That's obviously true, but the reality is that many people have acted as if it is. They don't want poor or minorities in their schools with their children.

They're the same that's been plaguing the US educational system since the beginning. Big picture is that the rich and racist want to protect their child's education and don't want to risk their children getting a substandard education. The methods that they've done to affect that is what has created the defective public school system. That's why charter schools are mostly sold as a way to fix poor inner city schools but rarely as a superior alternative to, say, private schools, or high end suburban schools. Because the reality is that those schools have too much money and too many opportunities.

Not only that, but charter schools are literally improvements for the best students at the expense of poor and minority children.

How, exactly?

What do you think they take away?

Govt funding

You mean, other than money?

I've got to imagine taking all the good students away also can't be good for those who remain. Is there any research (paging well named) into whether or not segregating high performing peers helps or harms lower performing students?

Funding has and always will be based on enrollment.

As I stated earlier ITT, the public system actually double dips on charter school enrollment. They get half of the money tied to that kid, without actually having to educate them in the public school.

Because charter schools only get half of the funding per student that the district does, that leads to silly things on the two official count days. Schools will throw parties and give away gaming consoles and other prizes for showing up on that Friday, and teachers/administrators will do anything and everything possible to encourage parents to make sure the kids come to school.

So no, it's not about the money for the district.


How so? One of the primary problems in Milwaukee at least is the lack of peer pressure to conform to standards of conduct. These charter schools aren't only taking "high performing" students. They can't pick and choose which students they take by virtue of their charter from the district. However, unlike the district school, they have the ability to enforce disciplinary standards because there's a line of kids waiting to get in who might actually want an education.

Honest question: have you done any research into how charters work in Wisconsin, or are you relying on your wife’s experience? Or any research as to how charters work outside of Wisconsin?

Charter schools aren't selecting "high performing" students, they are selecting students whose parents care about education and have certain resources. Those are very different kinds of biases. I agree entirely that it might be possible that segregating high performing and low performing students could be good for both (also it might not be) but that's not what charter schools are accomplishing, so it's irrelevant.

Honest answer: Yes, I do know how charter schools are authorized in WI, but would hardly call myself an expert. I also know rules vary by state. So if any Tom Dick or Harry can start a charter school in your state, then I suppose some of what I said doesn't apply. But that's not the case here, and two of the lowest performing public school districts in the country are in Southeast Wisconsin. Charter schools are a solid solution for thousands of kids around here to get a decent education in a more healthy environment.

There isn't a one-size-fits-all solution to any of this, but it is tiresome for 2+2 regs from Whitelandia, VT or wherever they're from to show up and spout off about rich racists ruining education when they have no clue what goes on in actual struggling school districts around the country.

You can tell that charter schools are way better then normal public schools. That's why you find them all over urban districts full of brown kids and not in affluent white suburbs. Because that is totally how things work in this country.

I can't speak for all states/counties but I know that in my county, any kid can go there as long as they win the lottery and can get to and from the school every day regardless of where they reside. The buses do not go to the charter schools. So this means that parents who have the means to take their kids to school and pick them up or arrange carpooling or whatever (ie more affluent) can put their kids in charter school, while the kids who have to ride the bus because it's their only way to school are just **** out of luck.

More affluent tends to = more white.

So at least in my area, this helps explain why charters look more segregated than their public counterparts.

More affluent also tends to be better students. Somewhat odd to note the differences between states in these matters. In PA your home district must arrange transportation for you even if you attend a school outside that district. Several of my HS peers were bussed, by our local school district, to various Catholic high schools in another city.

Even the most ardent public-ed haters know that household income/wealth is a major predictor in student achievement, perhaps the biggest predictor.

And, of course, the so-called "achievement gap" is actually widening now that school districts are re-segregating.

Charter schools usually pop up in an attempt to provide better outcomes in awful districts, or as a means to specialize the educational experience.

I'm sure you have some in your area suburbs, but you just don't hear about them. I'd be shocked if you didn't have some STEM-focused charter schools available to you even in the richest of counties. Ditto for special arts or foreign language schools.

Sure, but why the switch? Why is it a means to improve better outcomes in awful districts, but not to improve outcomes in the suburbs and instead provides some niche schooling?

Semantics.

Even urban Charter schools usually have a schtick of some kind, but the easiest sell is on test scores and graduation rates in these low-performing districts.

If your district already has a 98% graduation rate, why bother even looking elsewhere?

Meanwhile, MPS has somewhere around a 55% graduation rate. Do you think the more engaged parents are going to be looking for any opportunity to improve the odds of their kids graduating?

Are there any other countries that have adopted or are currently doing something similar to charter schools in the USA or is this just a last ditch effort to exploit inequality in a country desperate to squeeze every last drop out?

Urban schools have shown worse performance, so it is only fair to provide the benefit of charters to those areas first. And since there is a long legacy of poor urban schools, you want to give those areas a monopoly on charters for a few decades so they can "catch up" to their suburban peers. Now that we have an administration that takes inner-city issues seriously, we can probably expand charters more quickly.

Alternatively, we could just start to send urban students to suburban schools. Don't know if anyone has considered that.

That would be an interesting experiment for someone with too much money. Take all the kids from Barack Obama School of Career and Technical Education (formerly Custer High School - 60% graduation rate) and bus them to Nicolet High School (98%) and vice versa and see how test scores change after 4 years. They're only 3 miles apart so it shouldn't be a big deal.

Truth in advertising: Nicolet spends significantly more on a per-pupil basis. River Hills kids are filthy rich.

Nicolet having higher per pupil spending doesn't really tell you anything without going into the nitty-gritty of their budget. Your advertising is not necessarily truthful.

No, but that would've been the first question anyone asked. For all we know, handing out an iPad2 to every single student at the beginning of the year is good for a few percentage points.

In the same vein, New Berlin is within 10 miles of Milwaukee and has an overall graduation rate of 98.1%, but spends far less per student.

My point has always been that money isn't everything in this discussion on why some districts work and others don't.

You don't really have a point because we have no idea why per pupil spending is higher at one school or another without really getting into the finer details of the budget. Does the lower achieving school have more special education students (who may require costly IEPs)?

In almost every post you make regarding the efficacy of government services you almost always at least hint at the notion that tax money is obviously squandered (see iPad giveaway in your last post) but you never, ever provide any evidence or sources for these assertions. Why is that?

Good thing the PRIVATE SECTOR is here to save us from malfeasance and misappropriation of public funds!

What could go wrong?

Well, objectively tax money is being squandered, but that's not the major issue here.

You can search my previous posts for the St. Marcus situation for more details on that. MPS wasted millions of dollars just to prevent a successful inner-city Choice school from buying an empty MPS building to expand their operations. They are literally an oasis in the desert as far as achievement goes, and they've long reached capacity and have been trying to open new campuses.

But more to your point, you can hand out all the IEPs you want, but unless you get those kids the attention they need, what's the point? You have 6th graders with IEPs who can't read at a 1st grade level. Kids like that do not belong in a class with 38 other kids and one teacher. Nobody wins in this scenario. Moreover, how ****ed is a system that lets kids who cannot read make it to 6th grade? You're setting them up to fail, but not even letting them actually fail so they may get some help. Every single year my wife would make recommendations for some kids to be retained, and yet every single year they'd just get marched right through to the next grade anyway. God forbid there are any unnecessary blemishes on the DPI reports.