I see a common theme in these cancellation essays: the individual tries to ignore the problem until it affects them. I have very little sympathy for anyone supporting the Democrat/liberal agenda over the last 5-10 years and complaining about this. I despise the Republicans (in general a bunch of feckless cowards) but at least, in genera…
I see a common theme in these cancellation essays: the individual tries to ignore the problem until it affects them. I have very little sympathy for anyone supporting the Democrat/liberal agenda over the last 5-10 years and complaining about this. I despise the Republicans (in general a bunch of feckless cowards) but at least, in general, they aren’t espousing this disgusting, racist, ideology. The key point of this essay is treating people as individuals.
"Democrats and liberals" had nothing to do with January 6, the ultimate expression of cancel culture. Trumpists used a mob, riot, and insurrection to cancel the results of the 2020 election.
And us liberals have nothing but contempt for the Woke.
Why should I? It's my country. You don't like it, hit the road. Airlines fly to Hungary every day. I hear there's a strongman you'd like as your Fearless Leader.
Everything is not racism. The equal opportunity and civil rights bills came about in the early 70s and mid-60s. Since the fall of the Berlin wall, our economy had started in a decline. Add free trade and globalism, you have a recipe for frozen wages, loss of economic opportunity. Good-paying manufacturing jobs were replaced by the service economy.
The war on drugs was a joke, it targeted Blacks in particular. It affects our neighbor Mexico and those in the US. I think our politicians like the Bushes and Clintons were in on it. Check out the CIA-Contra stuff in the 1980s in LA and Freeway Rick. Clinton and Mena Arkansas. The elites were drugging the poor in our country on purpose, now they are creating friction between Blacks and Whites. The top 0.5% own about 80% of the wealth.
It is really a class thing, not a race thing. How could there be any movement in a society that is in decline? I think the laws for racial equality would have worked if there had not been this push toward globalization or a drug war. Look who is funding Social Justice, it is the For Foundation, McArthur Foundation, Annie E Casey Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates, and Friends Foundation Open Society Foundation, Bezos Family Foundation, and the Kellog Foundation. All are technocrats or secular-humanists with the ideology of creating a Utilitarian Society, (worse than Nazi Germany).
M. Odin again! A hat trick of replies to You today!
I've been reading some U.S. history lately that pretty much confirms everything You "say" here.
Hard to day EXACTLY when the decline came, and make no mistake, America is in decline unless something is done about it. But this fact was stated, and I have no reason to believe. The 1980s. Like author said, these six words:
"The national debt tripled under Reagan."
I won't go into all the REASONS this was necessary. Not saying anything one Way or t'other, in fact.
you should back up hyperbolic statements with facts if you want your opinion taken seriously. I am an independent though a registered democrat and I can’t find racist ideology in the GOP’s platform anywhere. As matter of fact the GOP has done more to foster educational opportunities through support of school choice and charter schools which have been transformational for poor black communities in large cities like the one I taught in. And yet teacher unions support a Democratic Party that thwarts these educational opportunities. That is a troubling fact for me. The middle does not characterize the GOP or Democratic Party the way that you do. The middle doesn’t use unsubstantiated inflammatory language - the extreme right and left trade in that kind of rhetoric.
Charters and school choice have been "transformational" for poor black communities? I'm in Chicago and these schools haven't done anything better than public schools, not for poor black communities or any others. In which "large city" is that true?
The nationwide test scores for charter schools indicate they are doing a far better job of educating than local public schools are doing. This is true in NYC and in Philadelphia where I taught.I read economist Thomas Sowell’s book on Charter Schools and it full of statistics and data not unsubstantiated opinions that you really can’t ignore - the fallacy is that they aren’t working- the facts say otherwise- his book is worth reading- it certainly changed my perspective.
"The nationwide test scores for charter schools indicate they are doing a far better job of educating than local public schools are doing."
That's Dr. Sowell's view. My reading of other sources, including the newest national study by Harvard, is that charter schools educate students only marginally better than public schools. Some charters do extraordinarily well educating their kids. But so do some publics.
Charters, on paper, should be a runaway success. Charters receive tax money AND private investment funds. Charters can tailor their student population however they wish; publics have to take anyone who lives in the district. Charters can expel troublemakers easily, publics cannot. Charters don't have to provide special ed, publics do, letting charters avoid that enormous burden of money and staff. Charters are mostly free of district and state bureaucracies that tie the publics in knots, and they're mostly free of union. demands. Those huge advantages should make the test scores of charter students four, six, ten times higher than those in public schools.
They aren't.
Sowell sings the praise of charter schools and "school choice" because he believes government has little or no place in education and that "the market" will always do better. So, the charter system, which has been around for decades, should have proven by now to be the ideal system with which to educate students.
They aren't. They are marginally better in the aggregate, but not nearly enough to justify the hosannas they receive from the "free markets for free people" crowd that would love to drown public education in the bathtub.
Here's the Harvard study. For all the advantages charters were given by society, their results should be light-years better than they are. I have nothing against charter schools, but any claim to vast superiority over publics is sadly misplaced.
Oddly, it caused me to feel more favorably towards charter schools. For one example:
"The average gains by 4th- and 8th-grade charter students are approximately twice as large as those by students in district schools, a difference of a half-year’s worth of learning. The steepest gains at charters, relative to district schools, are for African Americans, students in the Northeast, and those from households in the lowest quartile of the socioeconomic distribution."
So it's odd that you are using it as justification for your skepticism about charter schools. Of course, you are correct that the differences are not as dramatic as the strongest advocate might predict, but I'll take significant positive results even if they are not game changers.
I suspect that you have some considered reasoning for your low support (different then opposition) to charter schools. I'd be interested in how you interpret the Harvard study and other data (not just your final shorthand conclusion, but the process).
Maybe...but the relevant statistics for me are the ever worsening test scores in most large school districts. You would think the terrible showing for math and literacy especially compared to the rest of the world would have some consequences in the public educational community, but they are busy with other things. They don't even talk about it.
The state of education in this nation is alarming. The privates can take care of themselves, but publics and charters need an intervention and transfusion.
Not just money, though--more may be necessary, but isn't the only thing schools lack. My teacher friends report their schools can't keep their kids safe from each other, let alone from the world outside the walls. And that's just one issue that distracts from teaching and learning.
Schools are a reflection of our deteriorating social situation.
I taught at a magnet school with an enviable curriculum-it has been dismantled - the school can now confidently assert everyone has As but very few understand the math- tech companies will go where the talent is- if young people here can’t develop their potentials because no one will educate them appropriately they will realize how badly they were duped when is too late- a whole generation will be without marketable skills and the jobs they aspire to have will no longer be available to them.
My argument isn’t that they are all “vastly superior” but rather charter schools overall provide more opportunities for a better education to students who have not had access to quality education- so we should celebrate that -if they don’t produce measurable gains then the “free marketplace “ will force them into obsoletism unlike public schools that are under no pressure to either produce quality product or perish in the marketplace.
Yah. And Success Academy, which I mentioned, had the WHOLE POLITICAL FORCE of the Teacher's Union (AFT) actively trying to get them wiped OUT. Nearly did. From what I recall, they only used their private donors to fund new schools, not the eductaion itself.
I'm positive that the waiting lists are long for charter schools. That doesn't mean that they educate the national population any better than public schools do. It mostly means they're safer than many public schools, and perceived to be "better" because they don't have to take all comers like public schools do.
Sowell’s book addressed academic measures primarily and the differences are sobering- look into it if you are open to challenging your beliefs with data and statistics - his interest was investigating their viability as educational institutions- he would hardly argue (and write a book at 90 ) a good reason to support charter schools is simply because they are safer- although if two choices are equal and one is safer is that still not the better choice for your child?
My beliefs *are* based on data and statistics, so let's not do the "if you are open to challenging your beliefs" jazz, okay?
Charters are safer because they were given permission to not accept troublemakers, or if a student become so, kick them out with no fuss. Are you willing to give those same tools to publics? If so, how do educate those kids, or do you write them off as casualties of our system?
I recently read "The Education of Eva Moskowitz" who ran Success Academy. I assure You, they had trouble makers.
Now I don't buy EVERYTHING she said about herself. But I think the biggest part of their strength and success was the VERY close ties between the teachers and the parents. The parents were given reading lists to read to their children. And they were ragged on if they DIDN'T.
Their's were a public/charter school. They achieved what they did on the standard amount public schools got. They had (i thin') double the class size. How?
The MAINTAINED their classes; gave CLASSES to their teachers to show them HOW. DAILY IMPROVEMENT was their Mantra. Administrators, teachers, students (parents).
Other main thing they had going for them was that they didn't have the unions. They let teachers go who didn't rise to the occasion.
I agree: Way to go. I've never argued that some individual charters are not profoundly successful: they are. "Success" is one. "Walter Payton" in Chicago is another, one of the best in the nation. Same public/charter system. It's not exclusive to charter schools--many publics are equally stellar, and they have the unions, special ed burdens, and lack of ability to design their student bodies that charters don't .
The difference is what you wrote: set high expectations for students, and then establish and encourage close ties between teachers, students, parents, and others to ensure the kids show up, behave, and do the work needed for them to succeed. Preferably fed, clothed, and not wounded by gunfire, which is not always a given in some tough neighborhoods.
The kids generally do well when treated this way.
Bring that student-teacher-parent-community model to every public school and see what happens.
I really LIKE what You say here, M. Shayne, except for one thing. That model You and I agree would be successful? It will NEVER HAPPEN in public schools. Can't. Sorry.
What is the KEY feature of the model? I know, hard to single one out. The whole kit-and-kaboodle is necessary.
But the FOUNDATION is built on one thing, and that SUPERIOR teachers. Who are TAUGHT how to manage unruly students. Who ENGAGE their "scholars." Who keep in close TOUCH with the parents. Telling parents when their child does bad AND good.
And the problem is that public education, or rather the unions, will never ALLOW inferior teachers to be dismissed.
It's not even just the woefully inferior. Teachers who don't buy in to the idea that students MUST be challenged and taught to be their best selfs and that they CAN be... THey are a cancer that can ruin the whole school.
I taught in public school for 25 years , 10 of them in one of the toughest high schools. Progressive educational policies that increasingly made it difficult to effectively deal with “troublemakers” made one thing come true- our school which was educating motivated kids in one of the highest poverty areas became one where every kid became a casualty and no kid could learn.
Oh, I couldn't agree more with this analysis. Several members of my family are teachers, and all report the same: not just troublemakers in every classroom that they can do little about, but actual riots by students, and not just one. It's a mess, and the environments make it difficult if not impossible to educate the kids who really wanted to learn. Classroom management took up most of the time.
In NYC, they get students assigned by random drawings and are much more successful than the public schools. As another commentator suggests, see Thomas Sowell for a compelling analysis. Also, you identifying safety I think is a point in their favor, if accurate; I've seen no data on that subject.
Thanks for this, Andrew. In Chicago, some charters are randomly drawn but most are competitive-testing that allows them to tailor their student bodies. Please check my latest reply to Kate for the new Harvard study that suggests that charters educate a bit better than publics in the aggregate, but not nearly as much as the Dr. Sowells of the world like to assert. I have no beef with charters, but they aren't the educational ideal their proponents insist.
I accept your point that they are not the educational ideal. But Sowell didn't assert that; he analyzed a specific set of institutions in a limited area. I don't need to hold them to be ideal to favor them, nor to be anti union or teacher to believe that teachers' unions do a fine job of representing teachers and a poor job of advancing education.
Therein lies the problem: Sowell's data base is narrow, so his conclusions cannot be applied nationwide. The Harvard study does a better job analyzing charters' performance nationwide.
I have no beef with charters, nor do I want them banned. They hold a valuable place in our education system. I only resist the notion that they're "superior" to public schools. The educational outcomes are pretty much the same in the aggregate.
Naw, if You read my reply carefully You'll note that I forgot to mention the results. Success Academy produced DEMONSTRABLY superior students. Standardized tests put them ABOVE a LOT (can't recall... most?) white students.
You are gaslighting - attempting to portray house of as middle of the road when you are clearly leftist.
Racism is the sole domain of Dems now. It is a strange change. Dems attempted to weaken their opposition by painting them as racist. When that didnt work, they adopted racism in an attempt to weaken their political opposition.
I see a common theme in these cancellation essays: the individual tries to ignore the problem until it affects them. I have very little sympathy for anyone supporting the Democrat/liberal agenda over the last 5-10 years and complaining about this. I despise the Republicans (in general a bunch of feckless cowards) but at least, in general, they aren’t espousing this disgusting, racist, ideology. The key point of this essay is treating people as individuals.
"Democrats and liberals" had nothing to do with January 6, the ultimate expression of cancel culture. Trumpists used a mob, riot, and insurrection to cancel the results of the 2020 election.
And us liberals have nothing but contempt for the Woke.
Leave.
Why should I? It's my country. You don't like it, hit the road. Airlines fly to Hungary every day. I hear there's a strongman you'd like as your Fearless Leader.
Everything is not racism. The equal opportunity and civil rights bills came about in the early 70s and mid-60s. Since the fall of the Berlin wall, our economy had started in a decline. Add free trade and globalism, you have a recipe for frozen wages, loss of economic opportunity. Good-paying manufacturing jobs were replaced by the service economy.
The war on drugs was a joke, it targeted Blacks in particular. It affects our neighbor Mexico and those in the US. I think our politicians like the Bushes and Clintons were in on it. Check out the CIA-Contra stuff in the 1980s in LA and Freeway Rick. Clinton and Mena Arkansas. The elites were drugging the poor in our country on purpose, now they are creating friction between Blacks and Whites. The top 0.5% own about 80% of the wealth.
It is really a class thing, not a race thing. How could there be any movement in a society that is in decline? I think the laws for racial equality would have worked if there had not been this push toward globalization or a drug war. Look who is funding Social Justice, it is the For Foundation, McArthur Foundation, Annie E Casey Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates, and Friends Foundation Open Society Foundation, Bezos Family Foundation, and the Kellog Foundation. All are technocrats or secular-humanists with the ideology of creating a Utilitarian Society, (worse than Nazi Germany).
M. Odin again! A hat trick of replies to You today!
I've been reading some U.S. history lately that pretty much confirms everything You "say" here.
Hard to day EXACTLY when the decline came, and make no mistake, America is in decline unless something is done about it. But this fact was stated, and I have no reason to believe. The 1980s. Like author said, these six words:
"The national debt tripled under Reagan."
I won't go into all the REASONS this was necessary. Not saying anything one Way or t'other, in fact.
you should back up hyperbolic statements with facts if you want your opinion taken seriously. I am an independent though a registered democrat and I can’t find racist ideology in the GOP’s platform anywhere. As matter of fact the GOP has done more to foster educational opportunities through support of school choice and charter schools which have been transformational for poor black communities in large cities like the one I taught in. And yet teacher unions support a Democratic Party that thwarts these educational opportunities. That is a troubling fact for me. The middle does not characterize the GOP or Democratic Party the way that you do. The middle doesn’t use unsubstantiated inflammatory language - the extreme right and left trade in that kind of rhetoric.
Charters and school choice have been "transformational" for poor black communities? I'm in Chicago and these schools haven't done anything better than public schools, not for poor black communities or any others. In which "large city" is that true?
The nationwide test scores for charter schools indicate they are doing a far better job of educating than local public schools are doing. This is true in NYC and in Philadelphia where I taught.I read economist Thomas Sowell’s book on Charter Schools and it full of statistics and data not unsubstantiated opinions that you really can’t ignore - the fallacy is that they aren’t working- the facts say otherwise- his book is worth reading- it certainly changed my perspective.
"The nationwide test scores for charter schools indicate they are doing a far better job of educating than local public schools are doing."
That's Dr. Sowell's view. My reading of other sources, including the newest national study by Harvard, is that charter schools educate students only marginally better than public schools. Some charters do extraordinarily well educating their kids. But so do some publics.
Charters, on paper, should be a runaway success. Charters receive tax money AND private investment funds. Charters can tailor their student population however they wish; publics have to take anyone who lives in the district. Charters can expel troublemakers easily, publics cannot. Charters don't have to provide special ed, publics do, letting charters avoid that enormous burden of money and staff. Charters are mostly free of district and state bureaucracies that tie the publics in knots, and they're mostly free of union. demands. Those huge advantages should make the test scores of charter students four, six, ten times higher than those in public schools.
They aren't.
Sowell sings the praise of charter schools and "school choice" because he believes government has little or no place in education and that "the market" will always do better. So, the charter system, which has been around for decades, should have proven by now to be the ideal system with which to educate students.
They aren't. They are marginally better in the aggregate, but not nearly enough to justify the hosannas they receive from the "free markets for free people" crowd that would love to drown public education in the bathtub.
Here's the Harvard study. For all the advantages charters were given by society, their results should be light-years better than they are. I have nothing against charter schools, but any claim to vast superiority over publics is sadly misplaced.
https://www.educationnext.org/charter-schools-show-steeper-upward-trend-student-achievement-first-nationwide-study/
Thanks for linking to that.
Oddly, it caused me to feel more favorably towards charter schools. For one example:
"The average gains by 4th- and 8th-grade charter students are approximately twice as large as those by students in district schools, a difference of a half-year’s worth of learning. The steepest gains at charters, relative to district schools, are for African Americans, students in the Northeast, and those from households in the lowest quartile of the socioeconomic distribution."
So it's odd that you are using it as justification for your skepticism about charter schools. Of course, you are correct that the differences are not as dramatic as the strongest advocate might predict, but I'll take significant positive results even if they are not game changers.
I suspect that you have some considered reasoning for your low support (different then opposition) to charter schools. I'd be interested in how you interpret the Harvard study and other data (not just your final shorthand conclusion, but the process).
Maybe...but the relevant statistics for me are the ever worsening test scores in most large school districts. You would think the terrible showing for math and literacy especially compared to the rest of the world would have some consequences in the public educational community, but they are busy with other things. They don't even talk about it.
The state of education in this nation is alarming. The privates can take care of themselves, but publics and charters need an intervention and transfusion.
Not just money, though--more may be necessary, but isn't the only thing schools lack. My teacher friends report their schools can't keep their kids safe from each other, let alone from the world outside the walls. And that's just one issue that distracts from teaching and learning.
Schools are a reflection of our deteriorating social situation.
I taught at a magnet school with an enviable curriculum-it has been dismantled - the school can now confidently assert everyone has As but very few understand the math- tech companies will go where the talent is- if young people here can’t develop their potentials because no one will educate them appropriately they will realize how badly they were duped when is too late- a whole generation will be without marketable skills and the jobs they aspire to have will no longer be available to them.
Absolutely what you said, Kate.
My argument isn’t that they are all “vastly superior” but rather charter schools overall provide more opportunities for a better education to students who have not had access to quality education- so we should celebrate that -if they don’t produce measurable gains then the “free marketplace “ will force them into obsoletism unlike public schools that are under no pressure to either produce quality product or perish in the marketplace.
Yah. And Success Academy, which I mentioned, had the WHOLE POLITICAL FORCE of the Teacher's Union (AFT) actively trying to get them wiped OUT. Nearly did. From what I recall, they only used their private donors to fund new schools, not the eductaion itself.
Perhaps it's not transformational, but I suggest you check the size of the waiting lists for charter school slots in NYC.
I'm positive that the waiting lists are long for charter schools. That doesn't mean that they educate the national population any better than public schools do. It mostly means they're safer than many public schools, and perceived to be "better" because they don't have to take all comers like public schools do.
Sowell’s book addressed academic measures primarily and the differences are sobering- look into it if you are open to challenging your beliefs with data and statistics - his interest was investigating their viability as educational institutions- he would hardly argue (and write a book at 90 ) a good reason to support charter schools is simply because they are safer- although if two choices are equal and one is safer is that still not the better choice for your child?
My beliefs *are* based on data and statistics, so let's not do the "if you are open to challenging your beliefs" jazz, okay?
Charters are safer because they were given permission to not accept troublemakers, or if a student become so, kick them out with no fuss. Are you willing to give those same tools to publics? If so, how do educate those kids, or do you write them off as casualties of our system?
I recently read "The Education of Eva Moskowitz" who ran Success Academy. I assure You, they had trouble makers.
Now I don't buy EVERYTHING she said about herself. But I think the biggest part of their strength and success was the VERY close ties between the teachers and the parents. The parents were given reading lists to read to their children. And they were ragged on if they DIDN'T.
Their's were a public/charter school. They achieved what they did on the standard amount public schools got. They had (i thin') double the class size. How?
The MAINTAINED their classes; gave CLASSES to their teachers to show them HOW. DAILY IMPROVEMENT was their Mantra. Administrators, teachers, students (parents).
Other main thing they had going for them was that they didn't have the unions. They let teachers go who didn't rise to the occasion.
Way to go, IMHO.
I agree: Way to go. I've never argued that some individual charters are not profoundly successful: they are. "Success" is one. "Walter Payton" in Chicago is another, one of the best in the nation. Same public/charter system. It's not exclusive to charter schools--many publics are equally stellar, and they have the unions, special ed burdens, and lack of ability to design their student bodies that charters don't .
The difference is what you wrote: set high expectations for students, and then establish and encourage close ties between teachers, students, parents, and others to ensure the kids show up, behave, and do the work needed for them to succeed. Preferably fed, clothed, and not wounded by gunfire, which is not always a given in some tough neighborhoods.
The kids generally do well when treated this way.
Bring that student-teacher-parent-community model to every public school and see what happens.
I really LIKE what You say here, M. Shayne, except for one thing. That model You and I agree would be successful? It will NEVER HAPPEN in public schools. Can't. Sorry.
What is the KEY feature of the model? I know, hard to single one out. The whole kit-and-kaboodle is necessary.
But the FOUNDATION is built on one thing, and that SUPERIOR teachers. Who are TAUGHT how to manage unruly students. Who ENGAGE their "scholars." Who keep in close TOUCH with the parents. Telling parents when their child does bad AND good.
And the problem is that public education, or rather the unions, will never ALLOW inferior teachers to be dismissed.
It's not even just the woefully inferior. Teachers who don't buy in to the idea that students MUST be challenged and taught to be their best selfs and that they CAN be... THey are a cancer that can ruin the whole school.
I taught in public school for 25 years , 10 of them in one of the toughest high schools. Progressive educational policies that increasingly made it difficult to effectively deal with “troublemakers” made one thing come true- our school which was educating motivated kids in one of the highest poverty areas became one where every kid became a casualty and no kid could learn.
Oh, I couldn't agree more with this analysis. Several members of my family are teachers, and all report the same: not just troublemakers in every classroom that they can do little about, but actual riots by students, and not just one. It's a mess, and the environments make it difficult if not impossible to educate the kids who really wanted to learn. Classroom management took up most of the time.
In NYC, they get students assigned by random drawings and are much more successful than the public schools. As another commentator suggests, see Thomas Sowell for a compelling analysis. Also, you identifying safety I think is a point in their favor, if accurate; I've seen no data on that subject.
Thanks for this, Andrew. In Chicago, some charters are randomly drawn but most are competitive-testing that allows them to tailor their student bodies. Please check my latest reply to Kate for the new Harvard study that suggests that charters educate a bit better than publics in the aggregate, but not nearly as much as the Dr. Sowells of the world like to assert. I have no beef with charters, but they aren't the educational ideal their proponents insist.
I accept your point that they are not the educational ideal. But Sowell didn't assert that; he analyzed a specific set of institutions in a limited area. I don't need to hold them to be ideal to favor them, nor to be anti union or teacher to believe that teachers' unions do a fine job of representing teachers and a poor job of advancing education.
Therein lies the problem: Sowell's data base is narrow, so his conclusions cannot be applied nationwide. The Harvard study does a better job analyzing charters' performance nationwide.
I have no beef with charters, nor do I want them banned. They hold a valuable place in our education system. I only resist the notion that they're "superior" to public schools. The educational outcomes are pretty much the same in the aggregate.
Naw, if You read my reply carefully You'll note that I forgot to mention the results. Success Academy produced DEMONSTRABLY superior students. Standardized tests put them ABOVE a LOT (can't recall... most?) white students.
You are not a decent person.
Gimme a break guys. I'm gonna leave the racist card OUTTA the deck.
I've posted already, T.Rump did a number of good things. Okay. GREAT things. But I judge a person by their CHARACTER, not their political party.
You are gaslighting - attempting to portray house of as middle of the road when you are clearly leftist.
Racism is the sole domain of Dems now. It is a strange change. Dems attempted to weaken their opposition by painting them as racist. When that didnt work, they adopted racism in an attempt to weaken their political opposition.
Not sure what “disgusting racist ideology” you are hearing from the GOP. Could you elucidate?
How exactly does the GOP "promote a disgusting racist ideology"? Examples....lots of them....to assert such a grand claim.