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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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 Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2010 11:56 pm Post subject: |
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| Senior wrote: |
| You haven't addressed the cost issue. |
That's because the study doesn't address the cost issue. If charter schools are under-performing on average, I don't care how much less they cost.
| Senior wrote: |
| We know this as there are cheaper schools, even if they have lower outcomes, that people still happily attend. |
Okay, so you feel the average citizen should receive less education than we do now at a high school or below level. Thanks for that insight.
| Senior wrote: |
| Charter schools are relatively new. They are performing at about the same level as PSs with a fraction of the funding. |
No they are not performing at about the same level as PSs according to this study. They're substantially underperforming according to this study. |
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Senior
Joined: 31 Jan 2010
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| Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 12:13 am Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| Senior wrote: |
| You haven't addressed the cost issue. |
That's because the study doesn't address the cost issue. If charter schools are under-performing on average, I don't care how much less they cost. |
Cost is an extremely important issue. Every dollar we miss spend on education is a dollar we can't wisely spend else where.
| Quote: |
| Senior wrote: |
| We know this as there are cheaper schools, even if they have lower outcomes, that people still happily attend. |
Okay, so you feel the average citizen should receive less education than we do now at a high school or below level. Thanks for that insight. |
Not at all. But, there is obviously something luring people to these schools, despite their supposed lower outcomes (I'm sure if I dug around long enough I could come up with a study that supports MY position), people aren't as stupid as some people would like to paint them as,
| Quote: |
| Senior wrote: |
| Charter schools are relatively new. They are performing at about the same level as PSs with a fraction of the funding. |
No they are not performing at about the same level as PSs according to this study. They're substantially underperforming according to this study. |
A third of schools are under performing compared to their public counterpart. What does the average of all schools look like? I'll guarantee all public schools lag miles behind all charter schools.
EDIT: I tried to find some info about CREDO, the group that conducted the study, and it seems there are some problems with the study. Basically the first item of a google search comes up with this.
| Quote: |
Conclusions
The results of the CREDO study cannot be relied upon. This is most obviously because the study
contains a serious statistical mistake that generates an automatic negative bias of considerable magnitude.
This mistake is a function of straightforward statistics familiar to those who are aware of measurement
error. It is not an obscure mistake that researchers could not be expected to understand. In addition, the
CREDO study violates several rules for the empirically sound use of matching. It is not possible to say
exactly how such rule-breaking affects the estimates, but the rule-breaking should be fixed. |
http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/memo_on_the_credo_study.pdf |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 12:37 am Post subject: |
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| Senior wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| Senior wrote: |
| You haven't addressed the cost issue. |
That's because the study doesn't address the cost issue. If charter schools are under-performing on average, I don't care how much less they cost. |
Cost is an extremely important issue. Every dollar we miss spend on education is a dollar we can't wisely spend else where. |
I agree it's an important issue in general; any step to reduce the cost of schools without sacrificing quality is wise. Given charter schools at least currently sacrifice quality on average, however, the cost savings simply aren't worth it. If we can take the minority of schools that perform better than public schools and use them as a model to create a system of schools that perform better and do it more cheaply, on the other hand, it would definitely be a good thing. Right now, that looks like something that's a long way off, if it's achievable at all.
| Senior wrote: |
| Not at all. But, there is obviously something luring people to these schools, despite their supposed lower outcomes (I'm sure if I dug around long enough I could come up with a study that supports MY position), people aren't as stupid as some people would like to paint them as, |
You say people aren't stupid, but these are the same people that vote in the goverments you claim constantly screw them over. You say something is luring these people to these schools, but assuming this data is correct (and it might not be; the study and it's methods seem thorough, but it could all be a lie), they are in fact sending their children to these schools despite the schools in question performing worse. And they're doing it totally willingly.
Unless this study is wrong, in fact, it constitutes solid data supporting the idea that people simply aren't competent to make decisions regarding their children's educations. 37% of the schools in question perform worse than public schools according to this data. That's a huge minority of schools which parents are willingly sending their children to to get education that is inferior to the public school system. Why are they doing it? The same reason they keep voting in the representatives that work against their interests: because they don't have a clue. Of course any parent would yank their kid from the school if they were told, "By the way, the town's public school provides a better education," and believed it. But they don't realize it, because they have no real way of judging. A lot of them probably heard some pro-charter school talking points, were convinced, and went with it without more consideration.
| Senior wrote: |
| A third of schools are under performing compared to their public counterpart. What does the average of all schools look like? I'll guarantee all public schools lag miles behind all charter schools. |
Your absolute, utter certainty despite having no data on the subject is part of why I liken your beliefs to a religion, Senior. "I don't know what the facts are, but I'm sure they must be X!"
In response to your point, this study took into account factors like demographics, subsidized school lunch participation, special education programs participation, and so forth for a reason: to correct for other factors which can influence academic performance independent of school choice. Your "all vs all" comparison completely obliterates those statistical controls; no matter what your two lump figures ended up being, they'd be totally useless in terms of determining the truth of the matter. The fact that you'd even bring it up makes me wonder how seriously you actually take this very important issue. |
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Senior
Joined: 31 Jan 2010
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| Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 12:43 am Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| Senior wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| Senior wrote: |
| You haven't addressed the cost issue. |
That's because the study doesn't address the cost issue. If charter schools are under-performing on average, I don't care how much less they cost. |
Cost is an extremely important issue. Every dollar we miss spend on education is a dollar we can't wisely spend else where. |
I agree it's an important issue in general; any step to reduce the cost of schools without sacrificing quality is wise. Given charter schools at least currently sacrifice quality on average, however, the cost savings simply aren't worth it. If we can take the minority of schools that perform better than public schools and use them as a model to create a system of schools that perform better and do it more cheaply, on the other hand, it would definitely be a good thing. Right now, that looks like something that's a long way off, if it's achievable at all.
| Senior wrote: |
| Not at all. But, there is obviously something luring people to these schools, despite their supposed lower outcomes (I'm sure if I dug around long enough I could come up with a study that supports MY position), people aren't as stupid as some people would like to paint them as, |
You say people aren't stupid, but these are the same people that vote in the goverments you claim constantly screw them over. You say something is luring these people to these schools, but assuming this data is correct (and it might not be; the study and it's methods seem thorough, but it could all be a lie), they are in fact sending their children to these schools despite the schools in question performing worse. And they're doing it totally willingly.
Unless this study is wrong, in fact, it constitutes solid data supporting the idea that people simply aren't competent to make decisions regarding their children's educations. 37% of the schools in question perform worse than public schools according to this data. That's a huge minority of schools which parents are willingly sending their children to to get education that is inferior to the public school system. Why are they doing it? The same reason they keep voting in the representatives that work against their interests: because they don't have a clue. Of course any parent would yank their kid from the school if they were told, "By the way, the town's public school provides a better education," and believed it. But they don't realize it, because they have no real way of judging. A lot of them probably heard some pro-charter school talking points, were convinced, and went with it without more consideration.
| Senior wrote: |
| A third of schools are under performing compared to their public counterpart. What does the average of all schools look like? I'll guarantee all public schools lag miles behind all charter schools. |
Your absolute, utter certainty despite having no data on the subject is part of why I liken your beliefs to a religion, Senior. "I don't know what the facts are, but I'm sure they must be X!"
In response to your point, this study took into account factors like demographics, subsidized school lunch participation, special education programs participation, and so forth for a reason: to correct for other factors which can influence academic performance independent of school choice. Your "all vs all" comparison completely obliterates those statistical controls; no matter what your two lump figures ended up being, they'd be totally useless in terms of determining the truth of the matter. The fact that you'd even bring it up makes me wonder how seriously you actually take this very important issue. |
Best to check my edit.
EDIT:Here is a study of basically every charter school student in the US, compared with students in PS in the same neighborhood.
http://209.183.221.45/_upload/hoxbyallcharters.pdf
Last edited by Senior on Tue Mar 16, 2010 12:48 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 12:44 am Post subject: |
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| Senior wrote: |
EDIT: I tried to find some info about CREDO, the group that conducted the study, and it seems there are some problems with the study. Basically the first item of a google search comes up with this.
| Quote: |
Conclusions
The results of the CREDO study cannot be relied upon. This is most obviously because the study
contains a serious statistical mistake that generates an automatic negative bias of considerable magnitude.
This mistake is a function of straightforward statistics familiar to those who are aware of measurement
error. It is not an obscure mistake that researchers could not be expected to understand. In addition, the
CREDO study violates several rules for the empirically sound use of matching. It is not possible to say
exactly how such rule-breaking affects the estimates, but the rule-breaking should be fixed. |
http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/memo_on_the_credo_study.pdf |
This is interesting. As I said, it's possible the study could be wrong, and this may give us cause to doubt at least the severity of the deficiency it portrays. I haven't read the entire paper yet, but I will. |
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conrad2
Joined: 05 Nov 2009
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| Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 12:52 am Post subject: |
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| What constitutes a bad school? |
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Senior
Joined: 31 Jan 2010
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| Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 12:53 am Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| Senior wrote: |
EDIT: I tried to find some info about CREDO, the group that conducted the study, and it seems there are some problems with the study. Basically the first item of a google search comes up with this.
| Quote: |
Conclusions
The results of the CREDO study cannot be relied upon. This is most obviously because the study
contains a serious statistical mistake that generates an automatic negative bias of considerable magnitude.
This mistake is a function of straightforward statistics familiar to those who are aware of measurement
error. It is not an obscure mistake that researchers could not be expected to understand. In addition, the
CREDO study violates several rules for the empirically sound use of matching. It is not possible to say
exactly how such rule-breaking affects the estimates, but the rule-breaking should be fixed. |
http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/memo_on_the_credo_study.pdf |
This is interesting. As I said, it's possible the study could be wrong, and this may give us cause to doubt at least the severity of the deficiency it portrays. I haven't read the entire paper yet, but I will. |
From the other study (by the same woman),
| Quote: |
In states where charter schools are well-established, charter school students' advantage in
proficiency tends to be greater. For instance, in Arizona, fourth grade charter students are about
7 percent more likely to be proficient in reading and math than students in the nearest regular
public schools. In California, the corresponding proficiency advantages are about 8 percent in
reading and 3 percent in math. In Colorado, the corresponding proficiency advantages are about
11 percent in reading and math. In the District of Columbia, where 11.3 percent of students are
enrolled in charter schools (by far the highest percentage of any state), the charter school
advantage is large. There, fourth grade charter students� advantage is 35 percent or more in both
reading and math. |
This would indicate to me that, over time charter schools tend to improve, whilst PS schools have unarguably stagnated, on average.
I would love to see a cost break down. On average, I believe, it costs $11,000 a year to educate a student in PS. I'm sure this varies across states and across age groups. |
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Senior
Joined: 31 Jan 2010
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| Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 12:57 am Post subject: |
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| conrad2 wrote: |
| What constitutes a bad school? |
For me; poor grades at a high cost.
In the US spending on public schools has increased massively yet grades, largely, remain mediocre. |
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conrad2
Joined: 05 Nov 2009
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| Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 1:05 am Post subject: |
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| Senior wrote: |
| conrad2 wrote: |
| What constitutes a bad school? |
For me; poor grades at a high cost.
In the US spending only public schools has increased massively, yet grades largely, remain mediocre. |
Whose fault is it: the schools, teachers, and government or the students and their families? |
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Senior
Joined: 31 Jan 2010
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| Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 1:22 am Post subject: |
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| conrad2 wrote: |
| Senior wrote: |
| conrad2 wrote: |
| What constitutes a bad school? |
For me; poor grades at a high cost.
In the US spending only public schools has increased massively, yet grades largely, remain mediocre. |
Whose fault is it: the schools, teachers, and government or the students and their families? |
It's a complex issue and obviously a mixture of all those issues. My default stance is usually "It is govt's fault" and I am sticking with it. Govt has a poor track record of providing goods and services. Is it surprising that they cock up education? |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 1:25 am Post subject: |
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The forum ate my post, and I forgot to copy it before hitting post. It was really long too. I'm not rewriting it, here's an abridged version:
1) The objection's statistics imply that -- maybe -- the charter schools results are not as bad compared to public schools as they seem to be. Asuming she's correct (I know enough statistics to get the jist of her case, but not to validate it or argue against it), charter schools still do worse than public schools by comparison, but it's might not be quite as bad as the study says.
2) After her probably valid statistical complaint, she goes on to make other more questioninable complaints. Saying things like, "The students in charter schools can't be considered to be the same as students of the same demographic in public schools because they made different choices," is just silly given it's parents, not students, that make the choice of where their child goes. The objections that follow the statistical complaint seem very suspicious; she realizes that her statistical objections weaken the study in question but don't invalidate it's overall findings, which is why I feel she resorted to them.
3) Given she's done a study whose findings support charter schools (a study which another researcher copied the methods of and yet was unable to produce the same results according to her wikipedia page), it seems to me she has a compelling interest to find fault with this study. That's not to say she's wrong that it might not be as bad as it says, but it also means that she's by no means an objective bystander either.
In any case, she might be right that rather than charter schools being massively worse than the public school alteratives on average (and yes, 37% underperforming and only 17% overperforming is a massive deficiency), they're instead only somewhat worse. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 2:42 am Post subject: |
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| conrad2 wrote: |
| What constitutes a bad school? |
Bad students and AWOL parents. |
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Steelrails
Joined: 12 Mar 2009
Location: Earth, Solar System
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| Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 4:58 am Post subject: |
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A bad school is one that serves as a glorified daycare/holding cell. Schools need to get rid of the kids that aren't there to learn and put them to work in manual labor. Then bring them back to school. Those that get the hint and stick in school can keep on going. Those that prefer manual labor should stick to it.
I think more than anything the peer environment at school determines the "success" level. If students are surrounded by other students who want to learn and achieve academically then that will be the vibe of the school.
Get the students out of there that don't want to be there or don't value learning/ I'm primarily speaking of H.S. students but this could even be extended to Middle School. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 5:18 am Post subject: |
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| Steelrails wrote: |
A bad school is one that serves as a glorified daycare/holding cell. Schools need to get rid of the kids that aren't there to learn and put them to work in manual labor. Then bring them back to school. Those that get the hint and stick in school can keep on going. Those that prefer manual labor should stick to it.
I think more than anything the peer environment at school determines the "success" level. If students are surrounded by other students who want to learn and achieve academically then that will be the vibe of the school.
Get the students out of there that don't want to be there or don't value learning/ I'm primarily speaking of H.S. students but this could even be extended to Middle School. |
What age group would you begin this process with, exactly? And what standard would you use to judge which children to remove? Test scores? |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 5:01 pm Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| In what universe does 'wants to close' equal 'to close'? |
Some of us have a good grasp of reality.
It passed.
Kansas City to Close Nearly Half Its Schools
By SUSAN SAULNY
Published: March 10, 2010
KANSAS CITY, Mo. � The Kansas City Board of Education voted Wednesday night to close almost half of the city�s public schools, accepting a sweeping and contentious plan to shrink the system in the face of dwindling enrollment, budget cuts and a $50 million deficit.
In a 5-to-4 vote, the members endorsed the Right-Size plan, proposed by the schools superintendent, John Covington, to close 28 of the city�s 61 schools and cut 700 of 3,000 jobs, including those of 285 teachers. The closings are expected to save $50 million, erasing the deficit from the $300 million budget.
�We must make sacrifices,� said board member Joel Pelofsky, speaking in favor of the plan before the vote. �Unite in favor of our children.�
continued at link
Dontcha love how everything is justified "in favor of the children"? Somehow having less schools and teachers is now in favor of the children. 
| Adolf Hitler wrote: |
| The State must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation. |
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