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Re: [Phys-L] Private schools



On 7/9/2012 10:04 AM, John Denker wrote:
I realize it is conventional to speak of charter schools as being disjoint from the public schools, but one could argue for the following taxonomy instead:
I like the taxonomy. Typically the term "regular public school" is used rather than "generic public school," but that's just a nit.
One major difference is that in my district and most others in this
State the students are much more polite and well behaved in the
charter schools for the simple reason that IF THEY DO NOT BEHAVE OR
DISOBEY THE DRESS CODE OR OTHER MYRIAD OF RULES THEY ARE EXPELLED AND
SENT BACK TO THEIR SENDING SCHOOL (which would be my old school).
HUGE DIFFERENCE!!!! and one which allows the charters to claim they
put out much better behaved students.
Indeed!

No argument. Indeed, when no consequences are attached to misbehavior, misbehavior is effectively encouraged. And to a large degree discipline issues are like the old adage about sewage and wine: Add a cup of wine to a barrel of sewage and you've got a barrel of sewage; add a cup of sewage to a barrel of wine and you've got a barrel of sewage too.
One often hears the suggestion that the less-successful schools should
just emulate the more-successful schools. This is obviously ridiculous,
because (except maybe in Lake Wobegon) there is no way to make all the
schools highly selective ... unless you want to leave some huge fraction
of the population with no schools at all.
I actually disagree. Only if you assume that all parents and students want exactly the same is your statement correct. Yet they do not. That is precisely why some prefer vocational schools, others art-oriented ones, yet others like tech-magnets or science-magnets, some value proximity to home while others value demanding liberal arts. Some prefer disciplinarian and value-laden education, others like "just teach me the academics and I'll take care of the value aspect at home." This seems to be one of the major issues created by our mostly one size fit all regular public education. Yet other options exist. Belgium offers choice for 100% of its population. So does Sweden (Sweden!). Arguing that choice is inherently inimical to public education seem ill-supported by evidence.
It's a classic market-segmentation / arbitrage opportunity. Businessmen
love love love this sort of thing. It gives a tremendous advantage to the
first mover: Segment the market and take the good segment for yourself,
leaving the other segments to your competition. The classic example is
selling health insurance to young, healthy people ... and then dropping
their coverage if they ever get sick.

This confuses health, which is largely not a matter of choice, with education interest and classroom behavior that clearly are largely a matter of choice. It also treats the client population characteristics as invariant under variety of social and behavioral incentives, which -- again -- is ill supported by evidence.

In other words, we have created a situation in regular public schools where essentially any behavioral sanctions on misbehaving students are considered out off limits; we have created a culture in regular public schools where student under-performance is largely considered a consequence of their environment and absolves them from almost any responsibility for it; we have created directives in our regular public schools which promote the rights of the few disruptive/problematic individuals over the rights of the overwhelming majority of their peers to effective education. And then we are surprised when disruption and low expectations thrive. And we are trying to engender guilt in parents who are unwilling to sacrifice their kids on the altar of this faulty vision and try to place them in more orderly and effective schools.

Let's analyze this in the obvious way:
a) Segmentation means the selective schools are more profitable and less
trouble-prone.
I am not sure about the "more profitable" -- one can show that the per/student cost (and waste) in regular public schools is higher than in selective schools and hence they are more "profitable" to those who provide the services. But they tend to be more diffused (unionized teachers, unionized contractors, etc.) and not associated in the public discourse with "profits," although one wonders what it should be called when regular public school maintenance costs 50% or more than it would cost on an open market, or when regular public school teacher salaries are 20-30% higher than they are on the open market (as compared to private or charter schools.)

But I agree -- selective schools are less trouble prone. Some of it because of selection, some of it because they are effective in discouraging misbehavior even among students who were prone to misbehavior in regular public schools. Not every transgression is punished by expulsion but the threat of expulsion provides incentives to better behavior. As does the perception that attendance is a privilege rather than a right. In a sense we are often blaming success -- less trouble tends to be blamed on cherry-picking rather than on successful change in behavior.

b) Segmentation increases the costs an the troubles at the less-selective
and non-selective schools.

If one accept your model, this is true. Yet you seem to ignore the reduced number of those "expensive" students if segmentation increases. And the reduced costs of education the non-troubled segment.
c) NCLB _takes funding away_ from the troubled schools, i.e. from the ones
that are guaranteed, by market forces, to need /more/ funding.
Actually this is incorrect. NCLB took up to 20% of the Title I funds -- about 1%-1.5% of total budget -- and required failing schools to spend it on SES for failing low-income students. One can argue whether SES is effective or not, but this is not "taking away" money from those kids that the school failed them. Further, failing schools get additional funding (like school improvement grants, etc.) and often serious extra support from the state ("technical assistance" in edu jargon).

As another point, imagine the opposite -- that we would explicitly tie additional funding (rather than assistive services) to failing schools. Don't you think this will simply create an incentive for more school to fail? Hey, this will just get them more money to spend, so why not (smile).

All this has little to do with physics but a lot to do with public policy. The gentleman from Houston (and a few others) often protests that it is important to discuss public policy issues on every forum. Perhaps true, but one should remember that being a physicist or a physics teacher offers no special insights on public policy as compared to the next guy.

Ze'ev