I am going to break one of my own rules and bend one of Sound Politics' rules. Ordinarily, I do not recommend books that I have not read, and a California charter school does not fit into our usual categories. But I am going to make an exception for this book because of my great respect for the author, Joanne Jacobs, and her web site. I have been reading what she has to say on education for several years now, and have considerable respect for her opinions on the subject. (And for her clear writing style. There's a young journalist at the Seattle Times who could learn a great deal from her.)
Those who want to improve our schools take different approaches. Some begin with first principles and argue that following those principles will produce better schools. Others pore over statistics to determine how the schools that succeed are different from those that fail. And still others look for examples of success (or sometimes failure) and try to describe what went right (or wrong). Our School is in the third category; it is a close-up of a small San Jose charter school, Downtown College Prep, which promises to prepare "underachieving students to thrive at four-year universities". And from everything I have read about DCP, it succeeds at that very difficult objective.
(Generally, I don't care for books of the first type, whether they come from the left or right. I have seen too many failed experiments to be susceptible to the latest fad, even if it sounds plausible. The second approach, statistical studies, is the one that interests me most. But to understand those statistics, we often need case studies, such as Our School.)
Though I have not read Our School (except for chapter 12), others have and have given it glowing reviews. Here, for example, is what Linda Seebach, who also knows a little about education, has to say about the book.
It is an inspiring story. Students who have never succeeded at anything suddenly catch fire.
And, if you want to see more reviews, you can find them at Amazon, and at the book's web site.
You can order Our School from Amazon. If you order the book through Jacob's site, you can give her a little extra on each copy. Today would be a great day to order the book, since it's her birthday.
(I have looked for the book at several local bookstores here on the East Side. I didn't find it, but I did get depressed at the small number and low quality of most of the books in the education sections of Barnes and Noble, and Borders. And this is an area that claims to take education seriously.)
Posted by Jim Miller at March 31, 2006 01:56 PM | Email ThisThis same story has been repeated at another charter school, Summit Preparatory High School in Redwood City, CA. Like San Jose, Redwood City is a predominatly hispanic community. Summit has in its three years of operation also achieved excellent results. With a student body composed primarily of low income hispanic students it has become the 30th best public high school in California. The school achieved these results despite the indifference to the school by the public education establishment.
Both schools outperform larger better funded public schools, putting paid to the assertion that more money is what will fix education.
The public school system exists today to serve the needs of the teachers , administrators, and elected school board members. Educating the student is a byproduct of the system not an objective.
Education will be fixed when the schools start to focus on their product, an educated student, and not on the process.
I am not so bold as to state one way or another as an article of faith, but I call your attention to one study, performed at the University of Illinois, at the behest of the Bush Administration Department of Education, which had this to say:
111. Charter, Private, Public Schools and Academic Achievement: New Evidence from NAEP Mathematics Data. 2006.
Author: Chris Lubienski and Sarah Theule Lubienski
Common wisdom holds that private schools achieve better academic results than public schools. Assumptions of the superiority of private-style organizational models are reflected in voucher and charter programs, and in the choice provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act. However, most studies that compare achievement between private and public school students either fail to account for differences in student background characteristics or are based on assessments of students who have since graduated from high school. This analysis compares student achievement in traditional public, private, and charter schools on the 2003 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) mathematics exam. Hierarchical linear modeling is used to control for demographic characteristics and school location. Findings reveal that demographic differences between students in public and private schools account for the relatively high raw scores of private schools on the NAEP. Indeed, after controlling for these differences, public school students generally score better than their private school peers. Three other findings warrant mention. First, Lutheran schools are the highest performing private schools. Second, Conservative Christian schools, the fastest growing private school sector, are the lowest performing private schools. Third, fourth graders in charter schools scored below public school students, but eighth graders in charter schools scored above public school students. This suggests that assessments of charter schools must pay careful attention to the sample population that is being examined.
Full text is here.
Posted by: ivan on March 31, 2006 04:05 PMAs for your comment about school performance. If the parents choose the School I have no problems with their choice. The product of a school is not just academic achievement. It also may include sports achievment or moral rectitude. Private schools do not market academic performance alone but also other attributes including snob appeal, location, sports results, morality etc. The school creates a product, which includes not just test results but other attributes which the customer (the parents) value sufficiently to purchase the service.
Contrast that with public schools that are granted a geographic monopoly by the state. These schools do not have to compete for students and by all measures the public schools are failing the students. Students in the developing economies are outperforming U.S. students.
Unlike private schools, pubic schools are insulated from the market. Public schools have customers but these customers are not the parents of the students. Public school customers are the Teacher's Union, the Adminstrator's Union, and the Local politicians who see the school budget as a means to pay off their supporters. This is not an incentive structure designed to yield excellence in education. It does do a good job of creating mediocre schools that are politicised and corrupt.
I gotta hand it to ya ivan, you're anything if not consistent. You aren't bold, but you are full of shiite. Your blind subservience to statism in the form of Unions and union hegemony consistently leaves you grasping for straws.
You wouldn't give a damn if the graduation rate of school kids was one in a hundred as long as it occurred at the expense of the continued strangle-hold of your union komrades.
Other than that, your cut~n~paste skills are very good!
Posted by: alphabet soup on March 31, 2006 08:23 PMEducation is not a product, or a market. and public schools are not "failing by all measures." Just because you repeat something over and over again does not make it so.
Posted by: ivan on March 31, 2006 09:26 PMIvan wishes to argue that our schools are doing fine. I believe that Ivan would think that, if the teachers in private and charter schools belonged to the WEA, then those schools would be doing just fine.
To paraphrase Ivan:
[Public] schools work? How well do they work? Do they work in all cases? Are they better than [charter/private] schools in all cases?
By law, the state must provide for the education of our children and it is required that our children must attend school. There are some that interpret this to mean that our children MUST attend the STATE school.
At any school, the work product is an education. All the teachers and staff are there to provide the service of education. If that service is substandard, we should have the right to choose a different educational service provider.
29th out of 34 countries in math? What that means is that, for every good school and every good student, there are many more that are not being provided with the educational service they deserve. (wbwittmeyer, is there a correlation between the scores and per student spending? Are we 29th out of 34 in per student spending?)
This performance is pitiful. Our educational service providers should be doing a much better OVERALL job than this. The primary contractor for our educational service provider is the STATE - they should be held accountable for providing such poor performance. Lack of serious competition has made the state complacent.
The service of education has been replaced by the social program du jour. We experiment with different programs all the time. Some work, others don't. But we're not experimenting in a lab, we're using our own children. If a program is tried for 2-3 years and doesn't work, who just lost 25% of their educational time? The kids.
Posted by: SouthernRoots on April 1, 2006 07:51 AMIn Seattle, we have choice so most parents feel good about their school (a recent district survey proves this). It is in the long-term management and faith in the leadership where we see problems. I can't speak for the rest of the state except that the voters have turned back charters THREE times so give them some credit. It's not about the unions dominating the voting because at least 2 times the charter initiatives had very heavy hitters behind them. Voters just don't see the proof that charters claim they have in providing better education.
Posted by: westello on April 1, 2006 08:19 AMProffering poor decision making by voters as good decision making by voters doesn't exactly inspire me....
(I will give 1/2 credit for trying ;'}
Posted by: alphabet soup on April 1, 2006 08:44 AMFed up with poor performing schools and the pedagogical fad of the month, parents who are involved in their children's lives are choosing to send their children to private schools or to home school their children. This erosion of market position has not yet reached the tipping point where it becomes flight.
Public schools systems have chosen to react to the canary in the coal mine in a variety of way typically of a monopoly: forbidding homeschooling, denegrating the performance of private schools, intrusive licensing regimes etc. The have not focused on the core problem. Fixing their product.
Posted by: wbwittmeyer on April 1, 2006 09:19 AM
Schools with standards seems to be the rule where excellence occurs. Duhh.
Posted by: duhh on April 1, 2006 07:26 PM