May 26, 2005
REASON, WHERE REALITY NEVER INTRUDES (via Charlie Herzog):
Charters work. Wake up! (Richard Schwartz, May 26th, 2005, New York Daily News)
Why do charter schools work? Because they live and die by the numbers. Literally.Here's the deal: Charter schools are public schools that function largely free of suffocating bureaucratic rules and union contracts. The nonprofit boards that run them sign five-year agreements - charters - that spell out precise goals for test scores, attendance rates and safety. If a school meets its targets, it gets another five-year pact. If it doesn't, the school is kaput.
"Succeed or die" is the charter school credo. Brutal but effective. Proof? Take a look at the stunning test results these schools posted last week and you'll see a small miracle in the making. The city school system's fourth-graders reading at or above the state standard jumped 9.9 percentage points. Impressive. But charters did a third better, with their pass rate soaring 13.2 points.
Just as striking were the charters' reading test results for eighth-graders. While the rest of the system saw its pass rate droop 2.8 percentage points, charter school eighth-graders gained a solid 5points on the same exam. Those numbers make a hugely compelling case for more charters. But there's a brick wall: Albany allows only 100 charters. For the entire state. By fall, the city will just about max out with 47 of those charters, representing a puny 3% of all city schools.
That's not nearly enough for Chancellor Joel Klein, who trekked up to Albany this month demanding that legislators obliterate the 100-school state cap. How many charters does Klein want? Sky's the limit. Sans cap, said one school official, the city could have 200 to 300 charter schools up and running within a few years. Translation: Hundreds of thousands of children, most of them disadvantaged and from the inner city, would get vastly better educations.
It's Klein's single best big idea for turning around city schools.
Funny how the Left believes in Darwinism in the absence of proof but not in Social Darwinism with its voluminous track record of success. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 26, 2005 10:34 AM
Mr. Judd;
There was actually a book about that, Bionomics . The primary thesis was that a free market economy had a large number of structural parallels with evolutionary ecologies and that it was very difficult to (honestly) do the reconiliation you mention, of believing in evolution and socialism.
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at May 26, 2005 11:54 AMWhen a charter school fails in MN, it gets big play in the Star Tribune (usually on the front page). Invariably a spokesman for the teacher unions tut-tuts about unaccountability or lack of standards.
The successful charter schools get no mention of course.
AOG:
Of course Darwinism is just the failed supposition that human free market economics is duplicated in Nature
Posted by: oj at May 26, 2005 1:14 PMA.O.G & oj: You really should get your hands on Social Statics and Data of Ethics, it's all in there, and there's much more to what is misnamed "Social Darwinism" than mere economics. +-
Posted by: Lou Gots at May 26, 2005 1:29 PMLou:
Of course, any system where intelligent decision making goes on will be Smithian/Darwinian
Posted by: oj at May 26, 2005 1:36 PMDon't know about the rest of the country, but charter schools have been a failure here.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at May 26, 2005 4:24 PMAh, the subjectivist speaks.
Except, of course, that it's not true:
http://www.connectionscharterschool.org/Star%20Bulletin%209.03.04.html
Posted by: oj at May 26, 2005 4:48 PMin what way did they fail ? were they given an honest chance ? hopefully things will get to the point where charter schools are the rule, rather than the exception.
Posted by: cjm at May 26, 2005 5:25 PMcjm:
Harry once wrote a negative story about one so they don't work generally.
Posted by: oj at May 26, 2005 5:33 PMI'm on the board of a charter school company in LA and in 5 years we've launched 5 new high schools in underserved neighborhoods. Our success rate (measured by test scores, graduation rates, attendance, college acceptance, you name it) has been so outstanding, that the LA Unified School District is interested in copying our model, which is based on small schools (high schools, grades 9-12, of no more than 500 students).
Posted by: Foos at May 26, 2005 5:46 PMwhat about it harry ? the article at that url looks authentic to me. can you provide a url for your statement ?
Posted by: cjm at May 26, 2005 7:08 PMcjm:
With Harry it's always just about his own personal observation and experience. He's the most subjective person in captivity.
Posted by: oj at May 26, 2005 7:11 PM