It's an enduring topic, how to assess the performance of education. At least two ways that might make sense are improvement in performance on standardized tests per tuition dollar, and improvement in lifetime earnings per tuition dollar. By both measures,
these authors claim charter schools leave public schools in the dust in eight U.S. cities.
And that's the problem. If those folks escape from the Progressive-Democrats' welfare cage, which education will help them do, the Progressive-Democratic Party will lose power and relevance.
ReplyDeleteI've long held that Progressive-Democrats don't see blacks or Hispanics or any other of their identity politics categorizations as human beings; these folks are just mechanical vote machines.
Eric Hines
That is a good measure only if you can test them as they enter and as they leave and see who has the most improvement. If they were #1 in the state as the entered Kindergarten and #1 at graduation that may not mean much. The Dartmouth and UNH districts, Hanover! and Oyster River, have great HS testing scores. Which they also had in 1st grade, 4th, 8th, etc.
ReplyDeleteEven that can be deceiving, as rural/small-town districts that become suburbs are often attracting high-tech parents over the course of a decade, raising the district average. Or they can find little tricks to boost testing, as my district has. (A really good one, too, similar to how the Finns get such good PISA scores every year.)
Absent students being in danger, I don't think schools make that much difference. The difference may be more in having a challenging peer group, who keeps you focused on more important and intellectual topics.
We have abandoned a lot of really important education because two working, commuting parents (in the optimum case)have little time in the day left to interact with the kids? For example- having the children around to help with chores and learn responsibility. Having the parents teach the children how to read and do simple math prior to entry into the school system. I was a stay (work) at home Dad and it had big benefits for my daughter.
ReplyDeleteI do not think we really have much of a "school" system as a daycare center that has classes.
as an aside, For any parent, job number one in education should be to teach the children to read well and early.
We have abandoned a lot of really important education because two working, commuting parents (in the optimum case)have little time in the day left to interact with the kids?
ReplyDeleteNo, that's a rationalization, not a reason, used by too many on the Left to excuse their own performance. My parents both worked outside the home, and Mom had a 30-minute commute, each way, to another town, to get to her job. A longer commute in the upstate Illinois winters (but, no, the drive wasn't uphill both ways).
They always had time for me, from playing football with Dad until the bursitis in his shoulder stopped him from throwing footballs to Mom teaching me how to cook. My chores? Cleaning the house and cooking supper when I got home from school.
Both parents working make things hard compared with one stay-at-home parent. Hard means possible.
Eric Hines
Improvement in lifetime earnings probably can't be measured, since you haven't got a control. If I could observe an alternative world in which they went unschooled, or to a different school, then I could measure their lifetime earnings in a comparable way.
ReplyDeleteAs it is, all I can do is measure lifetime earnings in aggregate for students who went to that school. But that's not going to be helpful; lifetime earnings can't be computed until the end of one's lifetime, so we'd only now begin to be able to factor in how well the Baby Boomers did. I can't tell you anything about whether the education Gen Z is getting today is better than the one Gen Y got a couple to six years ago.
Also, there are an approximately infinite number of external factors at work in lifetime earnings. Probably little of the Boomers' increase over their parents' earnings was about improvements in their schooling; the Depression was at work, as was the destruction of WWII and its aftermath.
Sure Grim, but you'd be comparing the current generation against it's peers, not other generations. It's charter vs. public school kids of the same gen. I think that's a good enough comparison, with some controls and a large enough sample, that it could be a useful indicator.
ReplyDeleteSure Grim, but you'd be comparing the current generation against its peers...
ReplyDeleteIn lifetime earnings?
To date, I presume. Charter schools haven't been around that long.
ReplyDelete