NYT Story: For Detroit’s Children, More School Choice but Not Better Schools

[Canadian Visitor]

What makes something underfunded. 'Under' what?

Flaws in the current Charter system do not make a reason to eliminate the only force that is encouraging DPS to be better. The argument that they're no better than public has always seemed like a self-serving argument, by those who just want to kill charters in their own self-interest. As long as one charter is doing better than average, charters are doing something good. They are keeping the heat on the public systems to get better. To identify ways of doing things differently. Some fail. Some succeed.

This makes very little sense to me.

First off, the end game for any education system surely has to be results based.

If the system is failing, as Detroit's clearly was in years past, and you introduce a 'reform' and the aggregate results remain abysmal, then it logically follows that the reform failed.

It didn't achieve the desired objective.

If you want to argue that Charter schools CAN be successful, that's fine. But surely you CAN NOT argue that they HAVE been successful, on the whole, in Detroit.

That doesn't automatically mean you get rid of them all, but surely it means a wholesale re-think, because WHAT IS; IS NOT working.

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Which brings me to different point. Why is it, and this isn't unique to Michigan btw, that particularly in the US and to some degree Canada there is an allergy amongst governments and/or their constituents to simply hire/contract successful systems to overhaul and manage yours for a period of time [[say 15 years to create a culture shift?)

There are U.S. school boards, along with countless non-U.S. systems that produce infinitely better results in state/public school outcomes.

Why not hire one of those systems to achieve change?

Granted there are other societal issues that contribute to different outcomes, whether in education, health, transit or other areas.

But if you want a better result, why not hire an expert with a track record?

Lots of transit authorities hire MTR [[Hong Kong's) transit system [[which is profitable) to overhaul their own. That doesn't mean MTR can turn a system in a completely different environment into one that makes money. But they often can turn in it one that loses a lot less.

No reason you can't do the same by hiring an entire school district or State or Province to manage your system for you, if you're consistently performing below your peers.

[Wesley Mouch]

This makes very little sense to me.

First off, the end game for any education system surely has to be results based.

If the system is failing, as Detroit's clearly was in years past, and you introduce a 'reform' and the aggregate results remain abysmal, then it logically follows that the reform failed.
...snip...

I get your point. And it would be great if reforms in education were easily measurable. The teacher's union's argument that testing is inaccurate isn't self-serving, but not entirely wrong. We don't seem to have managed to create objective tests that can find out whether Johnny can add 2+2. That doesn't seem to me to relieve the burder to keep trying on testing.

Likewise, the fact that our tests don't show that Charters are in aggregate exceeding public schools, if in fact true, doesn't show that students aren't benefiting. The most obvious one to me is that I would expect that Charters should lift all boats. That in itself would be good. Competition doesn't just improve the leaders, it improves the laggers too.

But the most important reason you're 'results abysmal means reform failed' isn't logic is that it doesn't mean that results could increase in the future. Presumably, that's what the public systems are arguing. 'Sure, we suck -- but if you give us money we'd be just as good as the bastards that are taking profits instead of paying us more'.

The equivalent charter argument is 'sure, we're not much better in aggregate than public schools, but the next idea we try might work' ... or results take time to show ... or some of us are better and at least that's better.

Why not hire one of those systems to achieve change?

That's a good point. Hiring a new superintendent is that idea. They should be bringing different ideas. That's the basic idea of Charters. That you can change. Existing public schools have limitations on their ability to change. Institutional interia is a problem in the best organizations -- and public bureaucracies seem to have it bad. And of course the most important stodgy group are Unions. It should be obvious to all that Unions are not progressive. They are stodgy, stubborn, and resistant to change. Its not the wages or benefits or pension excesses that are the problem with Unions. Its their resistance to change. Unions don't means a given reform will fail -- but it makes it much less likely that it will be adopted.

[Canadian Visitor]

The equivalent charter argument is 'sure, we're not much better in aggregate than public schools, but the next idea we try might work' ... or results take time to show ... or some of us are better and at least that's better.

I think the issue here is one of both time limit [[how long do you get to prove you can do it better or be the rising tide that lifts all boats?)

We can agree it takes more than a year, or two or even three to right a wronged ship......but if a policy is a decade long in the tooth, shouldn't material improvement be expected? Is it merely sufficient to say.....well they'll get it right, one day?

I think that sacrifices yet another generation of children to an entirely unacceptable outcome.

That's a good point. Hiring a new superintendent is that idea. They should be bringing different ideas. That's the basic idea of Charters. That you can change. Existing public schools have limitations on their ability to change. Institutional interia is a problem in the best organizations -- and public bureaucracies seem to have it bad. And of course the most important stodgy group are Unions. It should be obvious to all that Unions are not progressive. They are stodgy, stubborn, and resistant to change. Its not the wages or benefits or pension excesses that are the problem with Unions. Its their resistance to change. Unions don't means a given reform will fail -- but it makes it much less likely that it will be adopted.

Again, it has been fairly widely shown that a new 'superintendent' or director of education is rarely sufficient to create culture change.

Unions are one source of abstinence, but trustees and senior management are often just as likely culprits.

That's why I said 'hire a system'. So if you see a school district whose results are exceptional, be they in the U.S. or elsewhere, why not contract that entire district to oversee either your whole system, or a meaningful part of it? In other words, sack all of the existing senior management.

There are doubtless rules about subverting democratic will and all that, and I don't make light of that, there would need to be some work arounds......but I'm suggesting an end-run around trustees as well. Let them decide to hire 'the other guys' then go away, no meddling, for at least 4 years.....

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A change at that scale can also help make the case for more resources. A skeptical public may be loathe to give a failing school system more $ per pupil, believing, fairly or otherwise that they are not spending the existing $ wisely.

A completely new regime, coming from a different system, can independently argue that more money is needed if they are having success in their home system, in part, based on more generous resources, and also be having that increase in resources be tied to performance.

ie. We will add $1,000 per pupil if the SAT score rises by 3% or more within 3 years. In addition to that, of course, the system being paid to your system gets a 'performance bonus' for both its staff and its 'corporate/gov't group'.

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Final note [[for the moment )

Why does any jurisdiction still have school boards?

The original thesis, so far as I understand, came from a time when schools were mostly/entirely locally funded, and educational needs were highly local.

In the age of Federal/State/Provincial funding of a large chunk of school budgets, and an assumption that skills/education need to be both nationally and internationally transferable, what sense is there in the extra bureaucratic layer?