If Kansas Education Commissioner Bob Corkins (in photo) gets his way, Kansas will see a lot more charter schools in the future. But will they really improve education in the state? A recent New York Times editorial pointed out that on the whole, charter schools aren’t outperforming public schools across the nation. And some states’ programs are so poorly administered and monitored that they are having a negative impact on student achievement. If Corkins presses on in his support of charter schools, he should listen to the Times’ advice: “To salvage the charter movement, the states will need to abandon the strategy, now discredited, that consists largely of giving public money to what are basically private schools and then looking the other way.”
Posted by Melissa Cooley
Registered?
Commenting on WE Blog now requires you to be a Kansas.com member. Use the links above to register, if you haven't already, or to log in.Contact us
Follow us
Daily Archives
-
Recent Comments
- Jed on Let immigrants run
- Regular on Open thread 11/23
- Regular on Open thread 11/23
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/23
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/23
- Freebird1971 on Open thread 11/23
- Freebird1971 on Open thread 11/23
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/23
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/23
- Freebird1971 on Open thread 11/23
16 Comments
As I understand it, some charter schools exist now here in the Wichita area and state-wide. These are schools that receive some federal government funds to administer special programs for a limited number of years.
But these should not be confused with Bob Corkins and the state school board’s proposed “charter” schools. Corkins charter schools should be more properly called “state government schools operated on a contractual basis.” These would be under the direction of the unqualified, inexperienced state board of education members and their selected appointees.
So don’t be fooled by the terminology here. We don’t want to lose local control of our schools.
Charter schools are still government schools, and that is why they are not going to be the way out of the mess that public education has become.
School choice and vouchers is what’s needed. Turn every public school into a choice, instead of a requirement for those only in that area.
Our magnet schools are a prime example of that. Where students can choose to go to those schools. Not only do the students get to furture their education in the field(s) of their interest, but it has also desegregated more urban schools than bussing can ever do.
I say choice!
If we do implement wider school choice, than schools also need to be given greater latitude to boot out kids who are troublemakers. Rationale there being they can go to any school they want, so the school should be able to choose to remove a student who isn’t a positive (or at least neutral) contributor to the school environment.
KCL is exactly right.
If public schools could refuse to enroll poor children, special needs children or discipline problems like the private schools do, they would be a lot better.
Our society would be a lot worse, however.
Like the failed Edison schools, this charter school proposal is not even a band-aid to the education mess. It’s more like rotating the tires when you get a flat and driving home.
Public schools kick kids out of school every day for behavior problems. They have set up enough rules to see to that. There are several ways for a kid to be kicked out errantly. If they really cared about educating all kids (as they say they are) then they would find ways to work with these kids. They would also not have a policy like Wichita has that allows a kid to be truant for 60 days before they even consider looking into. That is Three months out of the seven month (taking out all of the holidays, breaks and other days they are out of school) school year. Why would you have such a policy if you are all about the kids? It appears that it is just too much trouble for the schools to make phone calls to parents. Then they wonder why parents do not participate and take the time they should with their kids. Why should they when the schools don’t think the kid is even worth a phone call?
As far a charter schools there are public schools around the state that would no longer be in existence if it was not for charter schools. Just look at the town of Yoder. The parents said things had to change or they were going to do their own school. Well the public school system said ok, what do you want and we will do it. So they now have a charter school designed the way the want at taxpayer expense. Where is the outcry about this? It is designed by the parents and basically run by the parents and should anyone try to change it the parents will start their own school.
As far as Edison in Wichita went if you talked to the teachers that taught there they will tell you it was a good for the kids and the teachers. As far as the magnet schools go in Wichita isn’t is a nice thing to have to apply to a school and wonder if you will be accepted? Then you can be removed from that school if you misbehave because they can just make you go to another public school. Sounds like a private school doesn’t? Don’t forget that you are paying for their transportation to these public/private schools we call magnets. Why aren’t the parents responsible if that is where they want their kid to go? Why does the taxpayer pay for this? Why shouldn’t they have to keep these bad kids? Why do they get to pick and choose who goes to a magnet? Gee sounds like all of the private school arguments people give. Also instead of just repeating what you hear you might want to check into what private schools actually do and if they kick kids out of school like you say they do. Because if they did you would see an increase in public school.
Some of you don’t understand that the Edison Schools scheme was NOT anything like the real charter concept, which was to create schools co-managed by teachers, a single principal, and parents. USD 259 listened to a sales pitch made by a company rep who didn’t live here or know the community. So it bought an “education” package. Edison’s COB/CEO’s only past “education” experience was giving classrooms TVs in exchange for their showing commercials at the beginning of every school day. If you want to believe they were real charter schools, go ahead and persist in your delusion.
If Bob Corkins were to manage charter schools, I don’t think they would be real charter schools. But it’s irrelevant. Kansas is 20 years behind the curve in education, so this issue isn’t going anywhere before your kids graduate from high school.
Heartlander: I presume you have experience in public education. Reading your post just above raises questions in my mind.
First of all, how do you define “real charter schools”? In your charter arrangement, does the school principal/teachers report to anyone? Who establishes the standards? Who pays the bill?
My concerns with Bob Corkins include:
1) Corkins and most of the members of the Kansas Board of Education are bereft of any relevant education.
2) I am not interested in seeing a new tax-wasting education bureacracy spring up at the state level reporting to Bob Corkins and the Kansas BOE.
3) A lot of wannabee private school operators will spring out of nearby woods and fields to try to wrest state funds from taxpayers in the form of vouchers under the guise of school choice and alternative schools.
4) Of course, the likelihood of cherry picking which would threaten the public school system.
JWink, We lost local control a long time ago. 1992 to be exact. Don’t forget it was that era that brought us an out of touch SBOE and figure head school boards. Corkins is missing the boat. If he really wanted to improve education in Kansas he’d support abolishing the SBOE, returning property tax control to the locals and truly letting local BOEs make policy decisions and set tax rates and budgets.
sotheysaid, phone calls are made every day that a student misses school. They are recorded messages, but they are made.
JWink, I spent 17 years in public educational institutions as a student. I taught in a public university. My grandmother was a public schoolteacher. My great aunt was a public schoolteacher. My great uncle was too. I’ve been in gifted classes, classes with kids who went to work after high school, kids who dropped out. In junior high I was in first-track classes for future college students. I took a metal shop class. The teacher convinced me to move up to second-year shop, which I thought was great. Except it meant that my whole schedule was rearranged and I was placed in four classes designed for future juco students, and go-to-work-after hs. These classes were totally different from the ones I was originally in. Not very good teachers. A lot more talking, A lot less learning. My own grades crumped. Fortunately that ended in high school.
I wasn’t advised to consider a K-12 teaching career because National Merit Scholarship Finalists were NOT considered suitable teacher material. They thought too much. Their abilities were considered “too valuable” to society to “waste”. It wasn’t just me. None of my classmates who were NMS awardees was so advised, although one became a community college instructor.
Public education is dishonest. It’s not your fault as a teacher, it’s due to the industrial capitalists who created it to serve their own interests. Suppose you are a history major who decides to complete your degree but also take premed courses. You need to take a minimum of freshman chemistry and organic chemistry, and biophysical chem is helpful. (I am thinking about a doctor I once knew who did this.) If you get the grades, no problem. Even though lab courses are really expensive for universities. Now, suppose you are an engineering student who wants to take three years of accounting courses. No problem.
Now suppose you are a non-ed major who just wants to take some ed classes to learn what this field teaches. Except for intro classes, you can’t get in. These aren’t expensive lab courses, they’re cheap lecture courses. They’re closed to “outsiders”. You’ve been “cultized”. Brainwashed.
You’re afraid of charter schools and vouchers because you might lose your job (highly unlikely for many years), and you don’t have confidence in finding other work, or you don’t want to used union protection. These fears are understandable.
But we don’t live in the Industrial Age anymore, and today’s children will have to be nimble to find niches in the postindustrial economy. They’ll need to think for themselves. With some exceptions, public education is increasingly inadequate as a preparer of kids for the future.
It’s not your fault that you have been brainwashed to believe that kids have only 45-minute attention spans, so they are put through rapid-rotation classes that disrupt their ability to digest information. If you really know how to teach, you can keep most kids engaged for 2-3 hours.
It’s not your fault that nobody has given you digistal video-recording equipment to make CDs to give your kids to take home, so that when they forget what you said, they can playback your lectures to refresh themselves.
It’s not your fault that kids’ textbooks omit vital information that you are given, so the textbooks are really poor study resources. It’s not your fault that high school student-edition math and science textbooks don’t come with odd-numbered exercise solutions manuals that have been standard in college math and science courses for the past decade.
It’s not your fault that you have too many students, and so rather than construct your own tests, you just use mass-produced software programs that makes your tests for you.
It’s not your fault that you don’t have time to read 3-page student essays, and then sit down with them and give them meaningful feedback through individualized help.
It’s not your fault that in grading math homework, you can’t give students immediate corrective feedback, but instead take their homework, return it to them two to three days after they have finished it, with little red-pen point-deductions, without explanation of how to solve the problem, and by the time homework is returned, the class is onto a new topic, so most kids never learn what it was that they didn’t do right. That’s an industrial age model of education.
It’s not your fault that fewer than half of Kansas high school graduates who enter 4-year colleges and universities earn their bachelor’s degrees in 5 years.
It is not your fault that at the University of Michigan, that state’s flagship university, for every 10,000 matriculating freshmen, 1300 don’t earn UM bachelor’s degrees 6-years later, while at KU, Kansas’s flagship university, 4300 of 10,000 matriculating freshmen don’t have a KU bachelor’s degree six years later. KU has a 3:1 non-completion ratio over UM. At U Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, the non-completion number is 2000. At Wisconsin-Madison 2100. At U Iowa 3400. At Mizzou 3200.
At Iowa State, the figure is 3300. At KSU it’s 4100.
So, what do you think Kansas’s problem is? Why don’t you work on it and figure it out.
Kansas’s higher-education failure is not your fault, because YOU didn’t design the college-preparatory system. What do you suggest be done?
Jwink, before you say “of course” you might want to read the work of Harvard researcher Paul Peterson. Writing about vouchers –- which are not the same as charter schools -– he said “Yet, while liberals are right to be concerned about these students, new data from a privately financed voucher program in Texas suggest that we should give vouchers a second, more serious look. Far from aggravating income and racial disparities in education, vouchers may actually help to ameliorate them.”
And in a different article: “In general, little evidence exists that voucher programs either skim the best and brightest students from public schools or attract only the lowest-performing students. On the contrary, voucher recipients resemble a cross section of public school students, though they may come from somewhat better educated families.”
First of all, I am not honored to be a career teacher — I wish I could claim that. My education was B.S./engineering from K-State, graduate school at K.U., ten years in Army/Army Reserves. Retired to Wichita from Johnson County. Became a substitute teacher about 4 to 5 years ago to examine changes in education of Kansas students.
M.Venick: In regard to Bob Corkins, I believe he would like to develop a bureacracy of state-level “charter” schools under his and the state BOE’s direction in which to experiment with their ideas of education. As I said previously, there are all kinds of definitions of “charter” schools. Bottomline: Corkins is dangerous to Kansas education.
KsClssicLiberal: Regarding vouchers, I see them as a way for entrepreneurs to invade public funds to run private schools. I know home schooling is generally successful but vouchers would go way beyond this.
Heartlander: You covered a lot of ground and I wish I had answers but I don’t. When I first started substituting, the differences in students of today to students back in my high school/college days was startling.
I looked for reasons such as dental x-rays!! (my dentist convinced me that x-rays are now less invasive), fast food and junk food (probably some effect), computers, etc., etc.
But most teachers seem to agree — the main problem is lack of parenting. Or parents that don’t care. Or parents that don’t have time. I now believe that is the #1 problem.
I wish I had more time to respond but I’m sure some of our bloggers will.
Charter schools are an exceedingly bad idea.
Any entity that can get a charter can open a school.
This blog demonstrates that their are (believe it or not) intelligent racists. Folks like that could get a school.They might do real well teaching the “3 Rs” They might also do well teaching a 4th R.
Most private schools are religious. Churches have deep pockets and a few SEEMINGLY intelligent folk.They could get a charter. Again the 3 Rs and a 4th addded.
Muslims might want to start a charter school.
Members of the Heritage Foundation could too.I’m pretty sharp. I’m also not looked on favorably by our right wing “friends”. I could start a school.
The public schools while flawed, do immerse students in an environment of students of many home taught bents. They teach kids to deal with a diverse society.
Let’s get colorful. I teach my own kid that Republicans are either dimwitted toadies or selfish self righteous self serving ass-kissing assholes. Want me to run a charter school?
Someone else here might teach their charter students that Democrats are atheistic, anti American, baby killing, terrorist loving welfare recipients.
Could a society survive such a dichotomy in “teaching”?—–
Caution should be used in applying the judgment of the New York Times editorial board. For comparison, you might read the reaction from the (www.edreform.com)
Research on charter schools shows a record that is, at worst, mixed. That’s because, as the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation points out in its report “Playing to Type,” charter schools are not an “undifferentiated mass.” They use a variety of instructional techniques and curricular themes. In addition, some may appeal more strongly to students who have had trouble with regular public schools, while others may appeal to students at large. In short, there’s still a lot we don’t know.
What we do know, however, is that Harvard and Columbia researchers have found that charter schools in Chicago have substantially helped students who enroll in the early grades. And as the survey conducted by the Center for Education Reform reveals, charter schools are affirmed by the most important people of all—parents. Over half of the 3,500 charter schools in the country have reached their capacity, and have waiting lists.
Kansas is among the laggards in introducing charter schools. In brief, charter schools in Kansas are creatures of unified school districts, and not the alternatives to local education authorities that they are free to be in other states. This needs to change.
You may call it the “not invented here” syndrome, or perhaps a belief in Lake Woebegone, but I call it a disservice to children who can benefit from the full flourishing of the charter school idea. Charter schools are not, as the Times puts forth in a straw man argument, a “magical solution,” and they’re not the only way to improve public education. But they should be part of the mix.
Correction
One sentence above in my previous entry should have read:
“For comparison, you might read the reaction from the Center for Education Reform (www.edreform.com)”
Sorry for any confusion.