Local politics timeFollow

Fixed for ya. No charge. I mean, there's also (traditional) public schools which are wildly successful and are a primary draw for owning a property in their district but I don't see you holding them up as a model to aspire to.

Ummm... what? No, the primary objective is better education. If the primary objective was saving money at the expense of test scores, you just cut funding for the existing schools and say "Well, you had to expect that" when the scores go down. I mean, isn't the argument supposed to be that public schools are bloated monstrosities of overpaid administrators and union leeches? There should be TONS of opportunities to slash that fat off without affecting test scores, right? But this is the excuse you give to a failed privately run charter system? "Well, they had less money so..."



Edited, Oct 16th 2014 3:27pm by Jophiel

Yeah, but if you're not happy with those schools, you can just up and move down the street and enroll in a better silver mine.

Schools aren't actually silver mines. I feel this disclaimer is necessary for certain parties.

If I did something that 70% of the time resulted in a worse outcome, I would probably stop doing that thing.

I'm not holding charter schools up as a model to aspire to. Some public school suck. Some are excellent. If Smash had said "every single public school has failed", I'd be arguing that he's wrong about that too. Don't read more into what I'm writing than what I'm actually writing.



ROI really.



Sure, and if money wasn't a factor, we'd just pay to provide private tutors for every child in public school and watch the test scores go up. I thought it was clear I was talking in relative terms.



That's a pretty unfair interpretation of what I said though. Given that a percentage of charter schools are able to outperform their similar public schools, the issue of failure is not about money, but methodology. That's the point though. Can we reduce costs while still producing an equivalent (or even better) education. And the answer, overwhelmingly, is "yes". Most charter schools perform equivalently to their similar public schools. Some of them outperform those schools. And yes, some of them perform worse. But that doesn't mean you chuck out the entire concept. You try to find out why some work and some don't, and work to make more schools work. And if the changing numbers are any indicator, this process does appear to be happening.


Oh. And something I wanted to point out. ROI among traditional public schools generally goes hand in hand with property values (as you pointed out). Which means that getting into a good school is priced out of the market for many people. Interestingly enough, the areas where the greatest ROI improvements often occur with charter schools in lower income areas. DC charter schools rank at the top for ROI. Here's an article referencing a study done on the ROI of charter school (feel free to read the study yourself, but apparently that confuses some people). Fun quote:




Edited, Oct 16th 2014 2:14pm by gbaji

The guy who got the numbers 2009 and 2013 mixed up is mocking other people's math prowess, folks.

Okay, only a 30% chance of improvement with an equal chance of making it worse. Or is this where we should go with the liberal concept of not being afraid to try new things?

I guess I should ask why there's such a spread. Thinking why are some worse and some better? Or is their achievement distribution wider than for public schools? Did anyone ever answer either of those questions?

Edited, Oct 16th 2014 2:30pm by someproteinguy

Where did I say that they were?

If all charter schools were identical, and those were each individual students odds of getting a better, worse, or the same education, you'd have a point. But these are numbers comparing charter schools as a whole. Meaning that 30% performed better than the alternative public school, 40% performed equally to the alternative public school, and 30% performed worse. So clearly, it's worth trying to get your kid into the 30% that are going to be better than the local public school you'd be attending otherwise, right? And for the 40% that wont experience anything better or worse, if the charter school costs less in tax dollars, then there's a net savings that may be worthwhile exercising.

And for the 30% that do worse? Don't send your kids there. Or, heaven forbid, take advantage of the fact that charter schools can be changed, eliminated, and/or replaced and put a better alternative in there. It provides an alternative is all. The fact that the alternative isn't better 100% of the time doesn't mean we should chuck out the concept of having alternatives.



Read the study. The impression I get is that this is because there's significant variation in education results based on geography, income levels, and who knows how many other factors already. Charter schools aren't any different in that regard.

The synopsis doesn't say 29% outperformed public schools. It said 29% showed improvement compared to public schools. Different, see?

Is this really a thing?

Yes. Link the "article" you "read". Then it won't be a thing. I find it plausible you read an article that referenced a study and never looked at the data. I also find it plausible that you just googled "charter schools study" after you made something up.

Easy to clear up, though.

Huh? First off, I didn't say "better scores" (Joph introduced something about test scores IIRC, but in a slightly different context). Secondly, I was using the same terms the study used:



They use the terms "growth" and "performance" somewhat interchangeably in that section of the report. This is because they are measuring "growth rates" (meaning the rate at which student's skills in any given area "grew" over set time period). So schools with "stronger growth" also "performed better" in their measurements. I just chose to use the term that was least likely to be misunderstood by the reader. Absent the context of the sentence (and really you have to read the whole section to get it), it's not clear what is meant by "strong growth".


Apparently, you interpreted that as me being dishonest or attempting to change the meaning of something. That was not my intent.

He's talking about your ability to verify data. Which, this post here was a spectacular example if you're trying to prove him correct. And this one is due to pattern recognition.

Edited, Oct 16th 2014 9:58pm by lolgaxe