RSS FeedsCharter schools
Do charter schools provide a sure-fire recipe for success, or exacerbate LAUSD’s performance problems? Discuss today's Blowback.
Comments will close after two weeks.
1.
In your second to last paragarph, you state, "What Broad, Green Dot and the others do not reveal is the scores of those charter students when they were in regular public schools."
If that statement is meant to include KIPP schools, your statement is highly misleading. KIPP has consistently posted how their students test on when they enter in 5th grade. For instance, at one KIPP DC school, students entered in the 34th percentile in math--similar to those in neighborhood schools. However, by the time they graduated, they scored in the 93rd percentile. Please check your facts next time.
2. How is individual aptitude developed? And then use the answers to these questions to analyze the school system to see if they are being employed. Further study on the origin of compulsory education (google it) will probably disturb you. It might cause you to have what is desperately needed in the freely restricted world of media; a place payed for by the Gates, Annenbergs, and more interestingly Ford and Rockefeller, a place literally built and founded on the ideas of people like Coombs and Shaffer, even here you may experience, a paradigm shift. Here is to hoping for C Wright Mills' Sociological Imagination.
3. How is individual aptitude developed? And then use the answers to these questions to analyze the school system to see if they are being employed. Further study on the origin of compulsory education (google it) will probably disturb you. It might cause you to have what is desperately needed in the freely restricted world of media; a place payed for by the Gates, Annenbergs, and more interestingly Ford and Rockefeller, a place literally built and founded on the ideas of people like Coombs and Shaffer, even here you may experience, a paradigm shift. Here is to hoping for C Wright Mills' Sociological Imagination.
4. I think an honest critic will simply walk away from the ideas postulated by those on seemingly opposite sides (Coombs, Shaffer, Broad, Gates support different sides of the same coin) and ask themselves what are the measures of true intelligence.
5. It is important to have a critical analysis of every arguement even one presented with righteous indignation as this one by Coombs and Shaffer. Following the call for critical, or correct, analysis what is the value of the, "test scores," that Coombs and Shaffer feel are the standard for intellect?
6. It is interesting that the critique bases its arguement on the difficulty of having to deal with a backward mass of "3,000 low-income students from ethnic backgrounds . . . with little commitment to education." I wonder where the assessment that these children represent people with no interest in their own education came from.
7. The best thing about charter schools are that they provide a place where my own narrow socio-political, cultural and educational beliefs can be very deeply embedded into my child’s brain. Charters are useful because a truly broad exposure to other ideas, and other children, can be avoided. Also, charters can prevent my child from being exposed to riffraff (i.e. people who aren’t like us). I think extreme social sorting is fundamental to our pseudo-democracy, so that’s why I like “school choice” so much.
8. I too am tired of the complaints of cherry picking and motivated parents pulling their children into better schools as the reason for the failure of the public school system. Without motivation, there is nothing anyone can do to create achievement. Nor should it be the goal of public schools to motivate. That's the parent's job. The real problem is mixing children of different motivation levels and different capabilities in the same schools in an attempt to make everyone equal. Only when children finally go to college, where motivation and capability still earn entrance into top schools, do US institutions compete internationally.
9. As the spouse of a teacher I find your aguments unconvincing; all parents, not just the middle class, desperately want a decent education for their kids. Too often, the area's problems overwhelm teachers in poorer areas and after a few years they educators turn cynical. If a few millionaires want to help, let them. Why should poor parents be compelled to send their children to dismal schools? Surely a little competition could motivate recalcitant administrators to offer that most valuable thing of all - the chance for a better life.
10. What's missing from this piece is a solid solution for improving public schools (charter or non-charter). This is a weakly constructed and jargon-filled essay that fails to advance the conversation about FIXING public education one inch. It's too bad; the authors are clearly smart people. I'd invite them to think about what we can do to help any and all schools succeed so that the doors of opportunity are open to the greatest number of students --- no matter what school they choose to attend.
Submitted by: Anon
2. How is individual aptitude developed? And then use the answers to these questions to analyze the school system to see if they are being employed. Further study on the origin of compulsory education (google it) will probably disturb you. It might cause you to have what is desperately needed in the freely restricted world of media; a place payed for by the Gates, Annenbergs, and more interestingly Ford and Rockefeller, a place literally built and founded on the ideas of people like Coombs and Shaffer, even here you may experience, a paradigm shift. Here is to hoping for C Wright Mills' Sociological Imagination.
Submitted by: Ben
3. How is individual aptitude developed? And then use the answers to these questions to analyze the school system to see if they are being employed. Further study on the origin of compulsory education (google it) will probably disturb you. It might cause you to have what is desperately needed in the freely restricted world of media; a place payed for by the Gates, Annenbergs, and more interestingly Ford and Rockefeller, a place literally built and founded on the ideas of people like Coombs and Shaffer, even here you may experience, a paradigm shift. Here is to hoping for C Wright Mills' Sociological Imagination.
Submitted by: Ben
4. I think an honest critic will simply walk away from the ideas postulated by those on seemingly opposite sides (Coombs, Shaffer, Broad, Gates support different sides of the same coin) and ask themselves what are the measures of true intelligence.
Submitted by: Ben
5. It is important to have a critical analysis of every arguement even one presented with righteous indignation as this one by Coombs and Shaffer. Following the call for critical, or correct, analysis what is the value of the, "test scores," that Coombs and Shaffer feel are the standard for intellect?
Submitted by: Ben
6. It is interesting that the critique bases its arguement on the difficulty of having to deal with a backward mass of "3,000 low-income students from ethnic backgrounds . . . with little commitment to education." I wonder where the assessment that these children represent people with no interest in their own education came from.
Submitted by: Ben
7. The best thing about charter schools are that they provide a place where my own narrow socio-political, cultural and educational beliefs can be very deeply embedded into my child’s brain. Charters are useful because a truly broad exposure to other ideas, and other children, can be avoided. Also, charters can prevent my child from being exposed to riffraff (i.e. people who aren’t like us). I think extreme social sorting is fundamental to our pseudo-democracy, so that’s why I like “school choice” so much.
Submitted by: Sharon
8. I too am tired of the complaints of cherry picking and motivated parents pulling their children into better schools as the reason for the failure of the public school system. Without motivation, there is nothing anyone can do to create achievement. Nor should it be the goal of public schools to motivate. That's the parent's job. The real problem is mixing children of different motivation levels and different capabilities in the same schools in an attempt to make everyone equal. Only when children finally go to college, where motivation and capability still earn entrance into top schools, do US institutions compete internationally.
Submitted by: Ed
9. As the spouse of a teacher I find your aguments unconvincing; all parents, not just the middle class, desperately want a decent education for their kids. Too often, the area's problems overwhelm teachers in poorer areas and after a few years they educators turn cynical. If a few millionaires want to help, let them. Why should poor parents be compelled to send their children to dismal schools? Surely a little competition could motivate recalcitant administrators to offer that most valuable thing of all - the chance for a better life.
Submitted by: Russell
10. What's missing from this piece is a solid solution for improving public schools (charter or non-charter). This is a weakly constructed and jargon-filled essay that fails to advance the conversation about FIXING public education one inch. It's too bad; the authors are clearly smart people. I'd invite them to think about what we can do to help any and all schools succeed so that the doors of opportunity are open to the greatest number of students --- no matter what school they choose to attend.
Submitted by: Paul
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT