Revitalized in what way? Every study I've read indicates that charter schools' success is, at best, the same as public schools, when taken in aggregate. For instance: http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/MU...OICE_CREDO.pdf

If you read the footnotes for the Cato study, they are using estimates for the private school costs, and not using the same fine-tooth comb they use on the public school costs.

When talking cost, bear in mind that private schools have no requirement to accept and educate children with learning disabilities, behavioral issues, poor English, no resources at home, etc....

Many charter schools can also self-select a "better" student population, as well, if they're set up as "magnets" or can otherwise have an application process.

Are private school budgets always publicly available?

No, they aren't, and that is why those weren't the "actual" costs as Arles made them out to be. Taking detailed local figures and then comparing to a national average isn't a real useful comparison.

I'm not sure how smart it is to base the cost-per-pupil for private schools primarily on tuition rates. Private schools tend to have endowments and healthy fundraising efforts that contribute to the yearly income side of their balance sheet.

If you look at websites for most private schools, you'll see a lot about financial aid, keeping tuition down, offering help with tuition, all of which indicates the actual cost-per-pupil is considerably more than tuition itself.

The Catholic school my daughter attends doesn't have a special ed program worth the name, little athletics spending, no gifted programming, a contracted band program, and no security.

Not to mention that here, if you want to attend a Catholic school and get an improved rate, you have to commit to attending church there and tithing a specific amount. And many of the private schools in my area are Catholic. So you can take that "average spending per pupil" and flush it straight down the toilet.

Everyone uses estimates for private schools as they are not required to provide the individual numbers since it's private funding. Think of this, though, if it did cost private schools in AZ the $10K to $13K per student it costs the public schools, how would they stay in business? Most tuition for middle and elementary school is in the $5K to $8K range per year.

The study I quoted used the IRS filings from the schools, which are categorized as non-profits, as well as a personnel survey the schools filled out which contained things like salary structure, class size, etc.

Interestingly enough, Stanford's CREDO had another study of New Jersey charters schools that said:

New Jersey Charter School Study Shows Gains In Newark Schools

The fallacy of your sourced was using the public school cost of $8K per student. That isn't even close to the real cost. Read the two articles I posted and they explain why in very simple terms.

And the fallacy of yours is that it was comparing line items sources with an estimation.

So what's your argument? Private schools in AZ don't cost the $6K estimate the study said - they instead cost over $13K? At worst, it's $7-8K or they wouldn't be in business.

What should be measured to determine if a school is accountable? Test scores? Attendance? Grades? 4-year college admittance?

The reason private schools are better is because they get to teach a FAR less diverse classroom. In way parents pay lots of money so their child can be surrounded by children just like them. Be that gender, intelligence or behavior.

A school with a very similar student body can create a matrix to determine success/accountability.

Charter schools are held accountable by the forces of the free market. If the output is not what the community desires, then it will not gain customers. A good charter school is one that identifies a need in community and fulfills it. Anything like ap classes, 4-year acceptance, sat scores, teacher ratio, counseling and support services.

Finally, when talking of public education we should really be dividing it into 2 categories: the bottom 20% who receive 80% of he funds and attention and the rest. Bills like the Colorado one think that the funding solution for the top 80% is the same for the bottom 20%, not true. Again, the goals of what is success for the bottom 20% has not even been determined. Certainty just getting them to graduate is not a useful, cost effective or realistic.

Sorry for the rant. On paternity leave, missing my classroom.

Are 'charter schools' selective with regards to students? - what areas are they in and were these factors taken into account when judging performance.

(I ask because I've helped out at an inner city school in London once upon a time where 80% of the students couldn't speak English - that school would skew any table hugely for instance)

This is a great debate to have. I would say a combination of all factors you listed. How many kids that went to college felt prepared by their HS. How kids from a middle school fared in HS. Some form of test score performance is probably a useful factor and even how a school prepares kids not looking to go to a 4-year school for future jobs/professions. I think with all the smart people we have in the education system, we can come up with some way that gives us a clue on how a school is faring vs its peers.

I'll go one step further and add the increased parental involvement. But, I agree on what you say - private schools often have kids and parents more dedicated to learning than public schools.

I think Charter schools are a good idea and one that is better equipped to succeed than public schools.

I honestly wonder if providing ever parent with a "tuition credit" they can use for any school in their area is the best long term solution. Then, they are basically paying tuition for the school (whether it is public or private or charter) and the poorer schools will start getting less students. This would also increase the parental involvement as they will be more accountable to their kids in ensuring they go to the best school.

Are there any figures on how much subsidized they are by the state? - I know private schools in Florida aggressively pursue state funding as the private school my sons attend has attempted to persuade me that both have ADHD* ... despite both being very good students academically ... the reason why, there is a McKay scholarship they get for students with disability such as that (and the rate of the scholarship can be far higher than their standard tuition charge).

*yes they can be lively at times, but err ... they're boys ... if they act up tell them to sit down and shut up or you'll tell their dad, that works a treat ;)

I think just allowing people in America to send their kids to the schools they want to would be a big improvement over the current situation in Florida where you're assigned schools and sometimes randomly reassigned schools after your kid has started at another one.

(its this random 'reassignment' which made us put our boys into private school as we wanted them to have a consistent peer group to build relationships with)

PS - Was strange to me when I moved here that you couldn't just pick a school for your kid to attend - thats how it works in England, you look at all the schools you want to and so long as they have space you send your kid to the one you like best ... at one point my wife and I were driving our eldest 25 miles down the road when she was little because we liked a village school in the middle of nowhere.

That's interesting Marc, because it certainly didn't work that way for me growing up (we had to move to get into a better school catchment area and even then, as someone who didn't go to the feeder primary schools I wasn't guaranteed a place)

Wonder if that's a local area thing or if it's changed in the last 15 years?

I'll take a crack at one or two of these if you don't mind.


Is that "randomly reassigned" between school years or during? The former is fairly common, especially in areas with population shifts up or down. Another trigger can be the addition of a new school/the closure of a school. That sets the maps up to be redrawn more often than not.

If it's during the year -- like a week or two into the school year -- then it's not entirely unheard of but it's not at all common. It'll happen once in a great while somewhere if the enrollment numbers are horribly off versus projections.


Question, cause I sure as hell don't know: is there school-operated mass transportation for most public schools in the UK? That's a primary reason against school choice in the U.S., and there's still an enormous number of students that rely on school busing to get them to/from.

There are a ton of scholarship options for private schools. I don't know the numbers, but I do know that there are tuition credits available in some states to help with tuition for lower income people.

The U.S. already spends more money per-pupil than any other country, but still crappy results. Let's get real: Crappy parents, or parents who shouldn't be having children, and expect others to do their jobs for them, and kids who don't get a crap about education. Until you fix that problem, throwing more money at education is foolish.

Don't the other countries have crappy parents and kids who don't want to be in school? Are you saying the us has the worst parents and least motivated kids?

Also, who is really hurt by your solution of no money until bad kids and parents are eliminated? Certainly not the bad kids and parents.

I bet there is a strong correlation between the amount of subsidized maternity leave and free pre-k schooling and a successful k-12 educational system. If that's so, the costs may be the same as us, just the results are vastly different.

Fundraising. Virtually every private school has at least one fundraiser (also called "development" or "advancement" in the trade). Prestigious private schools often have a whole staff devoted to this. Some can build up quite sizeable endowments.


Thanks for the link! Good food for thought.

When I lived in the UK I never saw an actual school bus. All the kids seemed to either walk or take regular mass transportation (which is more comprehensive than it is in the U.S.) to school.

Yeah, we all took regular transportation to high school (although they had to put on special buses after school to keep us away from the regular customers, it was still the local bus company and we paid regular fares) although again, that was 15 years ago. Can't comment on whether that's still the case.

I don't know as a kid I lived in the middle of nowhere so there wasn't any choice in the sticks (I had to take a bus for 20 minutes to reach the only High School in the area) - at that time I'd never even considered that it was possible to go to a school other than the 'local' one ... but then I was a kid at that point not a parent. It had been that way ever since I'd had kids until I emigrated.

You're correct that there is/was a 'priority system' which graduated according to various quite sensible items - I think first was: (1) local + siblings in school already, (2) siblings in school already, (3) local, (4) everyone else ... which I think is perfectly fine and sensible - obviously the better schools in an area are frequently harder to get into ... we had to wait several months to get my daughter into one of the local schools we liked (commuting her to another school in the meantime) but that was about it - we did live in a small town (Royston) in the 'country' though rather than in a city.

Its entirely possible that the schools in your area were 'full' and as such you'd get a slot in your assigned one but have to wait for a space to open if you wanted to attend another (quite sensible really and generally they do open up if parents wait - people move fairly frequently these days).

It depends on the area - I grew up in a rural county and we had school busses (contracted local companies - my dad did it for a while as he owned a taxi company for several years) because it was quite a trek to the 'local' schools (my village only had a very small primary school for young kids and for middle/high school we had to commute to a larger village/town).

In our case it was at the end of a year - but thats no consolation to a child who is settled in the current school and has a nice group of friends he's settled with.

(especially as in the case of my boys both had speech impediments and so changing schools was more traumatic than it might be for all kids)

We've never used the school bus system in the US and weren't at that time - we only live a couple of miles from the school in question and so weren't eligible and were reassigned to a worse school further away (about 5-6 miles down the road).

It was at that point we went private.

(the UK does have school busses in some situation, if they're available you're welcome to use them - if not then get your own kid to school, they've got legs/cycles or you've got cars/public transport so sort it out as an adult ...)

{counts} Let's see here, 3 schools in 4 years for mine (PreK-3rd grade at one, 4th & 5th at another, 6th thru present at another) ... I think it's just become such a commonplace thing at this point (due to a mobile society, the divorce rate, etc) that I have a tougher time seeing it as the trauma that those with different experiences might have.

To be honest, we've made a point of emphasizing that K-12 relationships are pretty temporary things from a very early age -- even if you don't move, roughly half the kindergarten class in a small private (or public) school won't be there for HS graduation.


Thanks, I truly had not the slightest idea one way or the other

It's probably worth noting here somewhere that I grew up in an area where it was 10-15 miles or more to the nearest school for a lot of students, and there's large swaths across Georgia that are the same way still today. Options outside of traditional school buses become pretty limited (i.e. virtually non-existent) unless you want to have the kids dropped off at 530a or 6a when the parent(s) goes to work.

My kids have learned this early by necessity - living near Ft. Detrick a large portion of the kids are military, and they were constantly being swapped out in elementary school. Middle school has bee a little more stable (brings in areas a little further from the fort), but it's still there.

I think there's something to be said for keeping a routine though of getting on the same bus, going to the same school, seeing the same teachers and administrators, etc. though.

When I was in elementary school they reworked the boundaries after 4th grade, and about half the school population changed. That really messed with relationships. A lot of friends shifted, new kids came in that had established friendships, and some established dynamics changed as well (new cool kids meshing with the old cool kids, etc).

Thinking on this a bit more (while noting what diverse sidetracks the Obama thread can take sometimes) ...

re: same school -- the normal minimum today would be, what, 3 schools (physical buildings) in 13-14 years? Primary/Elementary, then Middle, then High. Right? And if the physical location changes, the bus sometimes changes best I can figure (depending upon whether the buses are mixed ages/schools or single-destination routes)

re: same teachers -- how many repeat teachers do kids see prior to HS? 1, maybe 2, at the middle school level, still only maybe 1-3 in HS? And I figure it's even less than that when you get to larger schools than I've dealt with.

I guess my point -- if I have one -- is that I question how much stability really exists under even the best of circumstances. That just doesn't seem to be how the world works, just doesn't seem like a realistic expectation for parents (or students) to have at this point.

Sure, there's examples of just the opposite, I'm doubtful about how commonplace they are I guess.

They've started doing this at certain school districts in Texas. If the majority of parents in a class agree and so does the teacher, the teacher moves with the class. One of my cousin's boys is in 4th grade, and he's had the same teacher since 1st grade. Same thing for my niece, who is in a different school district, in 3rd grade.

That seems like a horrible idea, considering you're now expecting a teacher to grasp a different curriculum every year.

Of course, given how fucked up education is, yearly curriculum changes based on the whim of administration/politicians are practically a given, even for teachers who stay in the same grade. So who knows.

If a teacher can't grasp the content of an elementary school curriculum, I'd be pretty concerned about their abilities.

I was thinking you could also be in the minority who thinks your kid's teacher isn't great and you get stuck with them for 3 years. (I can't imagine every parent in the grade will love their teacher)

There's a *big* difference between grasping the content and having experience teaching it.

Coming from a family of teachers that's a pretty short sighted comment. My mom was a great first grade teacher and probably had some "tricks" of the trade for 7-8 year olds that might not work as well for older or younger kids. If teaching were as easy as 5+6 = 11 and this word is "bumble bee" all kids would do well at every school.

I come from a family of teachers as well. For education degrees, they don't teach 1st grade, 2nd grade, 3rd grade, they teach 'Elementary' focus. I don't disagree that there is a difference between teaching 1st and 4th graders, but that difference is less than the one between 4th and 5th grade. One of my cousins specifically took a job where she'd have the opportunity to stay with 1st graders until they moved to middle school.

edit: And, as I mentioned, the teacher has to agree to move as well. So if they aren't comfortable teaching 2nd graders, then they would get a new class of 1st graders.

I admit my view is more anecdotal and personal. The most revered guy at one of our feeder elementary schools for about 10 years (I teach at a middle school) was basically a blowhard who did a couple of units meant solely to impress parents and to move up the ladder to the current administrative job he has now. His kids bypassed content for his projects that parents and administrators all thought were so spectacular. (Feed the Kenyans, run for epilepsy. Nothing wrong with any of the ideas per se but they ate up many hours a day the entire year of instructional time) I just would feel really bad for a kid who got this teacher that everyone loved for multiple years when they come out not knowing multiplication facts or how to read. And I'm sure every school has a few of these teachers but at least in the current system you get a sampling of shitty along with good.

I'm pretty sure that I'd be adamantly opposed to having teachers follow students through several years of school, especially in those early years.
Both teachers & students have different styles, it's critical (especially for the students' long-term success) that they learn to deal with those differences. And it's hardly ever too soon to start working on that at least to some extent.

Yes though you didn't specifically mention it your description could also apply to homeschooling. This is one of the areas where I take a sharp break from the "mainstream" Libertarian viewpoint. While there are some horrible school districts in this country I think most provide a better education and teach many intangible skills that can't be learned through homeschooling.

Taking educational cues from Texas seems like a horrible idea in general. *rimshot*

And where I come back toward the mainstream Lib. viewpoint (I guess, I'll take your word for what that is on this subject).

On the whole, I'd say a competent homeschooler far exceeds the capabilities of the average/typical classroom. And I'd weigh that more heavily than the intangibles that we're talking about ... but if you're going to be in that setting then you ought to get all the intangibles you can (like learning how to work different college professors)

I think it was more a shock to my kids because English schools are a bit more 'static' - that and the boys speech issues mean that settling into a class involves the other students becoming accustomed to your speech patterns etc. (even more so when you have speech issues AND an English accent as well).

Oh - I thought you were referring to the English accent as the "speech issue" in question! :lol:




(j/k i really didn't, but i just wanted to get in a crack ;) )

All I know is that FM has caused me frequent "speech issues" over the years. Usually swearing. So, I blame Marc.

:p

That's certainly fair, and I had/have no intention of minimizing that specific situation.

Anyone who has heard my accent knows I understand about the difficulties speech & accents can present ;)

We're pretty stable re: buses. Our elem stop has been at the top of our street since before my son was in K (he's in 8th now). I know they've had some of the bus drivers for multiple years. And three buildings would be the minimum, which would match what I had and what they're on pace for.

With teachers, it's not necessarily having the same grade/subject teachers again, but ones like music, art, gym, lunch ladies, librarians, office ladies, janitors, guidance counselors, nurses, principals. And seeing former teachers in the hall*, etc (or my daughter having teachers that my son had). In middle school now it applies to extracurriculars as well.


* though my son had a string of like 3-4 teachers who left/retired/had babies either right after he had them or within two years


ETA: we have neighbors who have four kids, and between them they probably went to 4 different elementary schools. Magnet, Montessori, private Catholic, one in another neighborhood where the mom was an aide (they're not really magnet types, and in a couple cases got themselves booted). All of them EXCEPT for the one they naturally would have gone to. Oddly they all wound up in the normal middle school, which on the whole probably has fewer academic sorts than the elem.