Choice as a Motivator
An article in the New York Times reports that choice in education can motivate students. The article is about eighth-graders choosing books to read in a public-school English class — a micro-level choice as compared with the selection of schools or classrooms, which usually have the spotlight in the debate over educational choice.
Some teachers find that allowing students to choose their own books inspires them to read more and to work harder. If a choice critic saw one of those students avidly reading, he might say, “That student would have excelled at reading any book.” That’s the accusation I often hear when I mention students who are doing well in the schools their families chose for them: “The child would have worked hard in any school.” And it’s hard to dispute this claim, because you can’t observe the same child in a hypothetical different situation to compare. When it comes to choosing books, though, you can make a comparison — a teacher can assign a book to an entire class and also give students the freedom to select books on their own.
Choice in literature programs is not directly analogous to choice between schools, so the success of one doesn’t imply that the other is always best. But it does suggest that, in some cases, people thrive under conditions of choice precisely because they get to choose.
Err Sarah, People also make bad choices, too, such as placing their students into a failing or mediocre charter school at the prompting of the type of logic that you follow.
As a matter of fact, most charter schools are either mediocre or failing – - – or haven’t you been in touch with the news? Perhaps you were just a bit too overwhelmed with your philosophically induced conclusions about choice.
Comment by Joe Gnatek — September 6, 2009 @ 7:00 a.m.
Hi, Joe!
It’s nice to see you haven’t changed your habit of making assertions when the facts aren’t actually on your side.
There are three categories of scientifically based school reform research, “gold standard,” “silver standard,” and “bronze standard,” each of which are able to control for different sets of variables. The “gold standard” studies have the greatest degree of variable control, and the National Bureau of Economic Research was able to compare students selected by random lottery, so the analysis controlled for variables like student motivation. In other words, its methodology is regarded as the most stringent and respected within academia.
The results?
“We are able to compute effects in which we have a high degree of statistical confidence for the New York State tests that are administered in grades three through eight. For these tests, we find that the average effect of the charter schools on math is 0.09 standard deviations for every year that a student spends in his or her charter school. The average effect on reading is 0.04 standard deviations for every year that a student spends in his or her charter school. The math effect translates into about 3.8 scale score points and about 12 percent of a performance level (the exact translation depends on the grade). The reading effect translates into about 1.6 scale score points and about 3.5 percent of a performance level (the exact translation depends on the grade). … Keep in mind that the effects described are in addition to whatever gains students would have been expected to make in the traditional public schools, had they been lotteried-out.”
If you want to claim that charters in general are statistically less successful than public schools, you need to present a study that meets this academic “gold standard” methodology. I don’t believe that such a study exists, but if you know of one, please provide a citation.
Comment by Eric D. Dixon — September 6, 2009 @ 1:55 p.m.
Sarah, There are many times the number of studies that show the opposite, and you know that. Don’t you in the least feel a bit guilty about not speaking the truth? The facts are clearly ‘out’ that charter schools are mostly a flop. You can talk whatever ‘mumbo jumbo’ about standards of studies all you want, but good old common sense and facts about charter schools remain the same. And worst of all, you play games by showing a single study that proves only that if you conduct enough studies, you are bound to find one that barely supports your point of view. I notice that this is the only study you quote.
Anyway, you are not to be believed. You are nothing but paid to write the garbage you spew. I’m just glad I can expose you for the paid propagandist you are.
Comment by Joe Gnatek — September 6, 2009 @ 10:26 p.m.
oops, meant to address that to Eric Dixon, not Sarah.
Comment by Joe Gnatek — September 6, 2009 @ 10:27 p.m.
Public schools equal or better in math than private or charter schools
Contrary to common wisdom, public schools score higher in math than private ones, when differences in student backgrounds are taken into account. That was the conclusion of researchers Sarah and Christopher Lubienski in a study last year of data from the 2000 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
Now they’re back with similar and more-extensive results in a follow-up study of the 2003 assessment, drawing from a much larger national data sample of 13,577 schools and 343,000 students.
The results, the researchers said, raise further questions about the assumed academic benefits of private, as well as charter, schools. The results also raise doubts about how effectively parental choice can influence school quality.
“The presumed panacea of private-style organizational models — the private-school advantage — is not supported by this (NAEP’s) comprehensive dataset on mathematics achievement,” the Lubienskis, education professors at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, wrote in a summary of their recent study.
A paper on the study was posted Jan. 23 on the Web site of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education (NCSPE) (http://www.ncspe.org), based at Columbia University. The study was funded through a $100,000 grant from the Institute of Education Sciences in the U.S. Department of Education.
“More and more states are looking at voucher programs, or trying to organize public schools on a private-school model, and this study brings up serious questions about that approach,” Chris Lubienski said. “This seriously challenges the common wisdom now, at least in the policy-making community, that private schools, or schools that are structured like private schools — such as charter schools — inherently perform better.”
The researchers looked at achievement and survey data from NAEP’s 2003 national sample of 190,000 fourth-graders in 7,485 schools and 153,000 eighth-graders in 6,092 schools. The schools in the sample were categorized by NAEP as public (non-charter), charter and private, with the private schools broken down further by Catholic, Lutheran, conservative Christian and “other private.”
NAEP is considered the only nationally representative ongoing assessment of U.S. academic achievement, and is often referred to as the “gold standard” of school performance data.
Comment by Joe Gnatek — September 6, 2009 @ 10:51 p.m.
That study’s methodology has been refuted, Joe:
Comment by Eric D. Dixon — September 6, 2009 @ 11:10 p.m.
Incidentally, it’s nice that you’re actually citing research these days instead of just flinging unfounded insults left and right, but you’ll still have to look harder to cite something more credible.
Comment by Eric D. Dixon — September 6, 2009 @ 11:21 p.m.
You are full of not only trickery and deception, but also just generally full of it, Eric Dixon. I have never insulted anyone. I have simply told the truth. . . that you are a paid propagandist. and not to be trusted with your manipulations of data and the facts. Just because you have a well-financed, well-oiled machine of propaganda (and the ability to have results disputed by supposedley well-regarded researchers) does not mean that you are correct or on anything close to scientifically based in your research. Results are disputed by some researchers who refuse to account for all of the conditions posed in an educational environment all of the time- and you are well aware of this fact. True analysis is obtained through a variety of scientific means and studies. Please, spin your lies here all you want, after all, you are paid for it.
Comment by Joe Gnatek — September 11, 2009 @ 9:56 p.m.
And Eric,
I don’t believe that you were legitimate to use the email address that I was told would be kept confidential to release information about me personally. You, Eric Dixon, did this back in May and it was wrong. You and your organization lost whatever shred of decency you claim to maintain below your greasy exterior on that day.
Then to call me insulting because I reveal what is common knowledge about your organiztion. Please!
Comment by Joe Gnatek — September 11, 2009 @ 10:25 p.m.
Joe, your claims that we use trickery and deception are not only false — you know they’re false. You have yet to demonstrate an error in our research, and that’s because you can’t. There are no errors or deception to be found in our work. If somehow an error inadvertently crept into our research and you found it, you’d not only be providing a public service, we’d thank you profusely ourselves, because we pride ourselves on our accuracy and attention to detail.
The reason the study you posted isn’t enough to demonstrate your point is because its methodology is unsound. Digging up a study that says what you want it to say isn’t enough in academic circles, it also has to use the strictest methodological standards — by looking at randomized samples and comparing apples to apples.
That’s one reason I keep citing the study by National Bureau of Economic Research. Not only because it uses “gold standard” academic methodology, as compared to the weaker “silver standard” methodology in the study you posted, but because it was conducted by the federal government — hardly an organization that you can claim to be biased in favor of privatization.
But it’s not necessary to rely only on that study — there are a couple of other studies that also use “gold standard” methodology in examining student achievement in charter schools. The first of these is “The Impact of Charter Schools on Student Achievement,” by Caroline Hoxby and Jonah Rockoff, which studied lotteried charter students in Chicago. It concluded:
The second of the other gold standard studies is “Informing the Debate: Comparing Boston’s Charter, Pilot, and Traditional Schools,” by Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Josh Angrist, Sarah Cohodes, et al. It concluded:
In short, the studies that use the strictest level of academic methodology show what we’ve been saying all along: Charter schools are certainly a mixed bag — some perform remarkably better than public schools, and some perform markedly worse — but, on balance, charters considered in general perform slightly better than public schools. Results also depend on the amount of time students spend in charters — although some show a decline in performance after first switching away from public schools, most of those students see performance gains that significantly outpace their public school counterparts as the years pass.
One of the most important observations, though, is that public schools also improve when they face competition from charters. Although people can certainly make bad choices, the ability to choose is much better than being restricted to a single public schooling option that’s too often failing miserably — especially in inner cities. The ability to choose the venue of education for one’s own children should be sacrosanct, regardless of whether you or I think parents are making the right decision for their children. It’s not my or your decision to make for them — the choice rightfully belongs to parents.
And, Joe, I never revealed anything about your email address. You posted under your own name, and it was easy enough to find out your position as an SLPS English teacher by looking you up on Google.
You assume and accuse without knowing the facts, and you do this consistently with every topic you address. If this is an example of the kind of scholarship the students in Saint Louis public schools are being subjected to, it’s no wonder SLPS lost its accreditation.
Comment by Eric D. Dixon — September 12, 2009 @ 4:04 a.m.
Joe,
Welcome back! Personally, I count it as a blessing. If you go to http://www.google.com and do a simple, cursory search on your name (that would be “Joe Gnatek”), you will quickly discover the extent of information about you on the Interwebs. At the top of that search result should be the discussions we’ve had here.
I welcome you, Joe Gnatek, to the year 2009. May you live it in good health and perhaps glean a bit more technological awareness.
And, Joe…really, didn’t we have the discussion about the word “propagandist” before? Isn’t time to start moving beyond the first semester of Political Science 101?
Here’s the thing that absolutely blows my mind (and, you’ll forgive me, of course, for falling back on a quasi ad hominem attack as, it seems, that’s the only type of rhetoric you recognize): You’re a high school English teacher. You’re the person that parents entrust with their precious children’s education. If your conduct here is any indication of how you perform that role, you have utterly failed, sir.
And that, Joe Gnatek, is why your continued visits here are a blessing. You see, when people who are a bit more nuanced at the Interwebs than yourself use “the Google” to check out the quality of some St. Louis area public school teachers, hopefully they’ll run across all these little snippets of wisdom of yours and start either running frantically out of the city or start demanding more charter/private schools in their community.
I can’t think of a better argument FOR charter schools than you, Joe Gnatek. You are to be congratulated. Huzzah!
-Justin
Comment by Justin M. Stoddard — September 13, 2009 @ 4:03 a.m.
Eric, If I was wrong, I will admit it. I appreciate the clarification regarding where and how you dug up the information, if, in fact, it is true. I believe the problem is that I’ll never really know the truth when I am dealing with a man who gets paid to distort.
Political Science 101 is something you haven’t even taken, evidently, Justin. You are such a sad case, really. I have simply stated my opinion on a blog. My opinion is backed by what a large portion of persons in this nation consider to be the facts regarding this organization, while yours has always been laced with nothing of substance and purely personal insults.
Fact # 1 Many persons in this country realize the tragedy involved in groups that attempt to suppress or manipulate popular opinion through conducting studies that have a desired outcome for a particuliar idealogy.
Fact # 2 Any interpretaion of the word propaganda other than what Merriam-Webster and many other leading dictionaries reveal holds little interest in any serious conversation about word meaning.
Justin, I don’t get involved in this type of discourse as a teacher with my students. Your equation of my job performance to my discussion of what I (and many others) believe to be the facts, as well as your inability to master the use of a dictionary, simply demonstrate your immature mentality. I find your comments to be an insult that goes beyond the pale.
Comment by Joe Gnatek — September 13, 2009 @ 5:33 p.m.
There you go again, flinging false accusations without providing a shred of support for what you say. No, Joe, I’m not “paid to distort” — nobody could pay me enough to do that. I take my journalistic integrity very seriously, and your complete and utter lack of knowledge about me, my scruples, or the integrity of the organization for which I work, clearly shows through every uninformed sentence you spew here.
Facts aren’t a matter of what you or your friends arbitrarily decide to think or believe — facts have to be demonstrated through hard data and analysis. That’s what we do every day at the Show-Me Institute, all the heavy lifting of sifting through the effects of public policy, bringing truth and clarity to issues that government officials try to obfuscate, so that the people of Missouri have a better idea how their tax dollars are being spent and exactly how their freedoms are being abridged.
Again, I ask you: Where is your evidence? If you’re so sure we distort data, you should easily be able to find an example. Any single, tiny little example. Go ahead.
Once again, you’ll ignore this request because you can’t demonstrate any such thing. You can’t point out a distortion where none exist. Instead, you’ll be content to toss out another rehash of your standard litany of fabricated insults, without providing a shred of evidence to back them up.
Comment by Eric D. Dixon — September 13, 2009 @ 5:55 p.m.
Additionally, Eric, however you may have arrived at the fact that I work for SLPS, you still are guilty of drawing a conclusion that could very well have been wrong – and you know it. Researching the name in Google, if that is what you did, would simply reveal that a “joe Gnatek” works for SLPS, which may or may not be the same “Joe Gnatek” commenting in this blog. So you were absolutely wrong either way, and if you want people to respect you at all (or believe the bogus message you deliver) now might be the time to do some atoning.
You know, though, Eric, the creepiest part of it all is that you used that conservative tactic that our nation rejected BIGTIME in the last election, trying to somehow diminish the competing message through straightout deceptions that draws conclusions based on faulty or incomplete data. I mean really. Is that much better than your cohort, Justin, has conducted himself?
Comment by Joe Gnatek — September 13, 2009 @ 6:01 p.m.
I do hope you’ll show this COMPLETE discourse to all the good unbiased folks at Show-me. Touche
Comment by Joe Gnatek — September 13, 2009 @ 6:15 p.m.
First of all, I’m pretty far from being a “conservative,” Joe. Know your terminology.
You published under your own name on this blog, and I looked you up. There’s nothing deceptive or underhanded about that. If I was wrong about your occupation, you could have said so — but you immediately confirmed that you are, in fact, a public school teacher with SLPS. You’re the one who let that cat out of the bag.
“diminish the competing message through straightout deceptions that draws conclusions based on faulty or incomplete data.”
Where? Please, I beg you, demonstrate a single instance of where we have done this. Any instance at all. One single instance. I’m waiting.
Oh, right, we’ve been through this dozens of times already. You can’t demonstrate any such thing, because the Show-Me Institute publishes only research of the highest caliber and accuracy.
Comment by Eric D. Dixon — September 13, 2009 @ 6:19 p.m.
You and I and anyone who reads the comments knows that what you wrote was wrong. Furthermore, since you were at least wrong to draw the conclusion without being absolutely certain, I believe we need to ask ourselves a very important question? Which was it, that Eric Dixon made a ridiculous mistake he should unconditionally retract, or that you lied? I believe that anyone who reads what you have written will seriously question your motives for what you like to downplay as something that “I could have let you know”. Boy, talk about refusing to accept responsibility. You clearly ‘revealed’ through deception or bogus logic who I was in an attempt to belittle what I had to say. If you represent this organization’s philosophy with those remarks, it is no wonder people have the opinion that what “Show-me Institute” does is wrong.
Either way, you look like a fool or a liar now . . . or both. Take your pick.
Comment by Joe Gnatek — September 13, 2009 @ 6:43 p.m.
Once again, you’re entirely wrong, Joe. The “Email” field on our comment boards specifies that your email “will not be published.” And, guess what? Your email has not been published. You revealed your own identity by posting under your own name. I guessed at your occupation through publicly available information on the Internet, and you immediately confirmed your occupation.
There’s nothing wrong with any of this. If you don’t want people looking you up, don’t post under your own name and subsequently talk in great detail about your own job experience.
The reason it matters that you’re a public school teacher is that it helps demonstrate that your falsehoods and groundless accusations here are motivated by institutional bias. You rail against choice in schools because people might choose schools other than the ones you have a vested interest in.
But the people — and, most importantly, the parents — of Saint Louis want to choose their children’s educations. Your attempts to hold them captive through defamation and bluster won’t work.
Comment by Eric D. Dixon — September 13, 2009 @ 6:59 p.m.
Once again, you try to twist and wriggle from your fate. So which was it then? Were you lieing when you claimed to obtain my identity from google. I mean that seems to be what you are telling me with your switch in argument that it was ok to reveal my employment since your group only promised my email wouldn’t be published. In your initial argument, you did clearly state, after all, that:
“I never revealed anything about your email address. You posted under your own name, and it was easy enough to find out your position as an SLPS English teacher by looking you up on Google.”
I can’t believe you are only a liar. Obviously, you are also a fool; a fool who twists and turns the lies out as if they are a dime a dozen when you are busted.
I do hope you’ll share your ridiculous formulations with someone who reads your organization’s “research conclusions.” Perhaps they will also get a good chuckle. Perhaps your boss? On the other hand, perhaps not if you value your job. I don’t think you are that much a fool; primarily you are just a liar. . . and a bad one.
Comment by Joe Gnatek — September 13, 2009 @ 8:04 p.m.
Joe, you’re not making any sense. I never changed my argument.
Here’s your initial claim: “I don’t believe that you were legitimate to use the email address that I was told would be kept confidential to release information about me personally.”
This claim of yours is groundless. It’s false. I didn’t use your email address. I didn’t reveal your email address. I confronted you about your occupation after discovering it via public information on the Internet. You immediately confirmed your occupation.
This is also illustrative of your shady debate tactics. Unable to back up your insults and accusations with actual facts, you retreat to grasping at straws and weaving a paranoid fantasy.
Comment by Eric D. Dixon — September 13, 2009 @ 8:21 p.m.
You didn’t confront me at all. You asserted that I was someone that you had no conclusive proof (or you were lieing and used the information that was readily available to you).
Using your own ’scientific’ conclusions, you should realize that behavior was wrong. Of course, being in your line of work, you have trouble identifying the truth.
You both disgust me and at the same time satisfy my desire to show you for what you are with your useless wriggling around the truth. For shame. But then again, you obviously have none. After all, when was the last time you or your organization relied on honesty, integrity, or decency for a motive in your work.
Comment by Joe Gnatek — September 13, 2009 @ 8:38 p.m.
You’re making things up again, as per usual. Here’s how I confronted you:
You immediately followed that with a confirmation of your occupation. You published under your own name on this blog, and I looked you up. There’s nothing deceptive or underhanded about that. If I was wrong about your occupation, you could have said so — but you immediately confirmed that you are, in fact, a public school teacher with SLPS. You’re the one who let that cat out of the bag.
Now, do you have any actual data to demonstrate that the lies you constantly spew here have merit? Can you demonstrate a flaw in our research? An error in our published work?
Of course you can’t. As always. I await your next round of insults and bloviating.
Comment by Eric D. Dixon — September 13, 2009 @ 8:48 p.m.
Joe,
An insult…that goes beyond the pale? Hyperbolic much?
Joe, my friend, you’ve reduced this whole discussion to a second grade school-yard taunt. You throw out phrases you don’t understand and when you’re called on it, you do the virtual equivalent of plugging your ears and yelling “LA LA LA LA LA”. When you’re done with that, you throw out more phrases beyond your comprehension.
Here’s a simple tip for you, Joe. If you don’t want people to know who you are, don’t post under your real name. It took me less than 30 seconds to find out who you were using Google (independent of whatever Eric wrote). Casting aspersions on others for something that is your own fault is dishonest obfuscation. Shame on you.
I really puzzle over you, Joe. It’s hard for me to believe that anyone can be as blatantly stupid as you seem. I attempt to correct this observation by implementing a coping mechanism (Psychology 101). In this case, let’s use the mechanism of Rationalization.
Plus, this allows me to use the same tactic on you that you’ve been using from the beginning. I have no proof, mind you, I’m just throwing out half-guesses and innuendo.
You, Joe Gnatek, are a slimy troll. You’re a tool of the St. Louis Teacher’s Union. You and your well oiled propaganda machine must be brought to the light. The public must know about what kind of damage people like you do to a free society. Nothing you can say (no facts, figures or logic) can sway me from this notion. You are not to be taken seriously.
I rather like that. True, my “Teacher’s of the world, unite” post some months ago is a bit better, but I think that was lost on you. Trolls don’t think, after all. They only spew vitriol for a reaction.
OK, feeding time over, back under your bridge.
Comment by Justin M. Stoddard — September 13, 2009 @ 8:50 p.m.
Incidentally, in case anybody is just joining this conversation and finds it at all intriguing, you should definitely visit the entire set of threads in which Joe has continually made wild assertions with no basis in reality:
How to Compete With Charters
Education, Not Regulation
Answers to Charter School Criticism
Professional Licensing: A First-Person Perspective
Another Reduction in Government Lobbying
Choice as a Motivator
Joe devotes his comments to ad hominem attacks to such an absurd degree that he reminds me of this Onion article.
Comment by Eric D. Dixon — September 13, 2009 @ 8:50 p.m.
The point is Justin, I never cared that anyone knows who I am. What I revealed was that what Mr. Dixon did was wrong and is rather deceptive. He made an assumption that he should not have made, and did it for the wrong reason. If there is anyone here who is a troll it is you. I am, and have always represented myself here as, someone who is concerned about this organization’s ability to influence public opinion through the use of money to hire propagandists like Eric Dixon, (and quite possibly you, although you are probably just a sap with nothing better to do than troll).
And Mr. Dixon, you were wrong and are wrong. Furthermore, anyone who reads what you have written completely knows that you lie. You can try to twist it whatever way you want. One minute, you didn’t get my infoi from your special access to your website, the next minute, when you are busted with the lack of judgment on your part for using google to pronounce me to be a certain person, you indicate it was o.k. for you to get it from there because technically you didn’t violate what your website told me about email usage. Is there no bottom to the depth of your depravity?
Comment by Joe Gnatek — September 14, 2009 @ 9:16 p.m.
Joe,
I can’t speak for Eric (though, I’ve known him over twenty years, now and I know of no other person more honest and steadfast than he), but I can assure you nobody pays me for my opinion. Truth be told, I’m on the complete opposite side of the world right now (literally).
It’s comical to me that you assume that anyone with a differing opinion than your own must be on the take. Not only is this another exercise in obfuscation, it’s a terrible rhetorical device. (You should know this, being an English! teacher in the St. Louis School System).
I have absolutely no access to the Show-me Institute’s records and yet I was able to find out about your place of employment in a matter of seconds using Google. How do you explain that? Does my using Google mean there is no “depth to my depravity”?
Per usual, you are using this “email issue” as a tactic for avoiding any substantive discussion. That is why you are, and shall remain a troll, Joe Gnatek.
Comment by Justin M. Stoddard — September 14, 2009 @ 9:53 p.m.
“you indicate it was o.k. for you to get it from there because technically you didn’t violate what your website told me about email usage.”
Again, Joe, you’re making things up. You’re weaving your fabrications out of whole cloth.
Shall I remind you what I actually said?
Read that again. Here’s the most relevant part, bolded for emphasis:
Do you notice how I didn’t say it was OK for me to get your email address from there? Do you know why I didn’t say that? Because I never used your email address for anything at all, and your claims to the contrary are a paranoid fantasy.
I hope people do read this entire thread, and the other threads in which you’ve spewed your lies and venom, methodically and consistently embarrassing yourself.
You come barging into the comment boards here making accusation after accusation, hurling insult after insult, without providing a single piece of documentation to support them.
You’re the only person who’s behaving disgracefully here, Joe.
Again, I ask you: Where is your evidence? If you’re so sure we distort data, you should easily be able to find an example. Any single, tiny little example. Go ahead.
Once again, you’ll ignore this request because you can’t demonstrate any such thing. You can’t point out a distortion where none exist. Instead, you’ll be content to toss out another rehash of your standard litany of fabricated insults, without providing a shred of evidence to back them up.
Comment by Eric D. Dixon — September 14, 2009 @ 10:24 p.m.
Sorry if I didn’t read all of the above commentary. Eeee-yikes.
The initial piece is a bit of psychological research and a conjecture. The initial comment challenged . . . not the research cited, but, in essence, the conjecture taking the research findings and applying it more generally, to choice in schools. This is interesting, in and of itself.
Now, the idea that choice is a motivator carries its own fascination. It’s not very controversial, though some simple consequences of choice-as-motivator have experienced complications in behavioral economics research.
The initial commentator’s challenge, to the conjecture — that people sometimes make bad choices — can also be applied to the actual situation researched. Kids can make bad choices in literature. Many would likely choose, say, a Star Wars novelization over any classic of American lit.
Would that be allowed? Only by a bad teacher, I think. But kids can choose from the options given them, or go ahead with their choice with the approval of the selection by the teacher.
Likewise, parents can choose schools based on a number of factors, primarily the options offered them. Charter schools exist to innovate from the standard public school model and administrative methods chosen.
They exist in some diversity. Some adopt different standards.
If allowed, some might opt for wildly different standards.
For instance, a vocational school will have a very different set of standards than an academically inclined school. Since some people are not well-suited to college careers, vocational charter schools, and vocational magnet schools, are a great boon to them. I’d be curious what the research says about such schools. If a vocational school turns out excellent machinists but very poor academic scores in English lit, I’d not only not be surprised, I’d be annoyed if anyone made a big deal of this.
But the bigger picture is this: The thing about choice in a wider sense is that it allows competition, and in every competition, some will fail. Just as it is the case that half of today’s children are below average, so are half of our schools. That some of them would be charter and some private, no surprise. It will be interesting to see how the the lower half thrive (or not) in the future.
Here’s the thing about failures with a competitive body: Failure of institutions within a marketplace leads to closures. Failure in a government setting — where the government provides all or the bulk of the options — leads to . . . what? Rarely does a public school close. Instead, when a school is failing, teachers’ unions and a subset of concerned parents clamor for higher taxes to send more money to the schools! This latter is a nearly insane reaction to failure. Instead, the cruel capitalist way is much better: Fire the teachers, fire the administrators, start off with a NEW option.
It’s also the case that we learn from our bad choices. Send a kid to a “learning center” and the kid doesn’t learn? Go to a different one. Bad tutor? Fire him, hire another. This kind of thing happens all the time. People sometimes do choose lemons, in cars and in schools.
We want to encourage them to make the best choices.
And when it comes to the best, it’s amazing how often I see charter schools listing highest. In Arizona, for instance, the highest academic testing comes from Basis, of Scottsdale. It’s a charter school. Is this just because the kids are pre-selected for excellence in academics, and the charter saps the best? Look into that. Do a little research. You will discover that NO, the answer is that the teachers there teach differently than elsewhere. They have a method, and they demand a lot from their students. Much of the work being done in junior high there, in English, was far above what I got in Advanced Placement English in the public school I went to for my senior year.
I’m more than willing, on the other hand, to believe that one of the biggest factors in the education of youngsters is the high standards and wisdom and virtue of parents. There is nothing directly we can do about that, other than inform people of what high standards consist of.
But indirectly?
I believe, from my own experience in American during the last forty or more years as a sentient being, that the chief factor in low standards amongst parents is the result of lack of choice (no opportunity to develop the faculty, because of the dominance of public schools) and the spreading of low standards by public school officials, including, alas, teachers.
So, offering competition in schooling may raise standards generally, by sparking interest in parents, feedback to parents, and by inciting public school teachers to raise their own standards.
For, believe me, the standards of education when I was in school, thirty years ago, were abysmally low. And I went to a public school that won awards for excellence! It was, basically, crap. And it was crap mainly because the community didn’t know better, and was (for the most part) just interested in the sports program.
That’s a situation that too many schools, public and private, face. It is high time to put actual learning to the center, again, and high standards (not basic adequacy) as achievable for the best students — no matter which track they are on (high standards in academics for academic work; high standards in performance for artistic work; high standards in practical achievement in vocational work).
Comment by twv — September 21, 2009 @ 12:09 a.m.