-
Downton’s Class System — and Ours
May 20, 2013 | 9 comments
-
The Mexican Kleptocracy: July 1989
April 19, 2013 | 0 comments
-
The Mexican Kleptocracy
April 19, 2013 | 3 comments
-
Black Plight: In Conflict With Unions
April 6, 2013 | 0 comments
-
An Assist from the Press
March 16, 2013 | 0 comments
Capitol Ideas
Enchanted by Charter Schools
A hope that probably won’t fulfill its promise.
Waiting for “Superman” -- a documentary about failing government schools — was directed by Davis Guggenheim, who also produced An Inconvenient Truth (promoting Al Gore’s “global warming” scare). “Superman” has won lots of awards and Jonathan Alter, a man of the left, was a featured commentator. Yet the film, which adds to the general discomfort of teachers unions, has also won approval from conservatives.
It’s a measure of how far government schools have sunk in the public esteem that liberals have become alarmed enough to make a documentary that the American Federation of Teachers dislikes. Problems caused by teachers unions have been overlooked for years, and a film highlighting them is praiseworthy. Yet I also felt there was some confusion about the project. Let me try to say why.
“Superman” follows the fortunes of five families mostly from poor backgrounds, but with mothers (grandmothers?) hoping to rescue offspring from bad schools. And they have found the solution: Charter schools. But they are oversubscribed. One child is among 792 applicants for 40 slots in the Harlem Success Academy. So the cameras take us to public lotteries, where mothers and their offspring are anxious spectators. A child just might but probably won’t be admitted to the charter school of his choice.
“The political message is unambiguous,” Robert Weissberg wrote for the American Thinker. “Why permit only a few lucky kids to escape horrific schools? Every American kid deserves better, so abolish barrier-like lotteries and make good schools universal.”
An emeritus professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Weissberg recently wrote a politically incorrect book, Bad Students, Not Bad Schools (Transaction Publishers). His “guess” is that charters “are largely a silver-bullet hope among today’s public school stragglers”; in other words, a hope that probably won’t fulfill its promise.
Nonetheless, the movie reposes great faith in charter schools. It’s hard to generalize about them, because they are “chartered” by the separate states, with diverse regulations. They are taxpayer supported, but many of the usual union and school-district regulations are in abeyance. So they are freer. Some are also supported by mega-philanthropists such as Bill Gates and the Walton (Walmart) family.
About 5,000 charter schools exist today, disproportionately attended by black and Hispanic students. A Stanford University study showed that about 20 percent of charter schools do better than regular public schools, but about 35 percent do worse. “Quibbles about the uncertain value of charter schools aside,” Weissberg writes, “charters here [in ‘Superman’] are clearly the heroes, and public schools the villains.”
I visited a charter school in New Orleans in 2007. Most of the public schools, already dysfunctional, had been wiped out by Hurricane Katrina. So charters were given unusual latitude. To judge by the school I saw, well located in the French Quarter, a great deal of idealism had been unleashed. Teachers arrived early and stayed late, gave out cell phone numbers to students and answered homework queries at all hours. There was attention to neatness and order; classes even met every other Saturday. As to how things would work out, it was still early days.
The eager principal who showed me around had actually gone into the nearby (dangerous) Iberville housing project to recruit students. He is no longer at the school. My guess is that in the long run enthusiasm, even when effective at first, won’t be enough to overcome a fundamental defect.
Over the years we hear of “superman” principals who come to bad schools and rejuvenate them by personal example, inspiration, and discipline. But idealism fades and energies dissipate. A properly functioning system — as the U.S public school system was for many decades — must work with ordinary people and everyday incentives, not with extraordinary people who are somehow inspired. After a few years they can burn out like a spent rocket.
In Bad Students, Not Bad Schools, Weissberg says that some of the “kids” presently occupying classrooms, “disdaining academic achievement” and often disrupting proceedings, should be “shown the door.” But in a society where diplomas-for-all is a priority, that is unthinkable. It is not poets but taboos that are the unacknowledged legislators of our day. And thinking that whole classrooms of “kids” are just not going to make it is forbidden.
Schools have become “the refashioned Great Society,” says Weissberg. He means that rewarding idleness in the name of abolishing poverty is now unpopular but has been replaced by a new ideal that currently prevails: “no child left behind.” It also “puts bread on millions of tables” — full employment for the education industry — so “slackers must be retained regardless of educational value.”
Worse, retention is embraced even if this impedes learning among their classmates. To be grossly politically incorrect, most of America’s educational woes would vanish if these indifferent, troublesome students left…
But that is unthinkable, “so we lurch from one guaranteed failed reform to the next, squandering hundreds of billions of dollars.” Progress, pols assure us, is just over the horizon; meanwhile failure attracts more funding. Weissberg blames “slothful, sometimes disruptive students,” and recommends throwing out “the bottom quarter of those past 8th grade.”
I DON’T GO all the way with Weissberg because he brings up another taboo, IQ. But many black children suffer from a disadvantage so acute that intelligence isn’t needed to explain anything. At lower income levels, black family life has been all but destroyed, often leaving neither parent in sight and grandma holding the baby. Only 17 percent of black children grow up to be teenagers with both parents still in the home. So the great hazard for charters, as I see it, is that as long as their students come from broken homes, especially those lacking fathers, they are likely to provide little more than an uptick in academic results, and perhaps a brief one.
About the Author
Tom Bethell is a senior editor of The American Spectator and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity Through the Ages, and most recently Questioning Einstein: Is Relativity Necessary? (2009).
Letter to the Editor View all comments (31) | Leave a comment
More Articles by Tom Bethell
More Articles From Capitol Ideas
http://spectator.org/archives/2011/05/12/enchanted-charter-schools
Follow us:
ADVERTISEMENT
Current Issue
- The (Real) Great Divide
- The Great Train Robbery
- A Nation on the Edge
SPONSORED LINKS
FLASHBACK TO: 1995
-
Pope Culture
A man of faith in a godless age is hitting Americans where it hurts.
-
Why the GOP Does Not, Like, Totally Suck
Mr. and Mrs. American Spectator Reader, let P.J. O’Rourke talk sense to your kids.
-
Dames at Sea
-
In the Absence of Guns
In Britain, defending your property can get you life.
-
The Metaphysical Martini
-
Counting the Costs of Clintonism
The debacle of this president’s administration is both a cause and a symptom of the decline of American values. Unless Congress impeaches him, that decline will go on unchecked. An eminent jurist surveys the damage and assesses the chances for the recovery of our culture.
-
Chuck McHagel
It won’t take long for conservatives to scratch this presidential wannabe off their 2008 scorecard.
-
The Legacy of Old John and Mother Fresh-Roasted
-
It’s the Best Time of the Year
The American Christmas, like the songs that celebrate it, makes room for everybody under the rainbow. Is that why so many people seem to be hostile to it?
-
The Bush Crack-Up
Was the President done in by the economy, or by the politics of the economy?
Clip of the Day
ADVERTISEMENT
Appleby| 5.12.11 @ 6:54AM
We all knew this stuff 50 years ago when I was still in public school; parents who are ignorant savages cannot make up for the failures of the schools, and Studs who spread sperm throughout their neighbourhood, in imitation of the sports stars who are rewarded by team owners and fans alike, will not take the place of what used to be called fathers. Neither can mothers seeking their next husband because the last one ran off with the nanny or his secretary, who imagines that he *loves* her, take the place of what used to be called mothers.
You are longing for a society that vanished 50 years ago, and you cannot bring it back this side of Heaven, because you refuse to admit that this would bring back the concept of Winners and Losers with clearly defined written standards for what those terms actually mean. It would also mean Taking Responsibility -- you gave birth to it, you look after it. Todays *parents* want the discipline and peace and success of the Fifties without any of the responsibility.
Or as the man in the New Yorker cartoon said to the bookstore owner: *I want a book on chutzpah -- and I want YOU to pay for it.*
Dai Alanye | 5.12.11 @ 11:49AM
The type of school is no automatic guarantee of educational success. What would help more than any other one thing--leaving the family out of it--is to allow school-leaving at the age of fourteen, as once was the case.
Instead, hopeful thinkers choose to believe that mere attendance at school will somehow make for wiser, better-behaved youths. What it does, rather, is damage the schooling of serious students.
In addition, bad behavior should bring about immediate suspension or expulsion. Let schooling become a privilege, and schools no longer prisons. All society will be better off.
What to do with the teen-agers who now will wander the streets? Stop government supporting them, and change child labor laws.
Liberals and wishful thinkers will scream, I realize, but continuing on the present course will simply lead to more failure.
MikeBee| 5.12.11 @ 8:16PM
D.A.,
You're on to the right track. There are only two serious differences between a) charter and private schools, and b) the public school system. One difference, amount of funding provided. The other, the charter and private schools can kick a kid out.
The immense success of private schools comes from the simple fact that they can tell a parent that his/her unruly child has been kicked out for behavior reasons, AND they get to keep the parent's money (they can also kick them out for poor grades). This creates a huge incentive toward good classroom behavior on the part of the children. This also creates incentive for the parents to get involved in disciplining their children.
My wife teaches in an urban school district. If the public school district where she teaches were allowed to do only this one simple thing -- kicking bad children out -- they would be far more successful. Of course, in my wife's school district, they also need to fire a bunch of administrators (they're way too top heavy with administration), so that funds can go to providing children with books and supplies, instead; but even this improvement is secondary in effectiveness to being able to remove unruly children from the learning environment, for the sake of the many who will behave.
Alan Brooks| 5.12.11 @ 9:52PM
People only care about their own families- Margie can tell you that without caring, education is as the tinkling of empty bells.
Besides, for one student to succeed, another must lose. Don't know why: it is very complicated, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.
TennesseeVolunteer| 5.12.11 @ 7:31AM
Tom, as the chief admissions officer for a private college I attended an seminar led by an SAT officer. He shocked the crowd with this stat!
The number one indicator for a high SAT score was a two parent family!
Think about it, not demographics, not a new high school, or computer classes, or internet access...just one simple thing - a two parent family, regardless of race, color etc.
The charter schools are sometimes a good thing but nothing can replace the daily love, teaching and example of a two parent family.
Michael Tomlinson| 5.12.11 @ 10:26AM
God's plan works, but in the Obamanation Steve and Sam would be called a 2 "parent family" too.
Missouri David| 5.12.11 @ 4:11PM
I hate to beat a dead horse, But the Bible is our only hope, our only solution. We can not be right with ourselves till we arew right with Jesus, and if we are night right with self, How can we be right with our neighbors? How can we elect decent politicans when the populace is so far off cue, that we don't even know our first Amendment, People need to stand together at PTA and Tea party affairs, read the Bible and ask for forgiveness! We were once great because we were good. Just ask Ronald Regan! Thanks and Merry Chrtistmas
Mike 3/505| 5.12.11 @ 7:10PM
And we wonder why re really are witnessing the decline in "real" families, not the psuedo-families made up by an insistence on government sanctification of an aberrant lifestyle...gay marriage.
Dee See| 5.12.11 @ 7:42AM
"The charter school system was part
of the Bush 'compliance' with the longstanding
drive to 'transform' education along soviet
poly-tech models."
-Charlotte Isserbyte
(former Reagan official)
'The Dumbing Down of America' website
The capstone creep agenda of reducing ALLLL
outside the ever psychopathic 'elite' to a functional, easily managed (ie reduced),
culturally voided 'sudra' status.
"Social Darwinism is itself nothing more
than the Freemasonic religion of 'bringing
through' the 'right class of people' ---of
everyone and everything 'serving the agenda'.
For these ends ALL genuine culture must be
subverted and destroyed, including the family.
The ultimate ideals are and always have been
MASSIVE extermination in the name of
EUGENICS or, if you will, 'sustainability'."
-ALAN WATT
'Cutting Through the Matrix' online
HUAC meets NUREMBERG 2012.
CAN THERE BE ANY DOUBT?
Hillel| 5.12.11 @ 8:44AM
I have sat on housing boards and religious school boards.Number 1is careful screening.Number 2 a good curriculum. You need Good students and good tenants. The students need material worth learning.(The crimes committed in the name of John Dewey..) Then come effective teaches (this is the hardest; effectiveness is a function of the fit beween the students and the teacher. It is a mystery of personality. The kids who don't want to be civilized (and will not be tamed by the military) can be used for spare parts.
LSinAZ| 5.12.11 @ 8:56AM
I love the rhetoric of "we must fix the family". I have never seen a proposal that would actually do that, especially in light of constitutional restrictions, i.e., there is no legal authority that can do this. Can you imagine a law in the US that would require you to get a permit for conception? It almost sounds good until you see the potential for abuse, in addition to struggling to stretch the Constitution to pass such a law. Could you use the Commerce Clause for this? Yes if you are a contortionist.
In the olden days, the stigma of out of wedlock birth was the real deterrent, but that has been abolished by the politically correct crowd. Not only has the stigma been abolished, this behavior is subsidized. As Reagan said, if you want more of something, subsidize it.
Dai Alanye | 5.12.11 @ 11:39AM
One thing that would help is to stop subsidizing illegitimate children. We naturally feel sorry for the innocent child, so offer the unwed mother an apartment and maintenance income while the sperm donor, having made his contribution, runs free. But the fault lies with the conceiver as well.
The simple fact is that society needs more suffering. That is, we need to allow people to feel the pain of their errors. Does this include the innocent child? Unfortunately, yes.
Vern Crisler | 5.12.11 @ 9:11AM
The problem is public or state schooling of any kind. A state school is no better than a state church. We should curse those 19th century statists who invented the public school system.
cuban pete| 5.12.11 @ 9:50AM
My grandchild has a spot,acquired via lottery, at a new charter school in D.C. It is bilingual and "green" focused. I will keep you posted.
Michael Tomlinson| 5.12.11 @ 10:28AM
Do you think your precious grandchild will be safe there?
cuban pete| 5.12.11 @ 11:03AM
Thanks for your concern Michael. My son and daughter-in-law assure me they plan to be very involved with this endeavor.
JP| 5.12.11 @ 10:31AM
Public schools are financial sink holes. Every years states and cities waste tens if not hundreds of billions on this pit of fraud, corruption, and incompetence. But why do so many people continue to back them? The answer is easy - schools have devolved into nothing more than government day-care. The government now raises most children.
The entire edifice should be torn down, never to be re-built. If parents want thier children educated, they can do it and pay for it themselves. And in return, almost $500 billion would be returned to the taxpayers.
Brian B| 5.12.11 @ 11:43AM
Yep. Why would anyone other than a Marxist want the folks who brought us the Post Office and the DMV educating our kids?
Privatize all schooling and give state or local assistance, not federal, to those who can't afford it.
Problem solved.
MikeN| 5.12.11 @ 11:53AM
Thomas Sowell has written about schools with poor black students that did as well or better than white schools.
However, at some point social science has to come in and deliver realities that political correctness won't allow. You mention New Orleans. I know someone who worked in the Recovery School District, and middle schoolers was too tough for them, so they switched to preschool. Even the preschoolers were talking about being in a gang. One of them was murdered by drug dealers.
Wayne | 5.12.11 @ 11:58AM
Frankly the best "charter schools" I have seen are Catholic Schools. I am sure Lutheran and Baptist schools are just a s good. Where are the GOP and the discussions about vouchers?
cowgirl| 5.12.11 @ 12:31PM
Some thoughts on school reform.
1. Home School your kids. This protects them from liberalism mental illness which is the same illness that affects our President.
If not, here are some tips for reforming the public school system.
1. If you drop out of school, you NEVER qualify for welfare, food stamps, or other government handouts. Your intentional economic suicide is your problem, not our problem.
2. If you become pregnant while attending school, your parents will have to find another school for your that accepts pregnant school-age kids. The taxpayers will not pay for this school. If are stupid enough to get pregnant while still in high school that is your problem not the taxpayers.
3. If you fail out because you were truant, or refused to do homework, or otherwise refused to accept education, your parents get billed for the repeat year, just like in private school. Your parents can have wages or welfare benefits garnished, tax refunds kept, whatever it takes to repay the debt to the education system.
4. Teachers are ranked, and those who can't cut it are removed, regardless of years served. During periods of layoff, the worst teachers go first, regardless of time served. Just because you can beat your heart for a while doesn't mean we owe you lifetime employment. If an honest statistical ranking system (see how the authors of Freakonomics caught teachers fudging test scores) ranks your performance in the top half, you can count on continual employment and benefits. If you are a lousy teacher, get better or get lost.
5. The top 2% of IQ students have a school for the gifted, taught by teachers who themselves rank in the top 2% of IQ. Material is accelerated, but is also taught by teachers who thnk the way gifted kids think. We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying to get F students to be D students. Lets give a little to the people who can really make a difference if they don't leave school from boredom or fear of gangsters
6. The top 5% of high school graduates get a free 4-year ride at a public university, if they are willing to major in the hard sciences, where the nations NEEDS local new hires.
7. The top 5% of hard-science majors get a free ride to grad school. That free ride can be taken immediately, or after they have worked for a while to get money and experience. Grad school with experience under your belt is good for everyone concerned
8. Part of our national malaise is our self-loathing from too many "America is bad" stories and failure to recount the good parts of our history, and why America is such a good place to thrive. Fix that to restore our national pride.
We have spent 40 years subsidizing and excusing failure, and the results are obvious. Subsidize success and make failure pay its own way
Dai Alanye | 5.12.11 @ 8:00PM
These proposals, however well meant, for the most part simply lead to more government control over the family and individual.
cowgirl| 5.13.11 @ 2:33PM
Esplain Ricky... This rewards success, something liberals running our government do not support.
Seek| 5.12.11 @ 1:15PM
"Fixing the family" will get only so far. The fundamental defect of black and Hispanic schools is the fact of their being black and Hispanic. Their race is far more of an impediment to achievment than even most conservatives will admit. We on the Right are timid. We speak of "values" and "tradition," but we can't utter the ultimate truth: Races differ.
The Big E| 5.12.11 @ 1:24PM
I had an interesting conversation a couple of days ago with the chair of our local country commission. Like many places they are currently struggling with budget issues, and one of the biggest is the extent to which they can, or will, help the local school board make up their budget shortfall. At one point during the conversation, he mentioned the drop out rate state wide was (if I recall correctly) about 34%, and that the local drop out rate was lower than that, but still, in his opinion, too high.
I asked him, "What is the point of going to High School?"
"To get into college," he said.
"And how many kids just aren't cut out for college, or just don't need to go?"
"Oh," I don't know. "A third or so, at least."
So, if a third are not cut out for college, and all High Schools do to prepare you to go to college, than why should be be surprised when a third are dropping out?
Why is the purpose of the public school system to get kids into college? Shouldn't the purpose of the public school system be to take children graduate adults who can take care of themselves?
I'm not downing the value of an education, but the reality is that, at least around here, that the public school system has a one track mind - either you're going to college, or you're of no use to us. And yet, do those kids not also need to learn how to manage their households? Balance their checkbooks? Exercise their rights and liberties? There are certain basic skills that everyone needs to have in order to prosper in life, regardless of their level of education, their job, etc.
Yet today, when a person graduates high school, they are equipped to go to college - and that's all they're equipped for. If you're not cut out, either academically, or because your gifts lie outside an academic field, then your screwed. You get NOTHING out of High School, because it has nothing to offer you.
I agree with what everyone has said about the problems in homes and with families, but might part of the problem also be that the public school system has ceased to provide education for life, and has begun providing (only) education for the sake of education?
Jeamaar37| 5.12.11 @ 2:06PM
Mr. Ruffin's experience was also mine except I couldn't stand it until retirement. Every public school teacher I know who took early retirement says exactly the same thing, " I just couldn't take it any longer." I retired 18 yrs. ago and still have nightmares about teaching in a minority-dominated, politically correct high school.
Pat| 5.12.11 @ 2:53PM
The state of education is dismal within America – primarily among us voters who are consistently bent over a table where the teachers’ unions and government agencies can have their merry way with us. Don’t believe it’s the adult taxpayers who need a better education rather than our cherubic school children? Consider the facts – for decades, vast sums of money, supplied by taxpayers who may or may not have children of their own, has flowed, or rather cascaded, into the education racket’s coffers. Nothing is more precious to us or more important to our future than our nation’s children – and, knowing that fact, those who stand to directly benefit have milked these tender sentiments with a higher degree of marketing skill than a Wall St. trader floating his latest pyramid scheme.
Remember “No Child Left Behind” and it’s direct descendent “Race to the Top” and “No Child’s” various grandparents, education swindles stretching back decades. Our nations’ children have been subjected to every form of experiment; new math, old math, phonics, “special ed” and self-esteem bolstering group hugs to name a few – schemes constantly updated, cleverly repackaged, rebranded and then generously funded in a seemingly endless cycle by our nation’s “professional” educators. Which brings us to this latest fad to extract more tax dollars – Charter Schools. How do we know the Charter School concept is just another educational fad and a clever means to perform a deep root canal on our wallets? Because the City of Detroit has finally embraced the charter school concept.
Led by Detroit’s Mayor with editorial support from the city government’s official mouthpiece, the Detroit Free Press, the talk recently is all about “charter schools”. But it wasn’t so in past years, Detroit’s school system has been deeply suspicious of any change in the status quo, neither Detroit’s teachers nor the School Board wanted any part of charter schools, magnet schools, parochial/public school partnerships – any change which might take away their monopoly on providing a bad education to their city’s children. With a high school graduation rate hovering between 25 and 50% depending on who is currently fudging the statistics, there has been a steady stream of new School Administrators, each of whom has failed to turn the situation around. But Charter Schools have gotten big national press lately as this article typifies, the smell of generous federal and state handouts, stipends and seed money is in the air – so the current thinking in Detroit is that maybe now is the time to embrace this charter school concept after all.
Taxpayers should ask themselves where charter schools are getting the most play – would it be within decaying urban centers and Democratic Party strongholds? And who will be asked to pay for the implementation of and conversion to a vast chain of charter schools stretching from Baltimore through Chicago? And if it’s “for the children”, the standard mantra which has worked so well in the past, then who will be asked to fund this latest fad? If you’re a taxpayer anywhere in the nation, do the math, and we’re not talking about the new math here, it’s that tried and true formula of tap the taxpayers’ wallets and then hope for the best.
big bob| 5.12.11 @ 4:12PM
There is no panacea for an institution in whom an organization is so entrenched as is the NEA in our government schools. The teachers' animus shown in Wisconsin toward Gov. Walker is nothing more than the anger just under the surface of the leaders of the NEA toward anything that would dislodge them from their places of power. Certainly all teachers are not so predisposed, but there were far too many who were!! I bring this up because it is a very visceral illustration of why nothing that could compete with government schools ever gets very far. The reason "charter schools" are being heralded in this fashion is not because of something specific, but rather, because they represent a venue that has managed to sidestep the death grip the NEA holds on students. Until competition is introduced to our country that has completely free reign to challenge the status quo, there will be no success in the truest sense. Any success in these institutions is muted, and will remain muted. Something has to come along that will offer a legitimate answer to this anachronism living off the taxpayer for the last 40 years. The energy stimulated by the charter school arrangement is enough to foster parents' imaginations about what "might be". Unfortunately, what might be will never be without competition.
Occam's Tool| 5.13.11 @ 1:53AM
Actually, cowgirl has a point. Hard Science education is part of National Defense. But most Liberal Arts nonsense, with the EXCEPTION of Classics, is crap. Most women's studies departments, for example, can be eliminated with improvement in the academic rigor of a college.
Richard Baker| 5.14.11 @ 8:40AM
What passes for Education Theory is just crap. The teachers today are spending waaay too much time in what I call "crowd control." The little darlings are allowed to destroy decorum and a learning environment because the adults running the systems don't want to buck the parents of these little monsters and are more worried about their retirement package. Close the schools, fire the teachers and administrators, give the parents an educational-only voucher, and let them find a private/parochial school that works. These lotteries for the Charter schools are the modern version of the old slave auction. How demeaning.
Ken Royall| 5.15.11 @ 8:51PM
Get government and their lousy unions out of the education business. Privatize it all, give vouchers to the poor so they can pick the school their kids will go to. The good schools will expand and the bad ones will be gone before long. There is no big mystery here, this system works well in the free market for all other products and services. The scumbag kids who are disruptive could be sent somewhere to learn a trade and work.
To "fix the family" there is only one way. Stop rewarding failure with government benefits. Birth control will get real popular if underage kids realize there is no money in having children anymore. Shielding people from the consequences of their own stupidity never works, ever. People learn from adversity, end of story.