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Open_Veins_8 OP t1_j9g665k wrote

Taxpayers don’t have a choice when it comes to their money funding a largely unregulated and underperforming industry at the expense of public schools. A new bill could change that.

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DisciplineShot2872 t1_j9g98vq wrote

I worked for a charter school in California in the late 90s. The "education" was a joke, all xeroxed packets the kids read at home before taking a 50 question multiple choice test. Meanwhile, the founders paid themselves fat salaries, including paying their teenage daughter six figures as the CFO while she was studying art in Paris. So I learned early that for-profit schools are a farce.

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TrashApocalypse t1_j9gichz wrote

Tax payers do have a choice if they stay active and informed about how is running for elections and what they actually stand for.

Not sure how to prevent another George santos though 🤷

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kormer t1_j9h8mkp wrote

> Parents don’t have a choice when it comes to their money funding a largely unregulated and underperforming industry known as public schools. A new bill could change that.

Fixed that for you

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nayls142 t1_j9gckwb wrote

Taxpayers don't have a choice with their money funding highly regulated, underperforming public schools. Anything that gives options to poor parents stuck living in these school districts is a net win.

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Hopeful_Scholar398 t1_j9gicb6 wrote

You should read the article. Cyber charter schools underperformed compared to public schools by every metric.

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kormer t1_j9h90f1 wrote

Only when you compare all charters to all traditional public schools.

The flaw in that analysis is that the students going into charters are not coming from all schools, but highly concentrated from the worst schools. Additionally there are a multitude of socio-economic factors that contribute to those students underperforming anywhere they attend, but the comparisons are always made against a broader set of students.

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AnotherUser297 t1_j9habmu wrote

Except that the kids who leave “bad” schools and go to charters often perform worse than the kids who stayed at the “bad” school. Charters are often selective in who they admit, have parents who care (enough) to try to get their kid in, and still don’t perform better than the neighborhood school. It’s not always the case - there are some good charters - but so many perform worse than the schools they’re pulling kids from.

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kormer t1_j9hbn76 wrote

Stop the lies

>> Charters are often selective in who they admit

>A charter school shall not discriminate in its admission policies or practices based on intellectual ability or athletic ability, measures of achievement or aptitude, status as a person with a disability, English language proficiency, or any other basis that would be illegal if used by a school district. Further, a charter school may not use achievement tests, entrance examination tests, enrollment forms, admissions interviews, or other means of testing a student’s intellectual ability, disability status, English language proficiency or other basis that would be illegal if used by a school district to grant or deny admission. A charter school also may not require a student to obtain or maintain a particular grade point average to be admitted to the charter school. The chartering school district may conduct periodic audits of the school's applicants, accepted students, and enrolled students.

https://www.education.pa.gov/Policy-Funding/BECS/Purdons/Pages/CharterSchools.aspx

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AnotherUser297 t1_j9hdsxo wrote

Unfortunately the law and the reality are different.

Charters kick kids with IEP needs out or don’t admit them under the guise of not having resources for them. They kick kids out for behavior, or don’t admit them for truancy issues at a previous school. They hold their admissions lotteries at one specific location in one specific neighborhood for one hour one night per year.

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ewyorksockexchange t1_j9hw3np wrote

You are mostly correct here, but your comment about kicking out IEP kids is somewhat inaccurate. Charters actually thrive on admitting low-need IEP kids because they receive the funding boost that comes with them.

Generally low-level IEP students are less costly to host for charters than the average IEP kid across all classifications, and charters get the funding for the IEP average kid in a given district when they bring them in. So a charter is taking low need kids and getting more in funding from the public school than what it actually costs to educate them, meaning the public schools are getting crushed on higher level IEP students when the lower level ones go to the charters.

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AnotherUser297 t1_j9hy38o wrote

Right, a kid with an ADHD diagnosis and an IEP gets full sped funding but it’s not costing the school much more than a kid without an IEP. He or she might go to a learning support teacher part of the day, or might have a paraprofessional working alongside. A nonverbal kid with autism, or severe emotional disturbance, or extensive physical needs is going to cost a lot more to educate, but may also be turned down by the charter because they don’t have the staff or programs or facilities to educate the student. A lot of the time, the school honestly doesn’t have the resources to properly educate those students, but they absolutely do take full advantage of the higher funding for students with documented needs.

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IIIIIIVIIIIII t1_j9hwv8i wrote

If only the school districts had some kind of council where the citizens could vote for people to oversee the school. 🤔

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