The treasurey got that wrong. In the USA schools even though entry is by random draw the outcome is that parents with kids who are costly get told that there are no facilities for them at the school. And the kids who turn out to be poor performers get kicked out as soon at their year’s tuition money comes in from the government. It’s not uncommon for their to be a loss of 50% of pupils over 4 years. So parents may get to choose to enrol but the school gets to choose if the child remains.

And in the USA Charter Schools have become highly segregated by race, social class and religion e.g.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-22/segregated-charter-schools-evoke-separate-but-equal-era-in-u-s-education.html
So although there are more schools, the actual choice has decreased if you don’t want to be racially or religiously isolated.

They dont have to be better; they just have to be as good as most and to cost the same.

Your side seems to think that if they don’t out-perform every other public school then the experiment fails.

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What’s the point of putting boatloads of money into new school (because of new facilities etc) when public schools (for the most part) are not at capacity anyway. Unless they are clearly better in some way then it’s a waste of tax payer money.

Economies of scale means having more and more schools with fewer and fewer pupils just doesn’t make sense.

I do think it would have been better to have a solid annual national testing program in place before introducing charter schools, with every parent knowing exactly where their kid stands, e.g. 53rd percentile for reading, 44th for writing and 61st for maths. That way we could tell if the kids that go to these schools really do improve on their previous performance, and avoid accusations of cherry picking.

At least Rufer is upfront about what he’s planning to do, and it appears to be part of some coherent plan to do better than the status quo for some kids.

I remember the principal at Rotorua Boys’ High was preoccupied with rugger to a pretty unhealthy level, surpassed only by the old boys running our “arch enemies” Tauranga Boys and Western Heights who by all accounts were even worse. Apparently whenever the 1st VXs played, the opposing principals would sit in their cars by the sidelines, so that at full time the “loser” could leave before the “winner” could come and rub it in his face.

Rotorua Boys’ once sold off library books en masse, coincidentally the same year as the rugby 1st XV went on tour in South Africa. And the 2 or 3 foreign students each year living all expenses paid in the dorm, so frequently turned out to be amazingly talented rugby players from Tonga or the Cook Islands, that it wasn’t just the pupils commenting on it, but the general public around town in Rotorua also.

So I have absolutely no doubt plenty of sports schools are operating in the public system right now, led by peculiar bent out of shape sports weirdo principals living vicariously through the exploits of their schoolboy sports teams. And if the rest of the kids are lucky there might be some good teachers doing some teaching in the background to make it all seem legit.

I am sure the Right-wing lobby can find someone better to champpion this lost cause – what about Michael Jones? Jones is Right-wing, christain, conservative, from Auckland and Samoan. What more could the ACT party and their cronies want?

Plus, aren’t schools meant for studying the curriculum, not playing soccer?

They dont have to be better; they just have to be as good as most and to cost the same.

Your side seems to think that if they don’t out-perform every other public school then the experiment fails.

Treasury knows fuck all. I don’t have a teaching qualification at all, but I bet that I can outperform most math & physics’ teachers who are formally qualified and have had decades of teaching experience. Teaching qualification means nothing. It is the ability of the teacher to teach kids to understand the subject is more important than a formal qualification.

Now, I want to share a good news with Kiwiblog readers about the result of one of my students that I tutor in maths. Mathkid passed the A-Level CIE (cambridge international exam) in 4 papers (2 pure maths/calculus, 1 statistics, 1 physics) which is the 7th form level or year-13 equivalent. The results came out last week. Mathkid is applying to do extramural study for one stage 1 Calculus paper at Massey while he’s doing his CIE UE (university entrance). A decision is awaiting form Ingrid Day, who is the Assistance Vice Chancellor if Mathkid can be granted a special permission to enroll because the legal age for varsity study is 16 but Mathkid is only 12 this year.

‘Treasury recommends that you support the Ministry of Education’s recommendation 7: agree that all teachers at Partnership Schools/Kura Hourua must be registered’

Notice the words ‘MUST’ and ‘ALL’, which makes it pretty clear how they feel about ACT’s stupid unregistered teacher idea.

And also from the Treasury paper: ‘Education systems with a high degree of competition for students (voucher systems, ‘charter’ schools and no school zoning) do not tend to produce systemically better outcomes in PISA’.

That second bit blasts a big hole through most of the right wing education ideas DPF is so in love with, and remember this is Treasury saying this, not the teachers union or the PPTA or some left wing education Professor.

Rightandleft, dropping class sizes in half isnt viable. It just isnt. You are talking about doubling the staffing cost alone. The discussion is about going from 30 to 35 students.

Charter schools dont have to be better than all state schools to be worthwhile, they just have to be good.

We can’t compare Rufer’s school to local state schools because they can’t have a class size maximum of 15, they don’t have nearly the funding level to allow that. If Rufer’s students succeed it won’t tell us that charter schools work, it will tell us that having classes of 15 or less works and the govt should be ensuring that happens in state schools too.

Also the unions aren’t just fighting to maintain the status quo at all. In fact the PPTA at least have been fighting for TOUGHER teacher quality standards to be introduced, more professional development funded and required and for more innovations in 21st Century teaching methods to be allowed. The govt turned down the teacher quality increases! Maybe because they’ve slashed the professional development budget and tougher quality control costs more money? The govt also failed to even bring up performance pay based on value added data when the teachers negotiated their last contract. Maybe because NCEA results are steadily improving and have been for the last decade?