It's just some crazy old lady trying to sell a book. No reason to be disturbed.

charter schools seem to be pretty great for poor kids http://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledb...arter-success/

not so much for the rest, which in my imagination is somewhat affected by religious types pulling their kids out of good public schools because they dont want them to learn about evolution and dinosaurs and stuff like that.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mummj4SwpU0

my understanding of these charter schools (and i'm sure i can find stuff to back me up if you're a non-believer) is, that they cherry pick the best students and run-off the ones not performing well to inflate their numbers, and there is a ton of theft and waste and **** too.

charter schools are far from the answer (in my opinion).

The charter schools I know of around here have longer days and a longer school year, with a sort of boot camp style. I imagine a lot of kids just stop going.

but with a community based mentor program like pathways that becomes less likely. that's the answer here. well... one of them, but far more effective than further standardized testing and performance based salary.

the public school system, as an institution, works. it just gets ****ed up from various external forces.

i see this charter school thing as nothing more than a scam to rob the government out of the **** ton of money we spend on public education (i'm sure there are some good ones, or people with good intentions involved in some).

PTU: big brother and pathways work on an individualized basis but they don't solve systematic issues. Are you going to have millions of big brothers/big sisters running around tending and mentoring kids full time? No. Can big brothers and sisters help their littles overcome peer pressure to not study? Sometimes, but mostly no.

On Charters:

Charters do not necessarily use admission criteria. Even those that do perform better than expected. Much better than expected as a group, even after adjusting for differences in student population.

On the creaming topic.
Yes, they do cream. But overall national data indicates this doesn't happen as much as is widely believed for two reasons:
1. authorities are cracking down on such behavior
2. turns out the best performing students don't bother

Even if the charter schools do cream successfully, I do not believe it's a problem. There is nothing wrong with providing the most motivated students and families with the resources (including positive peer pressure) they need to succeed.

Shouldn't the incentive be on the teacher? I don't know how you would do it but maybe a system where when someone graduates HS, they pick the one teacher that helped them the most. That teacher gets something like a $5,000 bonus or whatever.

The bottom line is money talks. You want teachers to do a good job? You have to pay them. Sounds callous, but it's the truth.

If that was available every teacher would campaign to every class to pick them for the $$ prize. Teachers get paid, no reason to pay extra for the job they were hired to do

That proposal has a long list of issues that's not unique to the teaching profession.

Most of them revolve around most of the teachers (workers) have no shot at that prize and will simply become more unmotivated.

did you look at the OP? this is impressive stuff here that has everyone in the ed-reform world taking notice.

this is different from a big brother big sister program, and decreased dropout rates by an unprecedented margin increased college enrollments my an insane amount. this is really interesting stuff.

it's the kind of stuff that's the answer.

also what about all the financial improprieties going on with charter schools?

charter school make it easier for the outlier to thrive, maybe, but most people aren't outliers so we need to help them. public schools having one counselor for 1.5k students isn't right.

with pathways everything is mandatory. they have to meet with the mentor, they have to do their work. kid's living in poverty in our country don't have those expectations. i know, i was one of them.

I really don't know of a solution. I'm not really sure it is broken. I do believe that the previous attempt to "fix" it was horrible. No Child Left Behind, really? Base school funding on how students perform? Huh?

"Uniformize financing of schools. No districts with advantages."

This seems like the best way. Not sure how to fix seniority and teachers union. But let's face it, some kids are not college material, or even deserve to graduate high school, even if they had Eienstein teaching them one on one, they wouldn't grasp it.

The cream will usually rise to the top either way.

The American student doesn't seem to view education as the "way out" like most other foreign students, (generally speaking, of course). When speaking with foreign students or their parents, they seem to put enormous weight and emphasis on their education.

The beauty(and perhaps curse) of America is that education is not necessarily needed to become successful, or at least rich and wealthy.

Your implication here is that teachers do not get paid fairly if I understand correctly. Ineresting article:
http://michaelrobertson.com/archive.php?minute_id=357

Average teachers salary for 2013 in the U.S. was 56k. Not bad for what, 9 months work?

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d...t13_211.60.asp

My school districts average salary is a good bit above the 56k.

This is completely par for the course. Can you imagine teaching a precal algebra/trig class and having one of the less shocking questions asked by students be ", what do I need to make on the final exam to earn a C for the class?" We're not even talking about a remedial class here! This is a world shaped and influenced by people who make posts like the one below. I laugh when people are surprised at this type of stuff. The comedown will not be fun.

If you want better teachers, then you should pay them more, just like you would if you wanted a better chef, pilot or etc.

There are other ways to attract better teachers, like better administrators and etc.

Reducing some license requirements could attract more/better candidates. It doesn't really make sense that I can teach at any college in the country but need at least a year of extra schooling to teach HS seniors.

That statement may be true for a few geniuses at the top. For the majority no high school diploma means not getting pass the clerk for a job interview.

The pathways education model is essentially what I described: a full time mentoring (big brother/big sister) program that throws in other support programs.

The Pathway centers are functionally the same as (for-profit, albeit low margin) tutoring centers that permeate communities all over the country. The big difference is Pathways works for free.

Just to be clear, I think Pathways is great. It's doing something that needs to be done. But I don't have any illusions about the costs and limitations of such programs. In a smaller community like Regent Park, the model works since it's easier to reach a critical mass.

Once you transplant that program to a big city like NYC, you'll find the same problems as charter schools: not enough spots.

The book mentioned in the first video

http://www.amazon.com/Change-Agents-..._1426862798480

So yea playing to the black helicopter conspiracy theory Ron Paul crowd.

All depends where you live and it's more like 10 months work. Teachers need those two months off in summer and the students need it too

10 months with a week off in Dec, Feb, and April plus a pile of other holidays, several teacher development days, and sick days as required. I think it's fair to call it 9 months work.

Can't speak for how they work everywhere, but I do know that where I live there is an application process, part of the application is that you must submit your child's grades and samples of coursework with the application, and there is a "lottery" system (with a whole bunch of 'exceptions') that they use to determine who gets in and who does not.

I have no idea if this system is being abused and whether those kids who are struggling where they are magically don't get selected if they are underperformers, but it would not surprise me in the least.

Since you're pulling this from the Koch Brothers' bought-and-paid-for shills at CATO I have no idea if any of this is even true, but even if the data points are correct, the bolded still is not no matter what CATO minions are telling you. Private schools don't just let everyone in who applies, most never have and never will.

This is a good example of why education is needed. What you write is complete nonsense. Among developed countries the US has some of the lowest social mobility, mainly because access to education is conditioned strongly on wealth.

I think it's less to do with wealth and more to do with family structure. If you have 2 parents at home that are constantly on the kids about homework and good grades then the kids will do better. The biggest reason why schools are a wreck in NYC is cause the kids act like savages and there's no punishment that can stop them