The 35 year Chilean charter school experiment that never worked

It's not that they are well educated. It's just that they have plenty of sense and know the game. They have been subjected to it too long now.

 

Good students in good classes don't get taught to the test. I took FCAT, it wasnt difficult. We didn't spend any time on it.

Many schools were just passing kids along. Now it is a little harder to do. If they would stop playing games these tests would be great diagnostic tools to address problems in bad schools.

"Bad" students can use charter schools more then anyone. Here that is usually who they cater too and many are what you would call a trade school.

You can not memorize reading comprehension or logical analysis. Most tests even have the formulas for math so you don't have to memorize there either.

Where exactly are these kids being taught to memorize? I hear the complaint and I am aware of it. I just don't believe it. Maybe "bad" kids are, but that would entail remedial reading and the development of analytical skills. (Learning test "tricks" is analytical).

Lets get real specific. What is being memorized to pass these tests that is objectionable to a kids education? These tests don't test knowledge, which would require memorization.

FCAT woke up parents here and put pressure on schools. Scores and school quality have dramatically improved. We used to be 49th in education before the republican takeover with Jeb bush in 1998. Our schools have been climbing the national ranks since then.

 

Oh sorry about that. Next time you use a ridiculous blog as a source let us know what BS we are allowed to call out and what we should ignore. It is all BS so it was hard to tell.

How are those stats bogus and the ones you fail to cite legitimate?

 

What game? The game of the unions pretending there are no bad teachers and they need special job protection?

 

What would success look like if not this?

These kids choose the voucher schools, they could have gone to the other ones. Are you sure they made the wrong choice?

 

Are they really that good, or are they passing the test, and can't use a calculator? That's where my problem is. I've known people who were awesome at taking tests, but when they were actually required to utilize the knowledge they supposedly learned, they were completely ignorant. I had that happen in my own school, and I went to a top rated public school. I lived in an area that most people move to specifically to be in a 'good' school system.

And by the way, I am not saying that the system never works. Obviously it can in specific situation. But as a whole, I'm not seeing a massive improvement. Yes, in your limited context, where the parents are typically ignorant and disconnected just assuming 'government is taking care of my children', a standardized test showing the government is not, is a good wake up call.

But I would still suggest that if you merely had a free-market system, that alone would fix the problem. One of the specific reasons the Chilean system is working, is because when parents are forking up the cash to place their child in a different school, you can bet that they shop around, and look at the reviews, just as someone looking for a car, or a house would.

But American parents do not do that, because they have no choice. That's the reason parents needed a wake up call to begin with. If parents were taking the time to investigate schools, like those in free-market systems do, there would be no need for government standardized tests. There are more than enough indicators, even from word of mouth, that are more accurate in reviewing the quality of the school.

This reminds me of Thomas Sowell. Back when he was going into high school, you could apply at any school you wished, and they didn't have vouchers or anything, nor any standardized tests. Yet even in his day, everyone knew which schools were the good ones, and which were the bad schools. The ability to apply to any school, alone, caused students and parents to find out which schools were good and which were bad.

And that action alone, caused school to promote themselves accordingly, to attract students. No standardized tests needed.

 

Fuddy-duddy conservatives are soooooo old-school. Whenever will they give up their old-fashioned notions about learning?

In today's schools, students are taught self esteem, sharing, social skills, diversity, culture and to feel good about themselves as well as those around them -- and to be optimistic and happy. The new norm is if it feels good, do it!

Testing is passe. If a student feels like 2+2=7, then that's his answer and should be respected and considered to be the correct answer.

It is silly and backward to burden and squander a student's time studying mathematics, engineering, science, English, geography, medicine, etc. The answers to everything are readily available on the internet.

 

Choice among public schools is better then no choice, which is what we have today. I agree, that would be better then nothing. But of those kids wanted to get into a charter school I would not ask them to fund it themselves and then force them to pay taxes for the rest of their life for a system they didn't use.

 

not when it comes to high stakes testing, it is the school boards and the administration that have usually run afoul of the laws on this.
Sure teachers are pressured into participating in the cheating, but in almost every case where such cheating has been documented, such as in Atlanta and Houston a couple of years ago it was the administration which was found to have orchestrated the fraud. Most teachers I know are generally opposed to high stakes testing for a number of reasons, including the fact that a teacher can do nothing about a kids homelife, and a kid who is watching mom get beat up every night is not going to perform well (typically) on such tests and the teacher is rated on that kids performance. There are a whole slew of other factors outside of what happens in the classroom that impact the results of high stakes testing. Yes, I know most people think high stakes testing is a good thing, but they have been sold a load of spoiled goods for ideological reasons that have no bearing on reality. Most of those who push high stakes testing, have never been a teacher in an actual classroom and frankly don't know the first thing about teaching actual kids.

 

It can be very difficult to shut down a Charter school especially those that are run by the large national charter school corporations. One thing that happens is that these companies often have clauses included in their contracts that remove all local oversight of the schools operations. The Charter may be in Wilmington North Carolina, but run from Houston, Tx.

 

Cheating!

 

I have come to know these things in the country of Chile because I personally know many people from there. One's who go to charter and public from the past to the present. There stories are my stories. The links just reinforce their stories. There is so much corruption in bumping these kids up in their grades by administrators from charter schools it isn't even funny. They get by with minimal work and are not prepared for college.

Chile's situation is complicated in that Pinochet created a constitution that basically has the one word "Incorporated" in it which makes fully getting out of charters a little more complicated. Ever sense president Batchelet was in office and after her term, there have been on and off protests. She was a leftist and a distant relative of some of my family. Then they elected another right-wing president Pinera and the protests seem to have gotten worse. The youth have caught on all too well they are getting scammed out of a good education. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011–2012_Chilean_student_protests http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/world/july-dec11/chile_08-31.html http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Amer...s-and-fairer-access-at-top-of-election-agenda

 

All of which I said. And of course teachers are against anything that may reflect badly on themselves. Regardless of whether the poor test result is due to a child's home life, or whether the teacher is horrible, testing will make the teacher look bad either way.

The problem is, we do have horrible teachers in the school system, and they are protected by unions. These teachers are pathetic at teaching, and we need some way of removing them.

And of course teachers are pressured to cheat on the test. Of course it's the administration that is pushing this cheating. I never said otherwise.

But the problem is why are they doing this? Now if you have an alternative theory, by all means present it. But to me, the answer seems fairly obvious.

Administrators are stuck in a no-win situation. They can't fire a badly performing teacher because of the Unions, nor can they expel all the students have no intention of learning anything. This is why some school districts go through administrators like water. You take all the blame, and yet have no real power to do anything. As one should expect, eventually this leads to a race to the bottom, where good people don't want no-win jobs. Eventually the only one who will step into that situation is someone who has no ethical values, and will simply do whatever is required to make money and keep their job.... even if it means pressuring the staff to doctor the numbers and keep politicians happy.

I know of one specific case where this happened in my mother's school. There were some problem in her school district, problems that I was never privy to, but the result was that the school administrator stepped down, and was replaced, and that person stepped down, and was replaced, and this happened every one to two years, for almost a decade. They went through almost a dozen people in 15 years, because he had no control over the teachers being hamstrung by Union contracts, and no control over the kids, and yet being giving all these demands by the board of education and the politics.

 

Well I don't think that any charter school should ever be shut down. If the parents who are willing to pay money to send their kids to a charter school, are happy with the results, then the government has ZERO business shutting down those schools. It's called "freedom" remember? The government doesn't have the right to dictate our lives. If you are in China, ok, you got a point, because in that country, there is no freedom, unless government specifically offers it to you. Our country is supposed to be different.

 

Well of course. We should have a voucher system. The cost of the voucher should be fixed. If parents wish have their kids in a school which cost more than the voucher, they should make up the difference themselves, or go to a free public school. But I would wager, just as the Chilean example, public schools will continue to be crap, and lose students over time, resulting in many closures, which I think is wonderful.

 

You mean if the parents are willing to pay the money to afford to send their kids to a cheat school? So, when that happens, then they graduate with good grades but are poor students, they just poisoned the well for the rest of the school system. And as it stands right now with Chile's constitution, the government can't do away with charter schools anyway. But, since you brought up freedom to choose private or public, what kind of freedom is it if a charter school decimates an educational process by teaching to the cheat and getting bogus grades headed up by administrators of those charter schools? While at the same time having the government undercutting and under investing in public schools to the bare minimum just to get by so as to cater to charters. You just took a huge chunk out of the integrity, funding, and educational prowess of those public institutions. You went and grabbed one kind of freedom and threw the other freedom that other's are just as deserving to have, straight into the garbage.

 

And public schools in Chile will continue to be crap as long as the government caters to charters that not everyone can afford and are only cheat schools anyway. And there you go again talking about freedom to choose, all the while trying to destroy the only decent school model that has any resemblance to an education. So, what kind of freedom is it when you get rid of the school you choose, and are left with a cheat school you can't afford?

 

You are acting like what you claim has been established. Your own links, the links you posted, did not support the claims you are making here.

The links you posted said the lowest children were getting poorly educated. Yes.... at the public government run schools. The schools run by the government are the ones that are producing the worst educated students.

Now you are claiming that they are fudging the numbers, but that is currently a completely unsupported claim. I have found nothing anywhere that says this is what is happening.

This is what is constantly baffling about you people on the left. You look at the system.... see crappy awful poorly performing government schools, and then look at high quality private free-market schools, and your suggestion is that we need to eliminate the good schools, and force everyone into the crappy schools, and this will be a positive thing?

Again you are assuming that if we did this, that fully funded public schools would make them better schools. Yet here in America, where we have that exact system, that is not the result. Our schools are vastly more funded than your schools, and yet we have horribly un-educated students being given good grades and shoved out the door. The exact thing that you claim the private schools in your country are doing, the only difference is, I can prove our schools are doing it. More money isn't working up here in the US.

Yet the system in Chile, has produced the best education system in all of Latin America. The Chilean free-market school system is the leading education system in that area of the world.

Again, there is a reason that parents are putting their kids into private schools instead of public ones. They don't have to. They are making the choice to. It's likely because the private schools are in fact better.

I'm not getting rid of the public schools. The people are the ones getting rid of public schools, because they suck. I'm just in favor of the option. You are the one who wants to force kids to remain stupid and uneducated because they are forced into lousy government schools.

 

The kids use vouchers and can go to any school they want. After 2 decades nearly 9 out of 10 choose the charter schools. Those that do, attend college at the same rate as Americans. In chile. The poorest country in South America when the Friedman students helped with reforms. It isn't for the poor only. It is for the 90%

 

Can the students leave if they want?

Can the charter stay in business with no students?

Who cares what some administrator thinks about oversight? Are these the same administrators with sinking results and growing budgets? Do the administrators loose their jobs if the schools don't perform?

 

The vouchers make it affordable to the vast amount of Chileans. Their public schools were bad that is why they did this reform. Just like the swedes before them. And just like Sweden the results are astounding. Swedish public schools were just smart about it and instead of trying to force students to attend their schools they adapted working charter models into their own schools. Now their students who used to be behind ours before reform, trounce our students these days.

 

Yes, those are the public schools though. Please read your own article. You see, public schools are all about the cheating, here is one in this country where 35 teachers got together and cheated and if that isn't a culture scared to be properly reviewed, I don't know what is:

 

If you read those links closely instead of cherry picking what you want to read, yes you will find that the charter is a very flawed system. Those students at public schools are way more underfunded than charter school students.Those links talk about how both private and public are struggling because the break up of education to include both entities of education at the same time and it's is a disaster. Both sides are struggling because they have their own story. You folks just will never understand this. Both public and charters suffer because charters are made into a business. The Charter schools there are a business for profit. That's it! They are not really there for education. There are many teachers there that do not have degrees for teaching that work for charter schools. When you discuss these things with the very people on the front lines from both sides as to what really is going on, Charter schools leave no doubt that it is an assembly line form of education. You know, when you go straight to the horses mouth, it's hard to make a case against those horses.

Have you ever asked yourself why there have been so many protests in recent years to go back to a public run system? Are you there yourself so as to really know what is going on? I doubt it!

 

Why do you think Chileans are choosing the charter schools more and more over public ones of they suck?

Since the charter schools have a higher graduation rate then we do here for Hispanics how do you know they suck? Why is their attendance levels so high? Why are they getting results with the same amount of money the public schools get? Why do you think government run schools are necessarily better?

Do you think the high number of Chileans attending college now that graduated from charter schools is a bad thing?

 

Looks like we are finally getting a little reform here. Houston at least seems willing to learn and improve from succesful charter models like the swedes do.