On Charter Schools
September 28th, 2012 at 9:00 am by David FarrarA reader e-mails:
Had two opportunities to hear KIPP schools founder Mike Feinberg yesterday.
I thought he was positive and balanced and clearly had done significant research on the NZ system and where the Charter/Partnership concept could enhance outcomes. His use of the NZ stats in terms of outcomes for Maori and PI students through to tertiary education makes a compelling case for change. He is not advocating the model for all, nor KIPP as the only Charter model.
It is clear that he has enabled people to achieve incredible things and has experiences that could be highly valued in NZ. He was clear that he believes they still have massive improvements to make.
There was an interesting sideshow in the question time where some of the Partnership opponents (all of them European and one an American) said we already have choice in NZ and this is unnecessary. Feinberg pointed out that the outcome statistics do not support that the level of choice is effective. The argument was then closed by one of Auckland’s Pacifika leaders who stood and announced that their people are sick of being told that they have “choice” when in practice in doesn’t exist and that they are desperate for change and for new opportunities for their children and grandchildren.
Some people see charter schools as opportunities, and some as threats. I am staying with my prediction that parents in low income areas will see them as an opportunity and ballots will be needed to select students as they will be so popular.
Related posts:
- USA Today on charter schools
- Dunne against charter schools
- Salmond on charter schools
- Isaac on charter schools
September 28th, 2012 at 9:12 am
Good parents will grasp the opportunity that charter schools bring while the scum parents will leave their kids to rot away.
Vote:September 28th, 2012 at 9:19 am
I’d love a charter school that teaches Maths, English (including proper writing, spelling and grammar), Science, Mandarin, Spanish, Economics, Accounting and Computer Programming. It would mean longer hours, but I think these would be good core subjects that would set many children up for later in life.
Too much?
Vote:September 28th, 2012 at 9:33 am
Last night’s presentation (in the beautiful Owen Glenn building at Auckland U.) was a wonderful testimony of the power of positive thinking. Others, like perpetual negativist John Minto, are conspicuous for their narrow and quite limiting perspective.
It is a shame the event couldn’t have been more widely publicised. We need balanced examinations such as this rather than the mindless second-hand rhetoric that so often surrounds complicated problems like education and the economy.
Many thanks to the sponsors, The New Zealand Initiative, Aotearoa Foundation, and participating universities Auckland, Victoria, and Canterbury.
Well done.
Vote:September 28th, 2012 at 9:50 am
And my prediction is the lack of any support whatsoever for these schools from educational professionals means that after the Labour/Green coalition takes power they’ll all be wound up before the start of the 2015 school year.
Without cross party support, Charter schools are simply a mad ACToid experiment of no value whatsoever that’ll be done away with as soon as the political supports are kicked out from under them. MMP is like that.
Vote:September 28th, 2012 at 10:04 am
In the face of statements like this …
… fish-boy gives up on argument and goes for raw, crushing political power like any good, little statist thug. Love the sneer at the end: a touch of class.
Vote:September 28th, 2012 at 10:23 am
Charter schools make incredible sense. Just like Rodney Hide, you shouldn’t just hate because they’re coming from ACT.
Vote:September 28th, 2012 at 10:37 am
Home environment has a huge effect in the outcome of students’ achievements in education. A good home environment that encourages & value education/learning is always a benefits to kids’. If charter schools can change the curriculum dramatically from the ones being run at State schools, then that will be a winner (big time). IMO, charter schools won’t lift Maori & PI kids’ performances if they just adopt the same thing as what the state schools are currently doing, because charter schools’ can be more flexible in what they teach compared to State’s schools where the curriculum is fixed. Schools must follow the mandated curriculum.
One such idea of mine is to select a few students (those where their parents are reasonably educated because majority of parents are uneducated) and then accelerated those kids’learning. Those kids’ parents will then nurture that at home (ie, outside of school). Do it at primary school level years because kids’ mind are not fully formed yet (not hardwired). At this stage their minds are very absorptive & receptive to external information. Basically, the reason for doing this is to make them subconsciously value & love education, which is then, it becomes a mechanism for self-drive for them.
We all know that when one is enthusiasts about something, say education then the mechanisms of self-drive sets in (also happens in other areas, be in business, sports, etc,…), then the rest is history. Once the kids are hooked into accelerated learning, then the issue of the effect of the home environment in their learning is pretty much sorted, irrelevant if kids’ home environment do encourage learning or not. It doesn’t matter whether the parents are educated or not. Kids’ will drive themselves in their learning.
The curriculum level from 40 years ago or so in math & physics are pretty much the same today, despite the exponential growth in new technologies & knowledge over that same period. Why not change it to something like, lower the curriculum material for year 10 and teach it at year 9, lower the curriculum level targeted for year 11 and teach it at year 10, all the way up to the top. This is where charter schools can differentiate themselves from state schools. IMO, this will succeed if the seeds are planted earlier on for kids’ to be self-driven (at primary school level). The other option for charter schools is to select only the few top students, then accelerate them if they don’t choose the option to move each curriculum teaching level to a year or two below from their current targeted level, mandated by the state, ie, move down the curriculum material for year 11 and teach it at year 10, teach the year 10 level at year 9, ….
IMO, I don’t see why simultaneous equations can’t be taught at year 9 or earlier. It has always been taught at year 11 level, perhaps since the 1950s . Technology & knowledge have changed hugely over the last 50 years but the curriculum hasn’t changed that much. There’s calculators that can solve simultaneous equations. There is software that can do that do. There is huge number of web pages that students can find on the internet, let alone a number of YouTube videos available on this topic, but the education experts think that simultaneous equations is a topic that can’t be learnt earlier in year 9 or even lower.
I read about KPP and I liked how they do it. They don’t do accelerated learning, but spending more time in class is good IMO. If a charter school can come up with revolutionary ideas (like the 2 points I’ve stated above), then that will be a winner. I think that the current system is an old way of thinking from half a century ago. that needs to be changed. IMO, schools should be focus on core subjects (reading/writing/math/science) plus they should drop teaching time-wasting topics because it takes away kids’ precious leaning time that they could have concentrate learning the cores.
The kids that I coach math this year, I have one year-6 student (age 10) who is preparing to sit 2 pure math papers for CIE (cambridge international exam) at year-12 level (6th form) starting in 3 weeks time. I have another kid who is year-7 (age 11) who’s preparing for the full A-Level CIE math (1 physics, 2 pure maths, 1 statistics) also in 3 weeks time. I also have students age 8, age 9 and age 10, where I’m preparing them for year-11 (5th form) CIE math for next year, 2013. They are well on their way in the curriculum. At this stage, they can solve simultaneous equations. The parents of these kids were only doing math upto 5th form when they were at school. These parents work as labourers, housemaids, cleaners.
So, what I’m trying to say here, is that kids’ can still achieve if they’re exposed to accelerated learning despite coming from home environment where the encouragement of earning is lacking. What I’m trying to get these kids into is the ability to be self-driving in their learning. They have to do it themselves, since they can’t get it from home, because their parents are uneducated.
What I’ve just described above, is something revolutionary that Charter school can explore for possible adoptions, because basically, from what I read about charter schools, is that their curriculum is just the same as the state schools, except a few things that they do differently. As the say goes, Rising tide will lift the whole boat. Kids can learn about history on the internet these days, if it is something that they’re interested in just for general knowledge. They don’t need to study it, except if they want to pursue scholarly study on the subject at University level, then they should study it. Kids’ precious times should be spent concentrating on core subjects (plus school activities/sports). I learn a lot of history just by Google.
Charter schools have good prospects of becoming a success, if they make dramatic changes to the curriculum and the way how they teach it. Forget about poor Maori & PI students coming from home environment that don’t encourage learning. Once the school sets up the kids to be self-driven in their learning (which I believe that charter schools has a good change of achieving), then the kids will excel irrelevant if they come from a home environment where mom & dad are uneducated and work as labourers and cleaners.
Vote:September 28th, 2012 at 10:48 am
Prediction:
Charter schools will have to run ballots to sort out the applicants.
Initially the applicants will be a mixture of those close by (say in south Auckland) and by those out of the area who want better than their local school. The close by ones will not be enough to fill the school – because the lower socio-economic group is full of some pretty stupid people (they wont even take their kids to fully free preschool which is just across the road……) and charter schools will require and DEMAND parental involvment. This will make them successful and popular, but I just cant see the drop-dead parents taking advantage of them. – well thats not until the compulsory enrolment in preschool has its effect.
Vote:September 28th, 2012 at 10:51 am
Fishy…
Vote:You have been reading too much NZEI/Labour propaganda.
The fundamental education problem in NZ (as it is in Chicago which has about the same number of pupils) is the self-perceived power of teacher unions. In Chicago the unioins finmally realised that parents have had a gutsfull of being dictated to by indentured idiiots receiving, on average, $US79,000 pa.- compared to the average Chicago wage of $US50,000.
They (AUSSIE unions) tried it with Gillard.
She put them to the block…. and won hands down
In Victoria, for example, teacher union membership is at an all time low — and they are performing better than before because they are now subject to evaluation …..just like their pupils.
So, Fishy, take of your red spectacles and think about the objective of the $1.5 billion that taxpayers are spending each year on education. It is certainly not as a teacher freebie.
September 28th, 2012 at 11:11 am
Fishboy…
educational professionals
I say fuck them. My previous post above, I asked any education expert here of why the curriculum materials from about 50 years ago (specifically in physics & maths) are almost the same as those of today?
Experts have come up with devastating ideas that sometimes caused harm to the education systems rather than good. If you want to know what I mean here, then see the following 2 youtube videos of how education experts have fucked up the US math education & curriculum over the last decade or so.
#1) Math Education: An Inconvenient Truth
#2) Math Education: A University View
In video #1), that’s exactly what is being taught in our math curriculum at primary school level, ie, doing math number strategy. That’s what I called time-wasting. The standard algorithm is enough so kids can learn something new and advance. Whoever the education experts who have included those time-wasting topics into our primary school math curriculum needs to be told to watch the 2 videos above and they can see how bad is their expert ideas have fucked up students’ math learning in the US.
Vote:September 28th, 2012 at 11:16 am
If you want to read about some of the issues with charter schools then here are some academic publications:
Stanford University study showing only 17% of charter schools are better than their local public school
http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/MULTIPLE_CHOICE_CREDO.pdf
The Civil Rights Project at UCLA talking about the effect of charter schools on the economic and racial segregation of schools.
http://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/mlk-national/e-pluribus…separation-deepening-double-segregation-for-more-students
An American Government report on the lack of access for students with disabilities in charter schools
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/charterschoice/CharterReportGAO.pdf
A University of Texas study on the attrition rates in Kipp Schools using publically available administrative data.
http://ows.edb.utexas.edu/sites/default/files/users/jvh/Heilig%20et%20al%20Charters%20AA_BRE.pdf
In America when failing charter schools ocurr it’s massively expensive to get them closed down and because of the expense (as everything ends up in court) the schools are given massive leighway. And when they do fail, it’s not just the school effected it’s all the kids who got a sub-standard education that have to be assimilated back into the mainstream (because other charter schools don’t want them).
Vote:September 28th, 2012 at 11:18 am
flipper (983) Says:
Fishy…
You have been reading too much NZEI/Labour propaganda. The fundamental education problem in NZ (as it is in Chicago which has about the same number of pupils) is the self-perceived power of teacher unions.
~~
Flipper, you’re echoing Republican Party/Fox News takling points.
In America, the states with the best record of school achievement are states with teacher unions.
Canada, NZ and Finland are all OECD countries with teacher unions and very high PISA rankings.
Vote:September 28th, 2012 at 11:23 am
I wasn’t at school 40 years ago (or earlier for that matter!) but I know in my own field of statistics that there have been huge changes in the curriculum and the method of teaching things since I was at school.
Vote:September 28th, 2012 at 11:30 am
Hey – Fish, mpledger, etc.
So – You think labour are going to go into south Auckland and close down schools that their main supporters and voters just may have taken a liking to.
Charter schools are similar to private schools (and I think it was labour who started the programme of scholarships to private schools for a few lucky low socio-economic pupils) where everyone would like to send their children if they could afford it; and they are almost exaclty the same as integrated schools – and i think all integrated schools have waiting lists. Parents will try anything to get tjier children into integrated schools – even labour MPs ……..
So labour will close these down will they……. and pigs might fly…….
Vote:September 28th, 2012 at 11:43 am
Mpledger, I wasn’t there 40 years ago, but since I’m interested in education, I tried to learn about the curriculum of the past compared to today.
What has changed in Statistics? I do have David Barton series of math textbooks for NZ curriculum, including his statistics textbook but I have found some old editions of his from when they were first published in the in the 80s are almost the same as today. Sure there are some new additions to recent editions but basically not much. Lots of new problems that have been added to each chapter in the Stats book, but the Stats topics in recent edition are almost or basically the same as the topics from the edition from 1980s. Also the Math Study guide textbook of today is basically the same as the editions from the 70s or 80s. Again lots of add on new problems to each chapter, but the topics are basically the same. That’s exactly what I quoted above in my first comment.
I said…
Pretty much the same means that they (curriculum of 40 years ago compared to today) have little differences. I didn’t say that they’re the same, which implies A==B (A equals B), but I meant A is similar to B. Similar and equal are not quite the same thing and you should know that from comparing sets in Statistics. The intersection of set A and set B is almost 100%, which is to say that set B (today’s curriculum) is a super-set of set B (curriculum of 40 years ago).
What methods of teaching (and curriculum topics) that have been changed in Stats in the last 40 years? Do you care to elaborate a bit more?
Vote:September 28th, 2012 at 11:43 am
Good posts Falufula Fisi. I generally agree.
The curriculum might not have changed much over the last 50 years but the standards have certainly been driven down deliberately to meet our OECD quota of “graduates”. The lowering of the standards has also curiously been in unison with a massive campaign to convince the public that academic achievement is the only form of achievement and will lead to more financial success. That never was true and is even less true today as we produce more and more partially qualified people, who then become a political force to be reckoned with, and the government has to create “academic” jobs for them.
It has had a flow on effect too – many of the teachers are so dumbed down they struggle to teach many subject especially maths. The problem is so bed that some primary schools have no teachers capable of teaching maths. Some schools can opt to teach maths for only half a year now.
so the snowball continues and I think you will struggle to find enough well qualified teachers to actually implement your ideas.
Related to the academia is the only true path in life is the dumbing down of practical skills – book learning is cheap, so is embraced by politicians – but practical learning is expensive and is neglected. This flows right up to university. Most one semester science courses have only about 8×3 hr labs now compared to when we went through -24×3 hour labs.
Many practical people, and especially those with practical and academic skills make much more than academics.
Add the problem that anyone with a degree and then becomes an office administrator or a pet homeopathy lecturer think they are academics and the problem is an enormous societal problem which cannot be fixed just by schools.
EOR.
Vote:September 28th, 2012 at 11:52 am
“Whoever the education experts who have included those time-wasting topics into our primary school math curriculum needs to be told to watch the 2 videos above and they can see how bad is their expert ideas have fucked up students’ math learning in the US.”
a) they wouldnt watch em
b) they wouldnt agree with them
they’re not misguided experts they are right on task…. Its been deliberate dumbing down so you and have a controllable mass of party voters. As Minto, Coney and their ilk would say “its always been about the class struggle”.
Vote:September 28th, 2012 at 12:01 pm
barry (949) Says:
Charter schools are similar to private schools. (and I think it was labour who started the programme of scholarships to private schools for a few lucky low socio-economic pupils)
~~~~
Charter schools are not similar to private schools. Middle and upper class parents would never put up with the kind of education that charter schools like KIPP (aka kids in prison program) give to their pupils.
The scholarships to private schools are a have in NZ. In a survey of parents who sent their kids to private school through the scholarship something like 30% of the kids would have gone to the private school anyway.
Vote:September 28th, 2012 at 12:07 pm
When I did stats at college it was very theoretical and about looking up tables for normal or t distribution quantiles. We only did it as a half of 7th form maths course not down into the 5th form like today. We didn;t look at linear regression and we didn’t explore data with excel like they did in a college course I was invited into one day.
And I was under the impression that they were ditching all hypothesis testing by comparing to distributions in favour of resampling methods. But i might be ahead of the game on that one and it’s not got into the system yet.
There is certainly more access to data and looking at data. Something we didn’t have the access to or capability to analyse by computer in my day (although we were on the cusp).
Vote:September 28th, 2012 at 12:07 pm
***they are desperate for change and for new opportunities for their children and grandchildren.***
No amount of change is going to compensate for a lack of motivation or cognitive ability. Education Realist
writes:
“IF you take low ability kids (of any race or income) and IF you select for motivation in the parents, at least, and IF you remove the misbehaving or otherwise highly dysfunctional kids who don’t share their parents’ motivation, and IF you enforce strict behavioral indoctrination in middle class mores and IF you give them hundreds of hours more education a year and IF they are in middle school and IF they are simply being asked to catch up with the material that middle to high ability kids learned fairly effortlessly—that is, elementary reading and math skills…..
…then they will have a slightly better test scores than similarly motivated low ability kids stuck in classes with the misbehavers and highly dysfunctional kids and fewer hours of seat time and less behavioral indoctrination into middle class mores, but their underlying abilities will still be weak and just as far behind their higher ability peers as they were before KIPP.”
Vote:September 28th, 2012 at 1:05 pm
In case anybody (especially the Minto’s of this world and all his quieter minions) have any doubt about which way the tide is running for teachers unions and charter schools, note that a major movie is about to be released. Won’t Back Down:
There have been protests against the film of course. I must admit to being very surprised that Hollywood, whose population is vastly supportive of the Democrat Party and any number of fashionable left-wing causes (yeah, yeah, they’re not real left-wingers), have produced this movie, with two prominent stars in Holly Hunter and Maggie Gyllenhaal. But as I said, it shows which way things are moving that even the Democrat Party, with teacher unions at their core, are not defending the likes of Chicago’s Public School system.
Wonder how many “Pasifika” parents in NZ will be inspired by Viola Davis’s character.
Vote:September 28th, 2012 at 1:19 pm
Bob R…
a lack of motivation or cognitive ability
That’s certainly true. But a turnaround is possible and can be done earlier on in a child’s education life. As I suggested in my earlier post above. Do this guidance when they’re still at primary school age. One of my student is this kid here (one in the middle), who comes from an environment where motivation for education is lacking. The cognitive ability of people in his house is also missing. However, when his parents first brought him to me at the beginning of the year, the kid himself had shown a sign of drive or concentration to me, on whatever he does, be it at school, playing with his toys at home or church, etc… (despite his environment where encouragement for education is lacking).
Now that kid’s self-drive for learning has increased 100 folds under my accelerated math learning & encouragement. See, I give him something to concentrate on & get him busy on it, more like offering/giving him a gift (perhaps he may look at it as a hobby to him) in which is something that could have not come from his home environment. Now, his parents have told me in recent weeks that he spend most of his time plowing thru the math textbooks of 3rd, 4th & 5th form on his own. He uses the Math Study Guide textbooks for NZ math curriculum. The problems that he got stuck on, he asks his parents or other older siblings for help and if they couldn’t help him (illiteracy is high in that house), then he brings those problems to me, in the next math session. The kid now spends his sundays doing math, rather than going to church. Well, its good for him. I have changed that kid’s perception of learning and his drive for it.
To me, its easy to change kids’ views at that young age, because if they don’t flip their views early on to be different from the views of their home environment, it would be much harder to change when they get to middle school, let alone high school and beyond.
This is why I believe that charter schools should changed the way they run their curriculum & teaching for young kids, because the turning point is decided right there at those age, since kids mind are absorptive & receptive to external ideas. They can manipulated and reinforced that what they do is special. They will feed on this initial seed and grow themselves from then on. We humans are not born with cognitive disability. That is a result of neglecting or not valuing education at home, however it is something can be changed and a charter school in South Auckland may be able to do that.
I have some reservations that if Charter schools are basically running the same thing as state schools and not different, I have no clue whether it will succeed or not. They have to basically do something completely new, otherwise I’ll have less confident if it will be a success.
Vote:September 28th, 2012 at 1:24 pm
Another valuable perspective is that of Karran Harper Royal:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/education/news/article.cfm?c_id=35&objectid=10836302
She is the parent from Louisiana who has become a vocal critic of charter schools and the huge negative effects they have had in New Orleans. Is Christchurch being softened up for the same style of social engineering that New Orleans was subjected to??
The KIPP stats may, or may not, be believable. I attended the Wellington meeting on Tuesday. Feinberg is a polished, smooth orator and obviously made a favourable impression with the ACT disciples in Auckland.
But the real policy question remains: does the idea of “Choice” ultimately lead to better system-wide student achievement? If you believe that it does, then why has America’s overall performance not improved at all, after 20+ years of Charter schools? Or, does “Choice” just mean that the brighter and/or more motivated and supported students just shift schools and change the impression of where their higher level of performance ultimately emerges?
Vote:September 28th, 2012 at 1:27 pm
I have no idea why teachers would be against charter schools; anything that provides a bit of choice when it comes to searching for a teaching job should be celebrated.
Vote:September 28th, 2012 at 1:42 pm
mpledger said…
When I did stats at college it was very theoretical and about looking up tables for normal or t distribution quantiles.
That’s what it should be, first & foremost. It is core & primary to learning. The learner (student), must understand the fundamental of the topic, ie, the theory. Application of it (ie, secondary) is just a follow on from the theory. So, it is the same theory from 40 years ago, but the only difference this time is we have more data today to apply the theory on. This means that the theory has not changed much.
The level 1 NCEA Stats or year-13 level (7th form level) is encouraging Stats students to basically use & rely on calculators heavily without fully understanding the theory. This is dangerous, exactly as what the Atmospheric Science professor is talking about in the video I linked to above (Math Education: A University View). I know this because the 11 year old kid who is sitting the 4 A-Level CIE papers (2 pure maths, 1 physics, 1 stats) in 3 weeks time has also been doing the NCEA Stats year-13 level at his school. The calculators allowed or being used for that Stats class, is full of symbolic & numeric calculations and the students are encouraged to learn how to key in the buttons for certain Stats calculations. I’ll give an Example below:
The binomial or normal distribution are found in those calculators and students are taught which buttons to press & enter numbers if they want to calculate the regression coefficients, binomial or normal probability distributions, and majority of them have no clue of how to calculate them by hand, which comes from theory, first & foremost. The calculators allowed in NCEA, is banned in CIE. The CIE curriculum encourages students to try and learn/understand the fundamental theory first and that’s the reason, that the CIE year-12 & year-13 math exam still use the normal probability distribution table made available in the formula sheet given in the exam because it encourages them to learn to understand rather than just learning how to punch numbers into a calculator and the answer pops up,without the student knowing how the hell the answer was calculated.
Vote:September 28th, 2012 at 1:56 pm
Colville (297) Says:
September 28th, 2012 at 9:12 am
Good parents will grasp the opportunity that charter schools bring while the scum parents will leave their kids to rot away.
So the 99.9% of parents who elect not to send their children to Charter Schools are scum parents? Your a genius!
Vote:September 28th, 2012 at 2:21 pm
Charter schools are simply an unnecessary distraction for an Education Minister and her ministry who struggle with the current set of issues they are working to address.
Vote:September 28th, 2012 at 3:42 pm
“It is clear that he has enabled people to achieve incredible things and has experiences that could be highly valued in NZ. He was clear that he believes they still have massive improvements to make.”
I wonder if there are any “ordinary” teachers in our “ordinary” schools who have enabled people to achieve incredible things that could be highly valued in NZ? And yet believe there are improvements to be made.
Vote:September 28th, 2012 at 10:31 pm
I was at the KIPP presentation last night in Auckland and had the chance to ask Mike Feinberg a question about the use of unregistered teachers in charter schools. He didn’t really answer the question aside from repeating an anecdote that doesn’t relate to the NZ system. I was the American described by the reader above, though I identified myself as an American-New Zealander. Unlike the presenter I have years of experience with both systems and they are very different. Weinberg had the stats but he didn’t really understand our system, how could he after only a few days in the country?
The man who spoke about lack of choice for Pasifika in South Auckland was directly contradicted by the next speaker who talked about the many South Auckland students who bus out of the area for school every day. In front of the school I teach at there is also a bus stop and every morning I see students in three or four other school uniforms waiting there to attend schools in other zones. In the US this could not happen at all, parents have absolutely zero choice. Now you can argue about having even more choice in NZ, but don’t say there is no choice, don’t compare it to the American system.
I think Weinberg was a very good speaker and was well prepared for most of the bad stats thrown at him. He did a much, much better job than Catherine Isaac at previous public meetings. Nevertheless his lack of experience in our system undermines his argument. KIPP is great at raising achievement on US standardised testing. He hasn’t acknowledged that in NZ we really do have a much broader curriculum than US states and we don’t use the same assessment methods. He also couldn’t explain away KIPP’s atrocious drop-out and expulsion rates.
Vote:September 28th, 2012 at 11:15 pm
Sorry but Rightandleft was handing out pamplets at the start of the evening with Minto and the other QPECs – end of credibility. The bus stop anecdote is absolutely weak in the face of the comments of the Pacifika leader (who is a man of genuine mana) and the support the leader received from a former board chair of two South Auckland schools. The “next speaker” who “contradicted” these two was John Minto with another bus stop anecdote – how funny is that. The message remained clear – poor kids have stuff all choice and these people (Rightandleft and his old friend John) want to continue to deny them that – to what end? Weinberg was all round outstanding. Time for kids that need it to get something other than the once size fits all.
Vote:September 29th, 2012 at 12:01 am
“The film is based on “parent trigger” laws— one of which passed in California in 2010— that allow parents to band together to choose new governance for a failing public school.”
Great. Let’s put the lunatics in charge of the asylum.
Vote:September 29th, 2012 at 9:31 am
Via a link to article that contains no arguments or reasoning from the woman herself, just flat-out assertions. I admit that I expected nothing more from the NZ Stenographer.
However, since the matter has been raised it seems appropriate to supply a couple of articles that have a more in-depth analysis of the New Orleans school situation. As an aside, given how utterly incompetent the municipal authorities were in running their police force, emergency services, and general city administration, it would hard to believe that their public school system would be a shining star. Calling the place “The Big Easy” was not just a reference to it’s laid-back approach to having fun.
First up is this piece in the Washington Post, and I’ll put the second into a separate comment:
It’s also a great example of how an organisation directly controlled by government and joined at the hip with a union, is almost impossible to reform. In this case it took a hurricane to force the change, simply by wiping out the old system. Evolution at work perhaps:
Are these figures a lie? One would not know from the link to Harper. Clearly something has changed and it’s working better than the old school system, and not just for the kids:
I’ll bet. And of course there’s the question of poverty:
The article also makes the point that, while the fights rage about charter schools ….
Interesting, but it would seem that charter schools were the key to making this happen. The article quotes two people who’d been involved with the previous school system: a business woman named Leslie Jacobs, and Neerav Kingsland chief strategy officer of New Schools for New Orleans, an undergraduate at local Tulane Universirty who entered education reform through a (failed, he admits) stint mentoring impoverished students. They both say much the same thing about making change happen:
Vote:September 29th, 2012 at 9:45 am
The second article is from the Christian Science Monitor (regarded by left and right alike as a serious media source for decades). After Katrina. It backs up the WaPo stats demonstrating a dramatic improvement in children’s academic success:
The article does state that With so many changes, it’s difficult to pinpoint the cause of such gains, and they go on to identify a couple, one of which is money:
The article does not compare the current and former levels of funding, but it should be noted that the extended days or school years only became possible when:
Which is precisely not what has happened recently in my old home town of Chicago, which means any extra funding is simply going to vanish like water into sand.
But another big factor is that school accountability has changed, in that it’s no longer based simply on the assessment of education bureaucrats but because parents now can choose any school in the district. That’s real choice, in the sense that it’s empowered with money following the student.
Vote:September 29th, 2012 at 9:47 am
Remember that comment people. It’s what lefties like Tom Jackson and their ilk really think of you as they swear in public that what’s most important to them are your children’s education.
Vote:September 29th, 2012 at 12:14 pm
Anodos,
I wasn’t handing out pamphlets ‘with’ John Minto, I was handing out PPTA pamphlets and he was there with QPEC, a different organisation. I’ve seen him speak a couple times before but that was the first time I ever actually met him in person. In fact I strongly disagree with him on quite a few issues, especially his extreme anti-Israel protests. I’m not a fan of professional protesters who take up every left wing cause. That being said I was impressed by how well Minto knew his stats and research on KIPP, he sure gave Weinberg a challenge.
The single Pasifika speaker who agreed with charter schools doesn’t represent the whole Pasifika community’s views. At the charter school meeting in Otahuhu a few months ago several Pasifika members of the community, not teachers but parents, got up and spoke strongly against charter schools because they felt their kids were being signed up to be experimented on by a party they didn’t vote for, ACT.
The main point I was trying to make at the meeting was that NZ already has charter schools. Parents have a choice of single-sex, co-ed, Catholic, Protestant or other ‘special character’ schools to send their kids to. Every school has a charter with specific goals set by elected members of the community. They use a curriculum that is intentionally broad so that schools can shape it to meet the needs of their school community. We don’t use multiple-choice standardised tests assessing content knowledge, we let schools choose from different assessment methods, NCEA, Cambridge, IB. If you rolled out this system in the US it would be correctly called charter schools.
So what is being offered now is not more parental choice. In fact it is removing community control by handing over accountability to private groups including corporations. I think it’s main goal is simply to introduce bulk funding and remove the teachers’ unions and their contracts from schools. Those are political goals that really have nothing to do with parental choice.
Vote:September 29th, 2012 at 12:20 pm
Oh and one more thing Anodos. Since I lost all credibility by handing out pamphlets at the door and being seen with John Minto, did Mike Weinberg also lose all credibility since his whole visit was paid for by a right-wing think tank and he entered and left with Catherine Isaac of the ACT Party?
Given the small turn-out and the questions asked it was clear everyone in that meeting arrived with an agenda. That doesn’t mean our reseach and facts are lies. There is still plenty of debate raging of KIPP in the US despite their supposed success.
Vote:September 29th, 2012 at 3:30 pm
Rightandleft…
unregistered teachers in charter schools
I’m not a registered teacher, but I believe that I can teach much better (maths/physics) than most registered teachers with many years of teaching experience. It is the ability & the knowing of the teacher in how to communicate a topic (often difficult ones) to a student where the student can grasp it with less hassle, is what counts rather than the registration of the teacher. There is nothing wrong with unregistered teachers. If they can show that they can do the job, then they should be allowed to teach.
Vote: