Yes, for the benefit of the higher performing students.

I am not an expert on public education. It seems like there are probably better solutions (as pointed out earlier in the thread) but charter schools are probably better than nothing. I think the arguments that they increase segregation have some merit but are probably not reason enough to oppose the schools.

I think the amount of scams is enough to rethink the whole idea.

There are magnet schools and, barring that, honors and AP classes.

Is this really the lie being told, that charter schools are for 'high-performing' students to get away from the riff-raff?

My wife is a public school teacher for 15 years. My mother was a public school teacher for 35 years. My father was a private school teacher(who worked for 10 years and eventually started a teachers union there) and eventually worked in public school administration. My son goes to a Charter School.

I really dislike everything about the Charter School system. It is extremely easy to exploit. Teachers who one day are perceived to screw over a board member's child could find themselves without a job. They are grossly underpaid. There are Charter Schools that I see all of the time that recruit for athletic purposes. And truly there is no real diversity. Certainly not reflective of the public school population.

While inconsistencies in State and Federal funding greatly effect our local public school district, it is also heavily mismanaged and corrupt. There are 30-35 kids in a classroom with only one teacher and no para professionals. They removed art, library and music from the curriculum. They are working towards consolidating High Schools, simply because if they can consolidate they can lay off teachers, even though the student population continues to rise. Of course consolidation is being driven by the building of a new school built by a construction company whose owner is the biggest donor to a majority of the board.

It was a brutal decision for us. Do you stand on your high horse and put your child in a school where he can blend into the 35 kids in his class because he is quiet and doesn't cause a problem? Do you want your kid to not have art, not have music, not have access to a librarian or a properly serviced and staffed library? Have all of those replaced by "extra" math instruction or "extra" language arts instruction neither of which reaches the level of challenging him.

Or do you put him in a Charter School that has 25 students in a classroom with a teacher and two para professionals. Art, music classes, environmental ed classes outside. They actually employ a chef in the cafeteria who uses locally sourced food, some of which is grown in the the student garden right at the school.

As a parent it is an easy decision, as a community member it is not. I see problems all the time. I've sat at Christmas concerts where there are three kids goofing around and when the one white girl gets up somebody "has to say something" to the two boys. I hear things like, "Oh, she is actually a really nice black woman," describing one of the moms volunteering at a school event. The racism is rampant. There is a lottery system for students to be enrolled, but there is also a nefarious "Founder's List" which makes sure that anyone they want to get in, can get in.

The problem is based in a Public School system that has been systematically undermined since No Child Left Behind was implemented. The funding for schools is inconsistent, the services for children who have learning problems and social problems is difficult to obtain and is always being cut, then given a new hoop to jump through. Combine that with parents who want to overly medicate their children and the ones who do not want their children to be "marked" by any problem and of course there is more money spent per child. School funding gets attached to test scores, teachers salaries get tied to their test scores. But the real end that has been reached is that we can now resegregate our schools and use education as the reason. It has already happened with private schools. Now those who think I'm too good for a public school and not rich enough for a private school have a way to segregate themselves.

Great post, Sluss.

in ohio its like 180$ per person/month. thats really not that much.

and arent some states starting to drug and alcohol test for these cards?

Great post, Sluss.

Sounds like just another area where the USA lags behind the rest of the world.

Of course. USA#34 or whatever because excluding black people is more important than taking care of our kids.

Charter schools get less funding than public schools (by a LOT in many districts). I don't think it's a problem if they are doing more with less, at least in competently run charter school programs like DC/NYC. A lot of flyover states' charter programs desperately need more oversight.

My experience up close as volunteer tutor for inner city kids (and my wife, who teaches for NYC DOE agrees) is charter/magnet schools have significant spillover effects even on kids that don't get in said schools. Just having friends at those schools with realistic prospects of getting into college is what gets them to get help to get into college to begin with.

Right. My "yes" is that it makes sense to separate out high performers. I don't know enough about charter schools to know if they make sense. I think I often confuse them with magnet schools.

https://www.theatlantic.com/educatio...utm_source=twb

I cannot believe Goldberg didn't try to spike a story that makes him look like an absolute imbecile, so I have to assume he thinks he comes off OK in that? Incredible

The root problem is the way schools are funded. School district is the most important factor in purchasing a home for families with kids who can afford to make a decision based on these factors. There are loads of other identifiable issues within the system, but as long as we are pretending it is okay to fund a school based on the income of the surrounding population it's a joke.

They're mostly funded with local taxes, are they not?

In Ca it's not most, but enough to matter a great deal. When we were looking to move the house hunting sites offered a breakdown of local schools including $ per student.

https://www.npr.org/2016/04/18/47425...-money-problem

We considered moving to a "better" area and paying more for our house except better in this case also meant more white and conservative. While we decided not to do that, we never considered moving to the "worse" areas to have our kids serve as a data point that would perhaps help those schools. Even though we stayed in a relatively diverse area on purpose we still chose within that area based on the specific school our kids would be assigned. Don't really think we desverve more of a pass than sending a kid to a charter school for making our decision this way.

I'd like to hear from anyone who has a kid and opted to place them in an underperforming school when given a choice to speak up here.

Funding has not been the issue for years. A combination of state and federal funding has long ago virtually closed the spending per pupil gap in MOST districts. There are still some states (your usual suspect red states) where there is still a pretty large 20+% gap but really they are in the minority. THere are outliers (especially at the top end) but intra state we're really not talking about big differences for the most part.

Money isn't the issue... social economic segregation (and racial in most cases) however is a huge problem.

Intentionally putting a kid in an underperforming school is parental malpractice.

I agree that simple dollars per pupil are not the problem, and also agree with all of your other points. I will point out that a, say, 10% gap in dollars will often represent more than a 10% gap in value.

A lot of those parents can't afford to move to more affluent zip codes with better schools. Some NJ zip codes have such high property taxes living in those zip codes is basically paying private school tuition and only makes sense if you have more than one child in the school system.

No, I know. It sounded like JT was asking for an example of someone doing in on purpose (i.e. they can afford it etc and just choose not to)

That is what I'm asking because that is similar to asking a parent to not put their kid in a charter school if they can't afford to move.

Ah okay.

Generally, I think a parent has a responsibility to put their kid in the best school they reasonably can.

The millennials article from the LC thread reminded me a lot about Inso0 and all his poor-shaming, and then I open this thread and it delivers

From that article:

Inso0's concern, though, is OF COURSE: