[HDThoreaun]

Education is mostly about your peers. It's obviously true for prestigious universities but it's just as true for elementary schools. Charter schools kicking out problematic students isn't some loophole, it's the main point, and it absolutely can improve the education for those that remain.

My district has a quarter of high schoolers in charter schools. Almost all of them under the poverty line. It's not like they're only accepting kids with two parents, in fact they're doing a much better job of helping poor families in my district than the public school system, which forces all the poor students into the same schools with literal murderers attending. Allowing poor students from families that value education to go to schools with like minded students is an unequivocally good thing compared to what the public schools currently do.

[ZeroGravitas]

It is both a loophole and the main point.

It's the main point for people who want their children to succeed at the expense of the rest of society and it's a loophole when they try to sell that concept to the rest of society as "we can teach better for cheaper so give us your tax money and let us replace universal public education" rather than "we have thrown some of your children on the scrapheap for you to expensively support for the rest of their lives and either don't understand or don't care that this is of net negative value".

[greenhexagon]

Please also consider: removing the one or two severely disruptive students from a classroom results in drastically better education for the 20+ students who remain, which is likely a benefit to society at large.

Based on my own education, a public school where every single day the same 1 or 2 students disrupted the lesson, assaulted nearby students and forced the teachers to waste hours on maintaining order rather than teaching, the result wasn't that the median student pulled the troublemaker up, it was that the troublemaker caused the entire classroom to not learn anything.

Society would have been far better off to have the couple students unable to thrive in a conventional classroom go to an alternative school and have all the other students get a decent education.

[autoexec]

> Please also consider: removing the one or two severely disruptive students from a classroom results in drastically better education for the 20+ students who remain, which is likely a benefit to society at large.

Charter schools aren't needed for that though. Public schools are supposed to already be doing it. Either in the form of escalating detentions/suspensions followed by expulsion, or by moving the most problematic kids into emotional/behavioral disability classrooms/schools, or in the worst cases sending the children to hospitals and group homes.

If public schools aren't doing this, there needs to be changes in administration, just like schools where they simply resort to arresting children and giving them police records for disobeying and being disruptive. Police shouldn't be involved at all for anything less than severe crimes.

[shiroiuma]

>Public schools are supposed to already be doing it. Either in the form of escalating detentions/suspensions followed by expulsion, or by moving the most problematic kids into emotional/behavioral disability classrooms/schools, or in the worst cases sending the children to hospitals and group homes.

The problem is that public schools can't do those things, for various political and social reasons. So the charter school thing is a workaround.

>If public schools aren't doing this, there needs to be changes in administration,

Again, this is a political problem, since administrators are picked by the local government. There's only so much administrators can do anyway. Ultimately, the whole thing seems to be a political and a cultural problem.

[HumblyTossed]

Of course it's a political problem. There are people who have been scheming how to dismantle public education. The short term goal is to funnel tax payer money to private schooling. The longer term goal is to make sure the lower classes simply don't ever get an education.

So, yeah, it is a political problem.

[philwelch]

This is a conspiracy theory made up and spread by teachers unions for their own vested interests.

[vacuity]

I can't speak on whether you're right, but there is genuinely a component where public schooling can't lump everyone together and expect things to work out. In high school, I knew someone who spread vicious rumors and made remarks about Nazi Germany and whatnot. Supposedly on the autism spectrum, although that's not an excuse either way. He was smart enough, but seemed more interested in aggravating and harassing people. There needs to be a separate schooling environment for people like that, one way or another.

[VirusNewbie]

If schools don’t have competition there is no incentive to do this.

[autoexec]

The incentive is : keep your job / don't get sued.

The law requires certain accommodations for students with disabilities and local elections should handle the rest. All that requires is an engaged community and parents can be extremely vocal/involved. Cities can have good reason to lean on schools too, because good schools bring people into an area and they bring money with them. In that sense, public schools do compete. Families and young adults looking to start them don't want to move to areas without good schools.

Incentives are there, it just takes work and paying attention. A lot of people don't even bother voting in local elections and those that do don't always give much thought to who to elect as superintendent or to the school board. When communities don't take the time to invest in their schools they don't get much out of them. It's part of the reason why poor communities that lack the time/money/energy to be as involved tend to have poorer quality schools. Adding to that are the wealthy families that move to where schools are better or don't move into those areas at all.

[HDThoreaun]

So you kind of just explained why public schools aren't actually competing, at least in poor areas. The issue is that many of the families in these areas do actually care about education, but are unable fix their schools because of others apathy. What should they do?

[Fjskeifndjd]

I’d argue that the majority of people have some desire to be good at their job, and take some pride in that. Competition is a terrible substitute for an effective culture, especially in environments dominated by externalities such as the entire lives of the children that are taught. I doubt many teachers spend much time checking other classrooms to see who is best, they have more important work to be getting on with

[aeturnum]

I think that all makes sense in a narrow way but I think you are sidestepping the actual challenge of education.

As the root comment pointed out - we already know that you improve outcomes by excluding low performers. Schools that can be selective take advantage of that. If you are in a position to attend one of those restrictive schools it may improve your outcomes!

However, the question of "how to do a good job educating kids" on a national level must include everyone in the measure. It might be worth having schools for troubled kids! But you have to look across the results of the troubled kids and the more normate ones. I think the root comment's point is that...this seems to have copied the techniques that charter schools use to improve their educational outcomes...but that arguably those schools are not "solving" the same problem as public schools and comparing them does not reveal any insights.

[jvanderbot]

Actually I disagree that a measure of success of an educational system is its breadth. If serving 95% achieved vastly better outcomes and 5% received no education (or an alternative one!) Would that necessarily and absolutely be worse? What about 99/1 or 99.9 etc

[toomanyrichers]

Agreed. It’s uselessly idealist to imagine you can serve the 100% without making the 99% much worse off. Actually worse than useless — it’s making things worse for the 99%!

Having seen just how much damage a single disruptive student can do, I think there must be alternatives for those that need them — if only to stop disrupting everyone else.

[aeturnum]

> If serving 95% achieved vastly better outcomes and 5% received no education

Good luck convincing the families of the 5%! I'm not arguing this approach wouldn't improve outcomes - just that it's not considered an acceptable solution to "the problem of education." So it doesn't seem like a good faith contribution to the conversation the article is addressing because I believe it's already been rejected as an option.

[brightlancer]

> Good luck convincing the families of the 5%! I'm not arguing this approach wouldn't improve outcomes - just that it's not considered an acceptable solution to "the problem of education." So it doesn't seem like a good faith contribution to the conversation the article is addressing because I believe it's already been rejected as an option.

Of course it's an option: this is why charter schools, private schools and home schools are increasingly popular!

Government education is the only meaningful way in which the majority of people are prohibited from meaningful choices for their kids because the government says "but what about the bottom 5%" -- so folks _opt out_ of government education entirely.

This is why "progressive" (i.e. leftist) politicians and activists are trying to make opting out as difficult as possible -- even though "marginalized minorities" disproportionately support opting out.

But despite the "progressive" (i.e. leftist) politicians and activists, the alternatives are increasingly popular. It's slow, but there is improvement on the alternatives.

[davemp]

The truly disruptive students will likely receive no meaningful education regardless.

[rayiner]

> As the root comment pointed out - we already know that you improve outcomes by excluding low performers.

That’s not quite the point. By excluding low performers, you can improve the outcomes of the other kids, beyond what would be possible by mixing everyone together. So you can achieve a net societal improvement that way.

[ZeroGravitas]

If those excluded kids are just moved from selective charter schools to non-selective public schools then, by the same argument, they'll be reducing the outcomes of the non-disruptive kids who don't have parents involved enough to take advantage of the system.

So unless these charter schools have a side business selling Soylent Green made from disruptive pupils and those with learning disabilities, they're not actually improving overall results.

[aeturnum]

> By excluding low performers, you can improve the outcomes of the other kids

Isn't this is what the root comment is saying? I did not summarize the entire thing but that was my understanding of its point.

> you can achieve a net societal improvement that way.

You can improve the outcomes of the non-low-performers, but it's hard to say it's a "net societal improvement" because the low performers are also part of society.

[brightlancer]

> You can improve the outcomes of the non-low-performers, but it's hard to say it's a "net societal improvement" because the low performers are also part of society.

That depends on the improvement vs loss -- IME, it is a net improvement.

With 100 students, 5 are disruptive, verbally abusive, maybe physically violent. How much does that 5% bring down the other 95%? If we remove that 5% from the other 95%, how much does the 5% lose versus the 95% gain?

IME, the gains in the 95% are miles ahead of the losses in the 5%, which makes it's net improvement.

[HDThoreaun]

I have no kids. My support of charters has nothing to do with that, especially seeing as I would live in a good public school district anyway.

I thought this was clear with the comment but I don't think charter schools teach better or cheaper. They just make it easier for kids to succeed by removing distractions. Before charters almost all of the poor children in the district were being thrown on the scrapheap. Now many of them are getting the education they deserve. I'll admit that I have no perfect solution. I'm not sure there is one. But it seems clear to me that I can't sit by and allow underprivileged students to face the conditions they historically have at public schools here.

[VirusNewbie]

>It's the main point for people who want their children to succeed at the expense of the rest of society

Having a child achieve their full potential actually helps society, it does not hinder it.

[nine_k]

Also, think about these disruptive kids.

They are the minority. They clearly don't function well in the conventional school setting. They are struggling to learn the material. They learn how to disrupt though, and how the grown-ups around them are powerless. They learn to be constantly blamed, and feel miserable, defiant, or both. A lot of wrong lessons.

This makes the lives of these disruptive kids worse. Being in a public school robs them of a chance to become decent people and get an education. These kids should receive a special education, tailored to their special needs, like e.g. autistic kids get a special education.

[trealira]

I think you're giving them a little too much credit. Plenty of disruptive kids have a perfectly fine home life, have an iPhone, get expensive toys or technology bought for them. A lot of them are just jerks who were never punished by their parents, received few punishments from teachers and staff who had little power, and enjoy being disruptive or bullying others, and don't give a shit if they flunk all their tests or classes. The teachers say they're going to become a janitor or drop out of high school at this rate, and they don't care because they've been told this all their lives, because their disruptive behaviors haven't gotten better since kindergarten, only gotten more violent and more sexual. And somehow they manage to squeak by to the next grade.

I say this speaking from my own experience as someone who went to a Title 1 school before taking a test to get into a magnet program when transitioning to high school (about age 14); the difference in disruptive behavior was like night and day to me. I still remember it very clearly.

If education can improve the most by punishing and expelling disruptive students more often, sending them to other schools, I wouldn't be opposed. It would help the non-disruptive majority of students reach their full potential, which is a better outcome than trying to help the disruptive minority at the expense of everyone else.

[nine_k]

I agree, a lot of disruptive kids are not highly disadvantaged. Their problem is a bad environment that helped develop their worst attitudes, so they do enjoy disrupting, bullying, and seeing other kids and grown-ups dumbfounded and hurt.

This is not good for them already. The current public school system just keeps helping them develop these valuable antisocial skills. These kids keep thinking that everyone around are weak fools, and that their disruptive behavior is a way to win.

A different environment, where there is nobody to easily bully, where the grown-ups are not bemused or annoyed by their conduct but expect outbreaks and are prepared to handle them, where the kids are shown different examples of adult behavior that they are used to, might help. More, well-prepared psychologists who definitely should be present in such a school would help these kids understand themselves, their disruptive impulses, why these impulses are ultimately bad, and what ways out are there. These kids are still kids, many not even teenagers. They are still actively learning what a social life is; giving them a good example tailored to them is utterly important.

I do not expect 100% success rate, but I'm pretty certain that it might work much better than a typical helpless public school.

[marcus_holmes]

You said "punish" so many times. Punishing unruly kids doesn't stop them being unruly. They just learn to hate the system and everything in it.

I got expelled from 2 kindergardens, and then was sent to a Montessori school. Where I was fine, even helpful.

"the beatings will continue until behaviour improves" just doesn't work, has never worked.

Maybe we shouldn't have one school experience for all the kids. Maybe some kids work fine with an authoritarian system and like having a set of rules to follow. Other kids don't.

[loandbehold]

You are conflating two unrelated issues: 1. Letting students learn their own way as opposed to memorizing teachers' instructions 2. Letting disruptive kids disrupt education of their classmates

#1 is good, #2 is bad. In fact #1 never works when #2 is present.

[marcus_holmes]

I'm not an education expert. But I think you have to ask why the disruptive kids are being disruptive. It might be that #2 is caused by not having #1 (at least, that was my experience: I stopped being disruptive when they let me do my own thing).

[theGnuMe]

I agree with you as a parent of a kid who has been labeled as disruptive. My kid is a smart sweet loving child who has big emotions and gets overstimulated. If anything he is bullied and taken advantage of by the other kids, yet he is the one who is disciplined because he has big reactions in the school setting. Kids can be really mean. In many sense the school is inflexible largely because of budget constraints. This is why we have large class sizes. Can you imagine handling 26-30 4th graders?

I am lucky in some sense because I can afford all the therapies, private tutors and teachers as necessary. I can throw money at the problem where as many kids have parents who cannot. Even then throwing money at the problem doesn't guarantee anything. You have to find the right fit for your kid and hopefully they learn the skills they need and adapt along the way.

To the rest of the commentors in the thread, you cannot segregate kids. The schools need to adapt to them and meet them where they are. In the US Federal Law guarantees this but the reality is that schools are underfunded by a huge amount so when we talk about individualized education and special education services, everything is cookie cutter.

BTW if any parent in this thread section can recommend a great public school system with appropriate Level 3 services please reply. I can literally move anywhere. A 70k a year private school would be hard to afford right now as would a $1-2 million dollar home in said school district but there is really no good information out there for parents.

[marcus_holmes]

Thank you for trying :)

Everything seems to be about forcing the kid into a standardised set of behaviour patterns: "behave like this or we will punish you".

Some kids don't work like that.

[trealira]

I only said it 3 times.

I don't mean to say that everything should be authoritarian. But to maintain a good school for the students who go to a non-authoritarian school, there still needs to be some degree of punishment, or expulsions. Just like in a non-authoritarian government, people who commit violent crimes still need to be sent to jail for the safety of others. Once away from the others, they can be reformed and reintegrated back into a normal setting, where the teachers can trust students not to get into fights more, and kids can learn in a quiet environment where others also want to be high-achievers, or at least are motivated to not become drop-outs.

I just don't think there's enough of that in schools like the one I described. Sorry, I kind of let my past color my tone more than I should have.

[theGnuMe]

You've heard of the school to prison pipeline right?

https://www.aclu.org/issues/juvenile-justice/juvenile-justic...

[gotoeleven]

It does work and has always worked. You're living in fantasy land.

[marcus_holmes]

as someone who it has never worked for; you're so wrong.

I was beaten as a kid. It just made me angry. So f*cking angry. It didn't stop me from acting up. I learned to take the beating with pride. I got smarter about when to act up. Everyone involved, literally everyone, had a worse result from this.

I would have had such a better life (and everyone around me) if the people who were supposed to be taking responsibility for me had actually stopped beating me and tried understanding me (like they were supposed to).

[nine_k]

It works, but not in a way you'd like it to.

A related saying of some guy who knew this stuff: "You can make a throne of bayonets, but you can't sit on it for long". You can force people with punishment, but they will try to revolt and get revenge once they have a chance; even a small chance, and a small revenge.

[rayiner]

Ruining the educational experience for the 90% to drag along the 10% is likely a bigger net negative.

[lmm]

> either don't understand or don't care that this is of net negative value

Or genuinely think it's of net positive value.

One disruptive kid can spoil the educations of 29 others pretty easily, and probably won't even gain anything from staying in school. It's a dead-weight loss. But we're too chickenshit to openly do anything about it, so the rich buy their way away from the bad kids one way or another, and the decent-but-poor get to suffer.

[mips_r4300i]

This happened to me, and was one reason why my parents pulled me out of school and I taught myself at home with a standardized curriculum.

It was only 1 kid in the class, but he was ruining the entire class almost every day, and the administration didn't want to risk the political fallout.

It was great to be able to learn as fast as I wanted with no distractions. Sometimes what has to be learned wasn't interesting and I didn't go any faster at it, but I did pull ahead in math by a couple years by 8th grade.

[seanmcdirmid]

> Charter schools kicking out problematic students isn't some loophole, it's the main point, and it absolutely can improve the education for those that remain.

If you kick out the problematic students, the only students you have left are easy to teach non-problematic students.

> and it absolutely can improve the education for those that remain.

It isn't mysterious: you selected the best students, so your results will be the best. It is a direct application of selection bias. Public schools will be left with whatever students are not accepted into charter schools...those "problematic students", and will...again...due to selection bias have worse results.

> It's not like they're only accepting kids with two parents, in fact they're doing a much better job of helping poor families in my district than the public school system

That's great for your district, but parent pointed out ending school at noon on Wednesday are going to apply selection bias. Perhaps your district does it better.

[ecshafer]

> If you kick out the problematic students, the only students you have left are easy to teach non-problematic students.

Maybe the negative effects of having problematic students is enough that its a worthwhile endeavor? By Middle school or high school "problematic students" involves people that not only are noisy and disruptive in class, but people that deal drugs, rob people, steal, join gangs, bring weapons to school. Just calling them problematic is really underselling the situation. And the effects of a student that routinely swears at a teacher and causes fights disrupts a large number of students preventing them from learning things.

[giraffe_lady]

Wow they sound really undesirable. I wonder if there's some place you could concentrate such people to reduce their impact? Maybe some sort of camp, idk.

In all seriousness once you start thinking of huge swathes of children as a problem in this way, the "solutions" become clear and atrocious. You have to find another path sorry.

[Fauntleroy]

When the actual fix (improving the lives, discipline, and care provided by their parents) is untenable, other lower effort solutions start to become more attractive. It's unreasonable to expect schools to correct for a poor upbringing.

[ls612]

I’m happy to hear that you’ve agreed to teach them all as the alternative path. Have fun!

[giraffe_lady]

It's funny you think it's preposterous that I might. Buddy we're not all sucking down six figures to write ad company spyware.

[HDThoreaun]

Can we please not go straight to holocaust comparisons?

[ameminator]

I don't understand why offering parents more choices in how their children are taught could be a bad thing. Maybe the public school system is failing its students. However, it always seemed unfair to trap parents who would otherwise have other options in a failing system. Yes, this does suck for the children of uncaring parents - but for the parents who DO care, shouldn't they have a means of meeting their obligation to their children?

[seanmcdirmid]

> I don't understand why offering parents more choices in how their children are taught could be a bad thing.

I am going to give my kid all the advantages I can, of course. But...personal optimization != societal optimization. Yes, I can put my kid in a better spot to succeed, but we aren't making progress as a society, things are getting very much worse actually (e.g. income inequality).

> Yes, this does suck for the children of uncaring parents - but for the parents who DO care, shouldn't they have a means of meeting their obligation to their children?

Again, those kids left behind...they are going to be expensive in terms of prisons, homeless services, lost productivity, etc...You can see this happening already, it is just going to be much worse when our kids are adults. And really, this is the only time we (or society) will have much influence on these kids. It is much easier to set a kid straight than try to fix an adult.

[logicchains]

>I am going to give my kid all the advantages I can, of course. But...personal optimization != societal optimization. Yes, I can put my kid in a better spot to succeed, but we aren't making progress as a society, things are getting very much worse actually (e.g. income inequality).

Good intentions but empirically it doesn't work; forcing troublesome kids to be in school with the kids who genuinely want to learn drags down the score of the kids who want to learn and doesn't improve outcomes for the troublesome kids. Countries with school choice like Sweden have much better educational outcomes than the US.

[ethanbond]

I suspect there are at least a few major confounding variables when comparing Swedish to US schools. You know, like... almost everything about how the society works?

[inglor_cz]

"Again, those kids left behind..."

It seems that you suppose that keeping those kids in "normal" school is better for them than moving them to some schools tailored to their needs.

There is nothing obvious about that. Removing the worst disruptors from standard classes may be a win-win. People are diverse and cannot be all served by a one-size-fits-all school type.

[xormapmap]

> It is much easier to set a kid straight than try to fix an adult

Is this true? Adults have free will & personal responsibility, kids are sort of at the whim of their parents and have no real legal rights when it comes to escaping a bad situation

[seanmcdirmid]

Adults have a life time to be set in their ways. Kids, at least before they are teenagers, are extremely impressionable. While we can't fix crappy home lives, we can give them a chance at school.

[greenhexagon]

Framing the situation as kids being "left behind" feels disingenuous if not outright inflammatory.

Many European systems have been thriving for decades with different school options for different students, based on interest, aptitude, etc. We'd be far better off as a society if we had one classroom for the 8th graders who read at a 1st grade level and one classroom for the 8th graders ready for Infinite Jest. The curriculum and instruction could then be tailored to the needs of each group. Instead, we lump them all together and end up with an outcome where the majority of the students are underperforming their potential.

[shiroiuma]

So basically the solution is to identify problematic kids very early, then take them away from their parents and put them in institutions to be raised by the state.

Because what you're expecting is for schools to take the place of parenting. If you're going to do that, you might as well just cut the parents and families out of the equation altogether.

[sgnelson]

I don't think anyone is going to say "offering parents more choices is bad." But the political reality is not simply "offering more choices." The political reality typically entails using funds set aside for public schools for charter schools. In reality, what happens all too often is that funding and resources are stripped away from the already resource poor schools and given to charter schools.

And that's probably why people seem as if they're saying "Charter schools bad." I'd argue they're really saying "Taking funds away from public schools to give to charter schools bad." We're creating a system where the already struggling schools will then be put on a downward spiral, unable to recover.

But I think our educations system is screwed up and we need to invest more resources into education at all levels, so what do I know.

There's also the moral question of your whole "it sucks for children of uncaring parents" quote, which I personally think is quite a selfish and uncaring perspective, that is also probably grossly not the truth for the variety of parents in lower performing schools, but I'm not going to get into that.

[throwaway101223]

> In reality, what happens all too often is that funding and resources are stripped away from the already resource poor schools and given to charter schools.

Where are you seeing this? D.C. has almost half of its students in charter schools, and it also has public schools that are funded more than almost anywhere else in the U.S.

Worth pointing out that the charter school enrollment is highest in the poorest wards with the greatest percent of the black population. It’s lowest in the richest wards with the greatest percent of the whtie population. See for yourself[1].

Like with the claims of “underfunded public schools,” a lot of these conversations seem to stem from people hearing talking points and assuming that they’re true, while not bothering to look at the facts that show the opposite to be the case.

https://dcpcsb.org/student-enrollment

[pixl97]

>Worth pointing out that the charter school enrollment is highest in the poorest wards with the greatest percent of the black population. It’s lowest in the richest wards with the greatest percent of the whtie population. See for yourself[1].

Now, what exactly do you think this is telling you?

[sokoloff]

> entails using funds set aside for public schools

That’s one framing.

Another framing is “using funds set aside to educate the children of the district”.

If you frame the funding as being for the schools rather than for the children’s education, you naturally object to it being spent elsewhere.

Are we trying to run public schools or trying to educate children in the district?

(My kids attended public schools.)

[seanmcdirmid]

Segregationists tried using that framing back in the 1960s/70s, but it the argument was ruled invalid by the Warren-led Supreme Court. Who knows what would happen these days, however.

[christophilus]

Joel Greenblatt has schools that focus almost entirely on low income / underprivileged students. Their results were really good last I checked (pre-COVID, so things may have changed). It doesn’t have to be about one race vs another. Choice can be good for all.

Edit: I should note, I think he doesn’t focus on race, but I got the impression that his students are predominantly minorities.

[sokoloff]

“I don’t want my kids to go to school with people of a different race” makes you an asshole.

“I don’t want my kids to go to a school that will fail to educate them” makes you exactly the opposite.

[sgnelson]

As to my earlier comment, I don't think anyone is saying "We shouldn't educate students" (except the parent comment that was like "only for kids whose parents care.") And for me, public schools are for the education of all the children in the district. In my head, I don't really separate the two. I believe in education for all, despite what resources their parents have. I'm going to reject the premise that I'm just for public schools just because. To me, it's one and the same.

If public schools aren't for the education of students, what are they for? To follow your question, if not public schools, do we just change all schools to charter and private schools and have the state fund them? (Well, then don't they just become public schools with slightly different administrations, that over time will surely become just another public school system?)

I should reiterate: I'm not saying that we shouldn't have school choice, but my very real concern is that school choice usually means that we take funding from one school, to send it to another school. And this is what happening* (* depending on the state/district you live in, maybe not. But it's happening in plenty of other locales.)

I think for a lot of middle class parents, Charter schools are very appealing. But I'm also talking about the students who need the most help. So the real question becomes "funds set aside for the education of _which_ students in the district."

Well, let's go back to the original post. Why do people go on and on about how school choice is bad? It's not about school choice. It's about school resources. It's politics. Who gets what, where, when and how. If the education system in America was so rich in cash that we were paving the hallways of schools with gold bricks, we wouldn't even be having this conversation. But they are not. It's a question of resources and how to direct those resources for the most good. And guess what, everyone is going to have a slightly different opinion of what "good" is.

But back to your question: Why aren't we trying to educate children in the district?

Okay, if it helps students, and if your tax payer dollars are there to educate that student, what's the problem? The reality is, this typically leaves the schools that are already struggling to fall further behind.

Teaching is hard. Teaching students who don't want to be there, don't care, have special needs, or a poor family life is even more so. This is especially the case because Teachers are asked to do a lot more than just teach English and Math, but rather provide some of the resources that may not be provided by their family or society at large.

All schools and school systems have their own needs and issues. And largely what happens is that schools which have the least resources need the most resources to be successful. There's also a very real economy of scale that can occur at schools, and once resources start getting stripped, those economy of scales start falling apart, and now those dollars you do have, don't go as far.

Getting teachers to work at Title 1 schools is hard. You need to pay them higher salaries. You need more resources, such as school psychologists, school resource officers, teacher aids, etc. Even things like having parents come in to volunteer is more of an issue, and if you don't have those volunteers, where do you get the replacement labor from?

Not too many people are creating (good) Charter schools to serve these students needs (not to say there aren't, there are some good schools out there, but not enough of them.)

I work in education (but you couldn't pay me enough to teach high school in America). I see the issues with the system everyday. The system is broken. Teachers are underpaid, overworked and leaving in droves. If you look at the statistics for number of students in education departments in colleges to become teachers, it has drastically fallen over the past 15 years. (I literally tell students of mine that are interested in education to stay away.) That's not likely to change in the foreseeable future.

Students are not getting the education they deserve. There aren't enough teachers. There are bad teachers. All too often the bureaucracy is uncaring and unyielding, and that's not a great way to educate individuals. Students are getting passed through the system regardless if they're learning or not.

The issue I have with your question is this: Are we trying to educate _all_ children in the district or are we trying to educate _your_ children in the district? Because if it's just your children, charter schools would be great. If it's all children, we can't just rely on Charter schools to solve all the inherent problems with the system (because they're not just going to magically fix things). We're going to have to reach deep down, work harder, and make a lot of even tougher decisions to fix the broken education system in America.

[sokoloff]

I may not have made my distinction clearly enough.

My city’s school district total proposed budget is $245M for next year. Enrollment is just shy of 7K.

One framing is “that $245M is for running the schools”

Another framing is “that $35K is for the education of each student in Cambridge”

The first leads you to conclude “of course we wouldn’t let a parent take even a dime of that money to put their kid in private school”

The second leads you to “of course they should have the choice to use at least 50% of that $35K allocated to each student to attend a school of their choice”

Of course the public schools are there for the education of students, but the difference in framing is whether the money starts there or rather ends there for students who choose to attend it.

[Terr_]

> I don't think anyone is going to say "offering parents more choices is bad."

Well, I will say that more-choice is not axiomatically good.

Imagine that on Monday the cafeteria has a choice of beef/chicken/vegetarian, and on Tuesday it adds a fourth option for methamphetamines.

There is strictly more choice, and the people who choose it might even express extreme levels of satisfaction... but somehow it doesn't seem like an improvement.

[dfxm12]

The philosophical issue is charter schools use public resources yet are not accountable to the public. Adding to that, having public education system that is available to the public is kind of the key part here. So, the practical issue is that if some students are being excluded, that misses the point of public education terribly (other practical issues involve profiteering by the charters, just like with private prisons). Additionally, having several overlapping choices with government funding is an inefficient use of the money.

As far as choice, there's nothing wrong with that, and religious and other private schools (which didn't get public funds) have co-existed with public schools almost everywhere well before our lifetimes. So equating charter schools (or vouchers) with choice in this context is disingenuous.

[logicchains]

>The philosophical issue is charter schools use public resources yet are not accountable to the public.

They absolutely are accountable to the public in their school district, who can choose to send their kids not to that school if they don't like the school, depriving the school of revenue.

[sobkas]

> >The philosophical issue is charter schools use public resources yet are not accountable to the public.

> They absolutely are accountable to the public in their school district, who can choose to send their kids not to that school if they don't like the school, depriving the school of revenue.

Having a choice between charter school and public school without enough resources to provide even basics to its students is not a choice. It's even worse because parents of children in public schools most likely also lack resources to help their children(be it material or cultural). So children in public schools end with a double whammy, neither parents(or parent) or school can help them.

[gotoeleven]

Where are these mythical schools "without enough resources to provide even the basics" ? They don't exist, this is a canard that won't die. Public schools in the US are funded extravagantly. The worst performing schools have the biggest funding per student.

Some kids want to learn, some don't. Some parents value education, some don't. Not even a billion dollars per student will change that.

[femiagbabiaka]

Simplistic arguments like this are one of the more annoying parts of the rhetoric of charter school advocates. It assumes that all charter schools are of high quality and that making education yet another thing that is economically stratified in the US is good. It’s ok to say that things that sound nice like choice in education can have knock on effects that are bad for society.

Very few things in this world are purely good.

[sokoloff]

It seems like a charter school that develops a reputation for low quality is a self-solving problem in a way that a public school which develops the same reputation is (currently) not.

One goes out of business; the other goes along indefinitely, with perhaps the wealthiest parents nearby withdrawing their kids, but most families and children are forced to endure it or move away.

[halfnormalform]

The feedback loop in education is several years long. Before a charter school develops a bad reputation, they just change their name, put up a banner declaring "Under New Management" and continue right along with better PR.

[sokoloff]

What happens to a failing public school? It keeps the same name, but adds “now Title I with an even larger budget”.

It’s not clear that that’s in any way better and I think is worse.

[linuxftw]

If public schools weren't awful, there would be no need for charter schools.

The public school experiment has failed.

[infamouscow]

> The public school experiment has failed.

The American education model was modeled on the 18th-century Prussian education system designed to create docile subjects and factory workers.

And by the measure it was actually designed for, I'd say it's an astonishing success. It's why you can be a high school graduate but not literate.

I encourage you to do your own research on the father of American education: Horace Mann.

[femiagbabiaka]

Tell me you only follow policy in the US without telling me: exhibit one.

The public school “experiment” has been purposefully sabotaged is more like it.

[HDThoreaun]

My district spends $29k per student. More than almost any other in the world. Yet some of its schools are so bad that a quarter of high schoolers opted out. It's not about funding. It's an overwhelmingly blue area, politicians are not purposefully sabotaging the schools. The government is just utterly incompetent, and worse, corrupt. And unfortunately many of the students are from households that don't emphasize the importance of education.

[linuxftw]

The article is about US schools.... so?

How can one sabotage a house of cards? Failure was inevitable.

[wnoise]

It's partially selection bias, yes.

But that's not the entire story. It's also the fact that not having to deal with the terrible kids helps the remaining kids. Fewer class disruptions. Less slowing down the class to pretend to let the slowest and least motivated keep up. Etc.

This comes at the cost of concentrating the troublemakers in other places, making them far worse for normal kids stuck there.

[HDThoreaun]

> It isn't mysterious: you selected the best students, so your results will be the best.

You're implying that individual results don't change by grouping the good students together. In your vision the good students stay good and the bad stay bad. I don't agree. The good students become great by surrounding them with other good students.

[lukeschlather]

If that's true then the converse is also true: bad students become bad by surrounding them with other bad students.

And the charter school gets to take credit for the "good" outcome while the public school gets blamed for the bad outcome that is a direct result of the good outcome.

Which, if we accept your premise, suggests that the charter schools aren't providing any net benefit, they're just taking credit. If this is really the way we want to operate things we could just do it in public schools.

[lotsofpulp]

> If that's true then the converse is also true: bad students become bad by surrounding them with other bad students.

The converse does not have to be true, only the contrapositive.

And in the case of a human’s tendencies, it is easier to become less disciplined than it is to become more disciplined. Bad habits are easier and likelier to pickup than good habits. Forming a tight knit high trust family/community is much more difficult than dissolving it. Etc.

[HDThoreaun]

I do think that the students who don't get accepted into the selective schools need better options. It's just when the options are keep all the students together or separate them and some will become better and some will become worse I think providing the students who want to succeed with a way to accomplish their goals is the correct choice. Hopefully there will be another option that isn't so exclusionary in the future.

I'm not super interested in who gets the credit here. If the public schools were able or willing to kick out problematic students like the charter schools then I think we should be doing that instead of charters. But that's not the reality. So yes, I do think that outcomes overall are better, at least in my district, because of charters.

[lukeschlather]

You sidestepped my point. Segregating all the underperformers into one place causes harm and you're ignoring that harm, assuming that the benefit of segregating the high performers is more important.

And you are in fact crediting the charter school with the benefit while ensuring that public schools receive blame for any harm that results.

I think you're actually arguing against universal instruction, that we shouldn't educate all students. Which we could do in public schools also! But you're not suggesting that at all.

[HDThoreaun]

I don't think I'm ignoring the harm. I am accepting it. We can get into the utilitarian calculus, but before even considering that I don't think it's acceptable to force students who want to succeed into classrooms with those that don't. And really that's the end of the story for me. Maybe the total outcome is worse because the kicked out students cause much bigger problems than they would otherwise but that doesn't mean we should force the other students to suffer. I don't feel right dooming those kids to a poor education.

The public schools do deserve blame for putting all the under privileged kids together. The charters deserve credit for allowing them to separate themselves. I don't think that's intrinsic to public schooling, it's just the circumstance we are in.

[tcbawo]

Equating underperforming students with disciplinary problem students seems to be a common problem in this thread. There are many underperforming students who would perform much better without being subjected to a threatening or harassing environment. Public schools attempt to provide universal education, which is at direct odds with bad-faith students that poison the well. In fact, in some places where this is legal, public schools get better when they can expel criminal minors into the charter system. Separating the worst offenders from the other students might also match these students with resources that are most equipped to help them (eg. counselors that might help to reduce gang violence).

[0xParlay]

Those “underperformers” aren’t being helped in either case. If we can dilute these problematic people into the general population maybe we won’t notice the pool smells distinctly like urine - aka the kiddie pool.

Education isn’t hard or expensive. Providing therapy for years of trauma and neglect is. Trying to focus on algebra when your home life is totally whack is hard. Otherwise what’s the cost of education.. chalk and plastic chairs?

Valuing public welfare is great, but so are the virtues that promote healthy families. Education is done by parents and there’s lots of adults with children who aren’t parents. Personal responsibility is a concept that will actually enrage otherwise intelligent people

[s1artibartfast]

I think it's very much unclear how much harm it does to segregate the disruptors.

How much good does it do a violent and disruptive student to have a quiet and studious one in the same classroom?

On the other hand, it's obvious how much bad such a disruptive student does to all of the other children.

Moreover, it there is no reason whatsoever to think harm would in any way be symmetrical.

[SaintGhurka]

> ending school at noon on Wednesday are going to apply selection bias.

That's not unique to charter schools. My daughter's public elementary school in CA let out at 12:50 on Wednesday.

https://wagonwheel.capousd.org/School-Info/Bell-Schedule/ind...

[atlantic]

You're conflating two kinds of bad students: the stupid ones and the poorly-behaved ones. Students with lower intellectual capacities should absolutely be helped; students who are disruptive, not so much. They may need to be sacrificed so the majority can have a decent learning environment.

[chaostheory]

The problem 10% bring down everyone else by monopolizing teacher attention. Let’s also not forget that many of these problem students are extremely violent with broken homes. Many of them eventually get transferred to prisons masquerading as schools, but that can take time, and long after they’ve done the damage to everyone else.

[amalcon]

> Charter schools kicking out problematic students isn't some loophole, it's the main point, and it absolutely can improve the education for those that remain.

I'm provisionally accepting this as true, partly because there's some truth in it and partly because I think it leads to an interesting discussion. This is great for the remaining students at the charter school.

That problem student goes somewhere, though. That problematic student still exist. They are now in another class, with other students. Some of those students are problematic and some are not, but per your premise -- that other class is now worse than it was. You haven't improved anything, you've just taken a disadvantage from one place and given it to another.

One might consider a scenario where this happens repeatedly, and you just get a class full of problematic kids. Those kids don't learn anything, but at least the non-problematic kids do.

There are several problems with that scenario, but one such problem is independent of ethical concerns: You just aren't going to find the people to run that school or teach that class for the amount society is willing to pay. Schools for behaviorally problematic students exist. They tend to be private, expensive, and full. They also tend to focus on students who e.g. assault other students in the middle of class, rather than on students who e.g. won't stop talking in class even if repeatedly removed from class, or even students with out-of-school criminal records.

[r00fus]

Removing special needs kids from your population is the quickest way to increase test scores and reduce budget. As a parent of a child with special needs, I've studied the financials of schools in my district to find out how special needs services are supported.

1) The federal government has never lived up to its promise of matching 40% of the special needs funding (in my state they cover a mere 8%).

2) Usually the shortfall ends up at the district level. Some districts get more funding from an increased special needs population while others don't (community funding model).

3) Often the district moves programs around so special needs child cohorts (and in some cases teachers) can remain intact while not focusing the lowered scores in one school.

4) Charter schools throw a wrench into this as they typically don't support special needs kids, but still get district funding. This causes other schools in the district to look "worse" because their test scores aren't as balanced as before.

[dragonwriter]

> Charter schools throw a wrench into this as they typically don't support special needs kids, but still get district funding. This causes other schools in the district to look "worse" because their test scores aren't as balanced as before.

This is probably state-dependent, in California charters have the same obligations (with two different organizational ways of addressing them, either as if they were their own district or as part of the local district) as other public schools with regard to special education.

[HDThoreaun]

The charters in my district absolutely support special needs children. I even know a couple special needs teachers at the big charter network. I can't say how their program compares to the public school system's but there it's not empty so I figure it can't be that bad.

[2devnull]

“ Allowing poor students from families that value education to go to schools with like minded students is an unequivocally good thing compared to what the public schools currently do.”

But it is sort of what schools currently do. The filter public schools use is housing. You have to buy a home in the school district. That is the reason real estate values are driven by school test scores. Because the opposite is also true: school test scores are a function of who own homes near the school. At the end of the day, maybe that operates better at sorting good apples from bad. I’m probably more in agreement with your line of thinking that making choice easier for poor folks could be best for society, but the selection effect is weaker if you loosen the filter.

[jimhefferon]

Serious question: you don't see a dilemma in kicking out those who seem problematic? I absolutely hear you that a parent wants the best for their kid. But historically declaring that some students are an issue has been a frought road.

[HDThoreaun]

Of course I see the dilemma. To be honest I just care more about the students who want to succeed than the ones that don't. Every student deserves a high quality education, and that just isn't possible to provide when you're distracted by other students. I care about the other kids too, for ethical as well as utilitarian reason, and I do think we need to think hard about how they can be best served. But the status quo is not working, I don't think it's fair to continue to deprive underprivileged students of the opportunities they deserve.

[SomethingNew2]

Let’s assume there will be some % of kids that lack interest in learning, have no parental or community support, and despite schools providing them additional support for years they show no improvement or desire to improve. I think it’s reasonable some % of these people will always be in the population pool. What is the solution for these individuals?

[lozenge]

That's quite a big assumption, but what do you think will happen if you don't offer them any education? They won't earn much or grow the economy and might end up going to prison, which is far more expensive.

[ndriscoll]

Assuming such a group exists, the point is that if you do offer them an education (or, rather, try to force it upon them), they won't accept it, so they still won't earn much or grow the economy and might end up going to prison, but now their peers don't get an education either and suffer the same fate.

[moate]

“Allowing poor students from families that value education to go to schools with like minded students is an unequivocally good thing compared to what the public schools currently do.“

If this were unequivocal, people like me wouldn’t fundamentally hate the concept of charter schools. You think “one bad apple spoils the bunch” and that’s an observed effect not a law of nature.

You can like charter schools, but don’t pretend that privatization of public resources for means tested approved individuals is an absolute virtue. The world is complicated.

[HDThoreaun]

you're right. Poor choice of words on my part.

[pharmakom]

> Education is mostly about your peers. It's obviously true for prestigious universities but it's just as true for elementary schools.

This is going to require some backing.

[edflsafoiewq]

Coleman report. Student outcomes are primarily effected by parents, then peers, then, as a distant third, schools and teachers.

[colechristensen]

The question is: what do you do about children with discipline problems whose parents don't care?

By all accounts, there are many of these kids. A portion of them are special needs and they at least have a path for what people want to do with them, even if special education doesn't have all the resources they need... there's at least an answer to "what should we do?".

But what should we do with the rest?

[etempleton]

In the US it used to be more acceptable to put students in classes based on where they were academically and in terms of behavior. Truly disruptive kids were also usually suspended until eventually being expelled.

Neither approach is considered appropriate anymore. It was a central thesis of No Child Left Behind, which is/was nice in theory, but not in practice.

Now schools are data obsessed. Bad metrics like suspensions, expulsions, etc are avoided because suspensions are correlated to bad test scores and bad future outcomes for students. So schools now measure performance against that. The problem is obviously correlation vs causation, but if that is how you are graded as a principal that is what you are going to work towards to keep your job.

The reality is that if you want good schools you need to cut your losses with the worst behaving kids. Slow learners really aren’t much of an issue because they don’t disrupt other kids learning beyond maybe needing more teacher attention.

[hospadar]

> The reality is that if you want good schools you need to cut your losses with the worst behaving kids.

This kind of attitude is a wide-open door for racist and classist attitudes to penalize kids of color, kids from poor homes, kids with unsafe or unstable home situations. Suspending and expelling kids almost always makes things worse for those kids.

There are HUGE racial and gender disparities in the rates of suspension and expulsion[1].

Anecdotally, I know a lot of educators and child social workers who are strongly opposed to suspension & expulsion as a punishment or a "solution". None of them cite "metrics obsession" as their reason, but rather the fact that the kids who are getting kicked out of school need more support, not less.

Maybe it seems fine to kick [other people's] kids out of school "for the good of the many", but happens next? What if parents loose their job because they have to stay home for childcare? What if folks end up homeless because they can't pay the bills? What if those kids end up in prisons (that our taxes pay for)? Just from a financial perspective, school is an EXTREMELY cost-effective early intervention compared to prisons, inpatient mental health, welfare systems, etc. Well educated folks often end up making money and paying into tax systems rather than drawing from them.

[1] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/raceindicators/indicator_rda.as...

[hackinthebochs]

>There are HUGE racial and gender disparities in the rates of suspension and expulsion[1].

Because there are huge racial and gender disparities in problem behavior. The bleeding hearts don't seem to care about the kids that suffer in a classroom that is being constantly disrupted by these problem kids, many of those suffering being underprivileged minorities. Whatever the solution is to these kids that "need more support not less", the cost shouldn't be borne by the kids that come to school everyday wanting to learn. This idea that society must endlessly prostrate itself to the least privileged is a failed ideology.

[HDThoreaun]

There are huge racial and gender disparities in all sorts of things. More than half of black children are in single parent households compared to 20% of white children. You can't just look at racial outcomes and determine discrimination without asking whether priorities and choices are also different between the groups.

[gotoeleven]

Au contraire! I can and do look at racial outcomes and determine discrimination without asking whether priorities and choices are also different between the groups because I have good intentions in my heart and my race card is not yet maxed out!

[etempleton]

I don’t disagree with you. All of what you said can be true and not change that 1 or 2 kids in a class can derail it for the other 20.

So pragmatically, with limited resources, how should those resources be spent? On the 20 kids with a moderate to high chance of succeeding or on the 2 kids with a very low chance?

From a societal ROI perspective it is pretty obvious.

[red-iron-pine]

> The question is: what do you do about children with discipline problems whose parents don't care?

This is relevant point to the military thing. If you screw up at school, your military parents will be called -- and it may impact them directly. As in, Sgt. X, your kid keeps picking fights, and we're going to punish them, and you, for it.

Which means the parents care -- a lot.

[HDThoreaun]

It's a very important question. I don't have the answer. What I do know is that forcing underprivileged students to attend schools that cause them to fear for their safety or even life is inhumane. Charter schools are solving that in my district.

[dwater]

Based on your previous comment, the remaining 3/4 of students are all murderers, criminals, deviants, disabled, or with parents who aren’t concerned with their education; or some of those 3/4 of students are somewhere in the middle but had their educations diminished by the removal of the better behaved students.

[HDThoreaun]

Well no, most of them are in the wealthier areas and don't have to worry about the violence the poor schools experience. There certainly still are deserving students stuck in failing schools and I think that's a tragedy. I don't see why that means we should undo a program that has been helping though.

[chung8123]

You don't let them hold the classroom and the rest of the kids that want to learn hostage. Not every problem has a 100% solution.

[tomohawk]

Maybe find something more effective than public schools at turning them around. Their track record certainly indicates a different approach is needed.

Just because the kids happen to be in government run schools, that doesn't mean that an effective intervention into their lives can be performed there.

Schools should be about education, not solving all of society's ills. It is intolerable that one child who disrupts the education environment should be able to prevent so many others from learning. Take the child out of the situation so the others can learn and then figure out what's going on.

[parineum]

> But what should we do with the rest?

The answer to that question is _something_ but I think the real question is "who is 'we'?"

[colechristensen]

Children's public education is an _everybody_ problem. How these bulk problems are handled is something everybody should agree on instead of acting like it's somebody else's problem.

[black6]

The parents. Offloading the responsibility of raising children is a large part of the problem.

[chowells]

Absolutely 100% incorrect. If the parents aren't willing or able to raise their children, someone has to. "Throw them away" is not a moral, ethical, or utilitarian answer.

[9530jh9054ven]

Why isn't it an answer?

At least from a purely utilitarian point of view, cost of educating and raising a child is exorbitant (teachers, food, clothing, shelter, etc) compared to euthanizing them (1 to 5 bullets, executioner pay, and burial costs). Benefits are going to be somewhat iffy; yes they could turn out okay but it's just as likely they could turn into criminal offenders that will chew up resources of the criminal justice system which is quite a lot more expensive.

I will emphasize that this is strictly from a utilitarian point of view. I make no comments on the moral, ethical, and legal issues.

[HDThoreaun]

I think you missed the "imprison them for 2 decades" part of euthanizing them in your consideration. It's fun to just make up how you think things should ideally work, but we're bounded by how things actually work.

[xbmcuser]

The peers part is badly overlooked a lot is talked about how asian countries seem to have a better education system. But overlook the most important part of the education system in asia. The filtering that happens first by school where the top student go to particular schools then even in each grade the students are divided in class by how how good they are.

[dragonwriter]

> Education is mostly about your peers.

Nah, its mostly about your socio-economic status, home environment, and similar personal (not peer) factors.

[HDThoreaun]

Sure, but the school system has no control over any of that. As far as what it can control, peers are absolutely the most important.

[tiahura]

Education is mostly about your parents.

[wolverine876]

Do those charter schools get better results? IIRC, research shows no difference, but maybe that is only in specific locales.

[diogenes4]

> It's obviously true for prestigious universities

This is a hard argument to make when the use of the gentleman's c is more widespread the more prestigious the school is. Driven students certainly attend prestigious institutions, but overall the prestige of the school a person attended is a very poor signal for the abilities of the person. I transferred from a prestigious private university to a large public university and didn't notice any major difference in the quality of students. The quality of the classes? yes—class size was a major difference. But the students seemed just as sharp in both settings, especially in upper-level classes.

Frankly, the major obvious difference was just money. Prestigious, private universities have rich kids in spades. I didn't notice any correlation between the money and the abilities of the person, though. At the end of the day the connections with those kids are where the university you attend really pays off.