I agree that there is likely corruption in pockets all over the charter and district schools. As a mentor said to me when I mentioned some accusations that were leveled at me just because I run a charter school, “These things are or may well be happening in charter schools. Charter and district doesn’t matter when it comes to integrity.”

The question is whether there is sufficient public oversight and transparency in the charter law. My answer is yes, but I would appreciate some kind of factcheck.org independent report to answer the claims of people trying to get elected or re-elected, who may be stand-up individuals but have an agenda involving a seat (like anti-charter people like Perkins and DiNapoli, pro-charter people like Johnson, Smikle). Where are you, factcheck.org?

I read these all the time – in fact, daily. What I see is that extremely negative and disturbing audit reports on NYS school districts including NYC get buried by the media. Occasionally when a local paper or station really reports on one in depth, the district or school officials blow it off with truly bizarre and inappropriate defenses, which the media is typically too complacent to look into.

Charters are the focus of many groups, for many different reasons, and thus reports re inappropriate or illegal charter financial conduct get covered and then, via the p.r. machines of various interest groups, recovered, blown up, distorted and recirculated widely, ad nauseum.

Proponents from all sides typically forget to mention one critical issue: The entire NYS system of K-12 regulation is so loose and politically-distorted that anything is possible in a public school and anything similar is just as possible in a charter school. I have, unfortunately, yet to read about one incident of alleged charter misconduct which was not previously disclosed in a public school.

Public school districts hardly want to blow the whistle on State Ed.’s gross nonenforcement vis a vis charters because charters might then turn around and shout that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. And vice versa.

I am, however, getting a bit more than dismayed at the popular trend in dismissing the importance of documented public school official misconduct, whether financial or otherwise, while blowing up the importance of the very same acts when perpetrated by charter officials and operators. Folks go ballistic when they think a charter operator has ripped off $3,000. Nobody said a word when it became obvious that the NYCDOE allowed a $3 million ripoff of its Reading First program by allowing a vendor to create an “unusable” RF web site. If this was Podunk, well, maybe we could say that the district was pretty unsophisticated in the IT world. But this is NYC. Under the Bloomberg Administration, which preens its image as the most IT-savvy administration in the United States, a major NYC govt. department, the NYC Department of Education, set up a Reading First web site for $3 million which the NYC Comptroller later reported was completely “unusable”!!!! Tell me that this contract wasn’t corruptly given to some influential’s brother in law. I dare anyone to claim that.

Basically, we have a ton of mud-slinging, with lots of folks praying that some sentence or theme in the mud will stick while everyone listening is supposed to avoid looking at exactly what’s in the mud ball because it’s … mud. Fact is, the mud from one side is just as bad, and just as true, as the mud from the other side in this battle. And honestly, very few of these people are really concerned about kids first. It’s all about the money, the power, the bureaucratic fiefdoms that folks who earn good livings off one or the other of these sub-industries can gather for themselves. Not for the kids. Not by a long shot.

If parents of public school and charter kids truly got together and did their collective homework – by actually reading these official audits and formal program evaluations – they’d probably all decide “to hell with all of ‘em” and go for vouchers instead, simply in disgust at what they’d read and what they’d learned.

In NYS, the public education system rots from the head. If you want genuine reform and anti-corruption moves, parents need to insist that the governance of NYSED be thoroughly reworked and for starters, that a fully funded and independent Inspector General, with subpoena power, be appointed who can investigate why NYSED allows these pockets of corruption to exist and flourish. And then tell the public all about it. Including parents. If this ever happened, and it’s getting likelier by the minute, I suspect that parents in unison would simply vote out all the state and local politicians who have their fingers in the public school and charter honey pots and who protect this system because it protects their pocketbooks.

Homework Week 1 – Read all the school district audits NYS Comptroller DiNapoli published in January 2009. That reading should make you very, very angry.

I understand that advocates of charter schools believe that choice will create competition. They argue that competition will spur schools to offer better education, thus raising the bar on standards. To be entirely honest though, I can’t see any clear winner in this competition. In the past three months I have read and looked numerous studies, the results seem to be just as divided.

One recent New York Times columnist cited a study by Roland Fryer, a Harvard economist whose research found that students in attendance at the Harlem Children’s Zone schools reading and math scores improved tremendously. The “typical” student entered the school at the 39th percentile for both reading and math, and within two years, had jumped to the 53rd percentile in English and the 74th in math. After reading that, who wouldn’t believe that charter schools are the way to go.

On the other hand, a Standford economist by the name of Dr. Margaret Raymond, recently produced at the Center for Research on Education Outcomes that points toward the opposite conclusion. Raymond’s work (which was funded by pro-charter foundations) surveyed charter schools within 15 states and the District of Columbia and found that only 17 percent of the charter schools observed were performing better than the comparable public schools. The majority of the charters, at 46 percent, were showing no gains, and an alarming 37 percent were actually performing worse.

So, here we have two studies, both from scholars affiliated with Ivy League schools. Now it is a question of who is right- which type of school trumps the other?Wrong. The question is what makes that 17 percent better, and how do we incorporate that into public schooling. Similarly, what is preventing that 37 percent from scoring higher, and how do we help them improve. Charter schools have the freedom in terms of curriculum. They often do not have the standardized tests and accountability that public schools are subject to. They tend to be more active, focusing on the community as a whole. But at the same time, the organization is often lacking. Unlike public schools, there is no transparency, and sometimes corporations tied to the schools are allowed to run around without any restraint. There have been numerous cases in the past year where acts of nepotism have been revealed in charter schools.

So how can we offer better education without pitting students, parents, teachers, and administrators against one another? How do we create this unity between public and charter schools? We as a nation are so focused on numbers, but we often don’t look at what is behind those numbers. Let us focus not on which is better overall, but instead assess, piece by piece, what is working and what isn’t. I think if we were to take the best aspects of both types of schooling, we would see an educational system that would provide equal opportunities for all. I mean, what benefit are we getting out of this feud between public and private anyways?

Several years later, my son wound up in the same middle school with this assaultive boy, and the other boy did something to my son which could have resulted in his very serious permanent injury or even death. I went to an administrator, who did not have any kind of relationship to that boy’s parent(s) and told her that given this kid’s prior history, I was authorizing my son to use his by-then formidable karate skills to simply take that boy down and hurt him if he made one move toward my son again. The administrator asked me not to do that for a few days and to give her a chance to deal with the situation her own way. I agreed. A week later the administrator contacted me. She spoke to staff who had observed the assault and after interviewing the kid, said that there was no logical reason, nor even an illogical one, for his attempting to severely hurt my son. She told me what she had done and would do if he ever came near my son again – and she did it. As a result, that boy was removed from the program my son was in, and since his parent refused to get him counseling or some other kind of appropriate assistance, the parent was ultimately forced to remove her son from that school and enroll him elsewhere.

In the decade plus afterwards, I heard of many similar stories. This is one reason why there’s such a big noise about the bullying that goes on in public schools right now. In fact, many educators do not feel any responsibility to protect the kids in their schools, in part because the parents of victims can rarely move their kids to safer, less hostile environments. In fact, a MI court awarded $800,000 to a student who had been the victim of school bullying abuse, including assaults, for a lengthy period of time. More awards of this magnitude may do something, overall, over the course of the next few years. However, in the case of any individual child being bullied or otherwise physically assaulted in a school, it is imperative that the parent be given the option of transferring the child to a safer environment immediately. In NYC public schools, charters are often the only available alternatives and for that reason alone, I would support their proliferating. Examination of NYCDOE crime statistics – taken from the State database, not from the Bloomberg well-massaged numbers – indicates that there are many kids who have been assaulted in school and thus many parents in need of a safer school for their kids. Charters tend to provide this; public schools are far iffy-ier.

I’m not so concerned with parents being advocates. I’m concerned with parents being parents. Since all research shows that informed, involved parents are the best guarantee of a child’s education and success in later life, I believe that parents should be empowered to choose any and every school available to determine which will best meet his/her child’s needs. If parents want to take on advocacy roles after that, they should feel free to do so. However, when people advocate, I believe they should also be held accountable for the results of what they advocate for. So again, if people who advocate want parents of kids to not be able to enroll them in charter schools and remain stuck in public schools that are not meeting their children’s needs – fine. But then also advocate for educational compensation funds so that kids impaired by bad public schools can get what they need, as determined by their parents, from other non-school sources. Just like we do for people injured by public health mandated vaccines. Otherwise, their children are just unfortunate roadkill on the path to what someone else has defined as public health … for someone else.

My first response after reading the original poster’s piece was EXACTLY the first comment posted by Michael M.–that is, while Ms. Brown’s experience is real, it cannot be generalized out to ALL charter schools and ALL noncharter schools. My kids, like Michael M’s, go to a noncharter school where they must dutifully tote that Home folder back and forth each day. It bears announcements and, on Mondays, a checklist with the week’s worth of HW. At their school, I, too, can’t imagine that anyone could slam someone else’s head into anything and have it described as “just playing.” Kids who are struggling are pulled out for extra help during the school day. There’s nothing charter or noncharter about this; it’s just what ANY good school should do.

Why wouldn’t the DOE try to emulate the success of district schools, like the one that MM’s kids and my kids attend? Why should charters be embraced as the only route towards giving parents more choice and offering alternative modes of education? Dee you are clearly enraged at the DOE, and I can’t entirely fault you for that, but I still don’t get why you think that private entities are the solution. I have to admit, too, that you would have more chance of helping me understand your viewpoint if you didn’t write such vitriolic things as “They won; you lost. Get over it.” Is that how I should feel about my discontent or dissent within an allegedly democratic system? And isn’t it at odds with your professed desire that parents be advocates? By that logic, I would think parents, or any citizens, really, should just give up. After all, it’s all over.

I’m not aware of bluster or shouting. Perhaps you can identify particular instances which you believe involve same?

In any event, indeed, eventually truth does prevail. Typically, it’s in post-program audits and evaluations, which I read daily. So far, this year, we’ve seen one large scale eval. of the NYC DOE’s Title 1 program which showed that it did students no cognizable good and that the longer they remained in a Title 1 school, the more their scores declined. We’ve seen several national studies (federally-funded) showing that US public schools’ special ed. programs and services provide virtually no benefit for the children afflicted with them. I have yet to see an alternative to allowing parents to pull their kids out of the public schools and programs which are, according to these evaluations, failing their children. Then there are the fiscal audits which show that funds for these programs are, in the words of the federal auditors, highly subject to “fraud, waste and misappropriation.”

Give parents a meaningful way to hold schools and districts seriously accountable for these failings and then I’ll happily stop supporting charters and vouchers. Until then … the more alternatives they can access for their children, the better.

I don’t know about other charters, but at KIPP, yeah, they do give tests, which they don’t discourage families from believing to be admission tests. If you ask directly in a PR context, KIPP spokespeople say they’re tests to determine the applicant’s grade level. But as I say, to the applicant, it’s an admission test.

A parent/guardian who fears that his/her child would do poorly on an admission tests is going to be deterred. And obviously the test creams for students who are compliant enough o be willing to cooperate with taking the test.

I’m sure that in your parallel universe, all fifth-graders and middle-school-age students would eagerly take a test, KS, but that’s not the case on Planet Earth.

I did the little bit of research (applying to KIPP San Francisco Bay Academy for my daughter) after a happy KIPP parent here in San Francisco posted proudly on our SFschools Yahoo listserve that his daughter had “tested into” KIPP SF Bay.

It’s so ridiculous to have this surreal discussion again, Kitchen Sink. You and I have had it before, and I’ve had it with other charter advocates too. Here’s the discussion:

Me: Charter schools cream for compliant, higher-functioning, more-motivated students from compliant, higher-functioning, more-motivated families.
Charter advocate: They do not!
Me: (Explains yet again how charter schools cream for compliant, higher-functioning, more-motivated students from compliant, higher-functioning, more-motivated families.)
Charter advocate: What’s wrong with creaming for compliant, higher-functioning, more-motivated students from compliant, higher-functioning, more-motivated families?

Ms. Alpert, bluster and shouting will carry the day for a while, but eventually the truth does prevail.

As if those whose skepticism about charters (arguments against are rarely about the individual in-school experience) have been anywhere near as organized as those whose children are truly benefiting from charters — charters often set up to compete with the least competitive traditional public schools, quite often in the same building.

The public policy question remains, specific examples of good charter/bad traditional notwithstanding (as if there aren’t pairings of the opposite): What kind of system — available to ALL children — is best?

Despite some reservations for public policy level reasons, it’s hard to knock “parent choice” as a bumper-sticker (unless you realize it’s “DOE choice” and “lottery choice” in a “rationing” environment), and I’m fine with a mix of charter and non-charter in NYC, but the space grabs — at the expense of the non-charter kids — have simply got to stop. On this matter, the politicians are only starting to hear the vast majority loud and clear.

If politicians truly reflected the will of the people, all kinds of things in our city, our state, and our nation would be different. Note for starters that the entire RttT pot is equivalent to but two weeks of the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and some 40 million or so Americans have no health insurance.

“Their” politicians is spot on. How about “our” politicians?

Thank you for telling me what’s good for me and appropriate to my attitude. Are there any other attitudes and beliefs which you feel I must adopt given your expert judgment re whom I am and what I do? As it happens, I decline to honor your decisions insofar as they purport to tell me what to think and believe in. As it happens, I am not a special education advocate. I am a special education policy analyst and forensic consultant – and there is a very serious difference. I also spend a lot of time talking to criminal investigators and auditors about special education corruption. This has spilled over into “at risk” student population areas as well. In fact, the areas in which thefts and misappropriations exist in the most widespread, pervasive forms are in the public education systems’ special ed. and poverty areas. These are also, not coincidentally, the areas in which parents have been the most intentionally dis-empowered. They are goldmines for the less than honest. And it is a lot harder to steal money from a charter school than from a public education system, and a lot harder to hide theft in a charter school, for reasons both obvious and subtle. However, where I have become aware of situations in which charter officials appear to have stolen or misappropriated funds, you may be sure that I go after them with exactly the same vigor as I do when I identify thefts and misappropriations in public schools.

I actually don’t believe that charters do much better overall for kids with real disabilities in terms of objective scores because charter staff are, for the most part, products of the same special ed. graduate programs which turn out public schools’ spedsters. But you’ll get a nudge up in scores here and there, depending on maximum group size and programatic structure of interaction in the charter and the level of disorganization in the relevant public school. My analyses show that charter and public spedsters are pretty much all, unfortunately, neither appropriately knowledged, skilled nor trained to do their students much good. And the great preponderance of research – funded by USDOE, no less – shows that special education does its students virtually no good whatsoever, and certainly pitifully little when compared with competent professionally operated programs – that is, those not in schools and not operated by educators. You know – the expensive ones that upper middle class parents use for their kids’ non-school remediation in affluent communities. Which is why affluent districts’ spec. ed. scores tend to look so good.

The reason I profoundly support charters is because parents of kids with disabilities can use them as a safety valve when they feel their kids are being abused in public schools. Charters tend to be places where parents can send kids in the morning and feel relatively secure in the knowledge that their kids will come home in one piece at end day. And since that is not something parents of disabled kids in public schools are gifted with, I maintain that charter schools are essential. This is the same reason why I profoundly support vouchers for kids with disabilities. I am sorry that so few states allow the establishment of charters solely for kids with disabilities, but over time, that will change. I’m absolutely sure of that.

If you want a compendium of information regarding abuse of children with disabilities in schools, go to the GAO’s web site and look up their May 2009 study on public school systems’ use (and abuse) of physical restraints and seclusion on children with disabilities, including some nice rundowns of what happens after special education staff kills kids with disabilities in school. You could also look at Congressman Miller’s HELP Committee hearing transcripts on his bill to prohibit the programmatic use of physical restraints and seclusion on disabled kids in schools.

You can tell a lot by how a society treats its most powerless citizens. The most powerless citizens of the public school system are children with disabilities, and the ways in which they are abused and neglected is nothing short of appalling. The second most powerless group is composed of children of color from poor families, and the ways in which they are maltreated and maleducated are also well-documented and appalling. Giving the parents of such children power over their own children’s education is necessary, both to save those children and to either force the public education system to clean up its act (unlikely) or expose to the public just how shabby and expensive they really are. Forcing such parents to keep their children in systems which maltreat and maleducate them – allegedly for the good of those systems – is really rather totalitarian and antidemocratic. As I wrote previously, if you insist on imposing maleducation on the children of the poor and powerless, at least have the decency to insist that an educational analog to the vaccine compensation funds be set up so that these kids can, ultimately, get what they individually need to live individually happy and productive lives. Or does that goal bow to the need of the public education institution to keep on trucking at full appropriation?

The people have spoken and their politicians have listened: thus there are charter schools. They won; you lost. Get over it.

Well, I see you have been very involved, Kitchen Sink. All I can say is that your experience is an outlier and does not jibe with that of others involved in teaching and working with disadvantaged families.

It’s self-evident that charter schools enroll the families who have it together to seek them out, decide to take a chance on the lottery and perhaps the admission tests (KIPP does test applicants, and those applicants are given the impression that those tests are admission tests, though KIPP claims they’re not*), and work the rest of the process.

It’s also self-evident to almost everyone who lives in the real world, with the singular exception of Kitchen Sink, that not every family has it together to seek out a school, take a chance on the lottery, brave the admission test and work the rest of the process. And at KIPP schools and who knows what others, that’s before the “counseling session” with the administration at which adults and students sign contracts agreeing to this and that and may well be discouraged from enrolling after all if they’re not likely to get with the program.

This is reality. Kitchen Sink’s world is Kitchen Sink’s world.

*As some of you know, I went through part of the KIPP enrollment process with my own child as a research project — the gushing press and researchers who “forget” to do all the research haven’t tried that.

Never, never did I see a reason to think that any parent was not motivated to care for or give the best for their child. Like I said, uninformed, hamstrung, yes, but never not motivated.

My point is about “what kind of parent” winds up in charter schools. In my experience – and I’m comparing my time working in a large urban district school, a small urban district school and a charter school in the same district – every kind of parent under the sun, and certainly not more “motivated” for their child’s success. I’d like to see that red herring be put to rest.

As far as Mayor Newsom understanding that teachers aren’t inept and schools aren’t uncaring, he’s right. There are wonderfully caring teachers all over the district school systems all over the country. There are caring schools. But overall, the message to families in poor district schools is: “STAY OUT! WE KNOW BETTER.” No wonder they seem “unmotivated.” District schools are suffering from an extreme lack of (a) high expectations and (b) unified vision and direction. Without those two elements, it’s natural to push parents out.

I wonder, did Mayor Newsom call the parents of elementary school students? Probably not, because truancy doesn’t show up en masse until secondary school. But if he did, he’d be doing a lot more than most districts seem to be doing to catch families in crisis early, and intervene by offering services and setting up boundaries. Unlike many charter schools, which in my experience, go the extra mile to push families and, yes, even provide supports when needed.

It’s bizarre and self-defeating for a special-education advocate to promote charter schools as the solution, because both data and anecdotal evidence overwhelmingly confirm that charters avoid and dump disabled students as much as possible. Those are just the facts, no matter how loudly firmly misguided (or deliberately deceptive) charter advocates try to insist otherwise.

Blustering at people about their school affiliations is counterproductive too, especially because so much of the pro-charter noise comes from people who haven’t set foot in a school in their adult lives, not counting a few shiny orchestrated tours, and know absolutely squat about what actually goes on in a classroom.

My own views about the “it’s a miracle!” magic-feather-silver-bullet charter propaganda started developing back in 1997, when I took on a major freelance writing job for the Hoover Institution, world capital of that mentality. At the same time, my older child was in second grade in a diverse urban public school (a midrange one, in answer to Ms. Alpert’s question, among our district schools). I was reading lots of Hoover materials by the magic-feather folks, mainly John Chubb (now discredited by the lies and sleaze he engaged in around his involvement with now-failed for-profit Edison Schools), Terry Moe and others like Thomas Sowell. At the same time, I was volunteering regularly in my son’s classroom, so I could see the total disconnect. These confident, high-profile and well-paid propagandists had not the tiniest ****ing clue what the inside of a K-12 classroom was like. Yet even they were probably more clued in that the primary drivers of our education policy, like Bill Gates and Eli Broad.

Oh, and I can see that the KIPP fans are leaping with desperation on the study of one (1) single KIPP school, which I haven’t had time to take a close look at. But here’s the history. Until a few years ago, none of the multiple studies and masses of gushing press coverage, of course including Jay Mathews’ (remember, he sells books based on the mass adoration of KIPP that he promotes), had ever thought to look at attrition. Gosh, I guess they all just “forgot” to check that. Since I’m familiar with the California Department of Education database, I researched the attrition at all the California KIPP schools and found the pattern that is now widely discussed — major attrition, with the majority of students who start KIPP not finishing. One thing I did was break down by demographics, so I found that the pattern consistently was that the subgroup that tended to be the most academically challenged tended to leave in much higher percentages (Latino or African-American boys, depending on the school’s overall makeup). At Oakland’s KIPP Bridge Academy during the period I researched, 79% of the African-American boys who started 5th grade left before the START of 8th grade — I didn’t have access to info on how many actually finished grade 8 — if any.

When I blogged those statistics, it got some attention. A while later, a report by SRI on San Francisco Bay Area KIPP schools resoundingly confirmed my findings, and also added info that I didn’t have access to — that the students who left were consistently the lowest achievers. The SRI study, to be clear, found that 60% of the students (overall) who started at those KIPP schools left before finishing 8th grade, consistently the lowest-achievers, and they were not replaced, leaving the class with the 40% highest achievers. The attrition of low achievers was so high that the SRI researchers were unable to study the impact of KIPP methods on students through their years there, because the attrition confounded the data.

Well, now we have info on one (1) KIPP school supposedly showing a different pattern; KIPP enthusiasts are leaping on it as the definitive proof, but I don’t see how you figure that. It’ll be interesting to see what the Mathematica study determines.

Oh, for disclosure, my kids have attended basically all three levels of urban public school: A midrange elementary school (Lakeshore Elementary, SFUSD), an arts high school that admits by audition and thus is relatively protected from some of the major challenges that urban schools face (San Francisco School of the Arts, SFUSD ), and a middle school that — especially when my older started there — was viewed as a “dirty,” “dangerous,” “disreputable” “ghetto” school (Aptos Middle School, SFUSD).

Uh, it isn’t “above everyone else’s” well-being. There are too many parents who’ve put their kids in charters, private and parochial schools to do this “everyone else” thing. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands, in fact. Or, is the price of citizenship in your best of possible worlds that all parents have to sacrifice their firstborn children to the “greater public good” that some unelected pundits define? I think it’s just fine when informed, involved parents do what informed, involved parents are supposed to do, and that’s to find the best possible school for their kids. But then, why should I say that when I was one of the parents who started a new public school program for a large, well-defined group of kids instead of taking a fancy private school scholarship we were offered?

Who decides what the greater social good is? You? I didn’t elect you; neither did the parents who put their kids in charter schools. That’s the job of elected officials. Are you one? In states which permit charters, those with the authority to decide this issue have already done so. Nationally, well, the Obama Administration is pro charter. It’s one of the few things that maintains bipartisan support in Congress. Now, why would they all do that?

It’s certainly true that private and parochial schools don’t receive govt. money … unless you count the numerous indirect tax and service benefits they receive, in which case they get a lot of public money. Just not in the form of a check.

But, getting back to whose ox is gored … where’s the link to the public school(s) your kid(s) attend, or attended? Have you had a child in a horrible public school, or are you just making decisions about the greater good … for someone else’s kid? When you build systems from the bottom up, instead of from the top down, and attend to the needs of the individuals on the bottom, it’s a bit harder to blithely dismiss the suffering those on the bottom endure.

As for those parents who don’t attend to what their kids do, including going to school, well, either there are programs that are effective in working with these parents and their kids or there are not. If there are not, then the public schools should admit they can’t hack it for this discrete group and invite non-education folks in to set up and run some programs that might. Probably outside a school. If there are schools and programs that do work for these parents and kids someplace, well then why, pray tell, aren’t the majority of public schools using them? Perhaps there’s something in the structure of the typical American public school and district which is antithetical to this group of parents becoming involved in their children’s educations? But right now, when at least 1/3, and possibly more – depending on who massages the underlying numbers – don’t graduate from high school, either there’s a humongously high percentage of parents and kids for whom this system does not work at all, or the system is pervasively incompetent and/or unwilling to do what really needs to be done. And what needs to be done does not involve further insulting those informed, involved parents who seek exactly what good parents are supposed to seek, i.e., the best possible available education for their children.

We have vaccine compensation funds for the people who are injured by vaccines, which people admit are necessary in order to secure the greater public good in the field of public health. Set up an education compensation fund for the kids who are victims of the public school system you defend, and then it’s fair to talk about forcing some parents (some other parents, that is) to throw their kids on the tracks, into the path of an oncoming train, because that will somehow make the world better for the people who can afford to live further uptown, above the railway.

This is not true:

Quote: “Actually, if you look at many studies of the overall effectiveness of charter schools, what you see is that, overall, they do no better, nor worse, than public schools…”

Actually, the studies are very clear – the majority of charter schools do worse than public schools, nationwide.

Quote: “…but typically do so at less cost.”

That’s too complicated, since as discussed otherwise here, charters underenroll the students who cost the most to educate. And the rock star charter schools certainly do not educate anyone at less cost. It’s funny, because I know a woman who’s a former KIPP executive and a non-charter public-school parent. When she talks about KIPP (which she still respects), she treats it as a given that KIPP has enormously more money to spend than her child’s public school – or any public school. I have friends who are charter school parents here in San Francisco who acknowledge the same thing — that’s WHY they chose the charter school. Yet the propagandists endlessly claim otherwise. The lies and distortions surrounding charter schools go on and on.

Quote: “According to this line of reasoning, all private schools and parochial schools should be abolished … so as to keep feeding that great institution known as the NYC public school system.”

Private schools and parochial schools aren’t being created and supported with tax dollars, however.

Quote: “The last thing the NYC DOE wants is a heavy inrush of informed, involved, savvy and connected middle class parents and their children. The first thing those parents would do, as we did, is use the NYS Freedom of Information Law to look at purchase orders, after which all hell broke loose.”

I am in San Francisco and follow this blog because there is so much buzz about mayoral control and how the Bloomberg school experiments could be leading the way for other school districts nationwide. It’s interesting to me that there’s so much hatred by charter parents aimed at the NYC DOE, when the NYC DOE appears so very pro-charter and hostile to its own schools — determined to neglect and abandon the schools it runs and turn as many schools over to charter operators as possible. I’m 3,000 miles away, so maybe that’s why I don’t get it, but I’m baffled.

Quote: “If you want to put the well being of an institution above that of a child, that’s your choice.” No, I want to put the well-being of the larger number of children above the well-being of a few. I might as well turn the comment around – if you want to put the well-being of your own child above everyone else’s, and harm the majority of children in the process – well, that shouldn’t be your choice, because it’s a selfish, coldblooded and immoral choice.

Quote: “I agree with you that a competitive spirit among schools is healthy. It pushes schools to be results-driven and be concerned with the real reason it is there – to educate and produce scholars. That’s why I think charter schools are wonderful.”

Diane Ravitch has a response to that. Here is her quote from a recent NPR interview: “There should not be an education marketplace, there should not be competition. Schools operate fundamentally — or should operate — like families. The fundamental principle by which education proceeds is collaboration. Teachers are supposed to share what works; schools are supposed to get together and talk about what’s [been successful] for them. They’re not supposed to hide their trade secrets and have a survival of the fittest competition with the school down the block.

Quote: “… as an educator, I’ve never seen a parent who wasn’t motivated to get the best education possible for his or her child. Never.”
Kitchen Sink, you do live in a bubble. In my own kids’ urban public-school classes I’ve seen parents who were too overwhelmed by their own problems to pay attention to their kids’ education, or even to understand that they should. Here in San Francisco, our mayor has been engaging in a project that has been an eye-opener to him; hearing about it might increase your awareness. After being challenged by Patricia Gray, the longtime principal of San Francisco’s Balboa High School, Mayor Gavin Newsom has been spending Saturdays calling the homes of students who are chronically truant from their San Francisco public schools. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Matier and Ross political insider column wrote about this in a Jan. 31 column (not available online.)
“It has been a real eye-opener,” Newsom told the Chronicle. “In just about every case,” Matier and Ross wrote, “the family is in crisis.” In other words, truancy isn’t all the fault of inept teachers and uncaring schools after all, Newsom is learning.
At last week’s overflowing Town Hall meeting called by San Francisco parents to address the current budget crisis, Newsom brought up his calls (and visits) to the homes of truants, and reiterated that point quite emphatically. The truants are almost always living in households battered by the worst life can dump on them. Those families are too overwhelmed to seek out the best education possible for their children, or to support their children’s education at all, even by getting them to school. It’s tragic, but it’s what’s happening in the real world.

Let every single person who opines (and separately, every single person who lobbies) on the charter school issue, pro or con, be required to stick a line below his/her name with a link to the most recent school report cards of the schools his/her children attend. And where the person’s kids have finished high school and gone onwards (and hopefully upwards), let the person give a link to the most recent school report card for each school his/her kids attended before graduation.

I’ve actually never seen a parent whose kid attends a public school hellhole or, in the case of kids w/disabilities, a public Day Willowbrook, stand up and oppose something that would give him/her a choice of schools for the child. But perhaps there’s something, or someone(s) I’ve missed? Let’s see whose oxen are really gored if parents get more choice and some public schools go down as a result. Let’s see a parent of a kid in a decent public school play pundit and tell another parent whose kid is being maleducated that their kid should be forced to stay where s/he is so that … the public school system can continue to get per capita funding for him/her, period. Am I the only person who’s read the recent NYU study of the NYC DOE’s Title 1 program, a study which concluded that the longer a kid stays in a Title 1 school here, the worse his/her scores are going to be?

Just so you know, when my son was very young, we were offered a full scholarship for his entire k-12 schooling career at an extremely prestigious and expensive NYC private school. We thought about it a great deal and decided that because we believed so strongly in the public school system, we would join with other parents and fight to get a program established that would meet our kids’ needs. Over two decades later, and after observing the NYC public school system through a variety of lenses (parent, forensic consultant to attorneys, policy analyst), it is clear to me that we just plain made a mistake. And that’s even with our son having attended what were, arguably, the best schools in the NYC system at that time.

The NYC public school system is pernicious and operates in ways which are genuinely antithetical to the best interests of the children. As a result of that experience, I now support public schools, charter schools, private and parochial schools, and vouchers – whatever will allow a parent to put his or her child into a learning environment which s/he feels is suitable for the child. Since we put our money where our mouths were when we helped start The Anderson Program, to the tune of maybe $30,000 (back in 1986 that was a lot more money than it is these days), I feel really comfortable in saying that we could have invested our money, and our time, more wisely. But that’s water over the bridge. What is not water over the bridge is the fate of thousands and thousands and thousands of children who are mired in a truly dysfunctional system right now, a system which is itself sited squarely in the middle of a truly dysfunctional industry.

Far as I’m concerned, every parent who wants to pull a kid from a school – any school – which isn’t meeting his or her child’s needs in ways that the parent defines deserves a pat on the back and as much of a helping hand as can possibly be mustered. The dysfunctional public education system here, in NYS, and nationally, with its highly paid lobbyists and collusive politicians can take care of itself quite nicely, thank you, and I cannot imagine having the temerity to look such a parent square in the eye and telling him/her that his/her child must be sacrificed to the great god of a dysfunctional institution.

Schools and public education systems do not live. Children do.

I’d make one important point: as an educator, I’ve never seen a parent who wasn’t motivated to get the best education possible for his or her child. Never. Uninformed, disempowered, downtrodden, maybe. Especially in the last couple of years and after 9/11 when folks on the bottom of the totem pole were losing jobs at the drop of a hat too. But this myth of the unmotivated parent filling the rolls of the district public schools that are left behind to clean up after charters have creamed the “informed” parents is a big fat lie, and an offensive one at that.

In my experience (and as at best a lukewarm believer in competition to make things better, not what I expected), the surrounding district public schools get better when a charter shows up, not worse. Indeed, the failure of the NYC public school system to provide a high quality education for all kids isn’t about the kids. It’s about the adults, and when adults behave differently and focus on what matters, things get remarkably better. And kids who could have been labeled with all kinds of bad and shameful educator-speak names because of their own behaviors remarkably rise to meet high academic expectations when they are given the supports they need and when the bad behaviors of school adults around them changes.

As for teachers giving in to overbearing parents, who defines “overbearing”? And isn’t that what principals exist for? I’ve rarely heard poor parents described as overbearing, so I assume you mean middle class and above parents. Overall, they must be doing something right since their kids score far better than do those who can’t afford to be overbearing. And, what’s the big deal if a parent whom a teacher and principal feel is being overbearing and unrealistic transfers his/her child to a charter where they do not think the parent is being overbearing? Perhaps overbearing is relative?

Charters tend, far more than public schools, to focus on individual children and adapt their programs to fit the needs of the individuals who walk through their doors. Public schools, on the other hand, focus on classes and groups, and strive mightily, often inappropriately, to fit their students into these pre-conceived groups and programs they’ve created for the hypothetical “them.” And then any child for whom the school doesn’t work is defined as defective. It’s amazing how many children who public schools have defined as defective turn out to be just fine when their parents transfer them to charter schools. In fact, I’ve often thought of establishing a new special education classification for a large group of children who have to remain in public schools, i.e., “public school-disabled; otherwise just fine.”

I’ll take an overbearing and demanding group of parents anytime. What establishment of charters has done, by and large, is empowered poor parents, parents of color, parents whose children don’t speak English at home, and the like to be just as demanding and overbearing as middle class parents have always been allowed to be.

God bless ‘em.

There’s a fine new study of a KIPP charter in MA out this week, btw. It analyzed, inter alia, the issue of kids who transferred out of the school, and the results for kids who stayed as compared with those whose parents applied but could not get them in. The charter had a high proportion of kids with disabilities and ELLs, to boot. Not only did the charter outperform its district, but its special ed. and ELL kids far outperformed their non-charter peers. Here’s the study:
http://econ-www.mit.edu/files/5311 . Jay Matthews had a piece on it in the Washington Post.

I agree with you that a competitive spirit among schools is healthy. It pushes schools to be results-driven and be concerned with the real reason it is there – to educate and produce scholars. That’s why I think charter schools are wonderful. They are getting back to the needs of children.

I do disagree with you on the part where you talk about how parents should be able to pull their children out of a school that does not listen to and give in to all the complaints of parents.

I am a teacher and I have worked in schools where parent involvement has been extremely high. And some parents have no qualms about coming up to me and telling me that they don’t see the purpose for an assignment or to tell me that I am doing something the wrong way. Of course I listen to their concerns and am usually able to explain the reasoning behind all my instructional decisions and the benefits they will see in the end. But sometimes, I have extremely overbearing parents who feel that, like the Gap, I am there to please them and provide great customer service. I have even had principals say that the way education is these days, we work in the customer service field.

Public school systems that do offer choice are afraid of parents threatening to pull their children out of that school. Sometimes over extremely unnecessary things. It becomes aggravating when my goal is to provide EVERY child in my class with a high class, quality education, but instead I spend a considerable amount of time playing customer service to please parents.

I agree that a school should provide parents with a partnership, and as in any partnership, collaboration and listening to one another. But, I think we all need to stop and think before we demand something from a good teacher, who has been certified to teach. I don’t want to come off as sounding like teachers are better than teachers. Hardly the case at all. I think that in the parent-student-teacher partnership everyone provides different skills to the pot. Just like no one can take the place of a parent to that child, a parent cannot take the place of that teacher in that child’s life. The parents shouldn’t try and be both, just as a teacher shouldn’t try and be the parent.