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I don't understand why offering parents more choices in how their children are taught could be a bad thing. Maybe the public school system is failing its studen

I don't understand why offering parents more choices in how their children are taught could be a bad thing. Maybe the public school system is failing its students. However, it always seemed unfair to trap parents who would otherwise have other options in a failing system. Yes, this does suck for the children of uncaring parents - but for the parents who DO care, shouldn't they have a means of meeting their obligation to their children?

femiagbabiaka 3y ago
Simplistic arguments like this are one of the more annoying parts of the rhetoric of charter school advocates. It assumes that all charter schools are of high quality and that making education yet another thing that is economically stratified in the US is good. It’s ok to say that things that sound nice like choice in education can have knock on effects that are bad for society. Very few things in this world are purely good.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  It seems like a charter school that develops a reputation for low quality is a self-solving problem in a way that a public school which develops the same reputation is (currently) not. One goes out of business; the other goes along indefinitely, with perhaps the wealthiest parents nearby withdrawing their kids, but most families and children are forced to endure it or move away.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - halfnormalform 3y ago
    The feedback loop in education is several years long. Before a charter school develops a bad reputation, they just change their name, put up a banner declaring "Under New Management" and continue right along with better PR.
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      What happens to a failing public school? It keeps the same name, but adds “now Title I with an even larger budget”. It’s not clear that that’s in any way better and I think is worse.
- linuxftw 3y ago
  If public schools weren't awful, there would be no need for charter schools. The public school experiment has failed.
  - femiagbabiaka 3y ago
    Tell me you only follow policy in the US without telling me: exhibit one. The public school “experiment” has been purposefully sabotaged is more like it.
    - linuxftw 3y ago
      The article is about US schools.... so? How can one sabotage a house of cards? Failure was inevitable.
      - femiagbabiaka 3y ago
        I don’t believe that public schooling, an actually lindy institution worldwide, an institution that was working quite well in the US up until about the 70s and 80s (wonder what happened then hmm) that has produced world renowned schools in the US in particular, is more of a house of cards than the Potemkin village that is charter and private schools.
        linuxftw 3y ago
        You'll need to provide evidence that public schools were working well in the 70s and 80s. Graduation rates today are higher than those decades. High school was optional for many parts of the country. The reason for the outcry now, is that we measure everything, and even the wealthier areas of the country are unable to perform to any reasonable standard.
        femiagbabiaka 3y ago
        Note: not working well in the 70s and 80s, working will up until the 70s and 80s. But gladly, this is a great resource: https://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf https://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf. Combine with this: https://sci-hub.se/https://www.jstor.org/stable/1804780 https://sci-hub.se/https://www.jstor.org/stable/1804780. At the exact point in our history that we should've accelerated spending in public resources we did an about face in the opposite direction towards privatization and the growth of the administrator class. All of our institutions (healthcare, finance, infrastructure, education, etc.) have been low-productivity money pits since then.
sgnelson 3y ago
I don't think anyone is going to say "offering parents more choices is bad." But the political reality is not simply "offering more choices." The political reality typically entails using funds set aside for public schools for charter schools. In reality, what happens all too often is that funding and resources are stripped away from the already resource poor schools and given to charter schools. And that's probably why people seem as if they're saying "Charter schools bad." I'd argue they're really saying "Taking funds away from public schools to give to charter schools bad." We're creating a system where the already struggling schools will then be put on a downward spiral, unable to recover. But I think our educations system is screwed up and we need to invest more resources into education at all levels, so what do I know. There's also the moral question of your whole "it sucks for children of uncaring parents" quote, which I personally think is quite a selfish and uncaring perspective, that is also probably grossly not the truth for the variety of parents in lower performing schools, but I'm not going to get into that.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  > entails using funds set aside for public schools That’s one framing. Another framing is “using funds set aside to educate the children of the district”. If you frame the funding as being for the schools rather than for the children’s education, you naturally object to it being spent elsewhere. Are we trying to run public schools or trying to educate children in the district? (My kids attended public schools.)
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    Segregationists tried using that framing back in the 1960s/70s, but it the argument was ruled invalid by the Warren-led Supreme Court. Who knows what would happen these days, however.
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      “I don’t want my kids to go to school with people of a different race” makes you an asshole. “I don’t want my kids to go to a school that will fail to educate them” makes you exactly the opposite.
dfxm12 3y ago
The philosophical issue is charter schools use public resources yet are not accountable to the public. Adding to that, having public education system that is available to the public is kind of the key part here. So, the practical issue is that if some students are being excluded, that misses the point of public education terribly (other practical issues involve profiteering by the charters, just like with private prisons). Additionally, having several overlapping choices with government funding is an inefficient use of the money. As far as choice, there's nothing wrong with that, and religious and other private schools (which didn't get public funds) have co-existed with public schools almost everywhere well before our lifetimes. So equating charter schools (or vouchers) with choice in this context is disingenuous.
- logicchains 3y ago
  >The philosophical issue is charter schools use public resources yet are not accountable to the public. They absolutely are accountable to the public in their school district, who can choose to send their kids not to that school if they don't like the school, depriving the school of revenue.
  - sobkas 3y ago
    > >The philosophical issue is charter schools use public resources yet are not accountable to the public. > They absolutely are accountable to the public in their school district, who can choose to send their kids not to that school if they don't like the school, depriving the school of revenue. Having a choice between charter school and public school without enough resources to provide even basics to its students is not a choice. It's even worse because parents of children in public schools most likely also lack resources to help their children(be it material or cultural). So children in public schools end with a double whammy, neither parents(or parent) or school can help them.
    - gotoeleven 3y ago
      Where are these mythical schools "without enough resources to provide even the basics" ? They don't exist, this is a canard that won't die. Public schools in the US are funded extravagantly. The worst performing schools have the biggest funding per student. Some kids want to learn, some don't. Some parents value education, some don't. Not even a billion dollars per student will change that.
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
> I don't understand why offering parents more choices in how their children are taught could be a bad thing. I am going to give my kid all the advantages I can, of course. But...personal optimization != societal optimization. Yes, I can put my kid in a better spot to succeed, but we aren't making progress as a society, things are getting very much worse actually (e.g. income inequality). > Yes, this does suck for the children of uncaring parents - but for the parents who DO care, shouldn't they have a means of meeting their obligation to their children? Again, those kids left behind...they are going to be expensive in terms of prisons, homeless services, lost productivity, etc...You can see this happening already, it is just going to be much worse when our kids are adults. And really, this is the only time we (or society) will have much influence on these kids. It is much easier to set a kid straight than try to fix an adult.
- logicchains 3y ago
  >I am going to give my kid all the advantages I can, of course. But...personal optimization != societal optimization. Yes, I can put my kid in a better spot to succeed, but we aren't making progress as a society, things are getting very much worse actually (e.g. income inequality). Good intentions but empirically it doesn't work; forcing troublesome kids to be in school with the kids who genuinely want to learn drags down the score of the kids who want to learn and doesn't improve outcomes for the troublesome kids. Countries with school choice like Sweden have much better educational outcomes than the US.
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    I suspect there are at least a few major confounding variables when comparing Swedish to US schools. You know, like... almost everything about how the society works?
- xormapmap 3y ago
  > It is much easier to set a kid straight than try to fix an adult Is this true? Adults have free will & personal responsibility, kids are sort of at the whim of their parents and have no real legal rights when it comes to escaping a bad situation

femiagbabiaka 3y ago

Simplistic arguments like this are one of the more annoying parts of the rhetoric of charter school advocates. It assumes that all charter schools are of high quality and that making education yet another thing that is economically stratified in the US is good. It’s ok to say that things that sound nice like choice in education can have knock on effects that are bad for society. Very few things in this world are purely good.

sokoloff 3y ago
It seems like a charter school that develops a reputation for low quality is a self-solving problem in a way that a public school which develops the same reputation is (currently) not. One goes out of business; the other goes along indefinitely, with perhaps the wealthiest parents nearby withdrawing their kids, but most families and children are forced to endure it or move away.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- halfnormalform 3y ago
  The feedback loop in education is several years long. Before a charter school develops a bad reputation, they just change their name, put up a banner declaring "Under New Management" and continue right along with better PR.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    What happens to a failing public school? It keeps the same name, but adds “now Title I with an even larger budget”. It’s not clear that that’s in any way better and I think is worse.
linuxftw 3y ago
If public schools weren't awful, there would be no need for charter schools. The public school experiment has failed.
- femiagbabiaka 3y ago
  Tell me you only follow policy in the US without telling me: exhibit one. The public school “experiment” has been purposefully sabotaged is more like it.
  - linuxftw 3y ago
    The article is about US schools.... so? How can one sabotage a house of cards? Failure was inevitable.
    - femiagbabiaka 3y ago
      I don’t believe that public schooling, an actually lindy institution worldwide, an institution that was working quite well in the US up until about the 70s and 80s (wonder what happened then hmm) that has produced world renowned schools in the US in particular, is more of a house of cards than the Potemkin village that is charter and private schools.
      - linuxftw 3y ago
        You'll need to provide evidence that public schools were working well in the 70s and 80s. Graduation rates today are higher than those decades. High school was optional for many parts of the country. The reason for the outcry now, is that we measure everything, and even the wealthier areas of the country are unable to perform to any reasonable standard.
        femiagbabiaka 3y ago
        Note: not working well in the 70s and 80s, working will up until the 70s and 80s. But gladly, this is a great resource: https://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf https://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf. Combine with this: https://sci-hub.se/https://www.jstor.org/stable/1804780 https://sci-hub.se/https://www.jstor.org/stable/1804780. At the exact point in our history that we should've accelerated spending in public resources we did an about face in the opposite direction towards privatization and the growth of the administrator class. All of our institutions (healthcare, finance, infrastructure, education, etc.) have been low-productivity money pits since then.

sgnelson 3y ago

I don't think anyone is going to say "offering parents more choices is bad." But the political reality is not simply "offering more choices." The political reality typically entails using funds set aside for public schools for charter schools. In reality, what happens all too often is that funding and resources are stripped away from the already resource poor schools and given to charter schools. And that's probably why people seem as if they're saying "Charter schools bad." I'd argue they're really saying "Taking funds away from public schools to give to charter schools bad." We're creating a system where the already struggling schools will then be put on a downward spiral, unable to recover. But I think our educations system is screwed up and we need to invest more resources into education at all levels, so what do I know. There's also the moral question of your whole "it sucks for children of uncaring parents" quote, which I personally think is quite a selfish and uncaring perspective, that is also probably grossly not the truth for the variety of parents in lower performing schools, but I'm not going to get into that.

sokoloff 3y ago
> entails using funds set aside for public schools That’s one framing. Another framing is “using funds set aside to educate the children of the district”. If you frame the funding as being for the schools rather than for the children’s education, you naturally object to it being spent elsewhere. Are we trying to run public schools or trying to educate children in the district? (My kids attended public schools.)
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Segregationists tried using that framing back in the 1960s/70s, but it the argument was ruled invalid by the Warren-led Supreme Court. Who knows what would happen these days, however.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    “I don’t want my kids to go to school with people of a different race” makes you an asshole. “I don’t want my kids to go to a school that will fail to educate them” makes you exactly the opposite.

dfxm12 3y ago

The philosophical issue is charter schools use public resources yet are not accountable to the public. Adding to that, having public education system that is available to the public is kind of the key part here. So, the practical issue is that if some students are being excluded, that misses the point of public education terribly (other practical issues involve profiteering by the charters, just like with private prisons). Additionally, having several overlapping choices with government funding is an inefficient use of the money. As far as choice, there's nothing wrong with that, and religious and other private schools (which didn't get public funds) have co-existed with public schools almost everywhere well before our lifetimes. So equating charter schools (or vouchers) with choice in this context is disingenuous.

logicchains 3y ago
>The philosophical issue is charter schools use public resources yet are not accountable to the public. They absolutely are accountable to the public in their school district, who can choose to send their kids not to that school if they don't like the school, depriving the school of revenue.
- sobkas 3y ago
  > >The philosophical issue is charter schools use public resources yet are not accountable to the public. > They absolutely are accountable to the public in their school district, who can choose to send their kids not to that school if they don't like the school, depriving the school of revenue. Having a choice between charter school and public school without enough resources to provide even basics to its students is not a choice. It's even worse because parents of children in public schools most likely also lack resources to help their children(be it material or cultural). So children in public schools end with a double whammy, neither parents(or parent) or school can help them.
  - gotoeleven 3y ago
    Where are these mythical schools "without enough resources to provide even the basics" ? They don't exist, this is a canard that won't die. Public schools in the US are funded extravagantly. The worst performing schools have the biggest funding per student. Some kids want to learn, some don't. Some parents value education, some don't. Not even a billion dollars per student will change that.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago

> I don't understand why offering parents more choices in how their children are taught could be a bad thing. I am going to give my kid all the advantages I can, of course. But...personal optimization != societal optimization. Yes, I can put my kid in a better spot to succeed, but we aren't making progress as a society, things are getting very much worse actually (e.g. income inequality). > Yes, this does suck for the children of uncaring parents - but for the parents who DO care, shouldn't they have a means of meeting their obligation to their children? Again, those kids left behind...they are going to be expensive in terms of prisons, homeless services, lost productivity, etc...You can see this happening already, it is just going to be much worse when our kids are adults. And really, this is the only time we (or society) will have much influence on these kids. It is much easier to set a kid straight than try to fix an adult.

logicchains 3y ago
>I am going to give my kid all the advantages I can, of course. But...personal optimization != societal optimization. Yes, I can put my kid in a better spot to succeed, but we aren't making progress as a society, things are getting very much worse actually (e.g. income inequality). Good intentions but empirically it doesn't work; forcing troublesome kids to be in school with the kids who genuinely want to learn drags down the score of the kids who want to learn and doesn't improve outcomes for the troublesome kids. Countries with school choice like Sweden have much better educational outcomes than the US.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  I suspect there are at least a few major confounding variables when comparing Swedish to US schools. You know, like... almost everything about how the society works?
xormapmap 3y ago
> It is much easier to set a kid straight than try to fix an adult Is this true? Adults have free will & personal responsibility, kids are sort of at the whim of their parents and have no real legal rights when it comes to escaping a bad situation