The Myth of Charter Schools by Diane Ravitch

[proud2BlibKansan]

Ordinarily, documentaries about education attract little attention, and seldom, if ever, reach neighborhood movie theaters. Davis Guggenheim’s Waiting for “Superman” is different. It arrived in late September with the biggest publicity splash I have ever seen for a documentary. Not only was it the subject of major stories in Time and New York, but it was featured twice on The Oprah Winfrey Show and was the centerpiece of several days of programming by NBC, including an interview with President Obama.

Two other films expounding the same arguments—The Lottery and The Cartel—were released in the late spring, but they received far less attention than Guggenheim’s film. His reputation as the director of the Academy Award–winning An Inconvenient Truth, about global warming, contributed to the anticipation surrounding Waiting for “Superman,” but the media frenzy suggested something more. Guggenheim presents the popularized version of an account of American public education that is promoted by some of the nation’s most powerful figures and institutions.

The message of these films has become alarmingly familiar: American public education is a failed enterprise. The problem is not money. Public schools already spend too much. Test scores are low because there are so many bad teachers, whose jobs are protected by powerful unions. Students drop out because the schools fail them, but they could accomplish practically anything if they were saved from bad teachers. They would get higher test scores if schools could fire more bad teachers and pay more to good ones. The only hope for the future of our society, especially for poor black and Hispanic children, is escape from public schools, especially to charter schools, which are mostly funded by the government but controlled by private organizations, many of them operating to make a profit.

The Cartel maintains that we must not only create more charter schools, but provide vouchers so that children can flee incompetent public schools and attend private schools. There, we are led to believe, teachers will be caring and highly skilled (unlike the lazy dullards in public schools); the schools will have high expectations and test scores will soar; and all children will succeed academically, regardless of their circumstances. The Lottery echoes the main story line of Waiting for “Superman”: it is about children who are desperate to avoid the New York City public schools and eager to win a spot in a shiny new charter school in Harlem.

more . . . http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter-schools/

[Gabi Hayes]

1. companion thread:

http://notwaitingforsuperman.org/

[Gabi Hayes]

2. from link above. I don't think they'll mind the long snip:

Ultimate $uperpower:
Supersized dollars drive Waiting for Superman agenda

In 1972, two young Washington Post reporters were investigating a low-level burglary at the Watergate Hotel and stumbled upon a host of unexplained coincidences and connections that reached to the White House.

One of the reporters, Bob Woodward, went to a high-level government source and complained: “The story is dry. All we’ve got are pieces. We can’t seem to figure out what the puzzle is supposed to look like.”

To which the infamous Deep Throat replied: “Follow the money. Always follow the money.”1

For nearly 40 years, “Follow the money” as been an axiom in both journalism and politics—although, as Shakespeare might complain, one “More honor’d in the breach than the observance.”

It is useful to resurrect the axiom in analyzing the multimedia buzz and policy debates swirling around the movie Waiting for Superman.

This year’s must-see documentary, Waiting for Superman is an emotional, painful look at the U.S. educational system, especially the bleak options for poor children in inner cities. Even its critics admit that it shines a light on educational disparities. At the same time, its admirers concede the film oversimplifies complicated issues, uncritically hypes charter schools and vilifies teacher unions.

What’s less obvious is how the film serves a coordinated and well-funded intervention in a polarized national debate over educational policy. What’s at stake is not just whether this debate will lead to better schools. More fundamentally, it involves public control and oversight of a vital public institution.

In education, as in so many other aspects of society, money is being used to squeeze out democracy.

[wtmusic]

3. Same old.

"Teachers can have a profound effect on students, but it would be foolish to believe that teachers alone can undo the damage caused by poverty and its associated burdens." That would indeed be a foolish belief - if anyone actually believed it.

Guggenheim doesn't assign teachers the burden of "undoing the damage caused by poverty", only the burden of performing their jobs competently. Many of them don't, and though that's not particularly unique, what is unique is that they can't be fired.

I had a refreshing discussion with a union teacher last night who was in 100% agreement that unions need to police their own ranks. It gave me hope.

[Hannah Bell]

4. "unions need to police their own ranks". so why is the government doing it by

setting up rules that will destroy public education school by school?

[Gabi Hayes]

9. quick! what was the baldfaced lie in the post to which you responded?

pretty careless they're getting, yoda?

[wtmusic]

11. delete

[Hannah Bell]

16. "what is unique is that they can't be fired."

[Joe Fields]

28. In YOUR opinion.

Yes, unions DO need to police their own ranks. They have been their own worst enemy, by NOT policing their own ranks.

Please document how the governments rules are destroying public education, school by school.

[proud2BlibKansan]

31. How do you propose unions do that?

[Joe Fields]

35. It's not my job to figure it out. I'm a restaurant manager.

It's the union leaders jobs to do it. Why don't you ask them?

[proud2BlibKansan]

36. You made the suggestion

Let's hear your ideas.

Unless of course you are just here to disrupt and have no intention of having a productive conversation. Then I would understand why you make no concrete suggestions.

[wtmusic]

39. Concrete suggestions are often ignored, which is why you're ignoring me.

I'll post anyway for the benefit of those with open minds.

Teachers unions could expedite firings in truly egregious circumstances, i.e. when a teacher convicted of molesting his own student is kept on the payroll. There's no justification for paying someone like that a salary, is there? If there is, I would love to hear your justification. And Randi Weingarten's, as well.

That would be a start.

[The Philosopher]

6. What is the percentage

of teachers that aren't performing their job competently? How is that measured?

[wtmusic]

8. The termination rate in the private sector is somewhere around 5% annually

meaning roughly 1 out of every 20 employees is fired every year. Let's assume for the sake of argument that only 20% of those were fired justifiably - the rest were due to discrimination, personal vendetta, whatever. The remaining 1%, however, had it coming. They didn't show up, they read the newspaper at work, they were abusive, they screwed around on the job.

In the Los Angeles School District, on average, 11 teachers lose their jobs annually out of 43,000 - that's 1/40 of 1%. Even with our generous assumption, we would have to conclude that LAUSD teachers are 40x better employees than the rest of us, and that includes sanitation workers and Starbucks clerks, but also doctors, attorneys and architects.

Either that, or it's 40x harder to fire a teacher, with legitimate cause, than the rest of us. That's our problem, in a nutshell.

[The Philosopher]

12. I'm sorry

My math literacy isn't what it should be. You say that 1 in 20 are fired and that 20% of those fired were "fired justifiably." Then the rest, which would make 80%, are undue firings. Right? But then you say the "remaining 1% had it coming." Where does the 1% come from? 80 + 20 = 100.

[wtmusic]

14. The remaining 1% of all employees in the private sector

were fired justifiably. 1 x .05 x .2 = .01.

I didn't phrase it very clearly.

[The Philosopher]

19. So

that remaining 1% is of the 5%? Making it 20% justifiably fired, 79% undue firings, and then that 1% who had it coming?

[wtmusic]

26. No

On average -

If we take 100 private sector employees, 5 of them were fired last year.

Of those 5, were assuming 4 were fired unjustly and 1 had it coming. That makes 1% of the original 100 employees.

[The Philosopher]

37. The numbers are still confusing me.

You write of a 20% of 5%, then a "rest" of the firings, the end with a "remaining 1%." That's three sets of numbers that I see. 20% fired justifiably, X number of "rest" undue firings, then the 1% that "had it coming," or justifiably fired. How do the three numbers of the 5% relate to each other?

[wtmusic]

38. The 1% is the same as 20% of 5%, phrased differently

Breaking down private sector jobs annually:

95% unfired
4% unjustified firings ("the rest" of the people who are fired)
1% justified firings

I guess I wouldn't make a good teacher :D

[The Philosopher]

43. That clears it up for me :)

So would those numbers be applies to the LAUSD numbers (the 11 of 45k)? 4% of 11, then 1% of 11, so forth?

[wtmusic]

44. At least 1% of the LA teacher workforce of 43,000, or 430 teachers,

are what we could expect to be "fireable" every year based on statistics from the private sector.

Only 11, or roughly 1/40 of 430, are actually fired.

[The Philosopher]

46. Okay

So, 1% of 43,000 teachers in LA are fired? And that's either because the teachers are better than the workforce that suffers 5% terminations or else it's harder to fire teachers in LA? That's what you're saying?

[Name removed]

52. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[The Philosopher]

57. Well

That's an entirely inappropriate response. I am just trying to understand what you're saying and you use the chance to belittle someone? That's not nice and it's unproductive to discussion. I just wanted to understand the math entirely, because the way it appears is that you're saying the firings of LA teachers is 1% instead of 5% like the rest of the workforce, when you broke down that 5% with a larger percentage of workers being unduly fired. Taking those out, would leave only the 1%. You claim that the LAUSD teachers are harder to fire or "40x" better than the rest of the workers, but it could seem that the system that protects from undue firings is doing just that. Protecting that 4% and getting the 1% right. According to your numbers.

[wtmusic]

58. I didn't mean to be belittling

but you do need some practice with fractions. I really can't explain it clearer than I already have. :shrug:

[Hepburn]

5. As far as I am concerned, the term "charter school" is a...

...euphamism for "segregation."

[proud2BlibKansan]

22. +1

[Starry Messenger]

7. k & r

[EFerrari]

10. Kick

[johnaries]

13. so what the f*ck IS the solution?

I like your bumper sticker about "whiny" teabagger asses, but what about OTHER whiny asses?

Let's face it, the problem with our educational system is on EVERY level. we have to address it on EVERY level. But when we try to do a comprehensive program, SOME whiny ass jumps up and says "WHY ARE YOU BLAMING ME?"

Face it - YOU are to blame, I am to blame, WE ALL are to blame.

Instead of "placing blame" why can't we just fucking FIX it?

Fuck the "pointing fingers" game, those fingers just point back to us. Let's just fix it!

That's all I have to say.

[grahamhgreen]

20. Lets model our schools after Finland and the other top school systems.

[wtmusic]

27. An excellent suggestion. And Finland's teachers are highly unionized.

There are also a lot of differences. Finland has a higher standard of living, lower crime, and there are virtually none of the multi-lingual challenges associated with teaching in the US. That makes teaching a more attractive profession and thus one which is highly competitive - they get the cream of the crop. No one is denying that America has a tougher row to hoe in those respects, but addressing those challenges involves longterm, inter-generational goals. Is there nothing we can do right now?

In Los Angeles Unified (I bring up LAUSD because I know more about it than other districts, but it's representative of NYCDOE and those in other large cities) what was originally designed to ensure teachers due process has turned into a labyrinthine stalling technique which accomplishes little more than making teachers' job security untouchable. With appeals and grievance hearings, it costs on average $500,000 to fire a teacher in L.A.

Proposition: expedite the process for the 10% worst teachers. We're not even talking about subtleties - we're talking about convicted felons (yes, they exist), the chronically truant, the ones who are repeatedly unresponsive to parents. Make it so it only costs $50,000 instead of half a $million. If we were to implement such a plan for 4,300 teachers, the district would save $2 BILLION over what it would cost to fire those teachers now - enough to double the number of teachers in classrooms - instantly make teaching in L.A. a lot more attractive as a profession.

I've done a lot of googling but there is scant information on Finland's teacher termination rate and procedure (in English). I did find this, however, which suggests Finns would be aghast at the procedural nightmare American administrators must go through:

"Cancellation of employment

An employment contract may only be cancelled with immediate effect on exceptionally pressing grounds, such as a serious breach or neglect of a fundamental duty of employment.

If an employee has been absent from work for not less than seven working days without furnishing the employer with a valid reason for this absence, then the employment may be considered dissolved as of the start of the absence."

http://www.guidetoworkinginfinland.fi/cms/index.php?tyosuhteen-purku-2

[grahamhgreen]

30. The problem is not the unions or the teachers...

it is the privateers that seek to destroy a system that worked for 200 years.

Basically what the film is advocating is the Enronization of American schools, a gaming of the system, playing with numbers until the school tax money goes into private pockets and none of it reaches the students.

We should simply examine how the top 10 school systems in the world work, and follow their example.

Just like with health-care, it's a no-brainer. Had we done that, we'd have single-payer.

unfortunately, the goal of the privateers is not to help children, it is to enrich themselves and destroy the unions and the American middle class.

We don't need to see them destroy education in America to know that this is their plan.

[wtmusic]

32. Fine, but adopting Finland's system might mean changing ours

so that it's easier to fire teachers.

[AngryAmish]

40. and the aliens

We all agree the little green men are destroying our schools.

[grahamhgreen]

47. Are some Dems now anti-union?

[proud2BlibKansan]

49. Yes

[laughingliberal]

15. K & R nt

[leftstreet]

17. K&R

[AdHocSolver]

18. Blaming the teachers for poor education outcomes has a parallel in the auto industry.

For years, American branded cars were rated as having lower quality than Japanese branded cars. Even a casual perusal of the "Frequency-of-Repair Ratings" in Consumer Reports Magazine showed that this was true across the board.

American auto company managements from GM, Ford, and Chrysler were quick to blame the American workers. U.S. auto companies couldn't produce a quality product, U.S. managers complained, because the jobs of lazy, incompetent employees were protected by their unions.

Over the years, Japanese car companies set up auto plants in America to build their cars using American workers and bought many parts and assemblies manufactured here. The result was that the Japanese branded cars made in America by American labor had the same high quality as the Japanese models made in Japan.

Gee whiz, Einstein. That seems to eliminate American labor as the cause of poor quality in the manufacture of cars by U.S. auto companies, since American labor produces the same high quality products when working for Japanese car companies as do Japanese workers.

American teachers work under a system of education that is a mismanaged pedagogical nightmare. Education in the U.S. is modeled after a factory assembly line, with little thought to how children learn.

The main goal of education in the U.S. for the past hundred years or so has been to produce minimally competent, compliant minions for the factories and offices of corporate America. Now that most jobs have been offshored, the need to produce large numbers of workers is no longer necessary.

In fact, producing large numbers of workers for jobs that no longer exist is counterproductive for corporate goals. First, public school education sucks up money from the private sector, and since there is no longer a need for large numbers of workers, private enterprise can receive some of that money by setting up privately run, for profit, charter schools.

In order to get the public to go along with this change, the private sector must first convince the public to go along with this privatization. Since private charter schools use the same failed pedagogical model that has been used by the public schools, corporations decided to use a phony measure of student achievement which they can use to blame public school teachers for the failure of the system, which the public school teachers inherited, and over which the teachers have no control.

The corporations achieve another benefit from this approach beyond siphoning money from public education to the private sector. The corporations get to blame the schools and the students for the lack of jobs. They will claim that American students are so poor, that the beleaguered corporations were forced to send jobs overseas because the corporations couldn't find qualified candidates to hire.

Steal public funds and blame the victims for outsourcing most jobs. A twofer for the corporations.

Teachers (as a group) need to critique the current education system in this country. Teachers need to point out that the charter schools use the same failed model of education that they are forced to work under, and that the outcomes, i.e. the overall failure for the students, will be no different for charter schools than what is now for public schools.

Teaching students to pass a meaningless, useless test that does not demonstrate whether any learning has occurred, is no improvement at all.

The following link is to an article about how Finland achieved meaningful reform of their education system. This is where teachers can get inspired to be proactive in education reform, rather than just be defensive in the face of unfair and unwarranted attacks on their performance.

http://www.nea.org/home/40991.htm

I recommend teachers, as a group, evaluate the system under which they work. For example, the typical school day (when I was teaching) is split into 50 minute sessions, often taken up with administrative chores, collecting homework, handling various interruptions, and leaving little time for actually teaching the subject matter, or helping individual students with any projects or difficulties. This is a pedagogical nightmare that won't be any different under a charter school.

[grahamhgreen]

21. "Superman" is simply an anti union, anti public school screed, if it

"Superman" is simply an anti union, anti public school screed, if it really wanted to explore solutions it would have looked into how the top school systems in the world work, like Finland.

[TicketyBoo]

23. But if you read the entire article

it says that 5% of Finnish children live in poverty, compared with 20% of our kids.

Poverty is a huge, sometimes insurmountable, barrier to a successful education. When parents are scrambling to keep a roof over their family's head and food in their stomachs, sometimes help with homework and parent-teacher conferences fall by the wayside. I wish we'd have had four more years of President Johnson. Maybe that War on Poverty would have had more success than the one in Vietnam.

[wtmusic]

29. Once you accept the idea that anything is insurmountable

or that any education is 100% "successful" you're sunk. Kaput.

You've given up; by definition, you are accepting that the situation can't be improved within the constraints of that liability.

[ipaint]

33. It certainly won't be improved by kowtowing to the vulture capitalists who

are drooling over the wide open door to privatization. The very same class of hoarding elite who visited that enormous "poverty liability" on us to begin with.

Classic right wing conservative MO- defund, declare a failure, privatize. Standard operating procedure since reagan, who put this particular public education fails children meme into motion, and the majority of comfortable middle class liberals falls for it every time. Suckers.

And now we have a president when face with telling people the truth and working to reverse the right wing damage while strengthening our public education system instead $buys$ into the corrupt capitalist so called solution.

[wtmusic]

34. Agreed

but it's undeniable that American education was failing compared to other civilized countries before the charter movement began.

What opened the door to privatization was nothing more than the status quo.

[grahamhgreen]

48. Because step 1 is defund. "defund, declare a failure, privatize"

The rest of the civilized world doesn't dump most of their revenues into wars for profit.

[wtmusic]

53. Australia in 2007 was ranked #1 in quality of education

and they spend nearly 1% less of GDP on education than we do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Index
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/edu_edu_spe-education-spending-of-gdp

The money's not going where it should be going.

[AdHocSolver]

56. Schools could be designed to overcome the issue of poverty.

Schools could provide breakfast and lunch for poor students to eliminate the "hunger" factor as a distraction from learning.

Making class periods longer with fewer different classes per day could allow for in-school study halls that would enable students to do "homework" in school without distractions from home issues. These study halls could be staffed by teaching assistants who could help the students with their studies. Teaching assistants could be retired teachers or college students interested in pursuing a teaching career.

Actually, this would make a good model for all types of schools. I have posted elsewhere in this thread about the problems with our present educational system, and I made suggestions for designing an improved system based on my experience both as a public school student and a teacher.

Those who advocate merely tinkering with the present system do not understand the issues. We need to think outside the box and design a system that will work, as they did in Finland.

[Karmadillo]

24. I wonder if the corp media will be giving this article a week of free, unquestioning publicity.

nt

[Starry Messenger]

25. Bwah!

Where's the fun in that? :sarcasm:

[AdHocSolver]

41. There seems to be a number of misconceptions about education issues in these posts.

The kinds of teaching and testing used under the current education environment to measure student learning is largely useless. By default, most teaching effort is designed to enable students to pass standardized tests, and the tests do not actually measure what learning, if any, took place.

The tests only measure whether enough "learning" took place to pass the current test. Most teachers are aware that a week after the test, most of the subject matter "learned" to take the test will be forgotten, in order to free memory to store the next material needed to "learn" in order to take the next test.

Gauging teacher quality by measuring how well their students do in a system that is so badly organized that the system prevents real learning from taking place is unfair to the students and the teachers.

Curriculums, textbooks, the organization of the school day, the training of teachers all have to be analyzed and redesigned. The current system does NOT work.

Discussions blaming "bad" teachers for lack of learning, and claims that educational outcomes will improve if we make it easier to fire "bad" teachers are distractions from the main issue, namely that the education system in the U.S. is across the board a failure, and it needs to be thoughtfully and intelligently redesigned from the ground up.

[wtmusic]

45. The half a million dollars which is spent to fire a bad teacher

could hire ten new teachers for a year. That's not a distraction; that's one of the first problems we should be looking at.

[AdHocSolver]

50. Putting ten, or twenty, new teachers into an impossible no-win situation will make no difference.

The way teachers are evaluated in U.S. schools precludes a valid determination of student achievement and teacher effectiveness.

So, yes, your irrelevant one-solution-solves-all-problems critique is nothing more than a distraction.

The only useful course of action to really educate children and get our money's worth is to do a thorough re-evaluation of education in the U.S. (curriculum, organization, pedagogical methodology, textbook development, and teacher training) the way they did with success in countries such as Finland.

[wtmusic]

51. Nonsense.

Ask any teacher: one of the biggest problems in education today are teacher:student ratios which are in the gutter. You can be the best teacher, using the best most modern facilities, with the most carefully considered curriculum and if you have 40+ students in front of you, you have little chance of adequately preparing them for college or for life.

As far as evaluation goes, let's start with immediately removing teachers who have been convicted of molesting their own students from the payroll, against the wishes of the American Federation of Teachers. Could we consider that a baseline from which to judge teacher "effectiveness"? :eyes:

The idea that removing the worst teachers is a "one-solution-solves-all" is your creation, not mine, as is the notion that right now we have an "impossible, no-win situation". It would be wonderful to dream that we could start from scratch, using educational reform a la Finland (entire population less than the state of Wisconsin) but to realistically consider it for the US, with 60x as many students in public education from all social strata and speaking different languages, is beyond naive. So we're left with dealing with the system we have, and doing it aggressively - and IMO the best way to start doing that is to stop spending half a million dollars on getting rid of teachers who never deserved the job in the first place, and putting it to better use.

[AdHocSolver]

54. Have you ever taught school? I did, in a big city public school system.

In "inner city" schools of that big city. I also earned a teaching certificate from a large university college of education, and I have two college degrees as well.

While large class size can make teaching more difficult, your idea of firing more teachers to decrease class size doesn't quite fly as a useful solution.

Your assumption that an education system cannot be designed to account for differences in culture, language, and economic class smacks of implicit racism and class condescension.

The fact that the current educational system in the U.S., besides being anti-intellectual, is seriously biased against other cultures, is a significant criticism against U.S. educational practice. The current inherent condescension towards other cultures does not negate the value or validity of those other cultures. Some of the most useful times I spent in school were the foreign language classes I attended in high school and college. Moreover, I have met a number of people over the years who came to America from other countries, and they adapted well to American society without giving up their native language or culture.

We have been "dealing with the system we have" and it is worse than ever. It is time to replace our education system with something that can work. It cannot be achieved overnight. The sooner we begin, the sooner we can make a difference in the lives of American children.

[wtmusic]

55. It's not that complicated.

It costs half a million dollars to fire a lousy teacher in the city of Los Angeles. Is that ok with you? If it is, we have no discussion.

If we could fire that teacher for $50,000 (still exorbitant) we could hire ten more teachers for a year with the money left over. Net +9 teachers - that's adding teachers to the classroom. Or let's phrase it another way: do you approve of taking ten teachers out of the classroom to fire a teacher convicted of molesting his own student? If so, can we take them out of your kids' classes, and not mine?

"The current educational system in the US is seriously biased against other cultures". As opposed to what, France, where citizens are prevented by law from wearing the clothes of other cultures? Or is it Finland, which really only has one culture?

"The fact that the current educational system in the U.S., besides being anti-intellectual, is seriously biased against other cultures, is a significant criticism against U.S. educational practice."
Sounds like ivory tower claptrap to me. Link, please.

Regarding my "assumption that an education system cannot be designed to account for differences in culture, language, and economic class" - I have no idea where your imagination even found the seed
from which that grew. Whatever. :eyes:

[eridani]

42. I just read that in my print NYR

Very much worth clicking on the link--NYR doesn't make all of their stuff available online