How Do Charter Schools Succeed? By Cutting Loose Students Who Aren't Good Enough

[yurbud]

To the degree that charter schools appear to do better than real public schools, this is why: they can kick kids out.

It works the same way in entirely public magnet schools: because students have to go through an application process, no matter how pro forma, they are more motivated to be there.

At the magnet high school I attended, there were few discipline problems, and nearly all could be cleared up with a sign from the vice principal saying, "If this behavior keeps up, I guess we'll have to send you back to your neighborhood school."

The teachers at that school were no different from neighboring high schools and in fact were rotated in from and out to them. But being able to jettison the "bad apples" made all the difference.

But just because those kids are not a problem at the magnet or charter doesn't mean that they leave society. They still need to be educated, or we will be paying a lot more to take care of them later in life.

Which is why we need to end this corrupt, corporate-driven education "reform" as soon as possible.

How do these lucky few rise? The charter doesn't have better teachers. In many cases the charter doesn't have a single pedagogical technique or instructional program that is a bit different from its public school counterparts. What it has is a concentration of students who are supported, committed, and capable.

Those students are able to rise because the school, like the pilot of a hot air balloon, has shed the ballast, the extra weight that is holding them down. It's left behind, abandoned. There's no plan to go back for it, rescue it somehow. Just cut it loose. Let it go. Out of sight, out of mind. We dump those students in a public school, but we take the supplies, the resources, the money, and send it on with the students we've decided are Worth Saving.

This may be why the charter model so often involves starting over in another school-- because the alternative would be to stay in the same school and tell Those Students, the ones without motivation or support or unhindered learning tools, to get out. As those students were sent away so that strivers could succeed, it would just be too obvious that we are achieving success for some students by discarding others.

The ballast model is an echo of a common attitude about poverty. If you are poor, it's because you chose badly, because you didn't try hard enough, because you don't have grit, because you lack character, because you deserve to be poor. Insert story here of some person who was born poor and use grit and determination and hard work to become successful, thereby proving that anyone who is still poor has nobody to blame but himself. Just repeat that narrative, but instead of saying "if you are poor" say "if you are a poor student."

http://www.alternet.org/education/how-do-charter-schools-succeed-cutting-loose-students-who-arent-good-enough

[mainstreetonce]

1. Great post

I don't know if you are an educator,but you nailed it perfectly.

[yurbud]

2. I teach community college and my wife teaches public grade school

fewer people are aware that the privatization and fake accountability agenda is creeping into higher education too.

[Igel]

3. I teach public high school.

This year I had two classes that were borderline unmanageable. One was a bit over the border.

Doesn't take many kids to create a problem class.

I've seen three real solutions to this problem.

1. As a teacher, dispose of them. Let them sleep, tune out with headphones, sit and play games, take 40-minute bathroom breaks. Get them so tuned out they're not a problem or simply let them remove themselves. They self-marginalize.

2. Get the administrators involved. They remove them from the classroom into in-school suspension and may eventually ship them off to some sort of alternative school where in groups of 10 per classroom with two teachers present they get high school credit for covering nearly no content over the course of six weeks. Then they return with consistent grades of A for simply not being a problem. It helps them to graduate. The administrators sideline them.

3. Their parents give them grief until they either drop out or their parents move them to a charter school in which they get As and no education. Either they or their parents marginalize them.

Notice that none of these solve the problem of having uneducated kids. But at least they're paper-trained and can get low-paying scut jobs until they get their act together, make such a disaster out of their lives that they drop out of society and often get institutionalized.

The alternative is horrible. The class itself is disrupted, and instead of having 3, 4, or perhaps 5 kids who aren't educated you wind up with 25 or 30. This, for many, is preferable, because we must sacrifice the many for the few when we empathize with the few and despise the money.

Of course, with the right setting, you don't just get 3-5 such kids making your life hell, you get a classroom full of such kids. Then all the good teachers leave and the cry is that something must be done to force teachers to return to uncontrolled classrooms ... Again, sacrificing people for the sake of those we empathize with.

There is a 4th option. You hone your babysitting skills until you're basically Darth Vader. You have iron control over your class and squelch any kind of disruption. The problem with this is the amount of stress and frustration that teachers have because no teaching happens in these classrooms. You're just glad that there are few fights that leave blood on the carpet, no fires are started, and the pregnancies from being in your class is either negligible or fully deniable. (It's always delightful to hear teachers say they'll never show a video again because, well, when the lights were turned back on at least a couple of students were engaged in fellation or coitus.)

My neighborhood high school had nearly 100 fights last year spread out over 10 months. The students say that it's an average school. In the entire state of Texas, it ranks 11 for fights. That's twice a week. A couple of years ago fires were set in the classroom and classes were left unsupervised because there was a shortage of teachers willing to work there and no subs. Where I teach has gotten a bit rougher, but we have perhaps a dozen fights a year. There's a substantial exodus of teachers who want to teach, though, and not babysit. The difference is that my school still has a very active advanced academics program. Teachers in those classes teach. The other teachers are honing their babysitting skills. Or on the job market.

Or deciding that allowing 4-5 students self-sacrifice in order to help the remaining 25 or so is a worthwhile trade-off.

[yurbud]

4. the other solution is reduce class size and increase on campus social services where you have

too many at risk kids.

Maybe that still wouldn't hook all of them, but we'd get some percentage more.

Of course this approach would require more money, which would require raising taxes, which is tough to do even here in California, let alone Texas.

I feel for you. I got my secondary ed certificate and subbed in grades 6-12 before I realized higher ed was a better fit for me. Although you expect kids to go a little wild with a sub, you get a rough idea what usually goes on from the lesson plans the teachers would leave for me. In a couple of schools, it was clear that they were doing little beyond keeping the kids from killing and impregnating each other in class.