Hi, I am posting the following for Melissa who had some difficulty accessing the blog:
In Class Warfare, the author Steven Brill discusses the recent history of education restructuring, political mandates and the contributing power forces which fight for a particular version of education “reform”. Much of his book is dedicated to the (perhaps earned) glorification of teacher-recruiting programs such as Teach for America and the growing surge of charter schools. While he thoroughly explains the effects of education policies and the role of federal mandates such as the Great Society‘s aid to education act and No Child Left Behind, I do believe that his take on programs like TFA out stage other very significant factors in public education.
In the beginning of the book, Brill makes the argument that what makes programs such as TFA so impressive is that they lessen or otherwise eliminate outside factors such as socioeconomic status among students. This the reasoning made from reviewing some progress reports of charter schools throughout the nation. While this is great news for students attending these specific schools, I believe that Brill is taking a narrow look at the effects of TFA and even charter schools.
There are factors and delve deeper than the progress reports from these charter schools. Taking a step back, one needs to consider how these children make it into these schools in the first place. Brill mentions the popularity of schools like KIPP and the lottery process that takes place to enroll students into the school year. Before reaching enrollment, however, parent involvement is what places these students on the lottery list; it is what drives the trend of charter schools. What I mean to say is that there is a certain type of parent who is engaged enough in their children’s education to know about their choices and the alternatives that are available.
This level of parent involvement, alone, is enough to account for the discrepancies between public schools and popularized charter schools. A parent who is aware of the education opportunities might be endowed with more time away from work to explore these options, to help their child with homework, to find other resources such as outside tutoring, etc. These are only hypothetical scenarios, but they are realistic nonetheless.
There are so many factors that influence the life of a student. Brill’s passionate support for reform programs is understandable but I think that there are underlying forces that make these programs successful. As a result, as an education reform mechanism, these initiatives do not reach the root of the education problem. They create a different divide, create different crack for students to fall through.
Comments
4 responses to “Brill Takes a Narrow Look”
Interesting insights. I wonder what Brill might say to counter your criticism. I do believe that there are studies of students in the lottery that compare those who actually got in to the charter school to those who did not. In these cases both groups presumably had parents motivate enough to put them into the lottery. Thus any difference might plausibly be attributed to what happens after the lottery in either the charter school or traditional public school. Let’s try to find one of these studies and look at it more carefully! Also, the largest studies of charter schools seem to indicate that only about 30% of them outperform traditional public schools. The rest do the same or worse! We’ll look at this data too.
I think it is also important to consider how charter school are compared and assessed with public schools. Most cases is standardized testing because both schools would have to adhere to it. I think about my own charter school education. We had our own for of testing that determined our entrance into the next grade level, but still had to spend a week of the year to study and practice for the state standardized tests. This meaning that how we assess performance and “out-preforming” should be looked at from a case to case basis.
You definitely make a good point here about all of the factors that influence the students going into charter school vs. the ones that stay in public school. However, what would you say then to Geoffrey Canada and Harlem Children’s Zone that seeks to provide what seems to be the most support that they possibly can? Also, as for Professor Feuerstein’s point about lottery winners vs. lottery losers, the study that I used for my blog post used that as their measure. They were able to provide evidence that charter schools typically did better when they were located in urban low-income environments. So, keeping that in mind, do we see HCZ as something that can be attempted in other urban areas (D.C. maybe?), or is it something that only Harlem is suited for?
Wonderful blog! I found it while searching on Yahoo News. Do you have any tips on how to get listed in Yahoo News? I’ve been trying for a while but I never seem to get there! Appreciate it