bounty44
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http://www.alternet.org/education/charter-school-insiders-now-admit-public-education-cant-be-remade-wall-sts-image
Alternet…gads it was difficult to even go to the site. From a philosophical perspective I might just as well go read joether’s blog or even vile critter parts’ nutsuckerisms and hit myself in the head with a hammer.
Anyway, here’s a critique on it:
quote:
Charter schools, which have been criticized for grabbing billions in taxpayer dollars with promises to reinvent public education using corporate efficiencies and values, are finding themselves under fire from industry insiders who are saying that these hyped market-based reforms don’t work.
Except they do work. Evidence shows it and the poster of the link ignores it, as does the author of the article. Charter schools educate as well, or better, for less.
quote:
The criticism comes in the wake of scandals by some of the sector’s biggest for-profit players that have given the industry a bad name.
The public school commies just don’t seem to get this---scandals happen everywhere, including public schools. There is nothing inherent in charter schools that make them more likely to incur scandals and by contrast, nothing indicting in them that necessarily disqualifies free market principles from succeeding, in spite of the occasional scandal. but by all means, if there are 6-7 thousand charter schools around the country, lets criticize the whole movement because a dozen or so have crooks running them.
quote:
“National for-profit charter school operators have increasingly been in the press lately and not for good reasons,” begins a January column by lobbyist-consultant Alex Medler on EducationPost.org. “Based on how often for-profit operators embarrass the charter sector, many are willing to say it’s time to ban them.”
Its easy to say “many” when you don’t have to actually provide evidence. There are thousands of charter schools and tens of thousands of teachers and administrators in them---just how many is “many” such that it accounts for a significant amount, a ground swell movement or a critical mass? Given that charter schools continue to grow, and parents want them, its hard to give a lot of credence to medler’s remark.
At the same time, ive mentioned elsewhere here that the charter schools are increasingly moving towards non-profit status. So the criticism is in part, null. But that said, the major difference between profit and non-profit is what the companies can do with the profits. In terms of actual practice in terms of teaching and learning, its tough to see how that difference matters. Critics would also have to show a difference in the outcomes between the two. To my knowledge, they haven’t, and certainly this article didn’t.
quote:
Nor is he referring to studies that show online charter school—the industry’s fastest-growing sector—are dogged by dropouts, poor academics and last fall’s stock price collapse of K12 Inc., the nation’s largest online charter operator. It has approximately 90,000 students enrolled in entirely Internet-delivered instruction in more than 20 states.
Stocks rise and fall in all sectors, all the time and it speaks nothing to the quality of the product being provided.
Fascinating that “e-learning” is embraced at the college level (which is full of lefties) but criticized for the scholastic level.
The link he provided says absolutely nothing about drop-outs and poor academics. We’re left to take his word for it.
quote:
He is referring to all those threads and a more basic one: “hubris” that the marketplace and all its vaunted know-how could fundamentally transform public schools and improve learning.
Except of course that they have.
quote:
“For-profits mistakenly assumed that inefficiency leads to bad schools,” he wrote. “They thought national scale and business savvy would allow them to outperform the competition. Chalk it up to outsiders’ hubris, but any school leader will tell you that running good schools is much more complicated than getting operations to fit together efficiently.” Medler added that state and local laws governing how public schools are to be run also confounded these would-be reformers. “Both the profit and quality quickly evaded most of them.”
medler’s assuming, for the sake of creating his argument, what charter schools are thinking. Is it true inefficiency necessarily leads to bad schools? No, but “inefficiency” certainly costs more doesn’t it? and again with the vague term “most”---without providing actual numbers, its meaningless. At the same time, he ironically points out how state and local laws confound reformers. That’s actually indicting on the law and the dinosaur status of the public schools.
quote:
These comments are not coming from longtime charter foes like advocates for traditional public schools, but from an industry lobbyist-consultant.
So there it is---the INSIDER, all one of him so far, and we meet one more below.
quote:
James Merriman, the CEO of the New York City Charter School Center, added his voice to the naysayer chorus when he last month told Slate.com, “You can’t make a profit and get good results… any dollar converted [to profits] from being used inefficiently in an inner-city charter school is needed in the school.”
Just to be clear again, the argument here is about profit vs non profit charters. But to be honest, im having a hard time figuring out what the heck he is saying. in any event, sorry---you can make a profit and produce good results, or millions of business owners and consumers are flat out wrong.
ironic though for the article that, if you go the new York city charter school center website, you can learn there that blacks and Hispanics are outperforming their public school counterpart. Peek here if you want to see more:
http://www.nyccharterschools.org/sites/default/files/resources/factsheet-Achievement.pdf
quote:
These statements by industry insiders about how free market tenets have not transformed public schools as promised are a notable crack in the propaganda armor surrounding the charter movement.
Only two “insiders” and no, the statements have not shown that in the least, unless you count a lack of transformation being that there are crooks on both sides of the aisle so to speak. Otherwise, they have not talked at all about outcomes.
quote:
EMO—or education management organizations—is the Wall Street-created term for firms running charter school chains—like HMO refers to health maintenance organizations in the health care world. When charters emerged in the early 1990s as a reform idea, they were envisioned as a new type of public schools that would be small, locally run, innovative and open to all students. In the two decades since, they have become an industry dominated by growing brands—some for-profit, some non-profit—and the primary mechanism for privatizing public schools and public school functions. The sector has more than 6,700 schools with 2.9 million students across the country.
Have said this before---so what? They unfolded different than the original vision (or so we are lead to believe anyway---that is, I suspect some are still quite in keeping with it), does that mean anything really? Do they still not educate kids as well, or better, for less money?
quote:
K12’s seems to be the field’s Exhibit A for the “hubris” that industry consultant Alex Medler wrote about on EducationPost.org—vastly overpromising and then underperforming. The firm is the nation’s largest provider of internet-only public schools. Its stock dropped more than 20 percent last fall after embarrassments could not be swept away. They had sub-par test scores, dwindling enrollments, and management contracts that were not renewed. That came after investors betting—and winning—that their stock would crash, and admissions by former employees, like marketing director Houston Tucker, who told Bloomberg.com that “K12 grew too fast and invested too little in instruction.”
I don’t like online education at any level, but that said, over time then, the market will adjust to that and either online charter schools will provide a better product and succeed on the strength of that, or they will go extinct. How that is a fatal criticism is beyond me.
quote:
That report identified four major areas where taxpayer funds were being diverted from academics into profit centers for owners-operators. What was most striking was the array of complex business strategies that have little to do with improving student achievement but much more to do with diverting money from classrooms, teacher salaries, real estate assets and funds obtained from selling government-backed bonds. The Center’s report is very complex and shows how many charter operators use an intentional web of interrelated for-profit and non-profit shells.
Then what the critics need to do here is show that what they are calling “diverting” is actually affecting outcomes. They don’t.
I skipped over quite a bit but im thinking that’s enough…
To use the term again, I don’t see anything mortally wounding charter schools in terms of their overall success at providing alternatives to public schools, and educating kids as well, or better, for less.
Generally speaking, the major theme of the article ended up being “we don’t like capitalism” and it all read to me like a college freshmen writing on a topic where he thinks he’s into something really big, and who wants to make a difference, but really isnt at all.
get over it comrades...
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