RS 225 - Neerav Kingsland on "The case for charter schools"

Release date: January 20th, 2019

Neerav Kingsland

This episode features Neerav Kingsland, who helped rebuild New Orleans' public school system after Hurricane Katrina, converting it into the country's first nearly-100% charter school system. Neerav and Julia discuss: why Neerav believes the evidence shows charter schools work better than regular public schools, his responses to the main arguments against charters, and what we know about how parents choose schools for their children.

Links 

Neerav's Blog: relinquishment

Jay Green's blog

"The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money" by Bryan Caplan

Edited by Brent Silk

Music by Miracles of Modern Science

Full Transcripts 

Comments

[Jameson]

No surprise that an adaptable, flexible system outperformed a massive inefficient socialist bureaucratic monopoly. Also no surprise that charter schools operate more efficiently with a budget of 20% or 25% less than the public monopoly schools.

The fact that the State of Louisiana and the Federal Government had Republican Administrations during the Katrina rebuilding probably had a lot to do with why New Orleans had to opportunity to pursue a charter system.

The design of most Public Monopoly Schools principally benefits the teachers, and especially the administrators, not the students. For instance, many Public Monopoly Schools have rules and labor practices in place making it almost impossible to actually terminate a teacher, no matter how incompetent or abusive has proven themselves. As an example, California offers Lifetime Tenure to its teachers after just two years of full time teaching. New York has a teacher review process that requires over 50 steps and several years to terminate a bad teacher.

Signaling definitely has a lot to do with school choice. And signaling definitely has a real effect on further future signaling. Many parents will pay out $25K/Year or more to send their kids to private high schools simply due to the fact that those high schools have a really good record of getting their kids into prestigious colleges. This occurs without regard to the fact that many of those prep schools actually have mediocre academics and actually pay their teachers quite poorly.

Neerav Kingsland correctly states that the government cannot force desegregation. Busing programs, for instance, just create resentment, avoidance, and strong political resistance. Families must voluntarily agree to desegregate schools and communities.

Private Schools will outperform Charters, just as Charters outperform Public Monopoly Schools, for the simple reason that parents and students have more choice, the schools have more flexibility, and the schools have to compete more. The free market and the power of choice work, whereas socialism and bureaucracy fail.

For everything pre college, home schooling provides the best mode of education. If every family cannot home school, then neighborhood schools, where some families in a neighborhood run a home school and other parents send their kids there, would work equally well. In this model, the government need not waste resources on teachers and facilities, and the kids need not travel any significant distance to get an education. At about age 12 or 14, the best 1/3 of students could pass a standard test and go on to college. The middle 1/3 of students could go to vocational / technical school and learn a trade, and the bottom 1/3 could go to work and also obtain some type of stewardship certificate. This would make much more sense than lumping all the different types of students together into a massive and ineffectual bureaucratic institution. The brightest 1/3 of students would get the PhD level professors they really need, the middle 1/3 would get the training they need, and the bottom 1/3 would get the wonderful benefit of actual work experience. Some of the Nordic countries in Europe already have a system somewhat like this, and they have very high levels of employment and job satisfaction.

[israel]

i love this podcast, but i am getting slightly irritated that it is on the whole quite right-wing libertarian leaning economically and politically, at least as far as guests' orientation, and this is especially bothersome as a skeptic podcast. it would do it good to have more "left-wing" critiques and speakers on the podcast (i put "left wing" in parentheses because in the u.s even a universal healthcare system for example is considered a radical left-wing policy).

[TC]

Here's a group that offers another perspective on K-12 education.

https://nepc.colorado.edu/

[TC]

An analysis of the New Orleans results:

https://nepc.colorado.edu/blog/real-story

[Nicholas Von Glahn]

In addition to the two posts above NEPC, I would like to add the fact that all charter schools are so varied, I found it ridiculous to analyze them as a whole. You can have a charter that hides a lot of religious instruction, or basically a military school, or a hippy school, or a non-profit that is a subsidiary of a for-profit company (that is trying to indirectly make money through the school). Further, when asked important questions about how we know it was the charter schools that had led to improvement, he just answered by saying: “my life experience,”— which is a non-answer. If we can just use ancedotes of that kind, I will provide one. I know a few teachers that worked for charter schools and due to not being unionized, the hours were too demanding and the pay was too little to be sustainable. As a result, all of them had to either leave the school (For a traditional public school) or leave the profession. Just because these charter schools in this area or an improvement compared to the old school in Louisiana, does not mean that this is the national solution to improving education.

[Jameson]

This study shows that private schools and parochial schools grossly outperform public schools in EVERY metric. These metrics include outperformance in all subjects, higher SAT, higher ACT, higher parent satisfaction, higher student morale, and successfully decreasing the gap between minority and white students:

http://www.capenet.org/facts.html

Private Schools necessarily outperform Public Schools since they have to compete with one another for students. This competition ensures quality. To the extent that Charter Schools also have to compete, this competition will improve performance as well.

Of course Private Schools will demand more of teachers and students. They have to compete with one another and have to post their performance record publicly to attract students. However, the entire free market works this way. Moreover, when students graduate they have to compete in the free market. Schools should have to compete with one another, just like any other industry. You would not want the government to tell you what car or what phone to buy. You want choices, and you want the producers of goods and services to compete with one another to provide you with superior price, quality, and features.

[skeptic42]

A private school organization producing data that private schools outperform public schools. Hardly what anyone can call an unbiased source. Bias against public education is virtually a national past time, we're taught from day one to hate public education.

The only data of some value are test scores. And test scores hardly show the entire picture. (More on that in a bit.)

Parent satisfaction is of zero value. It's nothing more than herd mentality. A parent who chooses a school will always be satisfied. Even when student performance is lower, parents will not move their children. (Defeating the alleged "free market" model of charter schools.) So, it's not about better education, it's about the ability to choose. Brand loyalty.

There are two main problems with charter schools. The first is the "free market" model of it. Parents shop around, they are customers. Education is a commodity. (Notice all the capitalistic terms used to describe education. Capitalism is less about producing better and more about popularity - if you can market better, you sell more. Same with charter schools.) Very few parents don't pull kids out of underperforming schools. And when a charter school collapses, leaving parents in a lurch, thousands of kids get dumped on the public education system.

The second is many, not all, charter schools are for profit, so they have to reduce their costs to maximize profits. While I'm not a fan of unions, they at least prevent abuse of employees. (Unions come with their own set of problems.) Think of the lowest bidder problem on all government contracts.

"Competition" will only reduce charter schools to test score manufacturers, the same thing laws did to public schools.

Thomas Jefferson viewed public education as a pillar of democracy. Not only does it educate, but it also prepares children to be citizens. Our emphasis on test scores and producing workers has reduced it from a place that can enrich society to a numbers mill. Public education can be vastly improved, but we're stuck with the industrial age model designed to produce factory workers. Charter schools are no different. The emphasis is on numbers and test scores using rote cramming of information so that children can achieve on tests, yet they quickly forget what they "learned." It forms a lifelong habit of reward-based extrinsic motivation.

What we are producing are future workers who are only motivated by money, fame, and rewards. Then we wonder why depression and suicide are huge problems.

The problem isn't public education, it's the way we approach education in general.

I recommend reading What the Best College Teachers Do, Learner Centered Innovation, and American Public Education and the Responsibilities of Its Citizens. They're more informative than google-centered, Search Engine Optimized propaganda.