> Social norming can work both ways. If you remove all of the students whose parents are willing and able to go through the application process, the norms of acceptable behavior for those left behind will move in an ugly direction and the kids who started out with the greatest disadvantages would be left to bear the burden
I went to public school as a kid and the disruptive kids were expelled. Not just kicked out of class - totally kicked out of school and told to find a new one! One reason I send my kids to private school is if you don’t want to learn they will kick you out. In public schools today you get a few bad kids and it ruins the whole class. This is a big reason why teachers are quitting en masse from public schools - they are behavioral consultants rather than teachers. The pay has always sucked - it’s the lack of ability to discipline bad kids that makes it miserable, and then parents blame you for everything when you just want to teach math and go home.
Indeed, and the assertion that 'only poor kids together' will behave even worse certainly needs backing up with data.
It seems obvious to me (since the experiment is repeated over and over within millions of families) that environment plays a major role in behaviour, but tbh I don't see good behaviour rubbing off onto the 'bad' kids in a mixed setting, it's almost always the other way around, or at best, a productive environment is disrupted by a few troublemakers.
So 'good' kids should get an environment free of disruption so they can do what they do. And the 'bad' kids should get an environment much more focused on encouraging good behaviour, so they learn to do the good stuff too. Win-win.
This is absolutely a huge factor, if not the biggest factor in education: kids who are actively disruptive and harmful to the learning of others being kept in with other kids, draining all of the attention from the teacher.
The causes and solutions are not as simple as "these kids are bad, kick them out of school", but any solution needs to involve kids who aren't disruptive and WANT to learn getting an environment conducive to that.
I went to a public school and disruptive kids were NEVER expelled, or kicked out of class, they were just tolerated and placated. I wish I had gone to your school because no matter how disruptive they were, or how much they bullied others in class, the school simply would not expel them. The worst they would get is after school detention. It was hugely disruptive and made life miserable for the rest of us.
If only disruptive kids were expelled instead of placated MANY of us might have had a better education.
I don't get the expulsion discussion here (not just your comment, but responses as well). At least in the US, these kids legally need to be educated somewhere. Expelling doesn't remove them from the school system. It just means they'll be disrupting a different set of kids at some other school. Making something someone else's problem isn't solving the problem. It's like dealing with homelessness by rounding them up and bussing them to a different city.
You could conceivably create schools composed entirely of the kids who got expelled from somewhere else, which I think some districts have actually done (continuation schools), but you're effectively creating a juvenile prison system for people who didn't commit any actual crime and definitely never got a trial.
“bad” kids don’t need discipline, they need help - of course they don’t behave well when there’s 0 modeling at home, it’s not because someone isn’t yelling at them enough - raising a child “takes a village” and many of us aren’t operating within a village anymore, we’re all stressed out and working too much
What makes a private school more likely to expell children?
Since they are a for profit enterprise, unlike public schools, wouldn't there be a financial incentive to have as many customers as possible?
In one particular area what is the reason a charter school would be better than a public school. Since the entry factor for most (excluding schools for smart kids) is money why wouldn't the same problems occur at a charter school? Finally, why can't we just fix public schools?
> we are thinking about spending an enormous amount of time, effort and money on a major overhaul of the education system when we don't have the data to tell us if what we'll spend will wasted or, worse yet, if we are to some extent playing a zero sum game.
... well, do we have the data now?
Seems to me the "education system" keeps having the same debates over and over; surely "data" isn't at issue here? From an outsider perspective it seems like all sides to any debate feel free to make up any data and any reinterpretation of existing data they need, in order to support their position of the day.
> First off, this is an observational study, not a randomized experiment. I think we may be reaching the limits of what analysis of observational data can do in the education debate and, given the importance and complexity of the questions, I don't understand why we aren't employing randomized trials to answer some of these questions once and for all.
The drive to use public tax dollars for private schools is great when it is STEM. Seems good right? Charter Schools for STEM. Who could argue?
People miss that the primary interest groups that are lobbying for private schools, that are arguing against public schools, are for Religion. They want to be able to teach the bible as fact, not teach evolution, to allow prayer.
By syphoning public dollars, into private schools, they are bypassing the separation of state-church.
This then takes dollars away from public schools, which then struggle. Then the awful state of the public schools, is used as an argument for more private schools, and thus more religious schools.
Eventually the population wont be able to think in scientific terms anymore, logical reasoning will be gone.
My kids go to a private religious school in South Carolina.
They are taught about world religions, evolution, have chapel twice a week and allow prayer. It’s also the best school in the entire state. My kids go there because it's a great school.
There are a lot of anti religious scare tactics used to push people off of vouchers.
The reality is that the only people with true choice in school selection have to either be able to afford private school, afford to move to a house zoned for a better school or afford to have parent who can facilitate a home school group.
Voucher proponents want everybody to have all choices available.
Ya this is a really sad turn of events for the US. When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s, public school was considered one of the pillars of the American Way, like free speech and MTV.
But after 9/11, trillions of dollars got funneled to Christian nationalist groups loosely aligned against Islam and diversity in general, who wouldn't have otherwise received that money, that work tirelessly to underline American values like the separation of church and state that you mentioned. Now whole generations have been raised under an MTV that doesn't play music videos. It seems like it's the same, because we have reality shows and influencers and people who are famous because they are famous. But it's not the same.
Private school is not the same as public school and it never will be. I would even go so far as to say that it misses the point of education altogether. Like a for-profit church or hospital. Privatization is making America a caricature of itself.
There’s nothing that prohibits public funds given to individuals from then going to religious organizations, eg student loans at university level.
They’re not “siphoning public dollars” as some third-party cabal; members of the public are choosing to allocate their dollars (in benefits) to what they believe will be best for their children.
Edit:
It’s not “siphoning” because the allocation is made by the beneficiary of those funds, who is choosing their preferred service provider. There’s no diversion of funds: they’re being utilized by the intended beneficiary in the manner they deem to best suit their needs.
That’s in contrast to traditional school systems, where funds are diverted by administrators to engage in politicking unrelated to education.
Edit 2:
I understand that many people are upset the beneficiary of a public benefit is allowed to make their own choice of service provider. People that in their wisdom, they know better how other people should run their lives!
But it’s indisputably the case school allocations are to benefit the student — the intended beneficiary. Admit you’re in a huff because you’re being told you can’t control what other people do with their benefits.
You’re like people yelling candy shouldn’t be allowed with SNAP/EBT funds. Next you’ll be yelling about “muh welfare queens!” or whatever.
It's also in large part profit motive. You can bet there are corporations licking their chips at the thought of opening cut-rate schools and raking in the profits. They can also incorporate all sorts of corporate propaganda that their parent companies want them to inject.
The profit motive belongs far far away from education.
As long as they cover the curriculum required by state law, withholding money from them because they choose to teach religion is the violation of separation of church and state. The money is for the state mandated education of the children which is typically being satisfied.
The author seems to be saying that the reason charter schools are successful is because of self-selection, and that is also why public schools are worse, due to the inverse of self-selection.
While there is certainly self-selection occurring here, it would be a mistake for policy makers to dismiss the problems with public schools as just being due to that. They should introspect instead of seeking excuses.
Charter schools are the saving grace to the public schools hijacked by the teachers union and bloated administrations.
Recently, these unions succeeded to lowering testing standards for graduation in blue states to mask the worse job they’re doing teaching our kids:
The Times Union piece you cite does not say that the union supported lowering standardized test scores required for graduation. In fact, the article quotes the union funded Alliance for Quality Education as opposing the change.
Charter schools create duplicate systems with duplicate costs, reduce funds available for traditional school students in sending schools, and are a waste of taxpayer resources. When students leave traditional public schools for charter schools, the traditional public school is unable to reduce costs in proportion with the loss in per-pupil revenues. Students in public schools are left with fewer resources.
> Charter schools are the saving grace to the public schools hijacked by the teachers union and bloated administrations.
Where I live, charter schools are a joke. They're old office buildings converted into "schools". This is super unsafe and honestly quite sad to see in most cases because these office buildings are on busy streets with no playgrounds (what they do have is basically a concrete slab in the back with nearly no play equipment).
News flash: if you want education to "work", we need to pay teachers more. Subsidizing private companies (charter schools) through vouchers is just a leach on resources we could give to our existing schools and teachers instead. There are millions of teachers out there, some with master's degrees, who make much less than a new grad junior dev who goes to work, edits some CSS, and browses Reddit the rest of the day. We simply don't value education in the US enough, and charter schools are a non-solution proposed by those who would rather run away from the problems than face them head-on.
> Charter schools are the saving grace to the public schools hijacked by the teachers union and bloated administrations.
I''d break this into two statements with "public schools" being part of both:
1. Charter schools are the saving grace to the public schools because they are not mandated to serve every student and can therefore siphon off failing or behaviorally challenged students back to the public system. Find me a charter system serving special needs and at-risk students better than the public system at the scale of a public system, and I'll change my mind.
2. Public schools have been hijacked by the teachers union and bloated administrations because their funding structures are controlled by politics and culture wars instead of targeted research and practice on what specific kids need. I'm not a fan of teachers unions or bureaucracy, but who else takes the heat for teachers who are under-resourced, under-paid, and over-worked?
> Fix K-12 schools (no, more money on bloated administrations is not the answer), and the need for affirmative action goes away.
100% agree on the affirmative action part, but to fix K-12 schools you need new or other institutions to pick up slack on supporting students. The reason that "Deputy Assistant Senior Manager of Cognitive and Emotional Development" exist is because the law is pretty clear about how a school district is responsible for a student with XYZ cognitive and emotional developmental challenges. To get rid of that administrator, you also need to transfer (operationally and legislatively) ownership of that responsibility.
The articles you cite don't mention teachers' unions at all, and they don't point to "the worse job they’re doing teaching" as the reason for renorming standardized tests. I agree with you on the need for reform (though I have a hunch we would disagree on the specifics), but I don't think your argument adds up.
In some cases outcomes might just be bad in major cities. It may be counter intuitive, but in many ways cities have felt the brunt of economic and racial injustices.
Are major cities more likely to contain people in abject poverty, who perceive their situation as hopeless, sometimes correctly? Many people struggle with learning, due to conditions at home, and without money there's no get out of jail free cards. Kids need people with money to advocate for them, or they can be abandoned by society, told they will never amount to nothing (very much like Biggy Smalls did), and their talents overlooked.
For people living in these conditions college may be achievable, but there's a very narrow window, with a ton of risk involved. To summarize, perhaps we're simply spending more, to combat bigger problems (often ineffectively); versus the quality of education being as poor as you claim.
The need for affirmative action exists regardless of what you do to K-12 schools as long as college admissions count standardized test schools and extracurricular activities.
PSA a primary driver for this (along side other issues) is that in "major cities" the affluent pull out and stick their kids in private schools, creating a feedback loop of public school increasingly capturing all and predominantly the least- least-supported kids.
And teachers then teach in over-crowded classes with 3x the student-teacher ratio of the private schools, while also providing de facto baseline social services of many kinds. While horrifically underpaid.
Meanwhile the right wing is driving this feedback loop on multiple fronts, as it has been for decades—with the collapse of secular public education an open agenda for those decades.
The quality of comments here is pathetic. These are some of the most misleading arguments I've ever seen. Every bit of evidence is some exception to the norm.
I had 3 sons in my county's first charter school. We enrolled when it launched.
It was a mistake I regret. My kids were not baseline* and the educators were out of their depth. They took their obligations seriously and made good faith efforts but weren't able make the leap (during our 7 years).
We left for the county's public schools and they were a world better - by every measure. I am not overstating that an inch.
All that said, I still felt the charter was a good fit for normie students and I recommended it to some parents (but not all).
* One was high functioning autistic. Two coped poorly with the limited curriculum.
[+] [-] monero-xmr|2 years ago|reply
I went to public school as a kid and the disruptive kids were expelled. Not just kicked out of class - totally kicked out of school and told to find a new one! One reason I send my kids to private school is if you don’t want to learn they will kick you out. In public schools today you get a few bad kids and it ruins the whole class. This is a big reason why teachers are quitting en masse from public schools - they are behavioral consultants rather than teachers. The pay has always sucked - it’s the lack of ability to discipline bad kids that makes it miserable, and then parents blame you for everything when you just want to teach math and go home.
[+] [-] jacknews|2 years ago|reply
It seems obvious to me (since the experiment is repeated over and over within millions of families) that environment plays a major role in behaviour, but tbh I don't see good behaviour rubbing off onto the 'bad' kids in a mixed setting, it's almost always the other way around, or at best, a productive environment is disrupted by a few troublemakers.
So 'good' kids should get an environment free of disruption so they can do what they do. And the 'bad' kids should get an environment much more focused on encouraging good behaviour, so they learn to do the good stuff too. Win-win.
[+] [-] JediWing|2 years ago|reply
The causes and solutions are not as simple as "these kids are bad, kick them out of school", but any solution needs to involve kids who aren't disruptive and WANT to learn getting an environment conducive to that.
[+] [-] Simulacra|2 years ago|reply
If only disruptive kids were expelled instead of placated MANY of us might have had a better education.
[+] [-] JJMcJ|2 years ago|reply
In a dorm the week before finals, 90% of the students are urgently trying to prepare for finals.
10% are drunk and or high and playing frisbee in the halls 24 hours a day.
From friends who have taught high school in poor neighborhoods the situation as similar, only more violent.
[+] [-] nonameiguess|2 years ago|reply
You could conceivably create schools composed entirely of the kids who got expelled from somewhere else, which I think some districts have actually done (continuation schools), but you're effectively creating a juvenile prison system for people who didn't commit any actual crime and definitely never got a trial.
[+] [-] dehrmann|2 years ago|reply
During covid, someone observed that it exposed the primary role of public schools to be day care.
[+] [-] bannedbybros|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] micromacrofoot|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] themitigating|2 years ago|reply
Since they are a for profit enterprise, unlike public schools, wouldn't there be a financial incentive to have as many customers as possible?
In one particular area what is the reason a charter school would be better than a public school. Since the entry factor for most (excluding schools for smart kids) is money why wouldn't the same problems occur at a charter school? Finally, why can't we just fix public schools?
[+] [-] h2odragon|2 years ago|reply
> we are thinking about spending an enormous amount of time, effort and money on a major overhaul of the education system when we don't have the data to tell us if what we'll spend will wasted or, worse yet, if we are to some extent playing a zero sum game.
... well, do we have the data now?
Seems to me the "education system" keeps having the same debates over and over; surely "data" isn't at issue here? From an outsider perspective it seems like all sides to any debate feel free to make up any data and any reinterpretation of existing data they need, in order to support their position of the day.
[+] [-] AmpsterMan|2 years ago|reply
> First off, this is an observational study, not a randomized experiment. I think we may be reaching the limits of what analysis of observational data can do in the education debate and, given the importance and complexity of the questions, I don't understand why we aren't employing randomized trials to answer some of these questions once and for all.
[+] [-] FrustratedMonky|2 years ago|reply
People miss that the primary interest groups that are lobbying for private schools, that are arguing against public schools, are for Religion. They want to be able to teach the bible as fact, not teach evolution, to allow prayer.
By syphoning public dollars, into private schools, they are bypassing the separation of state-church.
This then takes dollars away from public schools, which then struggle. Then the awful state of the public schools, is used as an argument for more private schools, and thus more religious schools.
Eventually the population wont be able to think in scientific terms anymore, logical reasoning will be gone.
[+] [-] brightball|2 years ago|reply
They are taught about world religions, evolution, have chapel twice a week and allow prayer. It’s also the best school in the entire state. My kids go there because it's a great school.
There are a lot of anti religious scare tactics used to push people off of vouchers.
The reality is that the only people with true choice in school selection have to either be able to afford private school, afford to move to a house zoned for a better school or afford to have parent who can facilitate a home school group.
Voucher proponents want everybody to have all choices available.
[+] [-] zackmorris|2 years ago|reply
But after 9/11, trillions of dollars got funneled to Christian nationalist groups loosely aligned against Islam and diversity in general, who wouldn't have otherwise received that money, that work tirelessly to underline American values like the separation of church and state that you mentioned. Now whole generations have been raised under an MTV that doesn't play music videos. It seems like it's the same, because we have reality shows and influencers and people who are famous because they are famous. But it's not the same.
Private school is not the same as public school and it never will be. I would even go so far as to say that it misses the point of education altogether. Like a for-profit church or hospital. Privatization is making America a caricature of itself.
[+] [-] zmgsabst|2 years ago|reply
They’re not “siphoning public dollars” as some third-party cabal; members of the public are choosing to allocate their dollars (in benefits) to what they believe will be best for their children.
Edit:
It’s not “siphoning” because the allocation is made by the beneficiary of those funds, who is choosing their preferred service provider. There’s no diversion of funds: they’re being utilized by the intended beneficiary in the manner they deem to best suit their needs.
That’s in contrast to traditional school systems, where funds are diverted by administrators to engage in politicking unrelated to education.
Edit 2:
I understand that many people are upset the beneficiary of a public benefit is allowed to make their own choice of service provider. People that in their wisdom, they know better how other people should run their lives!
But it’s indisputably the case school allocations are to benefit the student — the intended beneficiary. Admit you’re in a huff because you’re being told you can’t control what other people do with their benefits.
You’re like people yelling candy shouldn’t be allowed with SNAP/EBT funds. Next you’ll be yelling about “muh welfare queens!” or whatever.
[+] [-] JediWing|2 years ago|reply
The profit motive belongs far far away from education.
[+] [-] LanceH|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bsuvc|2 years ago|reply
While there is certainly self-selection occurring here, it would be a mistake for policy makers to dismiss the problems with public schools as just being due to that. They should introspect instead of seeking excuses.
[+] [-] monero-xmr|2 years ago|reply
Why is having competition among public schools, with parents having a choice as to which to send them, so bad? It doesn’t make any sense.
[+] [-] XVincentX|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nxm|2 years ago|reply
Examples: https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/new-york-lowers-bar-...
Meanwhile major cities have the highest per pupil spend for public schools, with frighteningly poor outcomes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/03/30/bal...
Fix K-12 schools (no, more money on bloated administrations is not the answer), and the need for affirmative action goes away.
[+] [-] forgotOldLogin|2 years ago|reply
Charter schools create duplicate systems with duplicate costs, reduce funds available for traditional school students in sending schools, and are a waste of taxpayer resources. When students leave traditional public schools for charter schools, the traditional public school is unable to reduce costs in proportion with the loss in per-pupil revenues. Students in public schools are left with fewer resources.
[+] [-] willio58|2 years ago|reply
Where I live, charter schools are a joke. They're old office buildings converted into "schools". This is super unsafe and honestly quite sad to see in most cases because these office buildings are on busy streets with no playgrounds (what they do have is basically a concrete slab in the back with nearly no play equipment).
News flash: if you want education to "work", we need to pay teachers more. Subsidizing private companies (charter schools) through vouchers is just a leach on resources we could give to our existing schools and teachers instead. There are millions of teachers out there, some with master's degrees, who make much less than a new grad junior dev who goes to work, edits some CSS, and browses Reddit the rest of the day. We simply don't value education in the US enough, and charter schools are a non-solution proposed by those who would rather run away from the problems than face them head-on.
[+] [-] thelock85|2 years ago|reply
I''d break this into two statements with "public schools" being part of both:
1. Charter schools are the saving grace to the public schools because they are not mandated to serve every student and can therefore siphon off failing or behaviorally challenged students back to the public system. Find me a charter system serving special needs and at-risk students better than the public system at the scale of a public system, and I'll change my mind.
2. Public schools have been hijacked by the teachers union and bloated administrations because their funding structures are controlled by politics and culture wars instead of targeted research and practice on what specific kids need. I'm not a fan of teachers unions or bureaucracy, but who else takes the heat for teachers who are under-resourced, under-paid, and over-worked?
> Fix K-12 schools (no, more money on bloated administrations is not the answer), and the need for affirmative action goes away.
100% agree on the affirmative action part, but to fix K-12 schools you need new or other institutions to pick up slack on supporting students. The reason that "Deputy Assistant Senior Manager of Cognitive and Emotional Development" exist is because the law is pretty clear about how a school district is responsible for a student with XYZ cognitive and emotional developmental challenges. To get rid of that administrator, you also need to transfer (operationally and legislatively) ownership of that responsibility.
[+] [-] cardamomo|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] P_I_Staker|2 years ago|reply
Are major cities more likely to contain people in abject poverty, who perceive their situation as hopeless, sometimes correctly? Many people struggle with learning, due to conditions at home, and without money there's no get out of jail free cards. Kids need people with money to advocate for them, or they can be abandoned by society, told they will never amount to nothing (very much like Biggy Smalls did), and their talents overlooked.
For people living in these conditions college may be achievable, but there's a very narrow window, with a ton of risk involved. To summarize, perhaps we're simply spending more, to combat bigger problems (often ineffectively); versus the quality of education being as poor as you claim.
[+] [-] MisterBastahrd|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] revolvingocelot|2 years ago|reply
The link provided shows that, in fact, the union opposed the change. This claim is a bald faced lie, and lies should be downvoted on HN.
[+] [-] aaroninsf|2 years ago|reply
PSA a primary driver for this (along side other issues) is that in "major cities" the affluent pull out and stick their kids in private schools, creating a feedback loop of public school increasingly capturing all and predominantly the least- least-supported kids.
And teachers then teach in over-crowded classes with 3x the student-teacher ratio of the private schools, while also providing de facto baseline social services of many kinds. While horrifically underpaid.
Meanwhile the right wing is driving this feedback loop on multiple fronts, as it has been for decades—with the collapse of secular public education an open agenda for those decades.
[+] [-] eimrine|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sixothree|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WarOnPrivacy|2 years ago|reply
It was a mistake I regret. My kids were not baseline* and the educators were out of their depth. They took their obligations seriously and made good faith efforts but weren't able make the leap (during our 7 years).
We left for the county's public schools and they were a world better - by every measure. I am not overstating that an inch.
All that said, I still felt the charter was a good fit for normie students and I recommended it to some parents (but not all).
* One was high functioning autistic. Two coped poorly with the limited curriculum.
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]