goo.gl/BxBO9

The article has appeared in both the Miami Herald and the Tampa Bay Times—both of which endorsed Obama in 2008. But hey, if you really need to believe, instead, those two obscure California Joes you cite … be my guest!

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@ just

simple math and physics: our nation is much bigger and with a much larger population.
not to mention we’re not brits.

I’ve pointed out repeatedly why choice as popularly promoted can’t work here. but for some reason
instead of getting questions or suggestions, the only response I ever get are the usual anti union rants.

leads to the conclusion most proponants of “choice” aren’t interested in acutal choice, but base rabble rousing for giggles

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I swear to God, there is little wrong which can’t be fixed in three steps:

1-REAL checks/balances on how systems & colleges spend money
2-end cronysim and neoptism in hirng and promotions
3-allow us to enforce disipline

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@ Jane W.

The subject of the article you cite is Marcio Rubio’s claim–based on a Gallup poll– that the majority of Americans are conservative, which the article rates “Half-true.” It then states: “Several pollsters told us they think Gallup is the most reputable on this question because of its unusually large sample size.”

But the point of MY article was that there are other very significant errors shown by the Gallup polls aside from the size of the polling sample that indicate they are unreliable and biased in favor of conservatives. And also, just how many are these “several pollsters” and who are they? Why aren’t they named?

YOU may think that these professors in Computer Science and Mathematics, from two major American universities, are “two obscure California Joes,” but that says more about you than anything else.

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Wondering Aloud, if the trick is so simple, please teach it to the black teachers in APS who taught my little children to “AKS” questions.
I don’t hire those applicants with mistakes on their resume and neither do my colleagues. So, you can call me judgemental all you want — I certainly am. So is the Fortune 500 company for which I work. Got poor grammar on the resume? It goes in the trash. Got poor grammar in the interview? You don’t get hired.
So you can say, as ME does, that grammar doesn’t matter all the way to the unemployment line where you and others will cry “it’s racist.”
Nope. Not racism. Why hire an American who is too lazy to learn their own language when I have twenty Indians who speak and write Engligh perfectly, as well as their own language(s)…but I guess speaking English properly is too much to AKS for.

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We don’t need any more cute, vogue, trendy mandates in education. We need common sense and full awareness of the needs of the students in every classroom in every school. Each class is unique; no two are alike. No teacher should be expected to perform rote lessons for any class ever. I agree with the bottom up approach, Bootney, and less edicts from above.

All public schools would be better if the public schools had the same honor and privileges as the charter schools, and above all, let discipline be restored. The integrity of the school and classroom has been terribly eroded by special interest and financial groups. My students are not numbers; they are unique individuals who deserve the very best their teachers can give them.

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@”Prof”

Why don’t you just admit that your 2008 academic study by two obscure (and quite likely partisan) Californians has been ignored by the media?

Yes, we all understand the principles of biased vs. unbiased polling—so what’s your point? Are you smarter than the editors at PolitiFact or the polling experts at the Gallup organization and Battleground Polling Inc?

As per above, conservatives outnumber liberals in this country approximately two to one. Please dry your eyes and move on to another issue.

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The entire opinion piece from Petrilli seems to prove a point I’ve made repeatedly–school choice may be being argued for the benefit of “those poor ______ kids”, but it is really about segregation (i.e. a special school for X group kids that excludes those found undesirable by X group parents).

The thing is that parents (and students) do have choices, many of them: a.) private school (there are scholarships and financial aid, folks); b.) parochial school (again, scholarships and financial aid are available for those in need); c.) home school; d.) moving to another area where you find the school(s) more to your liking; and e.) getting involved to make a change from within. If you want a Waldorf-style education for your kid, send him or her to a Waldorf school! Want your kid to go to an Ivy League prep-powerhouse? Send him or her to one! Want an international school for your budding jet setter? Send him or her to one! Hate your local school? Homeschool, send your kid to private or parochial school, move to another neighborhood, district, state, or country–or get involved and make a change from within.

If charter schools are better because they are able to operate outside the cumbersome rules and red tape of traditional public schools, why not instead remove those rules and red tape from all public schools?!?

If charter schools are better because of the parental involvement, why not get involved in the traditional public schools?!?

Oh and to the person who claimed that school choice is working great for the UK: The UK has a cradle to grave socialized society (which may or may not continue in the future)–universal healthcare, broad social welfare programs, (until recently) extremely low (or no) cost higher education, nearly universal preschool and subsidized childcare, and many other programs that we have repeatedly rejected in this country. They also have a national curriculum and one set of national examinations. Oh, and they educated significantly less students. Comparing US education to UK education is akin to comparing apples to kumquats–both fruit, but not much else in common.

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@ Jane W. And please note the percentage figures given by Wikipedia for American conservatives as of five months ago–only 40%, less than the majority.

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Brandy,

Well said!

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mommamonster, 5:35 pm

About Brandy’s 5:14 pm post, I agree with you that her post is “well said,” and her well expressed content is cogently outlined, with many viable details for parents to consider. Well done, Brandy!

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@ Brandy — And therefore isn’t it odd that the U.K. has school choice but the U.S. does not?

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DeKalb Teacher,

There are many honors and privileges allowed charter schools that public schools are not privvy to.

The public school loses per pupil revenue to the charter school. This weakens the the public school monies. Faculty and class selections in the public school are then decreased, leaving even less resources for the public school students who have no other school option.

The charter school can be selective of its enrollment. They can take the brighest and/or best and fill their school. Should the students not make their grades or become discipline issues, then those students are escorted out of the charter schools. Usually this means the disruptive students or low-achieving students are right back in the public school.

Charter schools are not held to the same standards as public schools regarding graduates or drop-outs. Charter schools do not have to incorporate inclusion classes.

Charter schools weaken the public (business) partnerships with the public schools, because with the division of the student bodies goes the division of partnership financial support.

In the case of my school, the students who opt to go to the charter school but cannot abide by the rules, come back to our school with less academic skills and are not on grade level. Then the administration at our school puts more pressure on the teachers to get the students on grade-level and graduate on time, i.e., inflate the grades.

Charter schools can recruit athletes as well as academic students.

If we could incorporate the charter freedom to teach into the public schools, all would be better. There are students who are at-risk but would not necessarily be at-risk if there was a better cross-section of students in the school, a better student representation of all levels of achievement and interests.

In order to populate our republic, we need a citizenry who can function well by being able to work with a variety of people. We do not need legal segregation of any sort: religion, ethnicity, or political. Private schools will always be among us, but there is nothing to be said about that in this blog because the rich may purchase whatever they wish with their own money. It’s wrong for the public schools to be forced to finanace a public “private” school like the charter school really is. Certainly, ability levels should be grouped for academic classes, but there are so many other opportunities in a public school where all levels can come together for common experiences and learn to get along and yet thrive in their natural abilities.

School is not just about academic learning, but it’s also about learning life skills. As I read the newspapers, particularly the “Get Schooled” blog, and listen to the news, I see a great need for people to learn how to disagree without getting disagreeable as well as to learn how to work out solutions to common problems. Public schools are about the common good for all its students. Charter schools are about the common good for a chosen few. charter schools are not really “public” education.

And this, DeKalb Teacher, is only the tip of the charter schools iceberg.

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@ Erica Sorry, I should have noted that the link to the professor’s testimony in the Forbes article gives details on how the “idea” of charters has too often devolved into the reality of for-profit EMOs spending less on instruction and getting the same or poorer results. He speaks to his studies of educational systems in other countries, which interestingly we’re also seeing on the blog today.

Between articles like this, the highly questionable student scholarship tax credit program, and the editorial last week by Jay Bookman about the voucher system in Louisiana (being touted by Chip Rogers here in Georgia), the new innovations make me concerned about what might happen with more state charters, vouchers, etc.

Of course, i am in Fulton which (despite what FSA might say) has been a very charter-friendly system, both for conversions (existing local schools) and start-ups. Hey, we like it so much we’re now the first large-system charter in the state! Like the professor, I would think that charters work best with STRONG community input AND involvement, which is not the case with some.

Kudos to you for caring about students, and I TOTALLY agree that there are people in public schools who need to never darken the doors again. (See some of my previous posts; I contend many “teacher” problems would dissipate if we had stronger educators in many administrative and leadership positions.) I think most of us here have the goal of giving our future generation the best education we can manage. Many of us just believe that charter schools should be developed from within, not without, to be successful.

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@ Prof, 6:41 pm

You are most welcome, Prof.

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It seems like we can all agree that if everybody went to charter schools, or at least public schools that operated like charter schools, we would all be better off. Now, it’s just a question of how to get there.

@Brandy
How about tearing down attendance zones and letting the parents choose which public school they want to go to? In regular public schools there is too much red tape and the people are too instituitionalized to fix. Hurricane Katrina, as you know, ripped through Louisiana and tore all of that down over night. Short of an event like that, the public doesn’t have the will power to make such drastic changes.

@ProudTeacher

Assuming that the money follows the child (which it doesn’t) charter schools likewise lose per pupil revenue to the public schools. Darwinism. The weak schools, be it charter or public, need to die. Currently only charter schools die when they are bad.

Charter schools are not selective. They have attendance zones and blind lotteries.

Charter school standards are set by the parents and not by the state or county. If I don’t like that school’s standards then I can go somewhere else. Darwin strikes again. Everybody will go to the schools with higher standards.

Could you be more specific about which charter schools recruit and have selective attendance?

I’m down with your assessment. If public schools could be more like charter schools we would be much better off. But like I was telling Brandy, that is a much tougher battle. The best we can do is open charter schools and hope the public schools die off.

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Brandy asks a wonderful question. She writes “If charter schools are better because they are able to operate outside the cumbersome rules and red tape of traditional public schools, why not instead remove those rules and red tape from all public schools?!? ”
It’s simple, Brandy. Public schools don’t want to change. They fight it. They ignore what parents want. They like the status quo. Boards love their power. Corrupt officials love the money. “Friends and family” love the jobs they aren’t qualified to do and are overpaid to have.
If changing the public school were possible, it would be done by now. Parents have fought for years and believed the lies. Now, we’re smarter. We’ll leave.
I’ts just like Penn State, Brandy. Penn State football was big and corrupt. Football and the power and money it created mattered more to the powers that be than the tiny little boys raped and abused by sandusky.
In the same way, school systems like APS value power and greed more than the lives of the little children they pledge to protect and educate.
APS, like many big school districts, is dirty. It’s corrupt and it doesn’t want to change.

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@bootney
You’re changing the subject. I’m happy to discuss whether or not taxpayers should support education. On a side note we do have food stamps and they have plenty of choices of where to use them, but we digress.

Back to the original paradigm. I need to send my kids to a school … the government tells me where to go and I have no choices. I need to go to a grocery store … I have plenty of choices. The crappy ones die and good ones thrive.

I didn’t understand your last statement. BTW … interesting debate … thanks for engaging.

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@DeKalb Teacher. 7:49 pm

“It seems like we can all agree that if everybody went to charter schools, or at least public schools that operated like charter schools, we would all be better off. Now, it’s just a question of how to get there.”
================================================

DeKalb Teacher, I do not agree with the above statement, nor have I read that “all” on this blog agree with that statement. My interpretation of the posts, on this blog which I have read regarding charter schools, is that there are differing views of how charter schools would best be implemented in Georgia. Please reread the following words of “Biologist,” who posted the below points this morning regarding the Stanford University Study on the effectiveness of charter schools relative to similar public schools.

Biologist’s post at 11:53 am, this morning:

“No talk of charters is complete without referencing the Stanford University study comparing charters to similar public schools:

Only 17 percent [of charters] had students who did any better on the whole than their public school peers, in 37 percent they did worse, and in 46 percent there was no statistical difference. (This study was large and well constructed bit of research).

Think on this. Only 17 percent of charters do any better at all (statistically significant difference) than the correlating public school. The ’school reform’ crown continues to push charters, but the results are just not there.

When groups like Fordham, The Broad Foundation, The Gates Foundation etc. perpetually push charters, one has to wonder what they are really up to.”

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Re: @”Prof”, 6:41 pm

The number 70 (seventy) does not appear in my 4:16 pm post, nor in any other of my posts today.

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DeKalb Teacher: I do not believe in letting the “public school die.” How can you be so cavalier about letting the education of less privileged students (those who do not have families to push them in a quest for a good education)fall into abject failure because they were not the selected ones, the ones chosen for the charter school?

You want to know which charter schools recruit? Look around you without blinders and see who attends those schools, what they do in those schools, and how long their enrollment has been. If I can see it, surely in your Darwin vision, you can see it also.

Yes, the money does follow the charter student or what do you call the money that the public schools must funnel into the charter school accounts? It certainly isn’t donations from the faculty of the public schools.

Anyone who does not have compassion should not be a teacher. Education without compassion is cruel, as many of these statements against the public schools are. Yes, public education is a mess, but that doesn’t mean it should be demolished. The very idea that only charter schools should exist present the prevalent attitude of too many in control of education right now: it’s not about the students and education, it’s all about “I, Me, and Mine.” Saying the public schools should just die a natural death is a very cruel attitude. My students are worth far more than your flawed Darwin Theory of Education. I’ll struggle in my public school and hope that those who want my school to die have children that grow up to be denied entry into a charter school. Then maybe you’ll understand what we in the public school sector are really up against: Bigotry.

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“BTW, a simple trick; substitute A and B for the nouns and adjectives in a sentence to check whether the singular or plural noun is correct.” – Wondering Aloud

For example, “rum and coke are my favorite drink.”

Hmmm…. Perhaps you’ll want to refine your rule a bit.

“So, you can call me judgemental all you want — I certainly am. So is the Fortune 500 company for which I work. Got poor grammar on the resume? It goes in the trash.” – Pride and Joy

Apparently spelling errors are cool, though…?

“I would urge you to see teachers holistically. I would imagine, based on my experience in similar situations, that there might be some excellent math teachers, or science teachers, or social studies teachers, who may not speak standard written English perfectly, because of their cultural backgrounds, but who know their particular subject matter well and who know how to communicate this content to their students well, and who genuinely care for their students, even so. The teacher’s ability to speak and write standard written English perfectly would be more important to be present in your child’s English teacher, I would think, based on your academic priorities. Why not mention to your child’s principal how important standard written English is, in your assessment, and request an English teacher for your child who has excellent standard written English skills?” – Mary Elizabeth

Brava. You model tolerance for those who are both less skilled in language mechanics and style and less tolerant of those with similar failings; be aware, however, that (1) APS employs English teachers, even in its “best” schools, who do not have a firm enough grasp on standard English to speak, write or to teach standard English correctly, which makes one worry about what the English teachers in its “poorer” schools are teaching, and (2) in those schools, there may be no parent who can go to the principal and request that at least the English teachers be required to be skilled at standard English. Since Pride and Joy is right that many employers judge potential employees quite harshly if they lack such skills, no matter how superficial that might seem, it’s especially important for children from households where standard English isn’t spoken to be provided the models they need at school.

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@ DeKalb

the gov’t only tells you where your kid goes if you CHOOSE to use public school.
if you don’t wish to CHOOSE public education you can CHOOSE to homeschool or private school if you can swing it.

you can also CHOOSE to move to a better neighborhood if you don’t like the system you have. people have CHOOSEN to do this for decades.

it appears your issue is you don’t like the CHOICES you already have, so you wish special consideration for yourself instead of having to make the tough CHOICES other parents do.

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oh, and while I’m thinking of it….
you could CHOOSE to do what blue collar catholic familes have done for generations. work a 2nd job or overtime to afford the tuition to a private school more in line with your beliefs and philosophy.

but that CHOICE requires sacrifice.

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What @bootney most fears is what he cynically purports to favor: choices.

A marketplace with choices would soon enough shut under-performing schools and invite their teachers to compete elsewhere in an economy which rightly rewards talent—and starves incompetence. In other words, the real world most taxpayers inhabit: a place where jobs don’t come with tenure plus three months of vacation plus the self-given right to perpetually whine about “how hard you have it” while revealingly staying put in your teaching job.

Competition moved humankind beyond nasty, brutish and short lives to provide Americans with a lifestyle the envy of the planet. But competition is anathema to the bootneys of our blog. They prefer to groan, to plead “special case” exemption for their line of work, to join unions that thwart reform, and to defer systemic change to a time beyond their retirement.

In their view, parents and children in failing schools were put on earth as grist for the mill. Taxpayers, meanwhile, are expected to write checks and leave the running of the asylum to the inmates.

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@just curious

Thanks for mentioning Asheville, NC school system. I was unaware of how they structured their elementary system. That seems to be very similar to how the article author was thinking. I wonder if he’s familiar with Asheville?

In fact, the Asheville system is very interesting. I wish I could hear more from parent/community feeling of how the system does in serving their students. Especially if the spaces available in the 5 elementary schools is considered adequate or if parents feel that some of the schools aren’t as ‘good’ as other elementary schools. I notice that once school has more than 400 students while another is in the mid-200s so there is at least some amount of size variation allowed by the school system.

@Mary Elizabeth

You responded to me that money was the issue that holds back school systems from having large amounts of magnet programs, etc. I don’t disagree that money is always a major factor in making decisions, but clearly, the people of Asheville, NC found a way to budget their system so that each elementary school is a magnet school with a particular focus and theme. It stands to reason that other school systems can probably figure out how to set up such a system as well.

I would expect that transportation would be a difficulty for a fully open ’school choice’ type of school system. For example, if Gwinnett County were to open up school choice throughout the county it would be very difficult for a student to attend a school on the opposite side of the county (google maps has a ~20 mi. distance between North and South Gwinnett high schools). But on a smaller scale it would seem very feasible — the Norcross cluster area has 5 elementary schools each within ~5 mi. of each other.

Would it be possible to make that cluster of 5 elementary schools into a magnet style grouping simliar to what is offered in Asheville, NC? What would keep it from happening?

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@ DeKalb

thanks for admitting I’m right.

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@ lyncoln & another,

one thing about the Asheville model. besides being a much smaller community, its also a much more politically homogeneous community than anything local. just as what works in NY doesn’t necessarily work here, same applies to a small city in NC.

it would be interesting to see how they did it and what challenges/successes they had. I don’t know their demographics, but it is also possible they benefited from being the only game in town.

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@lyncoln, 8:07 am
————————————————————
“@Mary Elizabeth
You responded to me that money was the issue that holds back school systems from having large amounts of magnet programs, etc. I don’t disagree that money is always a major factor in making decisions, but clearly, the people of Asheville, NC found a way to budget their system so that each elementary school is a magnet school with a particular focus and theme. It stands to reason that other school systems can probably figure out how to set up such a system as well.”
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Lyncoln,

A few of points in response. I had mentioned, in my earlier post to you, not only money, but “cohension in programs,” as being factors that would need weighing, regarding how many magnet schools each school district might decide would be feasible for its particular district to administer. (See my words to you earlier, repeated below.) Also, as “just curious” had stated, the Asheville, NC school district has only 1 high school, 1 middle school, and 6 elementary schools. And, as bootney farnsworth had mentioned, the Asheville model is a “much more politically homogeneous community than anything local.”

I am not adverse to many magnet schools functioning within school districts. I support magnet schools. I only stated that those magnet schools should have coordinated “cohesion of programs,” (as well as the financial wherewithal to fund as much variety as is advisable and feasible for a particular school district) which would suggest the need for coordination and planning for all of the schools within a school district, bearing in mind the total needs of a particular school district’s population. (There are almost 100 schools, serving almost 85,000 students, in Fulton County’s School District.)
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Mary Elizabeth, 11:51 am, July 23, 2012:

“Finances will not support a ‘pick your focus style of school’ for every student. (I, of course, exaggerate, to make my overall point.)

Magnet schools, within public school systems, have been around for at least a quarter of a century. This type of ‘pick and choose’ by students’ needs must have overall planning and cohesion and that is why decisions regarding these schools, and how many of them the system can accommodate, is better left to public school systems. I have nothing against public charter schools, but I believe that – for prudence in finances as well as cohesion in programs, public charter schools need to be approved (especially in number) and guided under the jurisdiction of local school districts.

The public must, also, be wary of new and innovative programs that could inadvertently (or not so inadventently) have the end result of turning public schools, essentially, into private ones. We must work to improve the public schools we have; we must not dismantle them, even unintentionally. Doing so, would change the nature of ‘free’ public education, which is now available for every student in the nation.”

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Truth, this is the kind of child that should be provided for within a public school system. There is not a reason why a child cannot excel in one are and be average in another. However, the charter schools want all exceptional and no exceptions. Magnet schools are a different element in public education. They tend to work with the public schools, not drain them as the charters do. Magnets are not intended to destroy the morale and esteem of the under-priviledged students left behind in a public school that charter schools do. There should be room in any public school for tolerance and cooperation. These are two things missing in the charter school concept of public education.

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You are most welcome, Brandy.

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Asheville has 2 high schools, 1 middle school, and 5 elementary schools. Also, 3 public charter schools and 6 private schools, but the charters and privates aren’t the focus of this post.

Gwinnett County (I use it since I grew up there) has clusters associated with each single high school. Some examples are: the Archer cluster has 1 high school, 1 middle school, and 3 elementary schools. The Norcross cluster has 1 high school, 2 middle schools, and 5 elementary schools.

These clusters are still larger in student population than Asheville school systems, but roughly the same size in number of schools (some are smaller like the Archer cluster). Why not do a trial run for the elementary magnet concept on a single cluster in a large county like Gwinnett? You can certainly communicate with Asheville to learn difficulties and successes they’ve had in running this type of system.

True, the parents/community have to agree to the trial. In the current atmosphere where almost everyone seems to feel something should be changed to ‘improve’ schools, I think you could easily explain that this is a trial run to see if this type of school choice/elementary magnet system will actually ‘improve’ schools.

If anything, parents will be happier with the system because they will have selected the school and some portion of the curriculum focus for their student rather than being given the same old curriculum with “no frills” that all students already receive.

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@Prof, 12:59 pm

Please know how very much I have appreciated your words of support, regarding the recent personal attack upon me. Such venom is sad to read, even when I am not the target.

It is my hope that human beings will transcend that level of exchange. Intense negativity pulls down all who read it, both spiritually and intellectually. I have faith that most will rise above that level of communication with others, and it is, also, my hope that people will come to trust more the concept that love, not hate, can transform this world, for the better.

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@ Pride and Joy. Just a minor suggestion, for I know what you mean about trying to avoid being gender-specific. It’s awkward to keep writing “his or her,” and “their” is the common way out of the problem.

Make the subject plural so the pronoun “their” can be used naturally. So, instead of writing, “Why hire an American who is too lazy to learn their own language… ” write, “Why hire Americans who are too lazy…”

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@Pride and Joy: “I’m not sure what you mean by punish the entire state. Please clarify.”

You gave a great example talking about how bad APS has become. My point is that in the effort to address the systems with problems, we’re on the verge of creating an appointed state commission that will have unilateral authority to grant charters anywhere in the state and overrule local decisions. In a small, rural system like mine, if the local board does not support a charter, the state commission could approve it without any regard for why the local system won’t. Now while that may not sound like a bad thing, in my system losing 200 kids would be nearly ten percent of our enrollment. That would seriously impact the functioning of the school system, which is running on bare bones as it is. That kind of upheaval could seriously create some chaos within our system that wouldn’t be good for the local or charter schools (I’m thinking about staff, materials, buildings that might have to be shuttered, etc). In many small systems, the charters would become a not so veiled means to separate the wealthy from the poor or one race from another. It is a situation that, while it might be very good in the Atlanta metro area, could very easily be bad for small systems like mine. Hopefully that explains my position better.

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@ ME Amen!

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To Ron F. You wrote “It is a situation that, while it might be very good in the Atlanta metro area, could very easily be bad for small systems like mine. Hopefully that explains my position better.”
Thanks, Ron. I understand your point now. It’s a valid one; I agree. What’s good for APS and Dekalb may be disastrous for others in GA.

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