Want to find a job as a teacher in the U.S. right now? Best to study math.
High school applications are due in two weeks. InsideSchools has advice on how to rank your choices.
And if New York’s gray weather has you down, check out the view from a classroom in Fresno, Ca.
http://www.sinksalive.blogspot.com KitchenSink
Re the Ravitch column: Just curious, but is she similarly opposed (in practice, not on principle, as she points out) to gifted and talented programs in district schools? They are designed specifically to enact the brain drain she alleges is caused by charters.
Secondly, she shows a head-in-the-sand aspect regarding NYC charters vs. nationwide. There are state laws with varying degress of success, and New York’s happens to have some mechanisms to hold charters accountable. And in NYC, the mayor’s support has also attracted some of the top charter talent to the city. It calls for a differentiated view, even with an out-of-hand dismissal of the Hoxby study as flawed.
This is not Arizona, where anyone could set up a charter in their garage.
http://www.nyfera.org Tom Carroll
I like Diane personally, believe she is a truly gifted writer, use her books as references, and agree with much of what she says on a wide array of topics, but her “study” on charter schools frankly is a joke. She simply took NAEP scores for district schools and compared them to charter schools — with no serious attempt to compare like students in like circumstances.
Diane’s slapdash approach is especially ironic since she spends a great amount of energy criticizing much more serious academic studies — that is, if she happens to disagree with their conclusions.
Thus, the Hoxby study goes under a withering microscope, but the Macke Raymond study gets no methodological comments from Diane at all. And, then, Diane offers up her own analysis, which couldn’t pass muster in an intro level stats course. Moreover, she criticizes charter studies for not being peer reviewed, but then releases her study in a chatty letter to Debbie Meier on Education Week’s blog. Oh, the rigor, the rigor!
I agree with Diane that some charter schools are low performers. But, she doesn’t have to stretch the facts to make that obvious point. Nor does she have to deny the equally obvious point that NYC has an unusually high density of exceptionally performing charter schools, in part because Joel Klein — who she can’t bear to praise — actively and personally encourages the highest quality charter operators to locate and expand here.
Diane, in her long and distinguished career, has much to be proud of, but not this latest study.
“I wonder whether school are more or less integrated along socioeconomic lines than they are along racial lines. I could imagine the title of that article being "why don't we have any rich kids?"
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