[bnralt]

That's the theory. What I've actually seen here (where many charters exist with public schools) is that charters actually increase the number of "good" kids in public schools. This is because without charters, parents will just stay clear of a bad area entirely. With charters, many parents will put their kids in the local public school early on, increasing the number of "good" kids that go their. They eventually will pull things out as the school systems problems increase as kids grow, but there seems to be "good" students willing to stay in the system later and later.

It's a slow improvement, but it's at least an improvement. As I said, without charters the "good" kids leave the system entirely, and these local schools never get better.

But the other thing to point out is that it's unfair to simply treat "good" students as commodities to spend on "bad" students and neglect "good students" educational needs (and this happens much too often, from what I've seen). For instance, I've seen a special needs student here get a full time teacher just for them (in addition to their regular teacher), which is great. But then advanced students who aren't learning anything because they already know everything on the curriculum can't even get a teacher to address their educational needs for an hour or two a week.

[smugma]

This is the exact evolution I’ve seen of my kids’ (charter) school.

[ahahahahah]

Please readers, do not believe these bullshit anecdotes. Look into real research about these things if you care about them.

[reducesuffering]

Feel free to cite the research then, otherwise:

"I am so, so tired of socialists who admit that the current system is a helltopian torturescape, then argue that we must prevent anyone from ever being able to escape it. Who promise that once the last alternative is closed off, once the last nice green place where a few people manage to hold off the miseries of the world is crushed, why then the helltopian torturescape will become a lovely utopia full of rainbows and unicorns. If you can make your system less miserable, make your system less miserable! Do it before forcing everyone else to participate in it under pain of imprisonment if they refuse! Forcing everyone to participate in your system and then making your system something other than a meat-grinder that takes in happy children and spits out dead-eyed traumatized eighteen-year-olds who have written 10,000 pages on symbolism in To Kill A Mockingbird and had zero normal happy experiences - is doing things super, super backwards!" https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-the-cult-o...