[Catloafdev]

This is absurdly problematic. Your solution is basically handicapping the schools with kids that perform worse and then potentially closing them? That doesn't solve the problem, this is just pro-Charter School propaganda that ignores the real-world effects of these positions. You've identified a real issue with the 'equality' vs 'equity' concept, that doesn't lead to 'Close public schools and switch everything to Charter schools', that's an absurd conclusion.

[CGMthrowaway]

What is your issue with redirecting funding from sucky schools towards ones that deliver results, while allowing school choice for students at the same time? I may be naive but that sounds fairly good

[BobaFloutist]

Charter schools deliver results the same way that private schools deliver results: selection bias.

It's really easy to have good outcomes when you have the ability to curate your student population. And though charter schools are regulated to make it harder for them to curate their student population, the statistical evidence is pretty unequivocal: they serve different populations than public schools, and their "better outcomes" immediately vanish when you control for that.

So, what is the issue with redirecting funding from sucky* schools towards ones that deliver results**?

* Schools that teach the general population

** Schools that teach a subset of the general population that always does better

[dnautics]

> Charter schools deliver results the same way that private schools deliver results: selection bias.

Wasn't there a failing neighborhood school in LA that got turned into four charter schools that basically rescued the district, without removing any students?

[bsder]

The other LA (Louisiana) had lots of evidence to the contrary. If you force charter schools to participate in a lottery, they almost always come up worse than the public schools (there was a single exception).

We saw this happen in Houston. Many of the worst public schools suddenly "improved". It's a miracle! Oh, they did this by encouraging the lowest performers to drop out. Whoops.

And this is before we start talking about all the high GPA students who now all magically need IEPs (Individualized Education Plans) because it gets them an extra 50% of time on their tests. So, now you have your best students loudly (because these parents are active) soaking up lots of resources genuinely meant for your worst students.

[BobaFloutist]

I'm not saying that charter schools can never be an improvement, there's probably very few changes to anything for which that can be confidently said, since sometimes systems and organizations get so mired in dysfunction that even a change that's, on paper, for the worse provides the needed stimulus to improve things.

I'm saying that people make claims about the systemic superiority of charter schools that, under examination, don't hold up, and it doesn't make sense to direct extra funding to schools that are already getting better results by making their own job easier. For that matter, many (certainly not all) of the "best" public schools are benefiting from a similar phenomenon, which is exactly why California has its complicated redistribution funding scheme, to avoid rewarding schools with an easy job and punishing schools with a harder job.

And people love to come into a system that they don't understand, regurgitate the most naive, obvious approach that we have specifically moved on from because these systems aren't actually that simple, and think they solved the problem: "What if we rewarded success?" Wow, what a genius, nobody's ever thought of rewarding success, let's call the NYT, let's call the Nobel committee, you've finally solved education, thank god we have you since nobody has ever thought of giving more funding to schools that are already doing well by taking it away from schools with struggling populations. Thank god we have someone here to tell us that we should financially incentivize good metrics, maybe you can solve American health care next, and possibly, if you can find the time, you could address world peace after that.

[delecti]

I don't know, was there? Do you have a link?

[dnautics]

Alain Leroy Locke high school. So I don't know if there was any academic improvement, but they was certainly a safety improvement.

Ed (looked it up): there was academic improvement, LAUSD claims it's not enough, LAUSD is comparing against neighboring districts, which were not as distressed at the outset, "18 years to improve should have been enough". Safety is considerably improved. Alumni and district residents seem to want to keep the school. Locke high school is currently going through a charter renewal challenge.

[Bratmon]

Unpopular opinion: If we have evidence that shows that keeping all the smart kids in one group creates massively better outcomes for that group, then that's something we should be doing everywhere, not something we should ban.

[SamoyedFurFluff]

I believe the evidence claimed is that there aren’t better outcomes for smart kids. Schools that claim they have better outcomes just selected for kids that would always have better outcomes. Like if I claimed my basketball team has better outcomes because I got to make sure all my players were above 6 foot. These 6 foot players don’t necessarily benefit from being in a team with other 6 foot players, but I’m saying people should apply for my team because I’m doing so much better than the team that can’t make those weeding out decisions. I’m intentionally conflating the success of my capacity to select for success with my capacity to coach a team.

[Bratmon]

But surely if having the best possible basketball team is important for national success, then it makes sense to pour more resources into the players with more talent

[BobaFloutist]

Yes, but in schools we're trying to get the best overall result, not optimize for one amazing school and a bunch of bad ones.

[ajam1507]

National success is about creating a nation of basketball players, not just a single all-star team.

[borski]

It’s not actually that unpopular; there are plenty of gifted programs, though the tide has turned to controversy around them more in recent years.

I continue to believe that gifted kids are special needs kids, and that they shouldn’t be in the same classroom as those who are struggling for all of their classes.

People don’t like to talk about gifted kids, except to imply that being “too smart” is somehow bad or unfair, and I think it does them a disservice.

Gifted kids get very, very bored, and lose interest quickly, when they aren’t challenged.

[Catloafdev]

Taking you at face value, the first step is to address the framing here:

  'redirecting funding from sucky schools towards ones that deliver results'

This is not quite the reality of how this works. What you have to recognize here is that being pro-Charter school legislation means that you are in favor of spending less on public education, and giving that money to private education companies who already charge and make profit.

You are advocating for draining public education. That's the position this takes. And you believe it's better to give it to private education, all for-profit entities. So you have to recognize that the position here isn't "give more money to better schools" it's "give money to private for-profit companies and take it directly away from public education"

  'allowing school choice for students'

This is a talking point that doesn't hold any water. They claim that by giving parents some tiny affordance, that somehow enables them to enroll their children in expensive Charter schools. That's not how that works. What they're doing is giving a very tiny % of the money they are taking from public education, and giving it to the families as direct cash. Why is this a problem? Because the amount doesn't cover tuition. It's not enough. Families in poverty can't afford multi-thousand-dollar tuition just because they got a $1k check in the mail. The math doesn't math. It only helps families that were already capable of affording it, or on the borderline.

But the bigger problem is that it directly harms public education. So then what happens is that public education gets _worse_ at the expense of the people who can afford private schooling.

So all this to say, defunding public schools is not a good position, and they are doing everything they can to try to dress it up and muddy the conversation.

[nkrisc]

Because it’s not a real choice. As household income decreases, the odds the child goes to the nearest school (regardless of how good it is) increases.

Are you providing after school child care options or transportation to their school of choice? If not, then it’s not a real choice and kids from lower income households will remain disadvantaged.

That is to say, the results will be mostly identical except now public money will be going to private entities. Because that was always the real goal of charter schools.

[rayiner]

> Because it’s not a real choice. As household income decreases, the odds the child goes to the nearest school (regardless of how good it is) increases.

The “odds” don’t tell you whether or not it’s a “real choice.” Families that value education will take advantage of those opportunities. Families that don’t value education will get what they get.

Lots of families don’t value education and there’s nothing you can do for them. My wife is from Oregon, which has terrible test scores. And as far as I can tell, people there simply don’t care about school. Everyone’s dad is a logger or fisherman or something like that, and putting effort into academics isn’t valued.[1] In that environment, the best thing you can do is have charter schools for the minority of families that care. The alternative is to have shitty public schools that don’t serve anyone well.

[1] My wife did so well on the LSAT she got a scholarship to a top 10 law school. But people back home aren’t impressed. That doesn’t matter to her, because she is extremely internally motivated, but most people just go with their social flow: they won’t work hard for achievements people around them don’t value.

[borski]

Surely it’s possible that a family might value education but not have the literal time, if they are working non stop, to take the kids to a further school? Or to take care of them afterward?

You’re avoiding the point by saying “anyone who cares can,” and avoiding the economics entirely.

Economics can force choices against your own best interests. If you have an hour between shifts and the school is 45 minutes away, you may have no choice.

This is separate from groups of people who don’t value education. This is about where others make that choice for them.

[rayiner]

Most people aren’t “working non stop.” Out of non-disabled SNAP recipients with children, only 10% work full time, and only 33% work more than 20 hours a week: https://fns-prod.azureedge.us/sites/default/files/resource-f... (table a.26)

[borski]

Most of the people I know who work two or more jobs also do not get SNAP. Sometimes, it’s pride, and sometimes, it’s logistics.

My sister is on SNAP; it took hours, literally, for me to sign her up, and I’m quite “technically savvy” lol

And every year the renewal takes at least two hours in NYC.

[jnovek]

There is so much context here that you’re missing — have you ever been poor before?

[jjulius]

What wildly inaccurate generalizations about an entire state.

Try being less closed-minded.

[hedora]

> except now public money will be going to private entities

Right, now you've come full circle to the core of my proposal: If the charter schools are not producing students that perform well academically, then they do not get paid. Instead, the investor that funded the charter school takes a bath.

This is capitalism at its finest:

- The local government provides a competitive backstop. If you do worse than that floor, then you do not get to compete.

- If your product is not fit for purpose, then you do not get paid. Private money subsidized the experiment, and only in places where the existing system had already failed.

- If the charter school (or anarcho-communist parent commune, or whichever team you want to root for) manages to reliably produce students that go on to perform well, then they solved an "insolvable" problem. Yay competition!

Over time, as the average district improves, so do the academic standards and the goalposts. Schools that once did well but are no longer competitive get phased out, so the funding model builds continuous improvement in. Nothing stops the public school districts from outcompeting the private entities. (In theory, the public districts have an unfair advantage - they don't have to turn a profit.)

[habinero]

> If the charter schools are not producing students that perform well academically, then they do not get paid

Some people have never heard of Goodhart's law and it shows lol. It leads to terrible ideas like this which make the same mistake again and again.

I want you to think -- really think -- about the ambiguities in "perform well academically". How do you measure this? Test scores? Grades? If it's grades, then you've just given everyone at that school an incentive to never fail anyone, no matter what. If it's test scores, we already know that leads to teaching to the test, which hurts academics in general. It massively incentivizes cheating and fraud. It incentivizes kicking out any student who has any problems whatsoever.

For every complex problem there is an solution that is clear, simple, and wrong.

[nkrisc]

The charter schools will do fine because they will attract wealthy students from all over who can afford to travel farther for a better school. So these charter schools will monopolize public funding for educating the wealthiest students, while poorer students will attend the nearest school regardless of quality and the schools will suffer as students struggle due to issues outside the control of the school (home life, familial financial struggles, etc.) The extremes at both ends will just be magnified.

Schools in poorer neighborhoods struggle because the people who live there are struggling.

The charter school model is attempting to solve the problem in a vacuum, but the problem does not exist in a vacuum.

[mrgoldenbrown]

In your vision how do you force the charters to accept a representative sample of students? Or do you not force them, and allow them to recruit the easy to educate kids and filter out the expensive kids?

[alwa]

One obstacle is geography, and the built environment. Schools are of their communities. Even if you do bus people around, they come home to the same places, norms, and situations; not all education happens in the classroom, and “you don’t belong here” is a thing. The rich schools are in the rich places. The poor schools are in the poor places. The outcomes—often—not always, but often—reflect that. Is a deeply-depressed neighborhood really improved by starving its school? Or deeming it unworthy of a having a school altogether, and emptying its children out to places that “have it more together”?

Another is the idea that schools are motivated by money in the same way profit-seeking ventures are. A company’s shareholders might respond to financial threats and incentives, but the teachers on district-regulated wages? What’s the phrase, can’t squeeze blood from a turnip?

Then there’s of course the construct validity of standardized tests as a measure of “suckiness”—they’re easy to administer at scale and to compare across years and between schools—but do they really capture every flavor of good work that’s done at a school? They’re the best thing we have, but does that make them good enough?

The main issue, though, I think we can frame in terms of a slightly different legibility issue: since the school is the only variable we directly control, we model the school’s “suckiness” as a function of its… what, budget? Staff bonuses? Whoever exactly is it who we’re proposing to punish by removing funds? But just as I imagine we can think of kids who would be fine either way—one of the less provocative stereotypes that comes to mind is that of a Tiger Mom kind of community—we can probably think of kids who won’t be fine. The less provocative stereotype that comes to mind is a child with special needs: with an aide, maybe that child may develop enough to participate in society, and we’re a more humane and moral society for trying. For that matter there are other children who are living and growing up in situations where survival is always going to come before their test scores—and those are probably the students with guardians least equipped to exercise “school choice.” How does punishing their school improve those kids’ outcomes?

Often students who perform poorly need more resources, not fewer.

…are a few of the counterarguments, anyway.

[j_w]

Because the "sucky" schools are statistically where poor people go to school, which statistically is where minorities go to school.

School choice is bad because the only people who benefit from school choice are already wealthy - they can afford to transport their child to the school of their choice.

[wagwang]

The people who benefit are not the wealthy, who can afford to simply buy a house in the school district of their desire, but simply middle class parents who care about their kids.

[habinero]

Poor people care about their kids, too. They're just struggling to keep a roof over their heads and food on their plates instead of worrying about what college their kids are going to get into.

[wagwang]

Assuming we're talking about the US, this is just not true. If you are actually poor, then the government has incredibly generous programs to put food and shelter over your head. Where I live, the city government will literally paid for your daycare and you can enroll in lotteries to buy homes at 1/10th the regular price.

[j_w]

Middle class parents are wealthy compared to the average student of a "sucky" school. These schools are typically the in the poorest areas in the state/county.

[lo_zamoyski]

I am all for helping the worse off. However, one of the most repulsive ideas is that you can cripple everyone else, because some people have less.

This is slave morality and the logic of ressentiment and envy. It is also profoundly immoral.

Never mind that this approach condemns everyone to a state of perpetual mediocrity, and the poor will always be with us. Mind you, how much you value education is to a large degree a product of the family environment and how supportive it is.

How about we allow excellence to flourish as it does, support it any way we can, and also look for ways to lift those who are worse off out of their condition? The focus should be on making things better, not bizarre idealistic notions like "equality" or "equity", whatever they even mean in real, concrete terms. If we dispense with envy, we focus on objective improvement instead of status-obsessed insecurities.

Of course, I think the most pressing problem in education today is that most "educators" have no damn clue what it even means to be educated anymore. They think they know, but they absolutely do not. It isn't "getting a job", as important as jobs are, or some odd aim of the ideology du jour. Public education in an ideologically-charged society of our stripe is practically condemned to superficiality and poor quality, because all good education begins with an accurate anthropology. We can't even agree on that, so naturally, this produces a lowest common denominator effect. In such a situation especially, permitting a diversity of educational styles and programs is necessary.

And btw, if someone is wealthy enough, they'll move to another school district and make school choice a reality anyway within your regime. People do it all the time. Or would you like a return to latifundia to enforce your vision?

[habinero]

> I am all for helping the worse off. However, one of the most repulsive ideas is that you can cripple everyone else, because some people have less.

Bruh. It's easy to prattle on about "objective improvement" and "slave morality" and pretend everything's a zero sum game where funding is fixed and we can do nothing to change the system. Neither is true. This is just an excuse to absolve yourself of doing any of the hard work to improve things.

> The focus should be on making things better, not bizarre idealistic notions like "equality" or "equity"

Man, does anyone else hear that high pitched sound? Just me? Huh.

[lo_zamoyski]

Perhaps you should learn to read, because your response (even putting aside the juvenile bits woven into it) doesn't actually respond to it, and certainly not with any real substance.

> pretend everything's a zero sum game

This claim is truly amazing. My post is exactly a rejection of the notion of a zero sum game. How can you reconcile the assertion that you can both enable excellence and assist the poor? Perhaps your aren't familiar with what a zero sum game is.

You don't achieve true solidarity by crippling those better off. In fact, that is what produces zero sum game thinking, because people get defensive, and rightly so.

> absolve yourself of doing any of the hard work to improve things.

What does that even mean? A parent's responsibility is first and foremost to their own children. If you don't accept that, then we have nothing further here to discuss. Children are not the sacrificial lambs of your pet political project.

(I am a bit curious about your accomplishments here, since you so self-righteously demand "hard work" from others. Did you force your own children to attend a garbage school when you could have given them a better option? I suppose that's at least consistent, but it is still unjust and a failure of parenting.)

[j_w]

> However, one of the most repulsive ideas is that you can cripple everyone else, because some people have less.

When did I say that I'm in any way pro crippling other students? I'm simply pointing out the socioeconomic reality of school performance.

Comments like yours are vile. Brimming with vitriol.

[nradov]

False. Charter schools are public schools and often served by school bus routes or other public transit. Walking or cycling can also be options for some students.

The real differentiating factor isn't wealth but simply giving a shit about your children. Parents have to take some minimal effort to enroll their children in a charter school and many simply don't bother.

[mrgoldenbrown]

IME the differentiator is the fact that in most states charters have some way of filtering out the least profitable kids is a huge advantage for them, and concentrates the most expensive kids in the public schools.

[organsnyder]

It's not just giving a shit: it's also the capacity to act on giving a shit. I'm exhausted at the end of the day after getting the kids to bed, and I'm fortunate to be in a stable marriage, live in a large home that my wife and I own, and work a well-paying WFH job. I can only imagine how tiring it must be to not have those advantages.

There are the parents doing heroics that I can hardly imagine, and they should be celebrated. But we need to design a system that provides a sufficient level of support for those families that only have an average level of capacity.

[rayiner]

> I can only imagine how tiring it must be to not have those advantages

Yes, you can only “imagine” what it’s like for people who are less comfortable than you. But that cuts both ways. It could be that you’re also “imagining” the barriers you think exist to people accessing charter schools. In particular, I suspect you’re incorrectly assuming that people work as much as you do, just for less money.

[organsnyder]

Actually, I can more than imagine it. I have friends that are in those situations, and help out when I can.

[GoblinSlayer]

How difficult is it?

1. give a shit

2. enroll

3. ???

4. PROFIT!

[borski]

Have you ever lived below the poverty line? In order to enroll, you’d have to know about it and manage logistics.

Working 14 hours a day so you can clothe and feed your kid doesn’t leave much time for that.

That doesn’t mean you don’t give a shit.

[organsnyder]

There are so many pieces of that step 3 in trying to navigate a school system that isn't accustomed to working with lower-income students.

[dirtikiti]

>> School choice is bad because the only people who benefit from school choice are already wealthy - they can afford to transport their child to the school of their choice.

So what?

If "level the playing field" means my kid gets a sub standard education because you have to constantly lower the bar, I don't want to play your game.

This stuff isn't new. Everyone understands the importance of education, and everyone understands the importance of being involved in your child's education.

It isn't about poor and minority. It's about being a good parent.

Some people don't have that ability, and my kid shouldn't be punished for it, regardless of the money in my wallet.

There are plenty of examples of single parent and low income households where they value education and push their kids to doing better.

At some point, it has to be about personal responsibility and not blaming everyone else for your failure to be a good parent.

[j_w]

Okay but if you care this much about school choice why not move to an area with better schools? That's a tool most people already have.

And yes, most people who are complaining about "school choice" have this tool to some extent. Will your living conditions be exactly the same? Probably not.

> At some point, it has to be about personal responsibility and not blaming everyone else for your failure to be a good parent.

So why don't you take some personal responsibility and put yourself in a residence which is in district for a school that you want your child to go to? Is that not in part your responsibility as a parent? We can both play this stupid game.

[dirtikiti]

That's exactly what my single parent did. Took responsibility for being a teenage parent, joined a trade union, paid more for a crappy apartment on the edge of a good school district, and busted their ass everyday to provide.

I don't see what you're arguing here? You're the only one playing a stupid game.

If school choice is a thing, everyone can choose where they send their kid to school... they don't have to pay more for a crappy apartment on the edge of a good school district.

And to top it off, the only poor people this actually affects are poor people who live in an area where there is an actual choice of schools to be made.

Which means there is most likely access to transportation.

[a34ta3t]

I love to see the true colors of this vile place when topics like this come up.

[dirtikiti]

I know, personal responsibility is such a vile concept.

Everyone can be so much happier if they can blame everyone else and the system for everything bad in their life.

[freediddy]

You don't live in the Bay Area.

Schools around the Bay Area are closing, especially in rich areas like Saratoga and Cupertino. That's because parents who can afford it are moving their children to private schools because of exactly what the OP was saying.

Schools are incentivized to focus on struggling kids because test scores are how teachers and schools are evaluated. The kids at the high end of the class are literally ignored. I know this because in my old neighborhood many parents were complaining about this. And then on top of it, the superintendent was begging parents for donations because they didn't have enough money.

[Catloafdev]

I'm not saying it isn't in your personal best interest to consider switching your kids out of public schooling. The problem is that the public schools need to be fixed, not abandoned.

There's a difference between "I choose to send my family to Charter schools because the public schools are in bad condition" and "we should close down public schools rather than fix them to make room for more profit in the child education industry"

Fixing public education is the boring, slow, difficult, real-world answer. Privatizing education further is just adding fuel to the fire.

[adrr]

Self inflicted injuries. Bunch of the public schools in large metro areas have removed their gifted and honors programs. Seattle and NY. That will force people into private schools or charter schools. Some districts talked about removing pre-calculus, thats will force kids as well. Dumbing everyone down to the lowest common dominator isn't the solution and public schools should fail if they keep that up. Its banning schools from having separate JV team and varsity team forcing all the athletes into the two teams without looking at ability. Unfair for everyone.

[JuniperMesos]

> There's a difference between "I choose to send my family to Charter schools because the public schools are in bad condition" and "we should close down public schools rather than fix them to make room for more profit in the child education industry"

The case for closing down public schools and replacing them with a for-profit child education industry is that it's systematically easier for all parents to get a better education for their children by abandoning bad schools and only paying good schools in a free market, than it is for parents to participate in the mass political process of fixing public schools, which are government institutions intended to serve a broad mass of people.

Also because different parents have different ideas about what constitutes a good education for their kids, different private schools can differentiate themselves in the marketplace by specializing in different styles of education and attracting different student bases; rather than parents having to democratically coordinate to enact the changes they want in the same mass-scope public school system (and fight against rival groups of parents who want incompatible things).

[freediddy]

You fix public education by kicking out the fascist left agenda, that believes that high achievement is only from white supremacy, and lowering standards for Black and Brown kids so that they pass but leave high school completely uneducated.

For reference, over 50% of Black and Brown kids that graduate from high school in San Francisco Unified School District can't read properly. That is about as racist an outcome as you can imagine, creating generations of undereducated citizens, however this was completely promulgated without a single right-wing influence, it was completely an outcome from pure left-wing educators. They also believe math is white supremacy so they restrict high achievers from taking it at lower grades, which caused many of the Asian families to move to private.

And yet, they spent $2 million renaming schools because I guess they thought that was money better spent than educating Black and Brown kids. That is the zenith of hypocrisy and racism.

[JuniperMesos]

> Schools around the Bay Area are closing, especially in rich areas like Saratoga and Cupertino. That's because parents who can afford it are moving their children to private schools because of exactly what the OP was saying.

It could also be that fewer of the sorts of people who choose to live (or can afford to live) in places like Saratoga and Cupertino are having children at all.

[adrr]

Everyone blames the school. Its the mentality of parents and kids at the schools. Kids go to charter school. 90% of the kids in my 10 years class meet or exceed grade level on the state test. She is surrounded by kids who push her up and parents that push their kids. Teachers care because the parents and kids care. My wife had half hour call last night with my daughters special project teacher because they want showcase the kids work and have the kids give speeches on it.

You don't get that dedication unless you're at private school. It democratizes private education for the masses. Also have lots of volunteer teachers and student teachers from local universities so the ratio is 1 instructor to 10 students. Special project teacher is a volunteer who is earning her masters at Harvard.

[throwaway5752]

It's funnier because it's old, failed policy that they are recycling without being aware of it because they are ignorant. All old things really do become new again.

[wagwang]

It's the current set of policy that is failing. All literacy and math score are down across the entire country and theyve been going down for the past 10 years.

[throwaway5752]

It is smartphones and social media.

The decline is across demographics, across geographies, and correlated with an increase young mental health issues.

The answer is staring us in the face, quite literally, as we type this. We put a cheating and dopamine producing machine in the hands of children without any regulations. Of course it is harming their academic performance.

Ask a football coach if there kids are going to play tackle football and you'll be surprised how often you they won't let them. Ask an educator or psychologist at what age they give smart devices to their kids, and I'd guess it is 3-4 years above the median.

The policy doesn't matter when we're actively damaging the brains of children, which are not fully developed.

[Levitz]

Did that "old, failed policy" yield better results than the current one?