Can an american explain what's up with charter/magnet schools. The concept of for profit education seems odd, especially when the US public school is in shambles.
for example Canadian charter schools are generally these weird hybrid education type things that don't really prepare students for anything after. And test scores tend to suck unless you count the child genius ones. How does that compare to the charter school systems in the states?
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The American public school systems are woefully underperforming due to poor funding and poor structuring. America spends more than any other country on education yet is outpaced by the majority of them due. Companies like textbook manufacturers inflate the costs of materials that the government is required to pay- essentially funneling massive amounts of public funds into private companies.
Private schools serve three purposes. One is that there is an idea that creating private institutions and allowing consumers to choose where they attend will produce better quality institutions. This is partly true; private institutions have more one-on-one instruction and smaller class sizes, and more funding to use on better programs. They are, of course, restricted to those that can afford them. The second is that, like our prison system, there is a drive from the American right to divest the government from institutions for budgetary reason s and allow companies to pick up the costs, then pay those institutions to do it. This tends to result in lower performance and much higher prices to line the pockets of companies.
Finally, private institutions are heavily supported by the right as a way of circumventing the separation of church and state, which prevents them from teaching religion in school. By allowing more private Christian schools and subsidizing them through vouchers, they can get more people into Christian schools. Some of America's Christian private schools are high-quality, and some are simply indoctrination tools that teach nothing. Its a crapshoot.
Basically, America is a shithole.
That was surprisingly well written for Sup Forums thanks a lot.
Nice job. The only thing I have a real issue with is the first line. I'm not so sure that the reason our schools are underperforming is "poor funding and poor structuring". I mean, you go on to say that we spend more than any other country; is funding the issue?
I'm agnostic on the school issue. My mother's a teacher (English as a Second Language at a middle school), and even she doesn't have a clue what to do about it. Kids show up in elementary school who can't read, the parents don't give a shit, the kids don't want to learn, social promotion means that there aren't any real consequences to the student for failing, the teachers' union protects the teachers for getting fired for crappy students who don't care, and it's not fair to blame teachers anyway if their job is to teach algebra to kids who show up unable to divide and multiply.
I almost feel like our whole premise is wrong, and we should do the old Chinese thing. Give kids tests, figure out what they're suited for, and teach them that. Send some kids to learn about mechanical stuff and send others to study humanities. This whole "every child in America can and will go to college for a liberal arts education" just isn't working. The closest a lot of parents come to caring is when they accuse the school of being racist for giving an in school suspension to her baby for telling a teacher to go fuck herself, and they already provide breakfast, lunch, after school snack, free tutoring if they want it. How do you teach kids who don't want to learn with parents who don't care if they do? Hold them back? How many times should Jamarcus repeat fifth grade? And if you move him to sixth without him really learning the material, how can you expect his sixth grade teacher to teach him with the rest of her students?
It's a mess. I almost think we should just accept that some kids aren't cut out for education and teach them how to clean, wash dishes, and fix cars or something.
Aren't American school lunches notoriously low quality though? especially through the free meal programs.
Also when I was in high school the after school tutoring was used more as a punishment rather than a legitimate place to learn, so I'm not sure about that either.
They aren't underfunded. Spending has increased hugely for decades and scores have remained unaffected. The system is broken.
As can be imagined in a country longer than the distance from Paris to Moscow, with a higher population than the UK, France, Canada, Australia, Germany and others combined, your experience varies. Free / Reduced Lunch isn't any different than what everyone else gets; the only difference comes at the register when only some of them pay full price.
The fact that this country is so big with so many people is another really good argument for not trying to solve the problem at a national level. A team of people sitting in Washington DC, trying to develop a curriculum and system that will apply to kids in New York, California, Florida, Texas, Oregon, Montana, Wyoming, Massachusetts, Mississippi, and the rest, probably isn't the best way to get this done. Anything for everyone is also for no one in particular.
There are more people in California than there are in all of Canada. Try standardizing up something to apply the same way to people in New Orleans, rural West Virginia, Chicago, Nevada, and Vancouver, and see how far you get. The new idea seems to be for a lot more local control, letting states and counties figure out how and what to teach, and let parents have more input into their children's education, which seems like it'll be more fruitful than the Democrat push towards more and more nationalization.
Yah common core really isn't doing your school system any favours. And you're totally right about the need for different education standards for each state, it's commonplace here and works wonders. The only problem I can see in the states is the south trying to put Christ into schools.
but to bring my line of questioning back to my original question, how do charter schools fix these problems? Are they still bound to common core or can they branch like the ones up here?
Also sorry for pestering you with questions.
>Yah common core really isn't doing your school system any favours.
Why? It's literally just barebones educational standards. How the students get taught is still up to each district.
>And you're totally right about the need for different education standards for each state
The USA isn't like Canada where we have one state where everyone needs to learn French. There's pretty much no reason why not every 2nd grader would need to know their times tables up to 5 or how to write an argumentative sentence.
I'm not really too familiar with how charter schools work, so I don't really know. I read once about a few of them being implemented, and there as a huge waiting list of parents trying to get their kids in them, and the students there were performing better than regular public kids. I think the one thing that is true about charter schools is that they can't be overly generalized, as the point of them seems to be trying new things.
Religion isn't ever going to be taught in public schools, as we've got the first amendment. The private Catholic school run in the neighborhood absolutely destroys most public schools as far as results go. But then, only involved parents who care about their kids education sends them to private school, even though it isn't particularly expensive or anything, and parents should and do play a huge role in their children's education. I think it's impossible to teach someone who doesn't want to learn, and it's a special kind of waste of time if their parents don't even want them to learn.
Not to sound like a personal attack, because it's really not, but I'd practicing saying "that's not my business". The first amendment protects people from government-sponsored religious indoctrination, and the people in Alabama should decide what's best for people in Alabama. They don't need New Yorkers to save them from themselves and set things right. Let Alabama parents raise Alabama kids. Democrats have problems sleeping at night knowing that someone living 1,500 miles away can buy or gun, or doesn't have a unit on evolution in 5th grade science, or is smoking a cigarette inside. Just let people decide how they want to live. "Saving" them by having California and New York overrule them is how you get common core; it's a dick thing to do; and it just pisses everyone off.
That's not exactly what I meant when I said provences do things differently, for example schools in Alberta are given grants if they can get students to sign up for trades, other provinces don't offer that. So naturally schools changed to accommodate this by offering different math/science courses for students following that route.
>but to bring my line of questioning back to my original question, how do charter schools fix these problems? Are they still bound to common core or can they branch like the ones up here?
I can't speak for all charter schools, but the one I went to basically functioned as a conjoined school district to the county one. We had all the same standards as the county school district, the only thing that differed was the curriculum used to meet them (all classes were honors program, for example, we also were the only schools in the district to offer an IB program, or Chinese, or junior year Calc 1, and we had mandatory community service hours) and the environment of the school (we had a shitton of exchange students and even an exchange teacher or two and much smaller classes).
Here's the problem with common core.
>Every second grader should learn this, this, and this.
>To make sure they are, we'll give them this, this, and this test.
>Now teachers, if your students do well on the test, great! If they do poorly, you're going to have problems.
Surprising no one, teachers teach to the test. Students are drilled on exactly what will be tested and nothing else, because no person in their right mind is going to waste a bunch of time in class that could be spent preparing your students to take a test when your job is staked on their test performance.
So the reasonable goal of making sure every second grader learns the same stuff, turns into an unproductive nightmare where most of what students do is preparing for tests and taking tests. If the SAT was the only thing that colleges looked at, would you spend your senior year reading books, practicing creative writing, and studying filmmaking? No, you'd be making SAT prep flashcards and taking practice SAT tests.
>for example schools in Alberta are given grants if they can get students to sign up for trades, other provinces don't offer that. So naturally schools changed to accommodate this by offering different math/science courses for students following that route.
Again, I'm not sure you understand what common core is. Take a look.
Oh sorry I didn't mean to single out religion it's just the first thing my sleep deprived brain jumped to.
Although I don't 100% agree with you on the more live and let live aspects I can see where your coming from and I do respect that stance. Especially with the differences between our countries.
I wasn't referring to common core with that statement, I was answering your second point about educational standards.
>If the SAT was the only thing that colleges looked at
I got into my first choice college with a 2340 SAT having barely passed high school (and in fact a transcript error shows I didn't even get enough credits to do that so I highly doubt they even looked at that shit)
>Every second grader should learn this, this, and this.
common core is minimalist shit
>To make sure they are, we'll give them this, this, and this test.
Not a part of common core
>Now teachers, if your students do well on the test, great! If they do poorly, you're going to have problems.
Schools were doing this shit before common core and will continue to do this after common core
Teaching to the test is a horrendous and prevalent problem that has fuck all to do with common core. I implore you to actually look at the common core standards; they are few and often vague or limited in scope.
Common core is education standards.
They are a common set of core knowledge every student should have at a set grade level. It's a minimum standard of competence.
Also it's more then likely "not doing any favours" probably means something slightly different where your from, here it's used more to describe something that's just average.
Hopefully they can break the teachers unions. End fucking tenure, have some fucking competition and teacher performance ratings. Bad schools should be dismantled with an entirely new staff. Bad kids should be kicked out far easier. School attendance has been teacher's currency for way too long. They know if they don't have kids in their classrooms and schools they would not be able to justify local, state and federal funding. That's why they put in place truancy policies that force all kids to be in school or jump through tons of hoops in order to be home schooled. Kids should be able to go to school to learn and not have to deal with bullies and violent individuals picking fights or cause tons of distraction in class because they do not want to be there. Their parents only place them in schools to be their baby sitter. If kids want to skip school, involved in a gang, create graffiti and be a distraction, they should be kicked out.
I would be for gender segregated schools as well. Boys and girls tend to focus better when they aren't trying to impress the opposite sex. Throwing money at the issues won't solve them, they just hire more administrators rather than fix the core issues.
Did you write common core or something?
I worked running a drama program at a junior high, and my mother and ex-wife are both teachers. Many students show up on day one woefully unprepared because of social promotion and general apathy, and every unit has standards that need to be reached. If students do poorly, you're not meeting standard, and things start getting shitty fast.
Before these standards and planned units started coming down from above, the only big test kids took was the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. There wasn't any teaching to the test.
Now, there are tests after tests that come along with these basic standards. Bad test performance won't just reflect badly on the teacher, but on the school.
Congrats on your SAT scores. Sorry about your reading comprehension troubles. I was using the hypothetical situation where colleges would only look at SAT scores, to help you understand how your preparation would change if, instead of a holistic approach, people who had control over your future were only looking at your scores on one particular test.