Education Policy Thread: Pubs are now the party of choice!

[Deleted member 7528]

Lol reading the end of that other thread. Jh wants “access” for everyone to the best charter schools the same way 10,000 have “access” to the outdoors. Via a small door at the other end of the building they’re crammed in, leading to a 10sq ft yard. You know, access! If they choose not to use it it’s their fault!

You want to nail that door shut and tell them they'll get no choice and like it.

 

[PhDeac]

You want to nail that door shut and tell them they'll get no choice and like it.

Says the guy bragging about children standing outside at the locked door at his kids school waiting for kids to leave. They don’t have the choice they want.

 

[Deleted member 7528]

Says the guy bragging about children standing outside at the locked door at his kids school waiting for kids to leave. They don’t have the choice they want.

And why is that?

 

[birdman]

And why is that?

They want your specific school and there aren't enough seats. Not just any charter school, your specific school. That is why they are on the waitlist there. There is not a general charter school waitlist that students get on and then get randomly assigned to any one of the several charters in their county when an opening comes up, is there? They apply to specific schools and yours doesn't have room. Your suggestion to simply build another charter school to house all the people who can't get into your charter, doesn't actually give them the choice that they want, because they chose your school, which is full.

 

[BarcaDeac]

doesn't WaB live in one of the more populous counties like Wake or Guilford? how many charter schools are gonna get set-up in, say Robeson or Madison counties?

 

[Deleted member 7528]

During the pandemic, more families in North Carolina turned to charter schools, according to OCS data.

Approximately 8.4% of the state’s 1.5 million public school students attend charter schools.

Enrollment in charters grew 14.5%, from 110,000 students in 2019 to 126,000 students as of Oct. 1, 2020.

Charter school enrollment growth in North Carolina is fueled in large part by an increase in Latinx students, who now account for 12.1% of charter school enrollment. A decade ago, Latinx students composed only 5.7%, according to state data.

Enrollment of white students in charter schools declined from 62.4% to 51.1% over 10 years.

Meanwhile, enrollment of Black students has remained steady. They account for 26.4% of charter school enrollment, a slight increase over the 25.8% in 2010.

The enrollment increases for Blacks and Latinx students coincide with North Carolina Advancing Charter Collaboration and Excellence for Student Success (NC ACCESS) grants designed to help charter schools increase their number of educationally disadvantaged students.

So far, 42 schools across 21 counties have received shares of a $36 million federal Public Charter Schools Program grant awarded the state by the U.S. Department of Education.

More schools have also enacted weighted lotteries that give enrollment preferences to students of color.

Between 2013 and 2018 there were only six charter school with weighted lotteries. This year, there were 42.

 

[Deleted member 7528]

They want your specific school and there aren't enough seats. Not just any charter school, your specific school. That is why they are on the waitlist there. There is not a general charter school waitlist that students get on and then get randomly assigned to any one of the several charters in their county when an opening comes up, is there? They apply to specific schools and yours doesn't have room. Your suggestion to simply build another charter school to house all the people who can't get into your charter, doesn't actually give them the choice that they want, because they chose your school, which is full.

Why don't they want their traditional public school? Why do they want a particular charter school (last year the OCS says their were 76,000 names on waitlists at charter schools). Admittedly, there are duplications on those lists, since you can be on more than one waitlist, but it is telling that almost 200,000 people want this one way out of traditional public schools.

 

[Highland Deac]

I'm not completely opposed to charter schools and the idea of school choice, although I am dubious of the notion that just opening up more and more charter schools (and thus taking more and more money from public schools, including the good ones) is somehow a magic solution to problems in education, and there is data out there suggesting that charter schools education and standardized test scores are generally no better than that at many public high schools.

This Forbes article - and Forbes is not exactly a liberal bastion - examines several NC Charter Schools using demographic data and concludes that they are, to some extent, reestablishing segregation in some parts of the state, with many charters being either overwhelmingly white or overwhelmingly black, with not much in-between. To wit:

"Initially, North Carolina’s charters served a disproportionately large share of black students. Since the initial period, charter enrollment patterns have shifted such that charters currently enroll a disproportionately large share of white students. Overall, the state’s charters have become bimodally racially imbalanced. In 2014, more than 70% of the state’s charters were either
predominantly white (enrolling more than 80% white students) or predominantly students of color (enrolling more than 80% students of color)."

North Carolina received a $26.6 million dollar grant from the federal Charter Schools Program in 2018. 42 charter schools received a piece of that grant. Only 30 of those have reported demographic information, according to NPE executive director Carol Burris, and of those 30, 11 have a “significant overrepresentation of White students or a significant underrepresentation of Black students compared with the population of the public school district in which they are located.”

"One example is Hopgood Academy, located in Halifax County. The county ranks 90th out of 100 counties in per capita income, but more than 28% of its residents live below the poverty line. In March of 1969, the U.S. Justice Department rejected the Halifax County district’s desegregation plan. A small mostly-white sliver of the county tried to set themselves up as a separate district, but lost a suit against the Justice Department in that same year. But in 1969, Hobgood Academy was established, a mostly white private school near a mostly Black public school. (This timeline comes courtesy of Rodney Pierce, a Halifax County social studies teacher and 2019 North Carolina Social Studies Teacher of the Year.) But in Halifax County, another wrinkle has been added. Soon after the CSP grant was awarded to the state, a movement appeared to convert the private school to a charter school. Opponents pointed out that the school was simply looking for financial relief for woes caused by declining enrollment, and that fans of free market ed reform should then be happy to see the school fold, but the charter was granted. That charter school retains its heavily white student body. And it received a half-million-dollar grant from CSP."

The Forbes article has several links to detailed, data-specific reports about the impact of charter schools in the state.

Link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2021/06/29/are-us-taxpayers-funding-modern-segregation-academies-in-north-carolina/?sh=28889a8d71cd

 

[Highland Deac]

The Washington Post also had a lengthy article this summer about NC Charter Schools. There is a paywall: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/06/07/is-federal-funding-financing-white-flight-academies/

Another WaPo article on how some charters are selective, even though they're not supposed to be. Again, there is a paywall: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/01/17/yes-some-charter-schools-do-pick-their-students-its-not-myth/

 

[ConnorEl]

Of course.

I understand the potential value of competition, generally.

But it seems highly oversimplified to imagine that just making schools fight for students/dollars is going to be either better educationally or offer better value to us collectively. I suspect it would end up about like our medical system...we pay the most collectivley for a product that's highly unevenly available and, on aggregate, much worse than most other advanced economies/nations.

 

[deaconson]

LOL go look at the stats posted above. It’s not a competition. Charter schools are safe spaces for families who don’t want their children challenged, socially or academically.

Just another evangelical grift. This time fleecing the government as well as their parishioners.

 

[PhDeac]

If the goal is for every kid to attend a good school, collaboration is better than competition.

If the goal is to establish an education market with winners and losers in which parents and districts are willing to pay to be winners, competition is the best shot.

 

[birdman]

Why don't they want their traditional public school? Why do they want a particular charter school (last year the OCS says their were 76,000 names on waitlists at charter schools). Admittedly, there are duplications on those lists, since you can be on more than one waitlist, but it is telling that almost 200,000 people want this one way out of traditional public schools.

That is not what you asked. You asked why they don't have the choice they want, I answered you, and now you are asking a different question about why they are choosing something other than their traditional public school. You'd have to ask them. But, I'd wager that just as frequently as concerns about local school quality drives the choices parents are making convince and scheduling decisions are the reason. Things like 'the charter option is really close to my work so I can drop the kids off and pick them up with out driving 45 minutes in the other direction...' or 'the charter option provides after school care, so I don't have to figure out another whole complicated thing' or 'the charter goes k-8 which means Johnny and Susie will be in the same school for 5 years which means one car line, one PTO, one set of teachers to get to know.' That is what I'd wager. I think your idealized framework of choice is just as often invoked by people out of convenience as it is out of need.

 

[birdman]

During the pandemic, more families in North Carolina turned to charter schools, according to OCS data.

Approximately 8.4% of the state’s 1.5 million public school students attend charter schools.

Enrollment in charters grew 14.5%, from 110,000 students in 2019 to 126,000 students as of Oct. 1, 2020.

Charter school enrollment growth in North Carolina is fueled in large part by an increase in Latinx students, who now account for 12.1% of charter school enrollment. A decade ago, Latinx students composed only 5.7%, according to state data.

Enrollment of white students in charter schools declined from 62.4% to 51.1% over 10 years.

Meanwhile, enrollment of Black students has remained steady. They account for 26.4% of charter school enrollment, a slight increase over the 25.8% in 2010.

The enrollment increases for Blacks and Latinx students coincide with North Carolina Advancing Charter Collaboration and Excellence for Student Success (NC ACCESS) grants designed to help charter schools increase their number of educationally disadvantaged students.

So far, 42 schools across 21 counties have received shares of a $36 million federal Public Charter Schools Program grant awarded the state by the U.S. Department of Education.

More schools have also enacted weighted lotteries that give enrollment preferences to students of color.

Between 2013 and 2018 there were only six charter school with weighted lotteries. This year, there were 42.

Using the time period spanning the worst and deadliest global pandemic outbreak in at least 102 years as the basis for making decisions about national public education policy is a really bad idea. Like, super bad, unless we assume that the pandemic state is the new normal, which I guess is entirely possible given your party's vaccine misinformation parade.

 

[Deleted member 7528]

Using the time period spanning the worst and deadliest global pandemic outbreak in at least 102 years as the basis for making decisions about national public education policy is a really bad idea. Like, super bad, unless we assume that the pandemic state is the new normal, which I guess is entirely possible given your party's vaccine misinformation parade.

It might be the perfect time, since it showcases how nimble a locally-run organization can adapt to dynamic conditions, versus a slow, lumbering old battleship that people can't get off of fast enough (but enough about Mako's Mom) that decides "Forget it, we're still getting paid".

 

[birdman]

It might be the perfect time, since it showcases how nimble a locally-run organization can adapt to dynamic conditions, versus a slow, lumbering old battleship that people can't get off of fast enough (but enough about Mako's Mom) that decides "Forget it, we're still getting paid".

Building policy around (hopefully) outlier occurrences will result in over-engineered and forced solutions to low probability problems.

 

[Deleted member 7528]

Building policy around (hopefully) outlier occurrences will result in over-engineered and forced solutions to low probability problems.

I don't believe that this was the one time in history that local, informed, in-touch management will be more responsive than a State-administered bureaucracy.

 

[birdman]

I don't believe that this was the one time in history that local, informed, in-touch management will be more responsive than a State-administered bureaucracy.

Well then, find more data to support your argument than charter school application rates during an outlier (hopefully) 18 month period. We want policies that are robust to uncertain times, of course, but too much focus on solving outlier problems generally leads to systems that are robust to extremes but overly complex for normalcy. It'd be like creating a Rube Goldberg machine for public education.

 

[deaconson]

It might be the perfect time, since it showcases how nimble a locally-run organization can adapt to dynamic conditions, versus a slow, lumbering old battleship that people can't get off of fast enough (but enough about Mako's Mom) that decides "Forget it, we're still getting paid".

You've clearly never had the pleasure of Mako's mom's company.

 

[WFFaithful]

If the goal is for every kid to attend a good school, collaboration is better than competition.

If the goal is to establish an education market with winners and losers in which parents and districts are willing to pay to be winners, competition is the best shot.

Winners and losers, volatility, wasted resources