quote:

ORIGINAL: Greta75

quote:

ORIGINAL: Wayward5oul
Actually SATs are becoming less and less important. Charter schools require very little accountability-teachers don't have to trained as teachers, funding is not monitored and where the money goes is not monitored (several schools have shut down with little to no notice due to running out of money), etc. There have been some successful charter schools, I have seen some of them myself, worked in one myself, but I can tell you there are huge differences in the charter between those and the majority of charter schools out there. And the research shows that charter schools don't live up to the hype.

Okay, it's the terminology that is very confusing.

Charter schools equals Private school? That's all it means right?

If that's all it means, it's a bit strange the whole charter schools push. Why can't public schools and charter schools co-exist together? So people have plenty of choices to choose public or charter?

quote:

ORIGINAL: bounty44

greta--without getting into the difference between public schools, charter schools, private or parochial or even home schooling---the short of it is, pretty much anything that competes with public schools is a curse to the left.

on the whole, competition breeds excellence and in general, students who attend other than public schools have good success and outperform their public school counterparts.

at present, public schools enjoy a monopoly via force of government and tax dollars. everyone who owns property here pays school taxes for the public school system and then, if they have a kid they want to send to a different school, they have to not only still pay those school taxes, but they have to pay the extra tuition at the alternative school also. for most people, this is financially beyond their means.

the idea behind vouchers (which the comrades hate) is to take the tax dollars that would have "followed" any particular kid to a public school, and allow the parents to have those tax dollars to apply to a school of their choice.

which is a nice segue into saying, "choice" is okay to the left when we are talking about abortion, but not so okay when we are talking about schools.

quote:

ORIGINAL: BamaD

quote:

ORIGINAL: Greta75

quote:

ORIGINAL: Wayward5oul
Actually SATs are becoming less and less important. Charter schools require very little accountability-teachers don't have to trained as teachers, funding is not monitored and where the money goes is not monitored (several schools have shut down with little to no notice due to running out of money), etc. There have been some successful charter schools, I have seen some of them myself, worked in one myself, but I can tell you there are huge differences in the charter between those and the majority of charter schools out there. And the research shows that charter schools don't live up to the hype.

Okay, it's the terminology that is very confusing.

Charter schools equals Private school? That's all it means right?

If that's all it means, it's a bit strange the whole charter schools push. Why can't public schools and charter schools co-exist together? So people have plenty of choices to choose public or charter?

They often do, it isn't uniform.
The main point of charter schools is to give parents an option to get their kids out of rotten school districts. This gives the public schools incentive to improve as every student who leaves their system costs them money. It is like private schools that everyone an afford.

quote:

ORIGINAL: bounty44

greta--without getting into the difference between public schools, charter schools, private or parochial or even home schooling---the short of it is, pretty much anything that competes with public schools is a curse to the left.

on the whole, competition breeds excellence and in general, students who attend other than public schools have good success and outperform their public school counterparts.

at present, public schools enjoy a monopoly via force of government and tax dollars. everyone who owns property here pays school taxes for the public school system and then, if they have a kid they want to send to a different school, they have to not only still pay those school taxes, but they have to pay the extra tuition at the alternative school also. for most people, this is financially beyond their means.

the idea behind vouchers (which the comrades hate) is to take the tax dollars that would have "followed" any particular kid to a public school, and allow the parents to have those tax dollars to apply to a school of their choice.

which is a nice segue into saying, "choice" is okay to the left when we are talking about abortion, but not so okay when we are talking about schools.

quote:

ORIGINAL: JstAnotherSub
My vote is for that. Research some of these women. Do not like them just because they happen to have a vagina.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Greta75
Charter schools equals Private school? That's all it means right?

quote:

Student Achievement in Florida’s Charter Schools: Key Findings

[im leaving a lot out for space sake, and hoping the lack of context doesn't detract from the point]

The data contained in this report, based on over 3.2 million test scores, is derived
from student performance on the Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test
(FCAT 2.0) and Algebra end-of-course exams.

The report compares the percentage of students in charter schools making learning gains
against the percentage of students in traditional public schools making learning
gains, by subject, grade level and subgroup. The percentage of students making
learning gains was higher in charter schools in 76 of the 96 comparisons. The
percentage of students making learning gains was higher in traditional public
schools in 10 of the 96 comparisons.

quote:

charter school students at all levels, outperformed their public school counterparts by percentage of students achieving a desirable level on a standardized reading test. 65-60, 66-58, 63-55 for elementary, middle, and high school respectively.

the same trend appeared in ALL subgroups---whites, blacks, Hispanics, poor and students with disabilities.

in math, it was 62-59, and 61-54 for elementary and middle school.

all the subgroups were better for charter schools with the exception of elementary school white, which was essentially a tie with public schools.

charter schools outdid the public schools in science, 55-54, and 53-49, with the 11 out of 12 subgroups in the charter schools performing better.

for algebra, it was 90-91, and 59-49 for middle school and high school. 6 of the charter school subgroups performed better; 4 were the same.

the achievement gap between white and black students, and white and Hispanic students, in reading, math and science was markedly lower in the charter school students at both the elementary and middle school levels. (no high school data)

it was lower in 3 out of the 4 instances in algebra. the 4th instance was no difference.

the percent of students making gains in reading is higher in charter schools and in 42 of the 48 sub group/school level categories.

in math, the numbers go back and forth between the schools depending on level and subgroup with a slight lean of charter over public.

these are final proficiency data for charter school and public school:

Reading Elem 65.1 59.6 Mid 66.1 57.9 High 62.5 54.7
Mathematics Elem 61.6 58.9 Mid 60.7 53.7
Science Elem 55.2 54.2 Mid 53.0 48.5
Algebra Mid 90.4 91.3 High 59.0 44.8

quote:

Specifically, it focuses
on the three private school types that combined enroll
the greatest proportion of private school students
(Catholic, Lutheran, and Conservative Christian) as
well as private schools overall. It also compares the performance
of students in these schools to that of public
school students to provide additional perspective....

Students at grades 4, 8, and 12 in all categories of
private schools had higher average scores in reading,
mathematics, science, and writing than their counterparts
in public schools. In addition, higher percentages
of students in private schools performed at or above
Proficient compared to those in public schools.

[the majority of things, statistically so and it holds true for whites, blacks, asians and Hispanics, regardless of gender]

[significantly more private and parochial school students go on to graduate from college than their public school counterparts.]

quote:

ORIGINAL: Awareness

quote:

ORIGINAL: Greta75
Charter schools equals Private school? That's all it means right?

No. Charter schools siphon money away from the public schools and have no accountability for it.

quote:

How can researchers publish a book concluding that government schools are outperforming private schools despite all the evidence to the contrary? By ignoring all the evidence to the contrary, of course.

Writing at Education Next, Patrick Wolf casts a gimlet eye on the claims of Sarah and Chris Lubienski in their book, The Public School Advantage: Why Public Schools Outperform Private Schools:

quote:

Research on this question goes back some 30 years. From James Coleman’s early observational studies of high schools to the experimental voucher evaluations of the past 15 years, researchers have routinely found that similar students do at least as well and, at times, better academically in private schools than in public schools. How have the Lubienskis come up with this surprising finding?

Wolf notes that the Lubienskis ignore numerous performance measures — including graduation rates, college matriculation, future income, parental satisfaction — that give a decided advantage to private schools, even after controlling for student characteristics. They narrowly define performance as math scores on two national tests, ignoring the reading data that also show higher private-school performance.

School choice programs consistently produce similar or better results for much less money.

Moreover, both math tests had been altered prior to the Lubienskis’ data collection to more closely align with the way that math is generally taught in government schools as opposed to private schools. By the Lubienskis’ own admission, “the professional development of math teachers changed in the late 1980s to emphasize math reasoning and problem solving and de-emphasize math facts and computations.” Government schools were more likely to embrace the new math curriculum than private schools, which “tended to continue to emphasize traditional math content.” Thus, concludes Wolf, this is a study of “how well private and public school students have learned the brand of math taught in the public schools” rather than a true measure of the differences in math skills.

Wolf also faults the Lubienskis for making apples-to-oranges comparisons of student characteristics that are “measured differently across school sectors” and for methodological flaws in accounting for students who switched from government schools to private schools or vice-versa.

Even more distressingly, the Lubienskis ignore the copious evidence from randomized controlled trials, which are the gold standard of social science research. As Jay P. Greene, Wolf’s colleague at the University of Arkansas, writes:

quote:

The net effect of these three methodological choices, plus the fact that standardized math results are more closely aligned with how the subject is taught in public than private schools, strongly skew the results in favor of public schools. The beauty of randomized experiments is that their results are not so easily manipulated by bizarre choices of what is controlled. But the Lubienskis don’t like randomized experiments. Advocates for quack medicine also tend not to like randomized experiments. They don’t let you selectively control for things until you get the answer you want.

Furthermore, Wolf’s assessment of the Lubienskis’ methodological flaws leaves aside the question of efficiency (academic achievement per dollar spent per pupil). Efficiency is an issue that apologists for the status quo prefer to avoid. For example, school-choice critics pooh-pooh results from the over-regulated Milwaukee voucher program because test scores of choice students were not significantly different from government school students (setting aside the choice students’ significantly higher levels of high-school graduation and college matriculation). However, the critics neglect to mention that the private schools achieved those results at about half the cost per pupil.

School choice programs consistently produce similar or better results for much less money. Indeed, in a 2009 review of the global research literature, the Cato Institute’s Andrew Coulson found that every study to measure efficiency in education returned a statistically significant positive result for markets.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has nearly tripled the amount spent per government school pupil in inflation-adjusted dollars in the last 40 years while test scores have remained flat and internationally unimpressive. Perhaps it’s time to give private schools their well-deserved chance?

quote:

ORIGINAL: bounty44

hey mnalevolent, go follow someone else around.

lastly, if anyone does any of their own searching and finds whats discussed below (I did, all over the place):

"Yes, Private Schools Beat Public Schools"

quote:

How can researchers publish a book concluding that government schools are outperforming private schools despite all the evidence to the contrary? By ignoring all the evidence to the contrary, of course.

Writing at Education Next, Patrick Wolf casts a gimlet eye on the claims of Sarah and Chris Lubienski in their book, The Public School Advantage: Why Public Schools Outperform Private Schools:

quote:

Research on this question goes back some 30 years. From James Coleman’s early observational studies of high schools to the experimental voucher evaluations of the past 15 years, researchers have routinely found that similar students do at least as well and, at times, better academically in private schools than in public schools. How have the Lubienskis come up with this surprising finding?

Wolf notes that the Lubienskis ignore numerous performance measures — including graduation rates, college matriculation, future income, parental satisfaction — that give a decided advantage to private schools, even after controlling for student characteristics. They narrowly define performance as math scores on two national tests, ignoring the reading data that also show higher private-school performance.

School choice programs consistently produce similar or better results for much less money.

Moreover, both math tests had been altered prior to the Lubienskis’ data collection to more closely align with the way that math is generally taught in government schools as opposed to private schools. By the Lubienskis’ own admission, “the professional development of math teachers changed in the late 1980s to emphasize math reasoning and problem solving and de-emphasize math facts and computations.” Government schools were more likely to embrace the new math curriculum than private schools, which “tended to continue to emphasize traditional math content.” Thus, concludes Wolf, this is a study of “how well private and public school students have learned the brand of math taught in the public schools” rather than a true measure of the differences in math skills.

Wolf also faults the Lubienskis for making apples-to-oranges comparisons of student characteristics that are “measured differently across school sectors” and for methodological flaws in accounting for students who switched from government schools to private schools or vice-versa.

Even more distressingly, the Lubienskis ignore the copious evidence from randomized controlled trials, which are the gold standard of social science research. As Jay P. Greene, Wolf’s colleague at the University of Arkansas, writes:

quote:

The net effect of these three methodological choices, plus the fact that standardized math results are more closely aligned with how the subject is taught in public than private schools, strongly skew the results in favor of public schools. The beauty of randomized experiments is that their results are not so easily manipulated by bizarre choices of what is controlled. But the Lubienskis don’t like randomized experiments. Advocates for quack medicine also tend not to like randomized experiments. They don’t let you selectively control for things until you get the answer you want.

Furthermore, Wolf’s assessment of the Lubienskis’ methodological flaws leaves aside the question of efficiency (academic achievement per dollar spent per pupil). Efficiency is an issue that apologists for the status quo prefer to avoid. For example, school-choice critics pooh-pooh results from the over-regulated Milwaukee voucher program because test scores of choice students were not significantly different from government school students (setting aside the choice students’ significantly higher levels of high-school graduation and college matriculation). However, the critics neglect to mention that the private schools achieved those results at about half the cost per pupil.

School choice programs consistently produce similar or better results for much less money. Indeed, in a 2009 review of the global research literature, the Cato Institute’s Andrew Coulson found that every study to measure efficiency in education returned a statistically significant positive result for markets.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has nearly tripled the amount spent per government school pupil in inflation-adjusted dollars in the last 40 years while test scores have remained flat and internationally unimpressive. Perhaps it’s time to give private schools their well-deserved chance?

https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/yes-private-schools-beat-public-schools