Comment by BobaFloutist
1 hour ago
Charter schools deliver results the same way that private schools deliver results: selection bias.
It's really easy to have good outcomes when you have the ability to curate your student population. And though charter schools are regulated to make it harder for them to curate their student population, the statistical evidence is pretty unequivocal: they serve different populations than public schools, and their "better outcomes" immediately vanish when you control for that.
So, what is the issue with redirecting funding from sucky* schools towards ones that deliver results**?
* Schools that teach the general population
** Schools that teach a subset of the general population that always does better
> Charter schools deliver results the same way that private schools deliver results: selection bias.
Wasn't there a failing neighborhood school in LA that got turned into four charter schools that basically rescued the district, without removing any students?
I don't know, was there? Do you have a link?
Alain Leroy Locke high school. So I don't know if there was any academic improvement, but they was certainly a safety improvement.
Ed (looked it up): there was academic improvement, LAUSD claims it's not enough, LAUSD is comparing against neighboring districts, which were not as distressed at the outset, "18 years to improve should have been enough". Safety is considerably improved. Alumni and district residents seem to want to keep the school. Locke high school is currently going through a charter renewal challenge.
Unpopular opinion: If we have evidence that shows that keeping all the smart kids in one group creates massively better outcomes for that group, then that's something we should be doing everywhere, not something we should ban.
I believe the evidence claimed is that there aren’t better outcomes for smart kids. Schools that claim they have better outcomes just selected for kids that would always have better outcomes. Like if I claimed my basketball team has better outcomes because I got to make sure all my players were above 6 foot. These 6 foot players don’t necessarily benefit from being in a team with other 6 foot players, but I’m saying people should apply for my team because I’m doing so much better than the team that can’t make those weeding out decisions. I’m intentionally conflating the success of my capacity to select for success with my capacity to coach a team.
It’s not actually that unpopular; there are plenty of gifted programs, though the tide has turned to controversy around them more in recent years.
I continue to believe that gifted kids are special needs kids, and that they shouldn’t be in the same classroom as those who are struggling for all of their classes.
People don’t like to talk about gifted kids, except to imply that being “too smart” is somehow bad or unfair, and I think it does them a disservice.
Gifted kids get very, very bored, and lose interest quickly, when they aren’t challenged.