From the LA Times YESTERDAY:
6:54 PM PDT, June 15, 2009
California charter schools outperform traditional public schools in reading but significantly lag in math, according to a national study released Monday by researchers at Stanford University.
The study of charter schools in 15 states and the District of Columbia found that, nationally, only 17% of charter schools do better academically than their traditional counterparts, and more than a third "deliver learning results that are significantly worse than their student[s] would have realized had they remained in traditional public schools."
"We find that a pretty sobering finding," said lead researcher Margaret Raymond, director of the Center for Research on Education Outcomes.
Charter schools have been widely scrutinized, but the Stanford study was one of the broadest and deepest attempts to come to grips with their progress, in part because the researchers were able to look at test scores down to the level of individual students . . . .
An exchange of comments in the Washington Post behind this article,
ReplyDeletehttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/13/AR2009061302073.html
Linda/RetiredTeacher wrote:
It's time for TEACHERS to be the leaders in their schools. I'd like to see teachers start their own charter schools, elect a head teacher, and make all decisions regarding staffing and curriculum along with parents. We need a complete paradigm shift in education. Only when teachers enjoy enhanced professional status and autonomy will we see the type of skilled professional that everyone seems to want. Highly intelligent people want to be decision-makers.
natturner wrote:
Linda, now you're talking sister!
A teacher-run public school system would give them something to talk about. Watch them howl over it now! But it's the only way, I say the only way to fundamentally reform America's public schools.
Mayoral control will never change anything. Business control of the schools through school boards won't change a thing. The business model for the schools perverts them into General Motors and Enron-like entities. Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Walton family, and their ilk have clearly failed already. But then they were never trying to reform the schools anyway. They wanted to destroy them.
One of the reasons why teacher controlled public education would work is because the vast majority of teachers care for their students, the children they teach. Not all, but most. Once we were in charge bad teachers would be gone the next day. We know who they are. Their lips would just have to be detached from administrators backsides across the country. The worst teachers love the test or they become administrators. The very worst become Chancellors.
And our concern for these children would cause us to guide them away from becoming cannon fodder in wars for oil in Iraq or Afghanistan. And our concern for these children would compel us to guide them away from competition with Chinese children and Indian children and other children of the world to see who could work for less in sweatshops and farm fields. And we would not lie to them about success and a wonderful job in a failed global economy if they will just do well on some meaningless test. We would not lie to them, like they are lied to everyday now!
But you know what it means to have the workers, the teachers, in an industry take it over and run it without benefit of filthy rich overseers. So don't expect the idea to be discussed on its merits when it can be so easily dismissed by calling it a name. Hmm, what name might that be?
malcolmxmlk wrote:
To the man trying to foment the slave revolt, Mr. natturner, might that name be socialism?
natturner wrote:
Bingo!
Will they print the facts about anything?
ReplyDelete