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by jahnu 2885 days ago
It doesn't say that at all.

"better results" should mean given a similar set of students. If you cherry-pick the inputs don't expect comparing outputs to be the same.

1 comments

Given the set of high-ability students, it does seem that charter schools have better results.

There's an attitude that everybody should do poorly together, and that's better than anybody succeeding. Like a bucket of crabs, each clawing at the others trying to get out and pulling them back in that keeps the poor, doing poorly. And well-meaning ivory-tower types fuel the culture with idealistic 'fairness' arguments.

The data does not back this up.

Charter schools like elite colleges gain 90% of their reputation from rejecting average or below students. There is variation among school quality adjusting for incoming students, however that exists for both normal and charter schools with many charter schools preforming worse than expected and many public schools preforming far above expectations.

However, if you want to support the value of some institution or approach it's really easy to ignore this fact and create biased research.

Citation? Its not about reputation (irrelevant) but accomplishment. And in the OP case, we're talking about one school helping one demographic. I wish this new school all the best luck in helping these kids.
the predominance of such studies in the United States does not show positive impacts on average for the charter school sector. https://www.brookings.edu/research/on-negative-effects-of-vo...

Recent research on statewide voucher programs in Louisiana and Indiana has found that public school students that received vouchers to attend private schools subsequently scored lower on reading and math tests compared to similar students that remained in public schools. https://www.brookings.edu/research/on-negative-effects-of-vo...

Or do you want the actual research papers?

And are charter schools about reading and math? Cherry picking results is easy to show whatever you like.

Charter schools are about - whatever each is constituted to be about. Like you can't go to a hardware store and grab a random tool and rate it on how well it drills holes. You shouldn't rate charter schools on your favorite metric. Some are about upper-class folk raising their kids with better music and art appreciation. Others are about escaping backward school boards. Sometimes they are in areas so backward, that the charter school still underperforms the national average. But if its an improvement for that area, its an improvement.

That's not 'better results' that's different results.

It's perfectly reasonable to look at the magnet school model as a good thing. However, you now have to defend the associated sacrifices.

I personally feel K-12 is to early to specialize so improvements at the cost of general achievement is a poor use of taxpayer funds.