While forming an opinion about Ms.Moskowtiz’ suitability for the job, read NY Times accounts of parents whom complained that certain teachers and Ms. Moskowitz intimidated parents of children whom the schools believed didn’t fit the charter schools’ image of flawless and high achiever students. There were allegations that Moskowitz intentionally discouraged parents so as to get them to drop out or change to another grade school, all to protect a facade.
@AlexDad2016, in my opinion the real difficult question is what do you do in a situation where the funding is “suitcased”. In other words, when a state or other governing entity pays x amount per student. Do you still have the same objection?
I agree that there is a societal obligation to provide an adequate education for the young. And I say this even though my own kids went to Catholic schools for a good portion of their education. But the obligation should be to the student, not any particular school. For my part I have no problem with the students and their families choosing where to “spend” the tax dollars, within a reasonable framework, that are devoted to that goal.
In my state (Michigan) charter schools do not receive any capital cost reimbursement, they only receive operating costs. They must pay for their building, teacher salaries, technology, etc from a much smaller reimbursement. Nonetheless they have been very successful.
@AlexDad2016 , @Ohiodad51, I think the extent of the obligation needs to be determined locally. Our state moved funding to the state level, while capital costs remain a local obligation. As a result, richer districts have moved technology expenditures to bonds (!) while poorer districts like Detroit have saddled the remainder of the state taxpayers with $500 million in bond default because of their incompetent management.
That is one of the reasons I prefer a voucher system, which would allow parents the final say and insulate education from politics and bad management of other districts. It will be interesting to see how it works in Indiana with their statewide vouchers.
A quick look at the internet revealed reports of a starting teacher salary in CA of around $40k.
This is very, very low. Anyone have a reference that shows the starting teacher salary is higher than this?
You can’t get people into teaching with the “average” salary number, which includes very experienced teachers, assistant principals, etc.
My own preferred pick for Education Secretary would have been someone like Sandra Stotsky. Larry Arnn is president of a dyed-in-the-wool conservative liberal arts college that does not accept federal tax dollars. Does this mean he believes the federal government should be kept out of education?
Disappointed no one has brought up the one distinct difference between different types of schools - the ability of charter and private schools to limit their enrollment to the type kids they want to educate. You typically won’t see them with a large (or any) number of spec ed students or significant discipline problems. You can’t talk about the amount of funding going to public schools without bringing up their mandate to educate ALL students, not just the ones who are “typical”. And we all know the amount of $ it actually takes to educate kids with special needs is typically significantly more than those who don’t fall into that category. Using public funds for charter schools that don’t include these kids in their enrollment can leave public schools with even more of an imbalance in the the type students they have to educate and receive funds for.
I did mention that charter schools in Colorado do have to accept some special need students, and that special ed students get a higher sum from the state.
I do not like charter schools or magnet programs. I think they do take resources away from the neighborhood schools and concentrate on the ‘specialness’ for the students who do get in. I also think one of the biggest thing they pull from the neighborhood schools is the involved parents because those parents forming charters or willing to drive their kids across town to go to the school of the arts or Spanish language magnet are usually the ones more involved. That said, one of my kids went to a charter and one to a magnet (although it was our zoned school, she was just in the ‘good’ half, the magnet). Those were the options presented to me so of course I picked what was best for my kids, not what was best for society. The magnet program (a middle school IB) was great but it took all the resources the school had. Any student could be in band, orchestra, or art, but only the magnet students were. Anyone could go on the 8th grade trip to DC, but only the magnet students did. The charter school was actually formed before the state started chartering, so it was a BOCES, with its own school board and ran a little more independent of the state. I’d guess more than half of the students had IEPs and 504 plans. More than one student had a full time aide.
I looked at one charter school that was just starting up when my kids were in about 4th grade. The parents all had to be very involved. The parents had to pay for uniforms and books and the lunch program wasn’t subsidized. We passed, but some neighbors attended and loved it. At the start up the school had few special ed students, but the state required them to take more (and provided some resources) within a year or two, and it became more subsidized for things like lunch and playground equipment.
<@californiaaa Yes, exactly, liberals are about choice and responsibility. I chose to send both my daughters to a small private school through 5th grade, and then they switched to the local public middle school and will both be in public through high school. I have never nor will I ever complain about paying taxes to support our public schools, nor would I ever support even a dollar of taxes going to pay for someone’s private school education. >
Why? What’s in the name? I don’t care about the name, I want to pay less and to get better education. I think it is a reasonable position.
@justgraduate:
That structurally isn’t true, Charter schools are supposed to have a wide range of students, kids are chosen by lottery and it is not supposed to be ‘admission of the best’. There have been charter schools that have been accused of that, but unless the articles I read were false there also are charter schools that have special ed and special needs students and they are turning out good students, too. Charter schools BTW for those who claim they are private, are not, they are public schools, they are funded by the same school taxes that feed the public schools.
Charter schools have had a mixed bag when it comes to results. Some of them were found to be doing what critics complain about, that they were cherry picking, others turned out to be in effect scams where those running them were either incompetent or were downright stealing from them (this is from the NYC system, since they write a lot about it).
On the other hand, Charter schools have had some major successes, in part because they run under different rules than regular public schools do. They generally have longer school days and school years than traditional schools, and especially for kids in struggling areas, from less stable backgrounds, that helps close the gaps with kids from more traditional schools. In Charter schools, teachers get a lot more training than traditional ones, there is a lot more mentoring and there tends also to be more flexibility with the way they teach, and teachers in charter schools from what I read also are required to do things traditional teacher’s contracts forbid them from doing. Charter schools also have an advantage with the teachers, they often get young, energetic kids not too far out of college who are enthusiastic, and don’t have a lot of the burned out or otherwise timeservers many regular public schools have.
I have problems with school voucher programs, those do take money from the public schools and I think quite honestly voucher programs are a way for some to try and kill off public schools. That monetary figure you see, of X thousands/kid, is not the money that gets to the classroom directly, it also includes things like the cost of special education, it reflects the costs of maintainence and other such expenditures, it reflects debt payments, too (unless they have changed it, that number reflects “School budget is X dollars, has Y Students, so the amount/student is X/Y”, when in reality the actual amount spent directly on student’s education is smaller than that. I also have problems because the voucher programs proposed that I have seen don’t have standards attached to it, so parents can take that voucher and could be going to a school where the kids are not learning things they should (my take on the voucher program is those most pushing for it are not parents of failing schools, but rather a lot of them are religious conservative parents who won’t send their kid to a public school but want the voucher to be able to pay for a religious school, basically want to subsidize “their schools” ). If parents want to send their kids to private schools, religious or otherwise, that is fine, but they should also pay for it, as we did with our son.
I would be willing to see voucher programs where kids are in failing schools and there aren’t alternatives like charter or magnet schools, but I also want to see voucher programs where the kids who take them have to be assessed to make sure they are receiving an education. One of the more famous voucher programs was a program in Milwaukee (I believe it was privately financed) where they allowed kids to take vouchers and go to parochial schools if they were in failing schools…and when they did long term tracking, despite what people expected, the kids in the program didn’t do any better than kids in traditional schools, so vouchers may not be a cure all either.
If Trump gets rid of the Department of Education, I wonder how that is going to affect states that get large percentages of their education budgets through federal spending (nationally federal spending makes up about 9% of education spending, but it isn’t uniform, some states get between 25 and 50% of their education budgets from Uncle Sam…others get very little).
“Why? What’s in the name? I don’t care about the name, I want to pay less and to get better education. I think it is a reasonable position.”
Yes, you want something for nothing. We get it.
I have an idea. Let’s get rid of the public school system all together, then you can have the privilege of paying $25k/per year for 12 years for each of your children. Then private college for each of them at $65k/yr for 4 years. Think of the money you’ll be saving not having to pay that pesky property tax.
This seems like a feature and not a bug. Financial incentives should discourage our best and brightest from wasting their lives teaching average students in some mid-tier public school. With a caveat, our public school system probably under funds magnet/selective enrollment schools and gifted programs.
Ahh…so average students don’t deserve the best teachers. Only the smart ones should get that advantage?
My son attended public for elementary and it was ok. We opted for a “gifted” charter for middle school and it has been better but not nearly as good as it could be. The charter only takes kids who score highly on IQ tests so they are bound to do well on tests, but the kids are not really pushed and this is probably more to do with the history of the charter (it was founded by homeschool parents that really do not want strong competition in the school but now with about a 50% Asian population it is changing slowly).
My state pays teachers very poorly but we are a poor state. In any case, both the public and charter spend a lot of money on technology that they like to boast about but according to my son, they rarely use (eg., smartboards). The advantage the charters have is the kids will typically have parents who are involved which usually equates to better achievement.
Charter schools often do pull good kids from the neighborhood schools and I can see the argument that they hurt these schools/kids. The public schools are oftentimes not challenging kids so parents will find the best option. Ultimately this is better in my opinion as the US needs highly educated kids to ensure we stay competitive with other countries.
Re the comments about the candidates husband being involved in a sex scandal - what does that have to do with her? Poor taste to post that comment as reduces your credibility.
I could not disagree with this more
.
I rank educating our children as one of the most important public services, together with treating illnesses, saving people from fires, and making scientific discoveries. These are real values. Writing programs for some video game, selling stocks by phone – how can you compare the social utility of these.
Wall Street bankers and Silicon Valley tycoons are earning multi-billions per year. Middle class people cannot even afford to send their children to decent schools and colleges. The priorities of our society are wrong.
^
If you’re Stuyvesant and trying to teach multi-variable calculus, that requires a high level of education, training, and skill. If you’re just trying to teach basic geometry, well that’s something almost anyone that is reasonably intelligent could do. Most teachers, unlike the ones at say Stuy, aren’t doing anything that requires a particularly high level of skill. I do question how much of a public service it is to get some kid who’ll end up in a blue collar job to memorize a bunch of facts that he’ll likely forget within a few years of graduation, if not before. To avoid a political rabbit hole, I’ll avoid commenting on the social utility of various professions.
@Ohiodad51 It’s a huge problem and one that should have been receiving much more attention at all political levels. I am not a fan of the voucher system or similar systems, because again, they pull good resources (mostly parents who want their kids to succeed) out of the public schools. Our local public schools were suffering (relatively…never that bad just not great) until parents revolted. Old admins were kicked out and new more responsive admins were put in place. Since then the schools have made great strides in providing quality education.
As to the funding issues, this is such a problem. I am not a fan of school districts, as I see them as wasting precious dollars on administrators, and as driving unnecessary infrastructure projects (including district buildings – what a waste). The solution should be to be laser focused on delivery of learning to students and a clear accountability for longer term outcomes, but this takes time and commitment that has been sorely lacking in many areas. For example, it seems like a no brainer to me to institute long term bonus programs for teachers and schools that contribute to enhanced outcomes (graduation, college etc), but this requires some very subtle mechanisms that are prone to political manipulation.
TL;DR – Improvements to public schools are difficult and ad hoc. I still think we owe it too all kids to make public schools the only recipients of public funds.
I don’t agree with this position. It is one thing to say that Rhee is not legally responsible for her husband’s allegedly criminal behavior. It is another thing to say that this behavior raises no questions about Rhee herself, in part because she has worked intensively on her husband’s political career, and has said that she and her husband work together in public service as a team:
http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article43619241.html
Since, as far as I know, Rhee is still part of a political team with her husband, I think minimally she would need to clarify what her position is relative to these allegations about her political partner and what role her political partner might have in her future public service.
I have not read the allegations but as I understood you indicated the husband was accused, not convicted. Is it not reasonable that he should not be considered guilty at this stage?
And I still in poor taste to bring up although certainly it will be brought up if she is chosen.
- Starting salaries for teachers: In 2009-2011, my daughter was teaching in the NYC public school system. Her initial salary was around $45,000 -- seven+ years ago -- and she got some kind of bump when she completed her MAT. At that time, Philadelphia public school teachers were starting at $42,500. At that time, Philadelphia teachers maxed out at around $75,000 base, increased by various boondoggles for coaching or supervising ECs, etc., plus of course excellent pension rights that everyone is trying to figure out how to renege on now. Excellent teachers tended to migrate to the suburban districts, in the best (and most ambitious) of which they could make well over $100,000 base.
I don’t know what the salaries are now. The Philadelphia district has been in dire financial crisis for awhile, so it’s possible the pay has not gone up. I bet it has gone up in NYC.
The Finland example is really interesting. In Finland, teachers have enormous prestige and social recognition, but they are paid significantly worse than American teachers relative to other jobs. Nevertheless, programs that grant teaching credentials have room for only about 10% of applicants. Obviously, the quality of teachers is very high. And while American teachers have a half-life of about 5 years (i.e., every 5 years half of the people who were teaching at the beginning of the period have left teaching), 80% of Finnish teachers stay in the profession for their entire careers. Which probably means, by the way, that there is very little weeding out of bad teachers.
- While there are certainly some charters who try to cream-skim and to avoid taking special ed students, others (and certainly the most respected ones) do take their fair share. At least around here, the financial problem with the proliferation of charters is not so much that they cream-skim and educate less expensive students for the same per-student price as the district school, but rather that it's extraordinarily hard for the district to close existing schools and thus reduce its fixed costs as more students migrate to charters.
Of course, one of the theories that makes charters attractive is that it’s supposedly easier to close underperforming charters. And it is easier, compared to district schools, But it’s not easy in absolute terms at all. The board here has never been able to shut down more than a handful of charters every year, and not all of them deserved to be shut down. So the progress charters were supposed to bring on has been elusive. The best charters are great, and some of them have even scaled themselves successfully. The worst charters are approximately as bad as the worst district schools, maybe a little worse.
- One great thing about charters -- the successful ones almost invariably bring significant charitable and foundation dollars into the system that the school district has not been able to attract. At the end of the day, that's why I support charters: they demonstrably expand the pie.
@yearstogo
I don’t want to beat a dead horse because although I heard about Rhee’s candidacy on the news only yesterday, it may already be a thing of the past. I posted some links above with various news stories about the allegations and their reverberations – they led to his declining to run for re-election as mayor. I brought this issue up for the same reasons that it would be brought up during a vetting process. It is not the only or the main point I made about Rhee’s candidacy.
According to the following: spending was actually lower than the average for NYC public high schools:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070628195704/http://schools.nyc.gov/daa/SchoolReports/03asr/171475.pdf
And that accords with what I remembered reading when I attended in the early-mid '90s and hear from alums and friends who teach at regular NYC high schools currently.
Also, keep in mind that many of the programs/ECs/equipment were raised though parent/alum run fundraisers…especially well after I graduated.