Sunday, October 4, 2015

Driven By Parent Choice

That's the dream for some reformsters-- a school system that is driven not by regulation or government edict and certainly not by the professional educators who work there, but a system that is driven by parent choice.

I believe there are probably idealistic purists among the visionaries who really do believe that we'd have a system where parents peruse sets of pure and transparent data and then make informed choices based on that data, allowing schools to compete and improve by responding to how their data plays out in the marketplace. These purists are sweet, like delightful five year olds who still wait breathlessly for Christmas morning and the proof of Santa's arrival.

But there are also advocates of choice who are less idealistic and less pure. They understand what having a system "driven by parent choice" really means. I'll give you a hint-- it doesn't mean a system driven by parent choice.

Idealists talk about parent choice as if it occurs in some sort of iron-clad vacuum, influenced by nothing by clean data and clear thinking.

That's silly. Parent choice is malleable, shapeable, bendable, and open to influence. Yes, technically, in a choice system, the ultimate decision is theoretically made by parent choice. But that parent choice does not begin and end with parents-- it is molded and directed by a hundred other forces.

Purists imagine parents poring over spreadsheets, consuming mounds of impartial school information with a tasty topping of crunched data. But as we have already seen, charters take a strong hand in what data gets to the public, spinning and angling for a good marketing picture. They direct marketing toward particular parents, and they offer benefits that go far beyond any data that can be crunched (I'm remembering Pennsylvania cyber-school ads that suggested cyber-school would make your child happier than public school).

To get money out of the tightish fist of a government agency can be tricky, what with all those rules and regulations. But to get money out of a parent (especially if it isn't actually the parent's personal money), you can appeal to emotions and prejudices with slanted, incomplete and just-plain-false pitches.

Saying that such a system would be driven by parent choice is like saying the fast food, soft drink and automotive industries are driven by consumer choice. They are-- but that consumer choice is driven by marketing that involves everything from emotional appeals that have nothing to do with product quality, to manipulating the market to do things like buy up all the shelf space in the store, to simply carpet-bombing the airways so that your product is best-known. And that at least is a market in which you aren't allowed to offer battery-acid cola or brakeless automobiles; some states (looking at you, Ohio) have not yet figured out how to keep flat-out charlatans from bilking parents with built-to-fail charter flim flams.

"Driven by parent choice" just means "run on the free market," and the free market runs on marketing. "Driven by parent choice" just means opening parents up to every marketing maneuver and sales shenanigans in the book.

Greene's Law of the Free Market: The free market does not foster superior quality; the free market fosters superior marketing.

Am I saying that parents are just too dumb to navigate a free marketty education system? Not at all. But I am saying that parents, like most US consumers in today's marketplace, are people who are bringing a butter knife to a gun fight. I am saying that parents who have their hands full with the daily business of holding a home and family together may have trouble doing the full-time research work necessary to cut through the fog and smoke and the lies and half-truths and spun baloney of charter marketing. I am saying that schools should not have "caveat emptor" stamped on their front doors.

And I'm saying that folks who say "driven by parent choice" as if that is a pure, clear, clean solution are either fooling themselves or trying to fool everyone else.

21 comments:

  1. "Am I saying that parents are just too dumb to navigate a free marketty education system? Not at all. But I am saying that parents, like most US consumers in today's marketplace, are people who are bringing a butter knife to a gun fight. I am saying that parents who have their hands full with the daily business of holding a home and family together may have trouble doing the full-time research work necessary to cut through the fog and smoke and the lies and half-truths and spun baloney of charter marketing."

    And even when people have the time to research all the different "choices", it usually comes out that there's little difference between them. My husband is zealous about knowing all the ins and outs of different phone plans on the market, but basically it comes down to things like, we could save a few bucks with this carrier, but we'd have less data. Or, this plan offers a lower monthly service charge but you have to pay more for the phone. In other words, there is no choice. From what I can see, it's pretty similar with charters - they're all just variations on the no-excuses drill-and-kill thing (except for some "elite" charters like Great Hearts which are pretty much reserved for affluent white folks, so they're not a choice for a lot of people anyway).

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    1. Parents routinely navigate the education market. Some do it by choosing a location to live (In my town all real estate listing list the catchment areas for each home), some do it by sending their children to private schools.

      I assume, Dienne, that you and perhaps your husband did some research before sending your children to the private progressive school that they attend. Do you think that was a waste of time because all private schools are pretty much the same?

      There are more Montessori schools in California than there are Rocket Ship schools in the United States. You need to branch out a bit in your reading to see the variety of charter schools. Some may even match the private school that your children attend.

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    2. TE, you have been repeatedly asked to name some good, non-drill-and-kill charter schools. The only two you ever mention are the school for the deaf and Walton Rural Life. If there really are that many, you shouldn't be that hard to name others.

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    3. Dienne,

      There are about 6,000 charter schools in the United States. How many do you think are "drill and kill"? Do you want a list of the Montessori charter schools in California? Let me Google that for you:

      Blue Oak Charter Montessori
      Dixon Montessori Charter School
      Community Montessori Charter School
      Dehesa Charter School
      Morro Bay Montessori Learning Center at the Family Partnership Charter School
      Urban Montessori Charter School
      River Montessori Charter School
      Maria Montessori Charter Academy
      Santa Maria Montessori Learning Center at the Family Partnership Charter School
      Tree of Life Montessori Charter School
      Mountain View Montessori Charter School
      Bella Mente Montessori Charter Academy
      Eagle Peak Montessori School
      The Grove School
      Poway Learning Center
      Sliver Oak High School
      Sierra Montessori Academy
      Montessori del Mar Learning Center
      Redwood Coast Montessori
      Rising Sun Montessori School
      Sherwood Montessori
      Golden Oak Montessori
      Carlsbad Learning Center

      Should we go on to another state and look for Montessori schools, or look for Waldorf schools, progressive schools, or other schools that you might approve of?

      What about the main point of your post, that parents have little time to do the required research. How did you manage to cut through the fog when you picked a private school for your children?

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    4. Reading comprehension, TE. Parents having little time was Peter's point, not mine.

      As for those Montessori schools, how many of them are located in poor and minority inner-city areas? What are the percentages of minority students in them? Thanks.

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    5. Dienne,

      Can I conclude that this list of Montessori charter schools in a single state constitutes an answer to your original request for charter schools that are not "drill and kill"?

      Before I work on answering your new question, perhaps you could take a stab at answering mine. You send your children to a non-union private progressive school. What lead you to choose that private school over the other possibilities? Were these schools like the cell phone companies you write about? Essentially all the same so you just flipped a coin or was there an important reason that you made the choice you did?

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    6. Here's the thing, TE. You claim to be so concerned that poor and minority parents have the same choice to send their kids to different kinds of schools that I have to send my kids to, since I can afford to pay. But you've never yet given any indication that charter schools do, in fact, offer any such choices to poor and minority parents. Sure, you can list a bunch of allegedly Montessori charters in California. But you can't tell me where those schools are located and what the racial make-up of them are. Why don't you tell me how many Montessori charters there are in Newark or Camden or the South Side of Chicago? How many schools in the all-charter district of New Orleans are any flavor of progressive, what neighborhoods are such charters located in and what percentage of poor and/or black kids do they serve?

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    7. Dienne,

      Your first request was to find ANY charter schools that were not "kill and drill". Have you been satisfied that I have answered your first question? There are a wide variety of charter schools out there, not simply "all just variations on the no-excuses drill-and-kill thing".

      The question is not about you being able to afford a private school, but how you came to choose that particular private school. Did you find important differences between schools? Were they all small variations on the same theme?

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    8. You're very good at bobbing and weaving, TE.

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    9. Dienne,

      A simple "Yes TE, you have listed a number of charter schools that are not drill and kill as I requested" would due.

      A simple "When looking for a private school to enroll our children in, we found little difference between the schools" would due as well."

      Lets complete one task before moving on to the next. Don't you think that is a good idea?

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    10. I'm not surprised there are so many Montessori charter schools in California. They always seem to be ahead of the curve in so many things. We have no Montessori charter schools in Ohio. None. We have for-profits that do so badly that the state head honcho had to resign because he lied about how they were doing. Totally corrupt system.

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    11. Because you keep trying your damndest to make this about me, TE. It isn't.

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    12. Dienne,

      It is not about you, but it is about your post. YOU POSTED "...you have been repeatedly asked to name some good, non-drill-and-kill charter schools. The only two you ever mention are the school for the deaf and Walton Rural Life. If there really are that many, you shouldn't be that hard to name others." Have I satisfied YOUR in that POST?

      YOU POSTED that "And even when people have the time to research all the different "choices", it usually comes out that there's little difference between them." I have asked if YOUR POST applied to your choice of which private school you would entrust with you children. Once again I ask, was there little difference between the schools that you chose for your children?

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    13. Apologies, the last sentence of the first paragraph should read Have I satisfied YOUR request in that POST?

      The last sentence of the second paragraph should close with ....was there little difference between the schools that you considered for your children?

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    14. TE, I don't understand your point. What does choice among private schools have to do with choice among charter schools for parents? No one cares what the choices are for private schools. The question is if there are good choices in charter schools for parents, and there obviously aren't in a lot if not most places. In the Northeast they're mostly "drill-and -kill". In Ohio if you aren't rich, there are no progressive schools if that's what the parent wants. There are no Waldorf at all and the only Montessori are private. All the charters are pretty much plunk-the-student-down-in-front-of-a-computer-with-terrible-curriculum-and-let-them-fend-for-themselves, and they all get dismal state ratings. So this "choice" you speak of does not exist in most places..

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    15. Rebecca,

      It seems to me that choosing a school is choosing a school. People like Dienne choose between private schools, others choose a school by buying or renting in a particular catchment zone, others choose a charter school. The ability of a parent to choose does not change with the school, and certainly the choice between charter schools and choosing between private schools have more in common than choosing a cell phone carrier.

      What do you think about Summit Academy Charter Schools? They are charter schools in Ohio dedicated to students with AD/HD and autism spectrum disorders. Classes have two teachers and are restricted to 18 students per class, and all get art, music, and martial arts classes.

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    16. TE, I had missed your last post here, so I also put this response in the commentary for the post on common schools versus diversity.

      I think the Summit Academy school sounds very good. There are three schools for autism in my city, and Summit is one of them. Of the two others, one is also a charter school, but not part of a chain as Summit is. Chain or not, all of them sound good, at least from reading on their site what they do.

      I think schools such as these are what AFT president Albert Shanker had in mind when he came up with the charter school idea. There's definitely a need for them, for these students that traditional public schools have a hard time serving, and it's good that two of them are charter so that they can serve everyone who needs them, not just the wealthy.

      I understand your point that affluent parents have choices that poor parents do not, either by buying a house in an affluent area or by sending their kids to a private school. The problems with charters as a solution for whole neighborhoods in poverty, as a substitute for the neighborhood school, however, are many. To begin with, you'd have to have an awful lot of them to serve all the kids in whole neighborhoods. I really think a better solution is the way my district has done it.

      The problem in Ohio, to start with, is that the supreme court said years ago that the funding formula is inequitable, but the legislature refuses to do anything to change it and bring it into compliance. The other problem, of course, is that Ohio refuses to have any sort of real regulation of charter schools because for-profit advocates have hijacked the legislature. The two biggest chains, White Hat and ECOT, along with others, are terrible. So it's not a solution, because poor choices are no better than no choice, and they can't serve everyone who needs them anyway.

      I think students should be able to transfer, but the only long term solution I can see is to make funding more equitable and to change the economy. In such a wealthy nation, it's absurd that so many children are living in poverty. It doesn't have to be that way. Plus, of course, we need to stop the high stakes standardized testing and punishment regime that doesn't improve learning, and politicians need to listen to teachers instead of to rich businessmen.

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  2. I agree that parents are often manipulated by outside forces--all we have to do is look at the brainwashing that has occurred regarding standards and high stakes testing and how they will improve our children's chance for "success." So many parents have bought into that line that they can no longer see what's happening to their children as schools attempt to turn them into clones who "know and are able to do" the same (testable) things at the same ages. For what purpose? According to the Department of Education, the mission is to create citizens who can "compete successfully in the global economy." Gone is any pretense of education being about the development of students. If all we're doing is educating worker bees for the economy, then business and industry should be paying for education--not the taxpayer who is getting little out of it.

    I'm not saying that there aren't some great teachers out there...and that left to their own choices, they'd be doing a much better job of educating young people. But the top-down, knowledge centered public education system will never achieve what a high quality learner-centered environment can do (and is doing all around the country).

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    1. I am interested in this. Could you please direct me to some of the high quality learner-centered environments around the country? Specifically, institutions between Chicago and Toledo would be close enough to me to visit. I have a week off in October. Thanks.

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    2. Public education right now is top down because of all the reforms that require so much testing and standardization. Are you really trying to say that the only way to run public education is the way it is being run right now? That's absurd. It is being run poorly on purpose right now so that reformers can shut down schools and turn them into for-profit charters. Instead of giving up on public education, why don't we ditch a bunch of these reforms and return some autonomy to local schools and teachers? I'd love to see that in my children's schools.

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    3. I think this is a very good point: "If all we're doing is educating worker bees for the economy, then business and industry should be paying for education--not the taxpayer who is getting little out of it." Government exists for the general welfare (as stated in the Constitution), not the welfare of corporations.

      Of course we want students to be prepared a career, but we want them to be self-actualizing people who understand themselves and others. We want them to discover their abilities and interests so they can find their niche in society, contributing in their own way and gaining satisfaction from it, not funneled into a pre-ordained slot regardless of their inclinations. We want them to embrace their creativity and develop their critical thinking; that's what will do more for both them and society at large. That's what the citizenry is paying for, so it shouldn't just be worker training.

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