The Myth of Charter Schools

[abelenkpe]

The Myth of Charter Schools

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter-schools/?pagination=false&printpage=true

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.

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Nice critic of Waiting For Superman. Enjoy!

[ibegurpard]

1. k&r

disgusting that I have to fight people I thought were my allies about public education

[Starry Messenger]

2. k & r

[Smarmie Doofus]

3. She's no fool. Attention must be paid. n/t

[donco6]

4. Wow. Great article. Hope a lot of people read it. n/t

[vi5]

5. Charter schools are for liberals...

who don't have the guts to outright say "I can't send MY kid to public school with THOSE people!" Those people being poor kids, troubled kids, minority kids, or kids in general not alligned with how they perceive their own precious little ones.

It makes them feel like they're less snobby and elitist than people who send their kids to actual private schools, while essentially still supporting the destruction of the public school system and more indirectly the power of unions in this country..

It's pathetic and I'm tired of it.

[Uncle Joe]

6. Kicked and recommended, this is an excellent critique.

Thanks for the thread, abelenkpe.

[stray cat]

7. The oxymoron of public education in America

The only public that gets an education are those who can afford to live in a competent school districtt. Chidren whose parents can not afford to move to the right school distict are not given a public education just a place to go to rot or drop out of. Someone must care about these people receiving a real public education

[ibegurpard]

9. Very complex question but I don't believe privatizing public education is the answer

[vi5]

10. Most of the time it's non academic factors...

Kids in the poorest districts typically have worse schools (or more accurately have some of the worst results, worst scores, highest drop out rates, etc.). That's not always the fault or result of poor teachers or poor administrators. In poor areas kids have parents who have to work longer, harder, many times multiple jobs to make ends meet and cannot always devote the time that any parent needs to in order to supplement what the schools do. They are often in high crime neighborhoods where fear rules and where there are far too many distractions.

This is why so many charter schools in these same areas don't get better results and why the test scores aren't better than the public schools. And where they are, often times it's because they can kick out the kids who don't do well.

[girl gone mad]

8. ...

For many people, these arguments require a willing suspension of disbelief. Most Americans graduated from public schools, and most went from school to college or the workplace without thinking that their school had limited their life chances. There was a time—which now seems distant—when most people assumed that students’ performance in school was largely determined by their own efforts and by the circumstances and support of their family, not by their teachers. There were good teachers and mediocre teachers, even bad teachers, but in the end, most public schools offered ample opportunity for education to those willing to pursue it. The annual Gallup poll about education shows that Americans are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the quality of the nation’s schools, but 77 percent of public school parents award their own child’s public school a grade of A or B, the highest level of approval since the question was first asked in 1985.

This would make public schools more popular with the general public than either political party, Congress, the President, corporations or or just about any other American institution.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

11. K and R!

[defendandprotect]

12. K&R ---

[erodriguez]

13. K & R

[Dappleganger]

14. Big K&R!