Coddington on charter schools
February 12th, 2012 at 10:15 am by David FarrarDeborah Coddington writes in the HoS:
Why the fuss over charter schools? Given the hysterical ranting from teacher unions, you’d think we were returning to caning on the backside.
It won’t be compulsory for students to attend what are, essentially, alternative choices for parents to state or private schools. A bit like kura kaupapa.
But unions don’t like parental choice. They like telling parents what to do. Robin Duff, head of the PPTA, published an opinion piece comparing these evil charter schools with epic failures such as the Pike River mining disaster, the Global Financial Crisis and the grounding of the container ship Rena.
Charter schools also cause famine in Africa I understand.
The commonality is that none are accountable. But charter schools are accountable to parents, something that many state schools are not.
If parents can choose to stay or leave a school, that is the best form of accountability.
While the PPTA and NZEI remain firmly wedded to collective agreements, it will be difficult to introduce incentives to keep brilliant teachers in the classrooms when they must move into management for higher salaries. In union land, excellent teachers shouldn’t get more pay than incompetent colleagues on the same level because that’s not fair.
I say let each principal decide for themselves how much to pay the teachers at their school, within a total budget.
Related posts:
- Charter Schools
- Herald on charter schools
- Another academic attacks charter schools
- Dunne against charter schools
February 12th, 2012 at 11:10 am
Attract high-quality teachers by slashing job security.
Vote:February 12th, 2012 at 11:20 am
“I say let each principal decide for themselves how much to pay the teachers at their school, within a total budget.”
Do you really think that each principal (or Board) in every state school has the skills and competence to decide individual teacher pay rates? Some of them can barely keep up with a yearly maintenance plan.
I think your ideal would be detrimental to current teacher-principal relationships, take the focus more away from teaching and learning, and there would be immense inconsistencies from school to school.
Thankfully I don’t think even Ms Parata will lurch this far to the Right. It’s interesting how some right wing folk are so obsessed with the administration of schools rather than the nuts and bolts of learning, achievement, knowledge, teaching approaches – you know, what schools are actually about. School principals don’t need more CEO type roles. They’ve got more important things to worry about!
Vote:February 12th, 2012 at 11:25 am
Just last week a brand magnificent new Maori Secondary School opened very quietly in West Tauranga (Bethlehem).
Vote:Questions have been asked as to what this school is going to do.
We understand as far as possible that it has its own Charter, so there, so can do what it wants.
Most Maori Schools from kura kaupapa to secondary are Charter Schools.
Religious Schools are mainly Charter and have their own particular participation in lifeskills.
Generally the teaching staff are of the highest standards who have belief in their schools education attainments and achievements. Like teachers in private schools – aspirations for their pupils.
February 12th, 2012 at 11:26 am
Why the fuss over govt plans to further undermine the public education system by directing even more public funding to selected private interests? Yeah, I just don’t know – it’s utterly incomprehensible…
Still, on the plus side – it’s nice to think that when a future Labour govt decides to further undermine the private sector by extending public sector competition with it in selected industries, you and Coddington won’t be able to see any cause to make a fuss about it.
Vote:February 12th, 2012 at 11:29 am
What an idiotic statement, simonway!
Vote:February 12th, 2012 at 11:29 am
Attract high-quality teachers by slashing job security.
If you don’t perform whatever field you are in, your job security suffers accordingly. That’s just life. Why should teaching be any different from any other field?
Do you really think that each principal (or Board) in every state school has the skills and competence to decide individual teacher pay rates?
What sort of skill and competence is required to decide to pay someone ten grand more because they perform better? Why is that a difficult decision in any way? Of course if your thick then your brow may furrow but hopefully they don’t appoint village-idiot level thickees to be school principals and if they do why they’re idiots. But otherwise, it’s just a simple no-brainer to me.
Why the fuss over govt plans to further undermine the public education system by directing even more public funding to selected private interests? Yeah, I just don’t know – it’s utterly incomprehensible…
Given the dumbing down and leftist PC bullshit the public system has achieved over the decades why does anyone support it?
Vote:February 12th, 2012 at 11:43 am
I strongly support the introduction of charter schools. I’ve seen a lot of evidence (some on WO’s site, some elsewhere) showing the great results that they get.
Vote:If charter schools are as bad as the teacher unions say they are, then the unions should really be encouraging them to be trialled. What better way for them to put egg on the government’s face and say “We told you so”?
February 12th, 2012 at 11:51 am
“Most Maori Schools from kura kaupapa to secondary are Charter Schools.”
No, read the current Education Act, sections 156 or 157 from memory.
“Religious Schools are mainly Charter and have their own particular participation in lifeskills.”
Certainly not catholic schools – Integration Act 1977? Their teachers generally belong to a union, are covered by the collective agreement, and schools accountable to state, including ERO visits.
“Generally the teaching staff are of the highest standards who have belief in their schools education attainments and achievements. Like teachers in private schools – aspirations for their pupils.”
What absolute rubbish! There’s an awful lot of money thrown at private schools and class sizes are often lower than the state system. Most students who attend private schools are from relatively wealthy homes. On the whole those students are much easier to teach and work with. A Year 5 class at Samuel Marsden Collegiate and a Year 5 class in Canons Creek are a world away. Social inequality impacts on dispositions to learning.
Vote:February 12th, 2012 at 12:12 pm
To each their own I suppose, but for me the reason why I will not be sending my children to a charter school is that there is no requirement for teachers to be trained. I’m sure most parents wouldn’t take their sick child to an untrained doctor, so why they would put the education of their child in the hands of an untrained teacher escapes me.
Vote:Call me cynical if you want but having untrained teachers to me seems like a way of getting cheap labour so that way the school can use money to buy lots of fancy computers or something suitably flash to make it look good.
As has been mentioned, the teacher makes the biggest impact on successful education of a child. So allowing a school to hire untrained teachers is not a good look in my eyes.
February 12th, 2012 at 12:22 pm
A Year 5 class at Samuel Marsden Collegiate and a Year 5 class in Canons Creek are a world away. Social inequality impacts on dispositions to learning.
The simple fact is Sam is that what impacts on dispositions to learning is the parent’s attitudes. There is nothing preventing poor families from caring about their kids education and providing them a warm, loving and safe environment except their own attitudes. That’s the fact of it. Being poor doesn’t prevent a parent from doing that in any way. Does it.
The fact that many poor parents do precisely the opposite to their children is not because they are poor, it’s because they don’t know any different, because no-one has told them how to be like that to their children, notwithstanding the fact they are poor.
And no-one similarly has told them that if they want to stop being poor then happily the very same attitude changes which will benefit your children will also benefit you for they entail things like being very self-disciplined, sober and diligent in all areas of one’s life and when that happens, why employers simply love people like that, whatever field it happens to be, be it a factory worker or whatever. Isn’t that good.
Now why the fuck lefties don’t start doing that and haven’t already been busy at it for simply decades, given lefties CLAIM to be the protectors and defenders of the poor, is a PGP-encrypted enigma inside a riddle encased in a Chinese puzzle box wired to explode at the end of a road like Eddy Murphy had to cross in The Golden Child.
I mean, it’s simple, isn’t it. Human nature is such that the above is the way out of poverty for those people, isn’t it. The above really would work, wouldn’t it. The attitude changes are free, aren’t they. They simply involve one changing one’s mind and thereby changing behaviour, don’t they. And that is totally and utterly free for them at any time at all, isn’t it. They don’t have to save in order to pay to allow them to change their minds, do they.
And we as a society know enough about psychology and education to be able to design programs that would penetrate the toughest cases of poverty-stricken people, don’t we. So it’s very doable, isn’t it.
Yes to all of the above. So why the fuck do lefties never ever not once talk about doing this, as opposed to keeping them down under your thumbs, by telling them non-stop the reason they are poor is because someone and something is oppressing them and holding them down and you can save them by fighting the evil oppressors. I mean talk about evil, doing that. But that’s what all you lefties have been doing for simply decades now, haven’t you. Michael Joseph Savage would be ashamed of you all, in fact he’d spit on you he’d be so mad.
Vote:February 12th, 2012 at 12:33 pm
I say let each principal decide for themselves how much to pay the teachers at their school, within a total budget.
This was tried and discredited during the great bulk funding debate. Boards were initially given more funds (if they signed up for bulk funding) but then this was soon reduced on each next allocation. Schools with the ability to charge hefty ‘donations’ could pay teachers more but mostly what happened is that Principals became managers instead of leading learning and they soon learned that employing beginning teachers was the most cost effective way to get through the year.
As for teaching – for that is what we are actually talking about – teachers moved a little from the collegial model most schools work under to the competitive model – sharing their ideas and skills less both within and across schools. In the flawed measure that is Nationals Standards who would want to work with troubled or challenging kids?
The trick in this debate is to understand that schools are not corporations and children are not widgits.
Vote:February 12th, 2012 at 12:54 pm
Not everything is a left v right thing, reid.
Vote:There will always be some awful parents unfortunately and they definitely need to be targeted, but I imagine that 99.99% of parents want the best outcomes for their children.
February 12th, 2012 at 12:57 pm
PPTA President Robin Duff also believes HIV/Aids originated in charter schools, and Ebola, and SARS, and Birdflu…
Vote:February 12th, 2012 at 12:58 pm
Bullshit Kiwigunner, bulk funded schools could not pay their teachers more than the standard collective contract, they could not even pay a bonus amount above the collective salary for thier step.
nice try though.
as for schools not being corporations, what a pathetic straw man.
its easy, principal or board decides teacher A is good so gets paid x, teacher B is better so gets paid more than X, teacher C is mediocre so gets paid fuck all or gets let go.
how hard is that? it works in every other job. yes there will be discrepancies, but no worse than shit teachers who have been around for 7 years being paid more than great teachers who have been around for 5 years.
Vote:February 12th, 2012 at 1:28 pm
No Grendel, kiwigunner was right on the money with what happened with bulk funding. You are showing an ignorance of how it worked.
Initially schools that opted in to be bulk funded were given a top of the scale amount per teacher. So (for example) if top of the scale was $50000 and the school had 20 teachers that the school got a million dollars. [This is extremely simplified of course because schools are allocated a certain amount of units and allowances, but it will demonstrated what went on].
Vote:Now this was an attractive offer for BOT’s because while most teachers were at the top of the scale there were some that weren’t so the school could use the difference for resources etc.
The problem for BOT’s is that teachers moved up the scale and so they saw their amounts of money gained through bulk funding diminishing. No problem they thought – when teachers at the top of the school retire or move to another school we will hire beginning or untrained teachers, or maybe not hire a new teacher at all.
Bulk funded schools became notorious for having nice freshly painted buildings, flash admin areas and new computer suites to impress the parents with. But classrooms were overcrowded with students and experienced teachers were in short supply.
And then if a school got into difficulty they were told – you are bulk funded, sort it out yourself. I know of a school where this happened.
February 12th, 2012 at 1:40 pm
I imagine that 99.99% of parents want the best outcomes for their children.
Well duh, of course they want them bc. But how could you possibly hallucinate I was saying they don’t? Your conclusion, in other words, has nothing whatsoever to do with anything I said above. Double duh, der and d’oh.
Vote:February 12th, 2012 at 1:46 pm
bc
I suspect that there were different results in different schools depending entirely on the circumstances peculiar to the school community. I am familiar with two schools that went into bulk funding and it worked extremely well. Both of them had increasing roles which helped. We were able to hire an additional teacher which of course had a direct effect on class numbers. No additional money was spent on painted buildings,/administration areas or computer suites. I am not going to pretend that the particular school with which I was more closely involved is typical of schools throughout the country. It worked extremely well for us but I accepted it may not work for others and there may be some boards for whom it probably could not work at all.
I suspect that the teacher unions oppose performance salary because they have insufficient confidence in boards of trustees. Equally, they do not like to be held accountable and, regretfully, there seems to be a reluctance to face up to the fact that teachers are accountable to parents, the community and business in the community. Teachers do not seem to realise that they have to turn out what communities need and that includes businesses. Charter schools may create a closer liaison between business and the teaching profession and that can only be for the better.
Vote:February 12th, 2012 at 1:48 pm
And irony of ironies on this site. 98% of Principals don’t want Nationals Standards and believe but they are are often given no professional credence here in this purely educational issue – ie the government knows best but when it suits the right the very same people are quite qualified to determine pay rates and performance management of staff something that almost none of them have any training for!
Vote:February 12th, 2012 at 1:57 pm
And the greater irony is that those teachers who refuse to be accountable via national standards, demand (through PPTA) that any charter schools be put under the closest possible scrutiny.
Vote:February 12th, 2012 at 1:58 pm
“Double duh, der and d’oh” What a clever comeback reid, how long did it take you to think of that one!
It’s hard to (to use your term) “hallucinate” what you are going on about reid! There was an incoherant rant about poor parents, “lefties” (are you implying that “lefties” are poor parents?) and at one point your rant started going on about the plot of an Eddie (not Eddy by the way) Murphy movie!!
Vote:Ye gods, can anyone understand what you are banging on about?!
February 12th, 2012 at 2:02 pm
when i was doing teachers payroll in 1996-1999, the schools i dealt with were not allowed to pay any different from the collective contract (i dealt with both bulkfunded and non bulkfunded schools). they had discretionary units of extra pay to give out, but no more than schools of the same size who were not bulkfunded.
prove that 98% of principals don;t want national standards Kiwigunner.
the vast majority of secondary teachers i know support it becuase they dont want to have to deal with the result of kids getting through primary without being able to read, write or count and then being dumped on the college.
Vote:February 12th, 2012 at 2:09 pm
bc attitude is what causes educational disadvantage. Attitude is free. Of course each parent wants the best but if they don’t know how to care about their childs education and they don’t know how to provide them with a loving peaceful caring supportive warm and safe environment, then even if they want that it’s not going to fucking happen, is it.
What about that is complicated?
Possibly your mistaking your own personal stupidity for being normal and thinking that everyone else is as thick as you are and can’t understand that simple point either, is your problem. I’m afraid however bc it’s you, you alone, who has a furrowed brow re: this.
Sigh. In case you didn’t pick it up one of your many points of confusion appears to be your failure to understand that in my 12:22 when I used the adjective “poor” I wasn’t using it in the poor performance sense but in the monetary sense. Your 1:58 seemed to indicate however a much more profound confusion seems to be going on so such conflation is merely trivial by comparison, but I hope that little correction helps, every little bit does, it appears, with you.
Vote:February 12th, 2012 at 2:12 pm
Hi Nookin.
Vote:I think teachers are fully aware that they are accountable to parents and the community. They are of course at first accountable to the students they teach (funny that you didn’t mention them!).
I totally disagree that national standards will ensure accountability and that unions are opposed to National Standards because it will make teachers accountable (in your opinion).
If you read a bit more about national standards you will realise that they are totally subjective. There is NO moderation to ensure consistency between schools and even teachers in a same school. So using national standards as a way to assess teacher quality is a big fail in my book.
The teacher unions have no problems with the curriculum levels and no problems with using assessment tools like AsTTle to assess students against the curriculum levels (that I am aware of) so I believe that is false to say that unions oppose national standards because it makes teachers accountable (which I don’t belive it does anyway!).
Oh and I think the union you mean is NZEI. PPTA is the secondary teachers union and national standards aren’t used in secondary schools.
February 12th, 2012 at 2:27 pm
“Attract high-quality teachers by slashing job security.”
Everything question you ever asked yourself about NZ’s piss poor productivity is summed up in that statement.
Nobody should have automatic job security, job security should come through performance only. High quality teachers have nothing to fear at all.
The days of having a job for life irrespective of performance are over, teachers (like Warfies) need to be bashed into submission if need be, we simply cannot carry poor teachers any longer.
Vote:February 12th, 2012 at 2:54 pm
(i) National Standards provide more feedback to parents and the government. They aren’t perfect, but it’s a step in the right direction.
I’m sick of the attitude that all teachers are angels and that accountability is tantamount to a slap in the face. I have endured plenty of teachers who were useless or just didn’t care. Teachers are public servants and they should be held to account to their employers (taxpayers) and their customers (parents) just like everyone else.
(ii) If schools can’t be trusted to run their own budget, then they can’t be trusted to teach our children. So, if the argument against bulk funding is that schools are incompetant, then we need much more drastic reform than just budget controls.
(iii) One size doesn’t fit all. Some schools just aren’t right for some children. It’s a fact of life that sometimes children will need to be moved to a different school. Charter schools will give parents an alternative, where previously the only alternatives were home schooling, moving, or private school. Those that argue against school choice have obviously never had any problems with their school, but that doesn’t mean that others don’t have problems.
Vote:February 12th, 2012 at 3:27 pm
“Social inequality impacts on dispositions to learning”
That in a nutshell is the difference between the Right and the Wrong
Vote:The Wrong believe that if society was more equal then all children would learn. The Spirit Level delusive thinking.
The Right know you can succeed despite inequality. That is why many of us grew up in social inequality imbued with Wrongist thinking but eventually by dint of hard work and higher aspirations saw the light.
National wants to bring about a change in this country. The change is to have people understand what aspiration means and how to attain it.
In this country a fancy car drives past and the Wrong think “Lucky bastard!”
In aspirational countries they admire the car and and think “I will have a car like that one day”
February 12th, 2012 at 3:43 pm
One thing that puzzles me about the left’s attitude to this Fisiani is why would anyone who wants to be healthy, study sick people? Why would anyone do that?
But this is what lefties do, re: this. They don’t study rich people and find out how to beome rich and pass that on, they don’t even study people who’ve moved from poverty through the ranks. They don’t even study the movers. Der. That’s the very key data you want.
Instead ALL of their time is devoted 100% to measuring just how bad it is for all these people, when they (the subjects being studied) already fucking know this since they live it. So what’s the point of spending not just a fraction but 100% of ones resources and time studying nothing but that just so you can find another excuse to wrings one’s hands over some hitherto unknown aspect of their plight? It’s like poverty porn. That’s what it’s like, another study, showing this or that. Oh dear. Weep and wail. Angry questions in the House. Oh deawy, deawy me. And then it moves on till the next poverty porn episode in a few months time. Tell me this is not what happens in real life.
This is why poverty never improves.
Studying leftism is like peeling an onion isn’t it, that just gets worse and worse the deeper and deeper you go. Peeling off layer after layer exposes more and more complete and utter festering, metastisized tumours of confusion of monstrous proportion. I fear at the heart of the lefty onion lies that giant plant that gives off a stench like rotting flesh once every twelve years or so. It’s that bad.
No suit yet developed can withstand it, I’ve been reading, so I’m just biding my time until they find something. The putrid rotting multi-headed and with five – five, arseholes, crouching menacingly at the very heart of the lefty mindset scares the crap out of me quite frankly. But nevertheless it is one’s duty, isn’t it.
Never complain and never explain. But fuck, when all it takes is for lefties not to think like they do and the whole problem goes away without me having to try and do that, one day. I mean crikey. Oh the humanity.
Vote:February 12th, 2012 at 3:44 pm
That in a nutshell is the difference between the Right and the Wrong
You are correct (if I’m correct in assuming that by “Wrong” you mean “Left”). You’ve provided an excellent example of that difference in your comment. From “the Wrong” we have the assertion “social inequality impacts on dispositions to learning,” an assertion with strong evidence from social science research as well as fairly easily-observed daily experience to back it up. From “the Right,” as expressed in your comment, we have fond belief in an ideology and various cliches. It’s a difference often seen, in fact seen a number of times in this thread.
Vote:February 12th, 2012 at 3:46 pm
One thing that puzzles me about the left’s attitude to this Fisiani is why would anyone who wants to be healthy, study sick people?
Perhaps they’ve taken an example from the govt’s determination to “improve” the education system by studying things that haven’t worked in other countries?
Vote:February 12th, 2012 at 3:57 pm
And perhaps they haven’t PM. In case you haven’t noticed I’ve diagnosed the problem and the solution above and it has nothing to do with Charter Schools which won’t do a whole lot to change anything at the end of the day and you idiots when you get back in will just eliminate them just like you did with the successful private prison, notwithstanding no-one had an issue with it, except for you guys.
But like I say with my solution, why waste time doing anything else? Nothing else is going to have any impact whatsoever.
Vote:February 12th, 2012 at 4:15 pm
The hysteria from Robin Duff and his kind means that these schools MUST be a good idea.
Vote:February 12th, 2012 at 4:23 pm
not sure why you keep saying “If parents can choose to stay or leave a school, that is the best form of accountability.”
You can choose to stay or leave.
Why do you think we can’t?
[DPF: Have you not heard of zoning?]
Vote:February 12th, 2012 at 4:28 pm
Also, why waste money copying something that has failed overseas from countries that have poorer education results than ours?
Vote:Where is the evidence that this will be better for the students?
February 12th, 2012 at 4:43 pm
Where is the evidence that this will be better for the students?
The present system isn’t working HB. It’s not turning out anything more than extremely mediocre product. This is the central pivot over which the Charter Schools debate oscillates.
Consequently those who don’t support Charter Schools do so on the grounds they see the system works fine as is and what do Charter Schools do but bring unnecessary change to the table and most importantly, these people think, their product will be degraded though the instillation of the dreaded “c” word – competition. Quelle horreur! They think.
The other side have all the evidence they need since they are driven by a negative: anything is better than what we have now, it may not be Charter Schools but let’s see what happens. These people, unlike the other side, don’t see the world as cage combat as Matiria Turei announced and therefore have no fear of having their kids tested and challenged. In fact, they think such is very good, even vital, for their child’s well being and success in life for it teaches confidence in oneself which is the best gift education can provide, provided it doesn’t come with arrogance.
So those are the two sides HB. That’s why it’s happening and if you want to talk about wasting money, why don’t you think about the amount of money we have been wasting, should the other side be correct and your side incorrect?
Vote:February 12th, 2012 at 5:19 pm
First off I will thank bc for correcting an error many people on this board seem to make, comfusing NZEI with the PPTA. The PPTA is not the union battling National Standards. Personally, as a secondary school teacher, I like National Standards and in fact would have no problem with league tables being compiled by the Ministry of Education. The only reason I have an issue with that happening at the moment is that the current set of National Standards are not actually standard. As has been pointed out, they differ from school to school in their application, so they don’t actually allow for comparison. Secondary schools already have a set of national standards to which we can be held accountable. It’s called NCEA and every year Metro magazine and others already do compile league tables from the results. And that too is just fine with me, and I’m, gasp, a PPTA member.
Now this issue I see with charter schools is that they are a solution to some other country’s problem. They’re meant to create competition, to give parents choice, to allow public schools to cater to communities, have parent control, have a special character. Well guess what, our entire public school system already does that! I grew up in the US, where charter schools began. I wish we’d had school choice where I lived. My public high school was so terrible I had no choice but to go to a private Catholic school even though I wasn’t Catholic (religious schools were by far the cheapest private schools). In the US you have zero choice in your school, it is 100% determined by your address. It will always be co-ed, it will always be secular, it will never be run by a parent-elected board of trustees. If you don’t like it, if it is filled with violence and has no discipline, well too bad, you better look for a new house. Charter schools were created to solve that problem. But in NZ, living where I do, I could send my child to a single-sex secular, one of at least 3 co-ed secular, a Maori-language school or a single-sex religious high school all run by a board of trustees, not a central bureaucracy in Wellington, and all are public. So why, exactly, do I need a charter school around too?
The only difference I can see in a charter school is that it can hire untrained teachers and pay them whatever they want. They won’t have ERO oversight and won’t have to follow what is already a very loose curriculum. I don’t see any of those as being positives. It has already been said that charters haven’t worked overseas and our system is superior to the ones we are now copying, but even if that weren’t true it still would make no sense to import something nearly identical to what we already do minus any accountability or training.
As to schools needing to run themselves like businesses, I would point out that principals are not trained in business or finance, or accounting, they are trained to be teachers. The BoT is also not likely to be composed of businessmen and even if it were they wouldn’t have the time to actually run a business with the staff the size a school has in addition to their normal jobs. The principal already has a full plate with his or her current duties. The same issue is at play when people suggest principals determine everyone’s pay rates. They are not in any way qualified to do this. Whatever you may wish, they aren’t businessmen, they’re teachers too. They don’t have time to observe classes and they can’t compare NCEA maths results to geography results and determine who is the better teacher. This year one of my classes absolutely excelled in NCEA, many getting Merit and Excellence. But my other class, taking the same exam, bombed it. I taught the same subject, the same way, one class ate it up, the other did not. How is a principal to read those results?
Vote:February 12th, 2012 at 5:39 pm
[DPF: Have you not heard of zoning?]
Zoning restricts the schools’ ability to choose, not the parents’. All it does to parents is guarantee their kid a place at their local school. Remove zoning and your kid isn’t guaranteed a place in any school at all if they’re thick or troublesome, unless you can hand over shitloads of cash. So far, Nat/ACT haven’t come up with something to get around that problem, so their bleating about zoning amounts to bemoaning the drawbacks of an existing system without having a better one to offer. How about, until you have a better one to offer, you quit the whinging?
The only difference I can see in a charter school is that it can hire untrained teachers and pay them whatever they want.
There is a bigger game involving undermining the public system and the primary teachers’ union – that’s a significant benefit of charter schools from the govt’s pov.
The present system isn’t working HB. It’s not turning out anything more than extremely mediocre product.
Another fine example. “The Wrong” has a bunch of independent studies showing that we actually have a pretty good education system; “the Right” has a firm conviction immune to evidence.
Vote:February 12th, 2012 at 8:21 pm
ha. Of course I have heard of zoning.
Vote:Many students at many schools do not reside in the ‘zone’
Many schools do not need to restrict enrolments to in zone.
Even many of those that do, do it after a while. For example, many of the popular schools in my area you can easily enrol a student at if you do so by November the previous year. As the roll fills the school then closes its roll to out of zone students. There would only be a limited number of schools in the country where they take only in zone enrolments 100% of the time.
February 12th, 2012 at 8:24 pm
Thanks PM.
Vote:+1
February 12th, 2012 at 10:12 pm
Getting into a different school isn’t as easy as you make it sound. Schools will take a few out-of-zone students, but for the most part you are restricted by zoning. I was very lucky to get into my high school despite being out-of-zone. It came down to a ballot. I don’t think children’s futures should come down to luck like that.
Vote:February 12th, 2012 at 10:57 pm
I have lived in four different cities since my first started school. I have never had a problem getting any of my children into the school I wanted them in – majority of the time this has been schools we were not in zone for.
Vote:We are definitely not the only ones who do this. You can tell when you drop your child off to a school friends house – many of my children’s friends are not in zone either.
I guess it is only a problem if the school you are in zone for is no good and all other choices take only in zone kids. Many of the schools my kids have gone to have closed their roll in Nov/Dec/Jan for the coming school year but most people will enrol their kids at a new school well before this and far and away the majority of schools this is not a problem.
There will be schools that are harder to get into as just about everyone in zone wants to go there. And so they should be able to – it is their local! Schools are obviously restricted by the amount of land they have and cannot just keep adding classrooms.
February 13th, 2012 at 7:10 am
The Charter Schools policy promoted by the Banks party does look like a solution looking for a problem.
Do we not already have Integrated schools that do much the same thing except they have to have accountable teaching standards and qualified teachers.
I have no problem with Charter schools being set up, however if they are going to have government funding then they should teach an approved national curriculum, have qualified teaching staff and be accountable for standards through ERO. It would then seem they would be very hard to distinguish from Integrated schools so what is the point.
Vote:February 13th, 2012 at 9:25 am
Why does Coddington still get work after publishing that statistically ignorant piece about asian immigration that unfairly and incorrectly scaremongered about an asian crime wave? If I was a fan of charter schools I’d ask Coddington to stop supporting them so as not to tarnish the idea by association.
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