When you can be selective and choose the highly motivated and the best you can do is moray gains, it is hardly worth it.

Modest not moray? (spell check)

The most recent research from Michigan shows that charter schools are actually performing WORSE than public schools. DFER are reexamining their entire approach. Check it out at This Week in Education.

75 %  of original grade 9 students in voucher schools did not graduate. 19% of MPS students have disabilities. Voucher schools have only 7 to 14% disabilities and they are milder diabilities compared to more severe disabilities in the MPS. With all of this to select and exclude and still have only modest gains? Not very good. All over the USA people are concluding that charters and vouchers are not the answer. Michelle Rhees reputation is in the gutter for many reasons and Richard Rothsteins analysis shows that the overwhelming reason for poor USA Pisa results are the high poverty rates in America compared to other Pisa nations.

The point that Joe missed, is that the students leaving public schools for a voucher school, are students who are not being supported in the public school.

It makes sense, that the number of voucher students would be the type that the public schools have not supported the students in any number of ways.

Are they highly motivated students?  Perhaps, when the voucher school has served the voucher student’s needs. There is parents’ stories on the voucher students, and in particular the students with the reading issues, that apparently the public school could not do anything about. But the voucher school did do its job, and give the student the reading skills to succeed in school.

One will be surprised when students received effective remediation, how motivated students are to succeed in school. I seen it with my own child, and self-motivation was the key in using her new found skills in the classroom. Teachers noticed it, and asked what was my secret. No secret, effective remediation suited for the individual student that most of the public schools don’t do for the most part. Why?  All kinds of reasons, but from what I have observed the common reason, it cost too much.

Again, cost too much?  From what I have observed and my 17 year old as well, the majority of students with learning struggles, are the students who have not been taught, poor instruction , etc. Effective remediation would solve it, but unfortunately the type of direct instruction goes against the pedagogy practices.

Here is one example. The decimal rules. One would think it be in the math text books. No its not, and I had to teach the rules to my child who was in grade six, along with lots of practice. Somehow, the kids are supposed to figure it out on their own, and by high school know how to multiply and divide decimals. Just a few weeks ago, there was my 17 year old , who have the decimal rules memorized by heart since the age of 11, showing another 17 year old, who has never been taught the rules. This 17 year old was so embarrassed, that she asked my 17 year old to do it in secret, so no one would find out. Fifteen minutes, the 17 year old, was utterly amazed all she had to do was memorized a short set of decimal rules.

From the reports, the voucher schools do a better job at remediation of the knowledge gaps and mild learning issues, that interferes in learning. Parents are pleased as punch, and their kids are happier.

So Joe, go onto the parent web sites, they tell you a different story, and some of their kids will tell their side of the stories. Give the kids the tools and skills needed to access the learning plane of knowledge, and watch them succeed.

Over in England - ” Get them while they’re young

British universities, says The Guardian, “will offer campus trips and workshops to pupils as young as seven as part of a new drive to encourage young people from poor backgrounds to consider staying on in education once they’ve finished school.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/facts-and-arguments/what-kind-of-role-model-are-you-for-your-cat/article7533814/?cmpid=rss1

I can think of better ways of spending education funding, and more so when tuition fees have doubled in England, along with the drying up of scholarships that are targeted for specific student population. The British parents must be rolling up their eyes, especially when the education agent is knocking at the door, demanding to know why your child was not at school today, and to deliver a ticket. Pay the fine, or fight it in court. Guilty, until proven innocent. And then there is the food police in the British schools, which is another story, which is also driving parents away from the British public school to charters and other alternative schools.

OSP/aka Joe,

Please provide a link for This week in Education…I think you know how to cut and paste…if not I can provide a link to that resource.

Careful Dou - Joe, you’ll burst Bev’s bubble again! (Wink)

Here’s a link to the article in case anyone’s interested:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/17/charter-school-quality_n_2490931.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

Although I’m sure Ms. Dare has already read it since she writes for the Huffington Post as well.

Frank Im sure you can use Google, links are difficult on a cell phone. Vouchers and charters are failing all over the USA. The charter movement itself wants a massive number of charters closed because they are doing a terrible job but their owners fight back because they are making money.

One Syllable,

For a guy who supposedly works out three times a week and is as fit as any thirty something, I am surprised you can’t copy a link on your smartphone and paste it into a posting without whining. This act kind of defines the on the go, real time, tweeter, man/woman of all seasons these days.  Perhaps, you need a bigger phone.

As for Charter Schools and profits, tell you what, you show me a Charter School financials(or link to same) that look much better than the operating statement of a public school and I might reconsider just who really employs you.

I use a Samsung note 2. There is a scandal a day at charters to the point that today, putting bad charters out of business as fast as possible before they taint the whole movement is the main preoccupation of charter leaders. Charter leaders finally understand why governments had caps on expansion. The are intended as experiments not a parallel system. The new ones are developing a reputation as scams that pay owners much higher wages than public school directors and local managerss much higher than principal by paying teachers much less and working them longer hours. As soon as the teachers can switch to the public system they do so.

Frank -

Googling the article was not that difficult.  However, because I know that no one at SQE seems to be able to research anything, rather they just opine without any facts, I included the link above.  Dou- Joe’s article actually links to the Huffington Post.  You ought to see the link - look up - waaaaaaaayyyyy up (I was a friendly giant fan) and you’ll see it.  (Smiley)

Dou- Joe -

Higher pay than public school officials?  Try $500,000 plus.  Since SQE loves to post the Sunshine list, avid readers may go there and compare.  I doubt you will find any school official in Ontario that makes HALF that much.  And before Bev, Nancy and the rest start on me - yes I did research that figure (go find it yourselves).  One interesting story: a charter school CEO paid themselves that much, just two days before the school was due to be closed for under performance - gotta love Amercian private enterprise!

If so Joe, start providing and also provide the data for the public education system, as Frank has suggested.

I had a $200,000 education director tell me back in 2001, that my child has no reading and writing issues. It cost more to denied children access to remediation services than it does to provide the corrective remediation of 120 hours.

That said, in the G/M - high priced help of the public education system does not necessarily lead to positive outcomes. “The size and budget of the TDSB have grown by leaps since municipal amalgamation, leaving an immense, bureaucratic organization with weak leadership and entrenched, self-serving unions. The whole outfit, headquartered in its North York bunker, exudes the scent of rot. It cries out for reform and renewal.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/dysfunctional-tdsb-cries-out-for-reform-and-renewal/article7279810/

In another G/M article - “Meanwhile, Harinder Takhar, a Liberal MPP running for his party’s leadership, proposed cutting some 9,700 school support-staff jobs as a cost-control measure. The idea, first outlined by economist Don Drummond last year, would eliminate 70 per cent of non-teaching staff jobs created since 2002, and save an estimated $600-million every year. Those affected would range from educational assistants to maintenance workers to guidance counsellors. “We have a student population that is going down and we have employment levels going up,” Mr. Takhar said after a speech at the Toronto Board of Trade. “If the student population is going down, the employment level, in fact, should go down.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ontario-seeks-solutions-for-education-system/article7595726/

Either case, the public education system should be looking in their own back yard, before casting their eyes at charter schools, and calling them scams. There is a lot of scams in the public education system, and it starts with the high-priced help telling parents falsehoods to avoid the remediation of children’s literacy and numeracy problems.

Wayne, why do you think that we begrudge someone being well-paid?  In the private sector if there’s anything that consumers don’t like about a company, they have the power to go elsewhere to buy product; the same can be said for charities if/when donors discover that perhaps only 10% of their contributions go to the actual cause. 
If the state-run school system were exemplary, few people would begrudge overstaffing, short working days, fewer that 1/2 the days actually spent in the classroom, inflated salaries and benefits.  Taxpayers see the short-comings and the poor results; yet aren’t allowed to choose where/how their tax dollars are spent.  Our government gives us no power to choose:  we’re forced to pay.  Do you see the difference?

Another thought—can you, the ones who constantly fight against the voucher system or charter schools, imagine how many state-run schools would close if parents and taxpayers could vote with their feet? 
Because we’re forced to pay for state-run monopolies, which are expensive, inefficient, and cater only to big ps unions, and not the taxpayers burdened with the bills, many people feel that this our society today is way too left-of-centre.  Governing too far left-of-centre has also spawned too many champagne socialists and latte liberals—most of whom are in some way working for government.