Diane Ravitch has an op/ed in the Los Angeles Times in which she lists the characteristics of a good school, starting with a comprehensive, content-rich curriculum:
“Our schools should have a well-rounded curriculum that includes the arts, history, science, geography, literature and foreign languages, as well as basic skills. Teachers should be well-educated and treated with dignity. Principals should be head teachers, who can capably evaluate and assist their teachers. School buildings should be well-maintained. Class sizes should be reasonable, making it possible for teachers to give extra attention to students who need it. Schools should have a firm and fair disciplinary code.”
Read the rest here.
Lol! I thought Diane was taking a summer break to “immerse myself in literature…read poetry, too, which I love…. attend to my own education in literature and history….attend to my health and physical well-being by swimming, biking, and gardening…. beginning a partial renovation of the kitchen.”!
Indeed! Even better, she might follow me through Gettysburg, visit Yorktown, or travel to Jamestown to engage Richard Cheatham as John Rolfe, the capitalist pig who put the colony on a sustainable economic footing!
For in this oped, Diane shows how much time she has been spending amongst the liberal (feel-good) New York intellectual elite; and how little time spent engaging with the ideas our schools should be sharing, and even the deeper facts of the reports she’s reading.
First to the opening assertion: “…there is a widespread impression that any charter school is better than any public school.” Hardly. No serious person believes that any charter is guaranteed to be good.
The raison de etre for charters is that they can be allowed to experiment and, sometimes, fail. What the Stanford study loudly points out is that too often this is not the case. The regulations imposed (often at the behest of the state education associations) prevent the good charter organizations from expanding and too often prevent the bad ones from being pushed aside.
Even so, Ravitch’ characterization of the study results is not honest either. Rather, the study emphasizes that many charters are new; and many students are new to the charters.
Student transfers in any situation tend to have a year of falling back. For reasons personal and curricular, it’s not til that second year where they begin to adjust, and in a third year make gains if gains are to be had in the new school. And indeed, this is the pattern at charters.
The CREDO study highlights more results, at odds with Diane’s characterizations in the Times and elsewhere:
–Charter students in elementary and middle school grades have significantly higher rates of learning than their peers in traditional public schools, but students in charter high schools and charter multi‐level schools have significantly worse results. [Makes sense--a HS education is much more expensive to produce, and charters are given much less funding].
• charter schools are found to have better academic growth results for students in poverty. [This was our main goal!]
–Students do better in charter schools over time. First year charter students on average experience a decline in learning, which may reflect a combination of mobility effects and the experience of a charter school in its early years. Second and third years in charter schools see a significant reversal to positive gains.
– English Language Learners realize significantly better learning gains in charter schools. [Again, that extra funding would be useful in charters!]
Lincoln’s commanders were too cautious; it was not til Meade in the few days before Gettysburg that the Army of the Potomac shook off its lethargy and began to move. ‘Twas not a moment too soon, as Lee’s plan to take Pennsylvania otherwise would likely have worked.
That lethargic army reminds us of many educational systems, afraid to shake up the status quo, afraid to move, dying anyway of malnutrition and disease.