Variety in the modes of education is a good thing: not every pupil is effectively educated in a public school.
But, I can’t help but think this is merely stealth privatisation of education: a profit making exercise. That it might actually have positive outcomes for pupils is a happy accident.
while it’s great there’s robust debate (elsewhere in this thread), gven all the other self-serving things this govt has done, I think we can take this as unlikely to go well for ‘the rest of us’…
This is just kickbacks for the companies that helped them get elected. Remember these charter schools are going to get tax dollars but are for profit.
The article points out that a large number of schools in the UK are charter schools (40% primary, 80% secondary), but doesn’t then say if that is a positive or not.
One size doesn’t fit all in education, which Seymour points out. But how do charter schools address this issue?
One size doesn’t fit all. That’s why all kids should have an hour of reading, an hour of writing, and an hour of maths every day (which takes up like 70% of the learning time available).
I’m all for innovation in education, but surely there is plenty of international data to give just a little bit of information on the positives of charter schools.
I nice comparative analysis would go a long way, but no.
It’s probably pretty difficult to measure the performance of charter schools vs public schools.
A charter school might specifically cater to underachieving kids, kids for whom the public system didn’t work well. Then by selection the public schools will outperform the charter school.
Or alternatively, a charter school might outperform public school because the class sizes can be smaller and they don’t have to stick to the government set rules for schools. If you set dumb rules (like three hours a day on the three Rs) then you can then point to the charter schools and say “look, they are doing better than the public schools so we should convert more schools to charter schools” when in reality it’s just a sign the way you run public schools is wrong.
I was thinking something a little bigger.
There are countries that run charter schools and countries that don’t. Which ones are doing better from an outcomes point of view, which ones are doing better after 20 years out of school?
If we look at a country level then things like attitude towards education, the specific implementation differing between countries, or the general social structure outside of school differing may make comparisons meaningless.
Another factor is that “charter school” doesn’t necessarily mean run by a company, just that they have an agreement with the government (a charter) that says they don’t have to follow the normal curriculum. But from my understanding charter schools in NZ are privately run?
Regardless, there are some studies. Here’s an article about one:
The figure below shows some notable results from the CREDO studies. The key takeaway is that charter school students, in general, perform about the same as their matched peers in the traditional public schools, but there is variation across different types of schools and groups of students. For example, students in urban charter schools generally perform better than their matched pairs—likely for an assortment of reasons—while students in online charter schools perform much worse.
This study shows that charter schools are slow to get started (i.e. perform poorly at the start) and slowly catch up to public schools over time:
This study investigates whether student achievement varies during the institutional life span of charter schools by comparing them to new public schools. The results show that there is little evidence that new public schools struggle with initial start-up issues to the same extent as new charter schools. Even after controlling for school characteristics, new public schools generally perform about as well as one would predict given their demographic and socioeconomic profile. New public schools hit the ground running and maintain steady performance, while new charter schools begin to improve after their first year and slowly close the gap.
This article talks about how charter schools and public schools are as good as the people running them:
The effectiveness of charter schools is a hotly contested and often debated issue among educators, parents, researchers and politicians. And studies have been published supporting both sides of the argument: that charters underperform public schools and that they outperform public schools. However, the key difference appears to be the state in which the charter is located and the organizing body by which the charter is run.
Hmm. Sometimes I wonder if this “Dave” is, indeed, an AI.
Hmm, I just checked my fingers and they do look a bit strange. If I was AI, how would I know?
If the charter school can cherry pick which students it chooses and can expel difficult to teach students then I can’t see how it could possibly do worse.
I’m starting to wonder if this is a chance for school boards/principles to get away from ‘the MoE overreach’ and constant curriculum alterations…
I can see how it would be tempting to be given funds and get back to teaching how they think is the best way to do it (rightly or wrongly!).
Maybe.
But it could also just be a cynical power grab, trying to force for profit education into the system.
Oh sure, that’s what the 3 horsemen are doing, but the schools could play this too… It’s risky, but every teacher I’ve met had indicated things have been bad for decades
