400,000 more people without Health Ins this year - Over 59 Million Total

[palemale]

They do. Charter schools have already proven that.

Wrong. There is no evidence that charter schools do a better job than public schools. Indeed, the research shows otherwise. I suggest you read Diane Ravitch's excellent article on charter schools, in which she harshly criticizes the documentary "Waiting for Superman," which she denounces as propagandistic. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Ravitich, she is a very well known, conservative critic of public education.

Some fact-checking is in order, and the place to start is with the film’s quiet acknowledgment that only one in five charter schools is able to get the “amazing results” that it celebrates. Nothing more is said about this astonishing statistic. It is drawn from a national study of charter schools by Stanford economist Margaret Raymond (the wife of Hanushek). Known as the CREDO study, it evaluated student progress on math tests in half the nation’s five thousand charter schools and concluded that 17 percent were superior to a matched traditional public school; 37 percent were worse than the public school; and the remaining 46 percent had academic gains no different from that of a similar public school. The proportion of charters that get amazing results is far smaller than 17 percent.Why did Davis Guggenheim pay no attention to the charter schools that are run by incompetent leaders or corporations mainly concerned to make money? Why propound to an unknowing public the myth that charter schools are the answer to our educational woes, when the filmmaker knows that there are twice as many failing charters as there are successful ones? Why not give an honest accounting?

The propagandistic nature of Waiting for “Superman” is revealed by Guggenheim’s complete indifference to the wide variation among charter schools. There are excellent charter schools, just as there are excellent public schools. Why did he not also inquire into the charter chains that are mired in unsavory real estate deals, or take his camera to the charters where most students are getting lower scores than those in the neighborhood public schools? Why did he not report on the charter principals who have been indicted for embezzlement, or the charters that blur the line between church and state? Why did he not look into the charter schools whose leaders are paid $300,000–$400,000 a year to oversee small numbers of schools and students?

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter-schools/?pagination=false

One interesting tidbit in the review is that the main instigator for the creation of charter schools was Albert Shanker, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, the main teachers' union.

 

[Kulindahr]

And provide aid to do so if they can't afford it.

That's why the bill cost so much. Most of the cost was subsidies for the poor. It's totally false to say that the poor will be negatively affected by this bill.

Unless the deductibles get paid, too, it will just be providing profits to the insurance companies -- the poor won't be able to afford having insurance.

Oh I don't think it is a blind spot at all.

Health care, like education should be a civic responsibility since it is, in effect, the core of societal structure. When the private sector is not able to ensure reasonable costs and better outcomes for the populace, it is not going to be corrected by the private sector. And what the US is proving is that the private sector cannot be trusted to ensure either universal access or better outcomes or lower case costs.

And do not suggest that private enterprise would do a better job of educating.

The private sector can easily do a better job of educating. Don't look to the for-profit schools for how, though.

I'll note in passing that "civic responsibility" used to mean private action, not government.

But the point is that you can't impose your worldview on a situation and judge someone else's position from it. The result frequently tends to be nonsense.

 

[Kulindahr]

One interesting tidbit in the review is that the main instigator for the creation of charter schools was Albert Shanker, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, the main teachers' union.

When I was in the education program at OSU, the NEA was by far the largest teacher's union, with the AFT a distant (and not politically correct) second. Somehow I don't think that's changed.

 

[JB3]

Wrong. There is no evidence that charter schools do a better job than public schools. Indeed, the research shows otherwise. I suggest you read Diane Ravitch's excellent article on charter schools, in which she harshly criticizes the documentary "Waiting for Superman," which she denounces as propagandistic. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Ravitich, she is a very well known, conservative critic of public education.



http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter-schools/?pagination=false

She is one voice, and there are many, many others that disagree.

Your implication that the research shows that charter schools are no better is not accurate. As a matter of fact, the areas that need the most reform in education, large urban centers, have benefited the most from charter schools. Suburban schools, which are always included in those studies, don't show a difference because those schools are almost always better. The fact is, charter schools benefit the students that most need help.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Educat...rter-schools-do-no-better-than-public-schools

One interesting tidbit in the review is that the main instigator for the creation of charter schools was Albert Shanker, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, the main teachers' union.

Ha. The AFT is largely irrelevant in education. They have nothing to do with national education policies, and nearly every major policy position in education in the last decade has come from the NEA. The AFT barely has a million members; the NEA has 3.2 million.

 

[palemale]

She is one voice, and there are many, many others that disagree.

Your implication that the research shows that charter schools are no better is not accurate. As a matter of fact, the areas that need the most reform in education, large urban centers, have benefited the most from charter schools. Suburban schools, which are always included in those studies, don't show a difference because those schools are almost always better. The fact is, charter schools benefit the students that most need help.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Educat...rter-schools-do-no-better-than-public-schools



Ha. The AFT is largely irrelevant in education. They have nothing to do with national education policies, and nearly every major policy position in education in the last decade has come from the NEA. The AFT barely has a million members; the NEA has 3.2 million.

You need a lesson in critical reading and analytic thinking. You've mischaracterized what the article you cite says. It does not say that large urban areas have benefited the most from charter schools. It said the following:

But the study also found more nuanced evidence that the charters that work best are those serving lower-income students, especially in urban areas.

Thus, the article makes no claims that urban areas have benefited the most. It simply stated that the charter schools that work best are those serving lower-income students. It doesn't say how many schools it is talking about, how many urban areas those schools are in, or that the schools performed better than similarly situated public schools. Perhaps you should read Diane Ravitch's article.

With respect to the two teachers' unions, the AFT, although it has fewer members, is the teacher's union for the large, urban school districts. At the time period Shanker was leading it, it was as large as the NEA, perhaps even larger, at times. It was certainly more influential.

 

[JB3]

You need a lesson in critical reading and analytic thinking. You've mischaracterized what the article you cite says. It does not say that large urban areas have benefited the most from charter schools. It said the following:



Thus, the article makes no claims that urban areas have benefited the most. It simply stated that the charter schools that work best are those serving lower-income students. It doesn't say how many schools it is talking about, how many urban areas those schools are in, or that the schools performed better than similarly situated public schools. Perhaps you should read Diane Ravitch's article.

With respect to the two teachers' unions, the AFT, although it has fewer members, is the teacher's union for the large, urban school districts. At the time period Shanker was leading it, it was as large as the NEA, perhaps even larger, at times. It was certainly more influential.

YOU need critical reading skills.

“When you take a look at our findings and then look back at previous studies, they start to follow a pattern,” says Philip Gleason, the study’s director and a senior fellow at Mathematica Policy Research, which produced the study. “Studies that have focused on the largest set of schools find either no or negative effects, but schools in larger urban areas, serving the most disadvantaged students, do have an effect.”

"Do have an effect". That means they affect the education of the students they serve compared to their public counterparts. Combined with the quote that you posted, the director of the study is saying that charter schools have a POSITIVE effect on students in large urban areas.

Then there's this:

The result, say education researchers, is a heated debate but also a growing consensus that charters, like regular public schools, vary widely in their quality and that they are at their best when serving a more disadvantaged population.

“It’s not surprising that suburban charter schools don’t do anything, because suburban schools are already pretty good,” says Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Harris School who has studied charter schools in Chicago. “At this point,” she adds, “the literature is still trying to figure out, are charter schools better or not? And arguably, that’s the wrong question to even be asking.” More interesting, Professor Schanzenbach suggests, would be research on what makes some charters more effective.

Learn to read pal.

Oh, and the NEA has always been more influential because its the organization to which school administrators belong. The AFT has never held the same level of influence.