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3 is crucially important -- and the religion thing is really unimportant compared to the larger problem. Charter schools, in many states, occupy the absurd pos

by nmrm2 11y ago

3 is crucially important -- and the religion thing is really unimportant compared to the larger problem. Charter schools, in many states, occupy the absurd position of being able to claim that they out-perform local schools while selecting or quasi-selecting their student population and still not actually participating -- at all -- in the standardized testing that justified their existence in the first place.

ThomPete 11y ago
Again this is simply wrong. Success Academy one of the best performing schools have a lottery so there is no way to get your kids into that school otherwise. Also public schools in NY are zoned so you have to live the right place to get your kid into the right school.
- specialist 11y ago
  I'm glad that Success Academy is serving your children so well. Please understand they are not the norm. I attended the best public schools in the county. Consistently listed in the top 10 nationally. My former public high school is effectively a private school. Just a few miles away are some of the worst performing schools in my state. Elsewhere, most schools are somewhere in the middle. Similarly, some charters are above average, many are terrible, most are somewhere in between. Overall, charter schools performance is no different than public schools.
  - ThomPete 11y ago
    No one is claiming their overall performance is better and I deliberately didn't talk about charter schools in general. I reacted to the characterization from exelius about how charter schools somehow was worse. All I want is for my kid to learn first of all reading, writing and math. I don't even care about whether one school outperform another but there seem to be various studies showing different things. My guess is that charter schools work a little better because of the Hawthorne Effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect And studies show different things. According to this it's better in general. But to me thats less important you can probably find studies that shows other things too. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-06-25/stanford-university-study-says-charter-schools-improved http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-06-25/stanford-u...
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  The lottery still has a selection bias, just less of one than outright cherry picking the best students. That being said, I'm not sure either of these are a problem. The real problem (one of them at least) is that a school's performance is measured by the student's scores on standardized testing.
  - ThomPete 11y ago
    The selection bias is those who want to sign up for the lottery vs. those who can afford to move into the area where their kids get zoned to the good schools. The selection bias of SA pales in comparison both purely by principle and in practice by the diversity of it's students.
    - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
      >those who can afford to move into the area where their kids get zoned to the good schools And who care enough to move (showing a massive parental interest in their child's education). This is why using test scores to compare schools, be it charter vs. public in the same district or public vs. public in another district, is inherently flawed.
      - ThomPete 11y ago
        The difference is that you can have an interest in your childs education and have a chance to get in on a charter. With zoned schools you can have an interest in your childs education and have no way of getting in simply because you can't afford it. The point is that those who claim that charter schools get to pick the good students and leave the bad ones with the public schools are simply wrong. It's the public schools in the rich areas that get to pick their students simply by whether they can afford to live where they do or not.
        nmrm2 11y ago
        > those who claim that charter schools get to pick the good students and leave the bad ones with the public schools are simply wrong no, they aren't. Sorry, this isn't a matter of opinion, it's a matter of fact. Every study ever performed on this question indicates that you are the one who is wrong. > It's the public schools in the rich areas that get to pick their students simply by whether they can afford to live where they do or not. The existence of selection bias X doesn't preclude the existence of another selection bias Y... why would you think that's the case?
- nmrm2 11y ago
  > a lottery This is exactly what I meany by quasi-selection. The dat are absolutely clear on this question -- lotteries create a very nearly insurmountable selection bias. > public schools in NY are zoned so you have to live the right place to get your kid into the right school This is immaterial to the question of whether charter schools are more effective than public schools for reasons that are essential to their organization (rather than incidental). Furthermore, I don't think this (or any) anecdata gets to the heart of my criticisms, which I'll explain further below. The core of the claim you made above -- that a charter is one of the best performing schools -- is not even a reasonable claim in most states because Charters aren't subject to the same testing and reporting requirements as public schools! In many areas, Charters are not required to report at all, or are allowed to self-report. Guess what? Public schools also do totally fanstically when they are allowed to sefl-report! Comparing self-reported data to data obtained through a standardized process is meaningless. Again, I'm not saying this is necessarily the case in NY. Just that it is a real problem nationally.
  - ThomPete 11y ago
    Please argue against things I have said instead of things I never said. I never said that charter schools was performing better I was saying that my SONS school was performing better despite being a lottery. If we can't at least represent each others claims properly I do not wish to partake in this discussion. No it's not immaterial whether someone can put their kids to a public school in Tribecca vs. Harlem.
    - nmrm2 11y ago
      > I never said that charter schools was performing better I was saying that my SONS school was performing better despite being a lottery. Your comment started with "Again this is simply wrong", without specifying "this". I assume you were refering to: "[charters are] selecting or quasi-selecting their student population". So, my interpretation of your claim: "Charter schools that use lotteries out-perform, which means their performance is not attirbutable to student selection." My response to this claim was that lotteries are a form of selection bias!, and that lotteries are exactly what I meant by "quasi-selection". > Please argue against things I have said instead of things I never said. I did respond to the substance of your comment. lotteries == selection bias, so a lottery school performing well isn't a sufficient answer to the problem of selection bias. (Also, if you don't want people to mis-interpret your comments, then don't open your comment with a dangling antecedent... saying "this is simply wrong" without saying what "this" is, is literally inviting people to interpret the thing to which you were referring.) In other comments you've narrowed the scope of your claims to something about your child's specific school. If that's your intention, then Im not sure why you stared your comment with "this is simply wrong" when I clearly wasn't referring to your child's specific school, but rather was very clearly asserting a general statistical truth that applicable nationally and even internationally, regardless of the vagaries of a single individual event. 2. The back half of my comment was essentially: whether or not lottories are a form of selection bias, it's never-the-less the case that charter schools sometimes aren't evaluated in the same way as public schools, making it impossible to actually evaluate public vs. charter -- which is the central thesis of my comment. > it's not immaterial whether someone can put their kids to a public school in Tribecca vs. Harlem. Me: The charters vs public national comparisons are skewed comparisons in general because they're not being evaluated using equivalent metrics -- huge huge problem! Also, selection and quasi-selection bias. You: Lotteries != selection bias. And there's another compounding variable -- income of student's parents! Me: Lottories == selection bias. And yes, income or whatever is yet another thing we should control for when comparing public to charter. But in addition to controlling for these other variables, we need to -- at a minimum -- compare based on the same metrics. If charters don't have to take (the same) standarized tests, then controlling for every other variable in the world is pointless.

by nmrm2 11y ago

ThomPete 11y ago

Again this is simply wrong. Success Academy one of the best performing schools have a lottery so there is no way to get your kids into that school otherwise. Also public schools in NY are zoned so you have to live the right place to get your kid into the right school.

specialist 11y ago
I'm glad that Success Academy is serving your children so well. Please understand they are not the norm. I attended the best public schools in the county. Consistently listed in the top 10 nationally. My former public high school is effectively a private school. Just a few miles away are some of the worst performing schools in my state. Elsewhere, most schools are somewhere in the middle. Similarly, some charters are above average, many are terrible, most are somewhere in between. Overall, charter schools performance is no different than public schools.
- ThomPete 11y ago
  No one is claiming their overall performance is better and I deliberately didn't talk about charter schools in general. I reacted to the characterization from exelius about how charter schools somehow was worse. All I want is for my kid to learn first of all reading, writing and math. I don't even care about whether one school outperform another but there seem to be various studies showing different things. My guess is that charter schools work a little better because of the Hawthorne Effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect And studies show different things. According to this it's better in general. But to me thats less important you can probably find studies that shows other things too. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-06-25/stanford-university-study-says-charter-schools-improved http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-06-25/stanford-u...
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
The lottery still has a selection bias, just less of one than outright cherry picking the best students. That being said, I'm not sure either of these are a problem. The real problem (one of them at least) is that a school's performance is measured by the student's scores on standardized testing.
- ThomPete 11y ago
  The selection bias is those who want to sign up for the lottery vs. those who can afford to move into the area where their kids get zoned to the good schools. The selection bias of SA pales in comparison both purely by principle and in practice by the diversity of it's students.
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    >those who can afford to move into the area where their kids get zoned to the good schools And who care enough to move (showing a massive parental interest in their child's education). This is why using test scores to compare schools, be it charter vs. public in the same district or public vs. public in another district, is inherently flawed.
    - ThomPete 11y ago
      The difference is that you can have an interest in your childs education and have a chance to get in on a charter. With zoned schools you can have an interest in your childs education and have no way of getting in simply because you can't afford it. The point is that those who claim that charter schools get to pick the good students and leave the bad ones with the public schools are simply wrong. It's the public schools in the rich areas that get to pick their students simply by whether they can afford to live where they do or not.
      - nmrm2 11y ago
        > those who claim that charter schools get to pick the good students and leave the bad ones with the public schools are simply wrong no, they aren't. Sorry, this isn't a matter of opinion, it's a matter of fact. Every study ever performed on this question indicates that you are the one who is wrong. > It's the public schools in the rich areas that get to pick their students simply by whether they can afford to live where they do or not. The existence of selection bias X doesn't preclude the existence of another selection bias Y... why would you think that's the case?
nmrm2 11y ago
> a lottery This is exactly what I meany by quasi-selection. The dat are absolutely clear on this question -- lotteries create a very nearly insurmountable selection bias. > public schools in NY are zoned so you have to live the right place to get your kid into the right school This is immaterial to the question of whether charter schools are more effective than public schools for reasons that are essential to their organization (rather than incidental). Furthermore, I don't think this (or any) anecdata gets to the heart of my criticisms, which I'll explain further below. The core of the claim you made above -- that a charter is one of the best performing schools -- is not even a reasonable claim in most states because Charters aren't subject to the same testing and reporting requirements as public schools! In many areas, Charters are not required to report at all, or are allowed to self-report. Guess what? Public schools also do totally fanstically when they are allowed to sefl-report! Comparing self-reported data to data obtained through a standardized process is meaningless. Again, I'm not saying this is necessarily the case in NY. Just that it is a real problem nationally.
- ThomPete 11y ago
  Please argue against things I have said instead of things I never said. I never said that charter schools was performing better I was saying that my SONS school was performing better despite being a lottery. If we can't at least represent each others claims properly I do not wish to partake in this discussion. No it's not immaterial whether someone can put their kids to a public school in Tribecca vs. Harlem.
  - nmrm2 11y ago
    > I never said that charter schools was performing better I was saying that my SONS school was performing better despite being a lottery. Your comment started with "Again this is simply wrong", without specifying "this". I assume you were refering to: "[charters are] selecting or quasi-selecting their student population". So, my interpretation of your claim: "Charter schools that use lotteries out-perform, which means their performance is not attirbutable to student selection." My response to this claim was that lotteries are a form of selection bias!, and that lotteries are exactly what I meant by "quasi-selection". > Please argue against things I have said instead of things I never said. I did respond to the substance of your comment. lotteries == selection bias, so a lottery school performing well isn't a sufficient answer to the problem of selection bias. (Also, if you don't want people to mis-interpret your comments, then don't open your comment with a dangling antecedent... saying "this is simply wrong" without saying what "this" is, is literally inviting people to interpret the thing to which you were referring.) In other comments you've narrowed the scope of your claims to something about your child's specific school. If that's your intention, then Im not sure why you stared your comment with "this is simply wrong" when I clearly wasn't referring to your child's specific school, but rather was very clearly asserting a general statistical truth that applicable nationally and even internationally, regardless of the vagaries of a single individual event. 2. The back half of my comment was essentially: whether or not lottories are a form of selection bias, it's never-the-less the case that charter schools sometimes aren't evaluated in the same way as public schools, making it impossible to actually evaluate public vs. charter -- which is the central thesis of my comment. > it's not immaterial whether someone can put their kids to a public school in Tribecca vs. Harlem. Me: The charters vs public national comparisons are skewed comparisons in general because they're not being evaluated using equivalent metrics -- huge huge problem! Also, selection and quasi-selection bias. You: Lotteries != selection bias. And there's another compounding variable -- income of student's parents! Me: Lottories == selection bias. And yes, income or whatever is yet another thing we should control for when comparing public to charter. But in addition to controlling for these other variables, we need to -- at a minimum -- compare based on the same metrics. If charters don't have to take (the same) standarized tests, then controlling for every other variable in the world is pointless.