I can see having standards for behavior, and I’d be surprised if any state/district is without them. Perhaps what you are saying is that the current standards are too lax or not enforced and therefore ineffective. Having standards for effort sounds much more tricky. How would you measure that? Do you just meant that they are not doing well on standardized tests?

I agree that whether there is a lot of school choice or no school choice there is always the possibility of having challenging students — those that are failing the standards and the community for motivational reasons. And as long as children are required to attend school, then the public has to decide how to help these challenging children. So I’m perfectly willing to have choice for everyone who’s acting responsibly and no choice for those who aren’t. I’m also willing to restrict people’s choices by saying they cannot use schools to segregate themselves from other people in the larger community. It is possible that segregation is the main attraction of choice to some people, but I for one think the usefulness of choice goes beyond this purpose.

Dennis, I am not a big fan of charters either–but I do acknowledge a need for some immediate solutions. My daughter went to a very good charter for her senior year in high school. I am not at all certain she would have graduated otherwise. Even in her “cream of the crop” urban high school, there was a whole lot of assumption that there was nothing that could be done for some kids who “don’t care.” Never mind figuring out if that was the case, or why that symptomology appeared in a specific case. There were many who stood staunchly behind the belief that some kids needed to experience failure (over and over again), in order to learn and grow.

The charter that we selected had a passion for taking on kids who were falling through the cracks. My daughter actually graduated three months after her class, but her counselor was the one who made certain that her self-sabotaging habit was not reinforced one more time–and laid out a service-learning opportunity to pick up the last half credit that she needed.

My son, on the other hand, presents far more challenges, having learning disabilities that have poked big holes in what he has learned. Between being moved from school to school and having had diagnostic and medication issues that made learning a very low priority at times. When things got really bad for him in the public schools, I did pick out a charter that looked like a good fit. Several of the decision-makers in that school were refugees from our school system, having spent time in the magnet schools. It turns out that the carried some of their worst “cherry picking” skills with them. They also had friends still within the school system. They were able to make decision based on confidential information that they had not right to (as well as rumor and innuendo). They were able to work their system to ensure that there were no available spots for my son (when they best efforts to dissuade us from applying were unsuccessful). So–we are back in the public schools–although there would have been charter schools desparate enough to sign him up.

In short, there is no magic to charters, except perhaps that they are part of the mix that has scared the bejeebers out of the urban public schools as they begin to understand that when students have easy options they will leave and that will mean downsizing. But the assumption that the kids left in the public schools are those whose families do not care so much leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy. People will stay for many reasons–tradition, proximity, belief in public education. The uneven performance of charters across the board, also suggests that it takes more than a mechanism for pooling students whose parents make a choice to foster success.

It’s easy to throw around terms like “educrats” and “self-interested bureaucrats,” but the inability to handle the administrative aspects of education (budget, finance, governance) has brought down more charters, in my experience, than poor teaching. I have seen several schools manned by dedicated and passionate educators founder on the rocks of having to keep their financial house in order. Combinations of poor enrollment forecasts, unauditable bookkeeping, human resources concerns (such as tax withholding accounts, meeting salary demands), contracting for food service, working with a governing board, seem to pop up like surprises to well-meaning educators who thought that the bureaucrats were doing nothing all those years.

So–like I said–charters may save a few kids, and to the extent that they can, we need them. But more, we need to get our public school house in order. We cannot afford to continue to believe that large numbers of American kids simply cannot be educated.

If you want this:

I DO believe they could be improved, but only if teachers are given the power to demand reasonable levels of behavior and effort.

Then you’re incorrect saying this:

… there are many in education who call for more and more money. I would have to be an idiot to turn that down…

More and more money is *precisely* what leads to the barriers you speak of. Ask for less, focus on jettisoning unneeded bureaucrats, and you might get the results you seek.

Thanks Dennis, a couple of thoughts:

First, it occurs to me that the students one would want to have around in a classroom are those who are most successful in that environment, both socially and academically. I doubt that they would be the ones most likely to bolt at first opportunity. Why take on the inconvenience of commuting to a distant charter, or the expense of topping up a voucher to make private tuition, when you are already doing well at your neighborhood school?

Second, the statement quoted above insinuates that there is some reason to expect struggling schools to improve if only we keep the motivated kids in place long enough. What reason do you have to expect this improvement, and when might it happen? Is there a new reform in place or on the horizon that will be capable of turning around these struggling schools?

I’m wondering if school choice may be just the ticket to getting what you want. If there are a wide enough variety of school choices, those kids that are “disruptive” may make choices that no longer result in disruptions. There’s an interesting new book out called “Nudge” that talks about “choice architectures”. Basically the idea is to develop a set of choices so that people choose to do the right thing. I suspect this will mesh with American values more readily that having the “authorities” deciding who can stay in a classroom and who cannot, hence the laws you mentioned.

Quincy, there are many in education who call for more and more money. I would have to be an idiot to turn that down, but once again, that’s not what I’m asking for. There are many public schools across the nation doing a good job, but I’m painfully aware that there are also public schools where education just isn’t happening. I DO believe they could be improved, but only if teachers are given the power to demand reasonable levels of behavior and effort. Because of certain court rulings that have been made and legislation that has been passed, that has become very difficult. Apparently, the schools discussed in the book have accomplished that. That’s why I’m very curious about the one neighborhood school that managed to pull it off.

Bravo!

It’s a simple fact that more money thrown into any bureaucracy will cause more time and effort to be spent pursuing even more money, always at the detriment of the bureaucracy’s primary mission. This means the more money poured into public schools, the less time, money, and effort will actually make it to the kids. This phenomenon has been recognized since at least 1960 by economists. So, if you want to be free of the crippling bureaucracy and actually teach, you should be all for cuts in education that make it less profitable for self-interested bureaucrats.

If we can dump the bureaucracy and the crap and make public schools responsive to change, great, then it’s worth the effort. If we can’t, and the public schools that are cesspools of failure now will remain so no matter what, they simply don’t deserve support.

I’m not sure whether it’s possible or not, I’m just reacting to a self-described public school defender letting slip that he thinks that this might not be possible and wondering, if a public school defender doesn’t think it’s possible, why try?