It seems like most studies on the effectiveness of charter schools (and voucher programs) rely on standardized test scores in math and reading. But one of the criticisms of charter schools is that they teach to the test. So it might be possible that charter schools do well in standardized tests, but fall short in other areas. I’m not sure.
Success Academy is an example of a charter school network in NYC that has done extremely well in standardized tests. But their students have not done so well on the SHSAT, the test to get into magnet schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx Sci. It took them three years to get any students accepted to a specialized high school.
I suspect that the majority of students that got admitted to the Stuyvesant and Bronx Sci went through the extensive preparation for the SHSAT outside of their regular day schools.
That’s mainly been the case in the last 10-15 years.
Back when I was admitted to Stuy, most of us did a few weeks of self-study to familiarize ourselves with the exam’s format by borrowing a book of past SHSAT exams from the library before taking and passing it. Only kids I knew who took prep courses were doing so because they were recent immigrants trying to get their English/reading comprehension up to speed.
Plenty of classmates from my year and older alums who overlapped with my graduating class took the exam cold without any prior preparation and were admitted. The math section was especially considered easy by many immigrants…especially those from Eastern Europe and East Asia as the topics covered on the exam were covered sometime in the public school curricula at the mid-late elementary school stage. And the vast majority were from low-income to lower-middle class families with many being immigrants or children of immigrants like yours truly.
I guess we are talking about now, not 15 years ago. Just trying to deploy critical thinking skills that were taught to me by my Eastern European public school.
Ironically, the reasons why this came up in the last 10-15 years is precisely due to the legacy of Bloomberg’s emphasis on improving elementary and middle school test scores which did happen.
However, the reason for those increased test scores was because the tests used and the public K-8 curriculum was watered down compared to what existed before. They also eliminated many of the SP/gifted classes from most of the neighborhood K-8 schools so as of ~15 years ago, if one wanted to have the best preparation for the SHSAT without starting prep classes as early as 3-4th grade, word among those parents was their kids must attend one of the few G & T schools from elementary school onwards. Even G & T classes in the neighborhood K-8s aren’t considered enough.
This is confirmed by many parents whose kids have gone through public middle schools in the last 10-15 years along with several former HS teachers and HS classmates who have been teaching in the NYC public school system for the last 10-12+ years.
That last requirement, I would imagine, makes the voucher system very different but also doesn’t change the effect that much. I don’t know much about EdChoice, but given that requirement I would be willing to bet that most of the schools that do participate in the program aren’t the elite private schools that have tuition upwards of $20K+ a year…they’re going to be cheaper, lower-performing private schools. As was already mentioned, private schools have a spectrum just like public schools. And the South has a lot of very small church-affiliated K-12 private schools that aren’t necessarily high-quality institutions…but still charge tuition.
Out of curiosity, I took a quick look at some of the top private schools in New Orleans according to Niche (https://www.niche.com/k12/rankings/private-high-schools/best-overall/m/new-orleans-metro-area/) and compared it with the list of schools in the EdChoice program. Unsurprisingly, I only found a few schools on the top 25 of the Niche list that participated in EdChoice (Crescent City Christian and Lutheran High School were the two I found after doing about 15-20 searches).
When you were in K-12, how many elementary, middle, and high schools were within commuting range with similar convenience to your default public school? Similar convenience means that it would not have been significantly more difficult for you and your parents to send you to the other school compared to your default public school. I.e. if there was school choice or vouchers when you were in K-12, how many choices would have have had that did not impose additional costs relating to commuting?
For example, I was able to get to the default public elementary, middle, and high schools (which I actually did attend) on my own (walking or bicycling). For elementary schools, there were two other public and a private K-8 school in range. For middle schools, there were two other public and the same private K-8 school in range. For high schools, there were one other public and a private school in range. Both private schools were religious (the high school was Catholic, the K-8 school was some type of Christian). Academically, it did not seem that any of the publics were that much better or worse than the others (and none had any unusual academic programs). The private ones did not seem to be anything special unless you wanted the religion. Schools that may have been better in some academic way would have required parental assistance to get to, if there had been more school choice or vouchers or some such.
I grew up in a town of 750 people. I attended the same school that my parents attended. It was even the same building! My hometown still has one school. Many of my childhood friends are now teachers there. They’re all very concerned that tax dollars will be siphoned from their program for vouchers that are useless to their student body. Has anyone heard the case made for vouchers in tiny rural communities? Thanks!
Personally, I am not a huge fan of saying it’s in the NYT it must be liberal garbage (any more than I am of saying it is on FOX so it must be conservative garbage). That said, and acknowledging that vouchers are a hugely complicated issue, I think there should be pretty broad consensus that many of our public schools are not doing a very good job, despite ever increasing funding. Certainly there are polls upon polls showing broad support for voucher programs among people lower on the socio economic ladder. Seems to me it makes sense to keep an open mind and try a variety of different approaches to improve educational outcomes, including vouchers.
The transportation issues that impede actual school choice are likely to be even worse in rural areas. It may be a fairly significant commute in a school bus or parent’s car to the nearest public school; commuting to a further away school can be an even bigger commute (and more likely to be parent dependent, since the further away school may not have enough school buses to pick up distant students out of their already-large (in land area) attendance regions).
@marvin100 , public education started in New England in the 17th century and achieved its American form by the late 18th century. Noah Webster was the educational rock star of the day, he published his American Spelling book well over century before the 1909 quote. If you have a chance, visit his home in Greenfield Village in Dearborn, MI.
There is simply not enough population to support many additional school alternatives in rural areas. What might happen is something like the system in South Korea, with high quality lectures transmitted electronically with local teachers to proctor and tutor. I don’t think that any schools, apart from boarding or religious schools, will willing locate in any area without a large customer base.
A broader question is why are kids bused an hour or more to school and what could be done to utilize all of that dead time. So perhaps the methods of school improvement in rural areas will follow a different path than in the cities and suburbs.
Go ahead, send your kids to public school in West Baltimore. Academic life has not improved there in 50 years. Poor folks with half a brain need options. Thank God for magnet schools.
In the state that I live in, MI, public schools have been struggling with declining funding for about the last 15 years. There was an interesting article in the Detroit free press this past Sunday about the decline in traditionally good suburban public schools in MI. http://www.freep.com/story/opinion/columnists/nancy-kaffer/2017/02/25/suburban-schools-funding-michigan/97891420/
I have lived in MI for about 20 years and my kids attended the public schools in our affluent district that has traditionally had some of the top schools in the state, but we have been in cutting mode for the past 15 years or so and it may only be a matter of time before it hits us too. We are hanging on by virtue of our history and parental involvement and will. Our rainy day fund is at critical levels. From my perspective as a parent who has tried to stay informed about the issues this is what I have seen over time. MI passed a ballot proposal in 1992, Prop A, that was aimed to provide property tax relief. Prop A put a limit to how much property taxes could be raised each year. It is also tried to somewhat even out school funding between rich and poor districts in the state so the money is sent to the state and redistributed. There are limits to how districts can vote to increase funds for their districts, there is some leeway to vote proposals for capital improvements but not to support employee pay and benefits, that money all comes back from the state. This all worked ok through the 90’s when the economy was strong and property values were rising.
Sometime after 2001 when federal taxes were cut and revenue sharing to states declined the state started redistributing funding sources and school funding started dwindling. Property values started stagnating/ declining in about 2005 further impacting school funding with an even bigger hit coming in 2008/2009 with the housing crash where MI had steeper declines and has taken longer to recover than most of the rest of the country. Combined with tax cuts at the state level we have had a steady disinvestment in the public schools in MI. Of course Detroit with its added problems of declining population, corruption, bankruptcy and state takeover has been the hardest hit but schools all over MI are struggling with decline and inadequate funding. The way the charter system works in MI has further drained money from the public schools. IMO vouchers are not going to correct this situation, the public schools need adequate funding to do well. You get what you pay for. Along with this I never understand how people think we can well educate children who are struggling with socioeconomic issues for less than what we are spending in our wealthier districts where the students are generally supported by their educated families.
Actually, American public schools didn’t reach their final form as we know it today.
The modern US public educational system as we know it was implemented in the mid-late 19th century and modeled on the Prussian public school system in order to fulfill rising demand in public education nationwide and to modernize it to provide education to an increasing population of students at minimal expense.
Incidentally, US research universities were also modeled after those of Prussian/German research universities in the late 19th century as underscored by how UChicago and JHU were modeled after such universities whenv they were founded.
@cobrat, sure, but the genesis of the system was in the early 18th century. The ideas of the industrial revolution were incorporated later in the 19th century, but the mechanism of community based finance remains much the same. The initial systems served settlers primarily in rural communities, but by the latter half of the 19th century there was a massive influx of immigrants which mandated more factory-like methods. At that time the mandate expanded to provide quasi-literate, compliant, factory workers in urban areas rather than literate citizens in rural areas. It wasn’t done just because of rising demand from an increasing population.
It was also uncommon for students to progress much past 8th grade until the 20th century. If you look at some of the source documents of what was actually taught in 8th grade - say, in the 1920s, they resemble high school texts today, so arguably, we are producing a similar educational outcome with 4 more years of expense. Perhaps that is because so much of the school day is spent on non-educational items. Home schoolers seem to manage all of their work in 3-4 hrs/day, why does a public school student take twice the time for the same tasks?
The NEA in its early years actually advocated for better schools and more professional teaching methods when it mostly represented school administrators. At the same time it also advocated for federal funding of education, which violates the 18 enumerated spending powers of the constitution. Is it any wonder, as the NEA morphed into a union representing almost entirely teachers, that the teaching of Civics and American history was revised to reflect that bias?
Now the NEA is like any other public sector union - it mostly protects its members and helps elect politicians that vote them pay/benefit increases. I am not criticizing the good teachers - I think they are underpaid. However the bad and average ones are overpaid and union rules stifle innovation. Vouchers are a way out of the captive, expensive, inefficient and ineffective public system.