Conor Friedersdorf posts a video from the Aspen Ideas and Networking for Fatuous Dinks Festival, where New Orleans and its post-Katrina charter schools are discussed. Sayeth Friedersdorf,
New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu explains how Hurricane Katrina created the conditions for school reform in his city. He went on to explain that the transformation was made possible not just because of the need to rebuild physical infrastructure, but because the displacement and layoffs that resulted from the storm sapped the power from the local teacher’s union, whose opposition would’ve otherwise made change impossible.
See, it’s the sapped power of the teachers unions that’s responsible for this (sub-head referenced but otherwise undiscussed) improvement in the schools!
As several commenters on the post discuss, a population decrease of somewhere between a quarter to a third of a city’s residents would make apples to apples comparisons a bit difficult, wouldn’t you say? Especially when the three demographic features most consistently correlated with educational outcomes– economic class, race, and parents’ education level– each had a significant post-Katrina swing towards the groups most likely to score highly. Might be worth mentioning!
If only we had some sort of systematized guidelines for how to accurately evaluate sociological data….
MikeJ
Young Conor is probably a fan of Buck v Bell too. Mandatory sterilization might get rid of enough of the poors to raise test scores.
The Republic of Stupidity
That would be nice, but how about some sort of systematized guidelines for evaluating Glibertarian dickishness?
Now… on a scale of one to ten, how big of an…
srv
Brownie doesn’t look so clueless now, does he?
Gotta drown some eggs to make an omlette.
Ash Can
Actually, this is the mayor who’s spouting dickish idiocy, and Friedersdorf is just reporting on it, right? Not that I don’t strongly suspect what the answer to this question is, but does Friedersdorf do anything to call out this bullshit?
AT
Why would we need data when what feel supports what we want to believe?
Spaghetti Lee
but because the displacement and layoffs that resulted from the storm sapped the power from the local teacher’s union, whose opposition would’ve otherwise made change impossible.
Huh. If I realized that the “reforms” I’m taking credit for came in the political dead of night, in the wake of a crushing and tragic natural disaster that so devastated my opponents they couldn’t even mount an opposition…I’d be kind of ashamed of that. I’d wonder if maybe there was a reason these “reforms” couldn’t happen until an Act of God conspired to make them happen-mainly, that they’re shitty reforms.
But hell, what do I know? I’m not one of the geniuses on the “school reform” circuit.
mpbruss
The first chapter of The Shock Doctrine has a pretty good recounting of just how charter schools got rammed through in Katrina’s wake.
Earl
@Spaghetti Lee: …and you have the ability to feel shame, so…
geg6
Wish Obama would have sent SEAL Team 6 to the Aspen Ideas Festival. It would have been as much, if not more, of a boon to America to take out the rest of the enemies of America as taking out bin Laden was.
Weaselone
To be fair it doesn’t take a hurricane driving and drowning undesirable demographics to provide politicians with the opportunity to fluff charter schools with reports and papers utilizing questionable methodologies.
Case in point. The Boston Public School Board likes to trumpet a paper that compared the performance of children in charter schools with the performance of children who were on the waiting list for these charters and forced to attend public schools. This was an elegant solution to the reality that the students attending charter schools are not representative of students in Boston as a whole. Huzzah, proof that charters are better. The reality that Boston’s charter schools don’t all have waiting lists, and that the presence of a waiting list might just say something about the quality of the charter schools relative to the other charters somehow wasn’t mentioned.
superdestroyer
If progressives are going to argue that charter schools are not beneficial for children and do not improve academic education, then what is the alternative. What would progressives have proposed to improve the schools in New Orleans.
And before anyone says that more money is the answer, please explain what the District of Columbia public schools are so bad even though being funded at a higher rate than virtually any school district in the U.S.
Southern Beale
Isn’t that what we hippies call Disaster Capitalism?
Every tim you contract away the public good to a for-profit company democracy dies. We saw it in Florida this week where a lifeguard was fired for saving a man outside the Jeff Ellis And Associates’ contracted “lifesaving zone.” We see it with contracted prisons and wars.
The fact that we’re not have a “national conversation” about this shit is criminal.
I tried to get on Jeff Ellis And Associates’ website and it’s down, I’m sure they’ve been inundated with angry e-mails. Which means Jeff Ellis should appear on Fox News whining about how liberals are mean in 5… 4… 3…
Valdivia
now I realized it is not only going to be sweltering but getting to 107 with the heat index. Joy! I get to run around in that heat.
Weaselone
@superdestroyer: If you are going to argue that additional funding is not beneficial for children and does not improve academic education, then what is the alternative? What would you propose to improve the schools in Washington, DC.
Seriously, why is it that progressives need to have perfect solutions for a problem before they can argue against policies that do nothing to fix the problem and point out that the proponents of these policies are using bullshit metrics to bolster these policies. Until we come up with a solution to keep the ship from sinking, the current policy of blowing holes in the ship’s hull to let the water out must continue.
1. The major solution to the education problem is not in the school itself. School performance is linked to demographics for a reason. Addressing the problems posed by those demographics would go a long way to addressing the education gap within the schools.
2. I believe that full year schooling needs to be part of the solution. How you work this out with teachers that need to work a 2nd job in the summer to get by, need the summer to do lesson planning and professional development and need the summer off to prevent them from taking a machete to the children is going to be a tough balancing act. It’s probably going to require some creative juggling and yes more money.
geg6
@superdestroyer:
First of all, there is no argument. The data shows that, overall, charter schools are no better, and are often objectively worse, than public schools. As far as that goes, that means charter schools have made no difference in educational outcomes. The only way to improve schools is to take measures that improve the socio-economic factors that are at the root of why students do not perform well. Expecting schools to do this is ridiculous as they cannot change the students’ incomes, parental involvement, and social conditions. In fact, Landrieu unknowingly makes my very argument. When you take all the poor out the schools and keep only middle and upper class students in, scores and performance improve. But with that asshole Jindal now injecting religion into the schools (his only apparent goal for education), I don’t expect to see any improvements in LA’s ranking in education compared to other states. They will be know nothings who think Jeebus and Ronnie Raygun rode dinosaurs while discovering America.
NotMax
Thank you, Gilbert & Sullivan.
“Things are seldom what they seem
Skim milk masquerades as cream”
Emails Reveal Louisiana Voucher Backpedaling
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Omnes Omnibus
@superdestroyer:
Eliminating poverty. Supporting pre-natal and childhood nutrition programs. And, yes, more more money – money aimed at school facilities, books, teacher salaries, rather than administration. I think those things would do as starters. American schools in suburbs and small cities that fund education well and don’t have many truly poor people do alright. So why not try to recreate the circumstances that lead to reasonable success there?
Cassidy
It’s the South. They didn’t need Jindal for that.
Cassidy
Not sure which one is more accurate.
Hillary Rettig
mpbruss got here before me but this was all covered in Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine. It’s not simply that the hurricane itself changed the context under which the schools (and towns, and federal programs were run); it’s that the right deliberately used the resultant chaos to gut unions and ram through privatization.
bjacques
Also known as a “cozy catastrophe”. If only a super-hurricane would hit the whole country, leaving only well-prepared Libertarians to face off against a group of collectivists just weak enough to be beaten, thus proving the intellectual superiority of the Libertarians.
Who then wipe each other out arguing over who has to clean the toilets and whether people with diarrhea and weak bladders should have to pull double shifts.
Cassidy
Honeslty, this country would be so much better if they were just gone.
Jesus, come take your followers, preferably to hell where they belong, because they can’t stop mucking up pur world down here.
scav
Interesting that superdelusional does essentially agree that more money is part of the solution because she rules that out of anything she’ll accept as a proposal.
superdestroyer
@scav:
There is almost no correlations between spending on education and good academic outcomes. There was a study in Illinois that showed that academic performance was negatively correlated with spending since more money is spent of inner city schools than on rural schools. If money was the deciding factor, then the District of Columbia would have the best public schools in the country and Utah would have the worst.
Saying that the only way to improve schools is to make everyone poor so that every is equal is a non-starter.
Maybe the best way to look at schools is to figure out how to get the most academic learning improvement for the lowest costs. However, the results would be very politically incorrect and would be allowed to happen.
Josie
The mayor may want to check with Houston and some other school districts in Texas, who are still dealing with the influx of refugees from Katrina. Many of those refugees could not afford to move back and are stuck where they are. Louisiana just shifted its problem children to other locations and now wants to take credit for raising standards. Total bullshit.
Todd
OT – Damn idiot stenographers that call themselves journalists these days. After hearing this morning’s breathless announcements about new bits of malware set to blow up Monday, I went to look. AP sent out a “doomed, we’re all doomed” piece which got picked up by the morons at Fox. To me, it looked about as sophisticated as a letter from the executive assistant to the deceased Nigerian oil minister, and invited people to click on a “you may be infected” link in Google or Facebook. It also gave a web address to the working group, a web address which is not on the page that the FBI publishes to direct people to their actual working group. My guess is that you’ll get a tasty bit of malware if you visit the link that Fox published, or if you click on that helpful scamware advisory in Google or Facebook.
Just run your existing, freshly updated malware suites, OK?
scav
@superdestroyer: You ruled out money altogether as a part of any solution, which is revealing of your real motivation. In a situation where schoolteachers are out of pocket buying stuff for classrooms, I have a feeling that some more cash wouldn’t go amiss. This is like reading about the sweatshop labor where the seamstresses were made to buy the thread they used. And until I had a lot more information about all the other factors distinguishing the performance of inner city schools and rural schools in the specific instance studied, I wouldn’t leap on the conclusion that money is ruled out of the things that would improve schools in all circumstances, everywhere. Money to the school won’t fix situations where the families can’t help with homework. Money to the school might help if the problem is the kids can’t buy the books.
ETA: and Politically Incorrect? It’s become Political Suicide to suggest money could improve anything whatsoever in this country. Taxes are the new Tabu, so all projects now come equiped with a magic fairy that provides funding out of bloody nowwhere.
Anya
@Josie:
They are not refugees. They’re citizens who moved from one part of their country to another part. If you want to label them, the proper term is “Internally Displaced Persons.”
mai naem
This country is not that different from third world countries when it comes to schools. The private schools are generally very good schools with motivated parents.More importantly, I truly believe if you offer a free meal for dinner with a tutoring program I would bet test scores, graduation rates etc.etc. would increase substantially.
Jado
“If only we had some sort of systematized guidelines for how to accurately evaluate sociological data….”
But we don’t.
Well, we DO, but it’s a liberal commie method that shows the true results of conservative ideology, so that’s completely discounted.
After all, if it conflicts with Divinely Received Wisdom, it’s obviously wrong…
Bob2
The last few weeks in Sucky Methodology have been Andrew Sullivan linking to De Rugy’s “economic analysis” nonstop.
Sigh.
Ash Can
@superdestroyer: You’ve ignored all the other solutions the commenters have presented in response to your original comment.
And then you go on to mischaracterize this study (heaven forbid you’d furnish the link yourself), which actually reaches this conclusion:
The problem in the state of Illinois is not the funding itself, it’s the inefficient way that funding is doled out to the schools (i.e., based solely on the number of students who qualify for reduced-price lunches). The difference in funding between schools in areas with the greatest poverty, which tend to have the poorest outcomes, and in areas with the least poverty, which tend to have the best outcomes, is immense. And yet, the difference in outcomes is “small but statistically significant.” Given that the disparity in funding is not small at all, and well beyond “statistically significant,” I’d say those two factors actually don’t correlate well at all.
As others have said here, and as you’ve ignored so as not to disturb your precious world views, neither the problem nor the solution is found in funding alone, but at getting at the root causes of poor academic performance. However, funding is both useful and necessary to address some of these root causes, so focusing exclusively on funding, with the aim of cutting it, not only doesn’t address the real problem, it’s counterproductive.
As for focusing on getting the best results for the least amount of money, I suggest you spend time talking to some actual teachers and administrators at actual schools, even “wealthy” ones, about how much unused money they have floating around, and where the funding they have comes from. You’d get quite an education. But then, it may cause you to question your prejudices, and you’d hate to have that happen, now wouldn’t you?
scav
You do have to wonder about a group where ‘least cost solutions’ are judged equivalent to ‘solutions that cost no additional money’ unless of course we’re discussing the military where suddenly the budget is unbounded.
Pathman
Disaster capitalism in action.
Original Lee
@mai naem: Our church has started hosting Homework Nights to the local community on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The church supplies supper and tutors, and the neighborhood kids can come in and get help on their homework. We started out with about 5 kids and by the end of the year had about 40 regulars. The principals of the nearby schools sent very nice letters at the end of the school year, thanking us for helping raise their test scores.
Another school not too far away started paying the teachers a cut of the aftercare fees to stay after school and help the kids in aftercare with their homework. The only caveat was that they could only work with kids who weren’t in their classroom. The kids got healthy snacks before homework time, and many of them got their homework done before they went home, and there was a significant improvement in overall performance and in test scores. They are adding a similar program to the beforecare program in the fall.
So something very simple and not all that expensive can make a big difference.
Culture of Truth
@scav: If the Pentagon had fewer golf courses we would never have won in Iraq and Afghanistan.
dslak
If we don’t get better results with more money, then surely less money will get better results!
YellowJournalism
And let’s not forget that at good charter or private schools with waiting lists, there’s always the option of kicking out struggling or uncooperative students, sending them back to the public schools to become “someone else’s” problem.
Ash Can
@scav: Seeing as Superdestroyer tipped his/her hand with that “making everyone poor” bullshit right off the bat, I gave him/her far more of an argument than s/he deserved. News flash: If paying six bucks more a year in taxes is going to make you poor, you’re already poor.
rikyrah
the posts about this Aspen thing have been hilarious
scav
@Ash Can: Still, I enjoyed your details so thanks from me. And, treating the underlying argument (however poorly articulated and duplicitously phrased) as worthy of a competent rebuttal is to be counted a good thing.
ETA: I may just have invented a few words, if so sorry. I need coffee desperately but that requires adding heat to the environment and, well, you know. . . decisions decisions.
dslak
@scav: Invest in a cold brew coffee system.
ETA: Nevermind. Just try this.
kay
I wondered how the for-profit school industry were going to enter low-income rural areas, because brick and mortar publicly-funded for-profits won’t be profitable in under-performing white working class rural districts. Not enough “marks” er… STUDENTS.
I got my answer. On-line for-profits!
They’re selling them hard in low-income rural areas in OH and MI.
They’re advertised as “free!” Which is of course a lie. They’re funded with taxpayer money taken from rural districts and transferred to wherever the on-line operator is based.
geg6
OT, but did anyone else catch Ann Romney saying, more than once, that Obama and his campaign want to and have vowed to “kill” Rmoney? It was an interview with, who else, Jan Crawford and Mrs. Dancing Horse did not explain that she meant that metaphorically nor was she asked what she meant by the remarks, reiterated strongly more than once.
She has plausible deniability, of course, but I’m guessing there was some code in there saying something about how the blahs want to kill us all. Gawd, I want to slap her ugly face. Ugly because of what spews out of it, not because of how it looks.
PeakVT
@kay: They’re funded with taxpayer money taken from rural districts and transferred to wherever the on-line operator is based.
Good luck with those struggling rural economies.
EconWatcher
OT, but can anyone explain why Kaine is underperforming compared to Obama so badly in Virginia polling? I mean, there’s like a 12 to 15 point spread.
I’ve been living in the state for about six years, and I really don’t get it. To me, Kaine seems bland and unexciting, but also inoffensive. Allen is obviously a giant racist and all-around DB, which I know helps with the 27%ers, but this is a swing state, with lots of new moderate/lib voters in Northern Virginia. I’d think the “maccaca” stuff would still have some sting.
What’s going on?
arguingwithsignposts
@superdestroyer:
Start by raising minimum per student funding standards in every school building to an acceptable minimum, including “robin hood” funding from all the crackers who don’t want to live in amongst the “others” in the cities. And what Omnes said.
MariedeGournay
What pisses me off the most is that charter schools were an idea the ATF came up with as a way for teachers to develop and test out experimental pedagogical methods. If something worked, it could be introduced to the rest of the school system. The schools would still be under the public school system, but the normal rules would be far more flexible to allow for innovation. A really cool idea that the moneyboys latched onto as a way of getting a slice of public money.
kay
@PeakVT:
I listen to well-intentioned liberal school reformers and I get really angry.
What did they think was going to happen? They deregulated public schools and introduced a profit motive. They thought poor people would WIN in that? Why?
There’s a MI professor that supported the charter movement. Well-intentioned. He’s a crusader now, trying to exclude for-profits. I have contempt for him. How could he be so reckless and stupid? The for-profits are already entrenched, and buying state legislatures. School reformers didn’t see that coming? Jesus. Find another line of work. You’re killing us with kindness out here.
RSA
@Ash Can: Great comment.
I’ll add that when we’re looking at correlations within some range of data, we can’t automatically make inferences about data points far outside that range. Imagine Bill Gates dumping a few billion dollars into the DC system, or enough to give every student a well-paid after-school tutor; by superdestroyer’s argument, this would stand no change of improving the system. I suspect that it would. We can’t ignore floor/ceiling effects.
Phil Perspective
@superdestroyer: Corruption? Just like Mitch Landrieu is a corrupt jackass! Not s shock considering who his sister is!!
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Valdivia:
It’s 52 here on the south Oregon coast, with 67 predicted to be the ‘high’ today.
Summer, where are you?
Litlebritdifrnt
OT – but good news Private Payrolls up 173K in June.
http://www.businessinsider.com/adp-june-jobs-report-2012-7
gene108
@mai naem:
Our drop out rates are a lot lower and our literacy rates are a lot higher.
Our education system works for most people in this country and has done a pretty good job for several decades.
I don’t think most people feel they were poorly educated or their kids are getting a substandard education in “government indoctrination facilities”, formerly known as public schools.
The problem we have is not the education system, but other social factors – poverty, racism, etc. – which more homogenous European countries don’t have to deal with at all, and so are more willing to have things be more equitable all around and thus better test score.
Ohio Mom
For anyone who is interested in what’s happening to the public schools, I can’t recommend Diane Ravitch’s new blog enough.
http://dianeravitch.net/
gene108
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Only if you consider 95+ and sunny summer weather…I’m sure there are parts of this world, where this wouldn’t be all that hot…
Phil Perspective
@geg6: So, you are shocked that Ann R-money is a racist clown? In case you forgot, R-money was already working at Bain by the time the Mormons recognized blah people as real people.
Raven
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Hot hot hot but not as hot as last week!
Corner Stone
@superdestroyer:
I would be interested to hear a few of the ways we could get the most academic learning improvement for the lowest costs.
NotMax
10 hours without a new front page post?
That may be a record.
Call Guinness.
dcdl
I have a friend that home-schools and last year signed up for a charter school that does distance ‘learning’. The charter school gets about $6000 and my friend gets $900 to buy school supplies and activities. What the charter school supplies is a teacher that comes out about once a month to talk to the parent and children about what they are doing and any concerns they have. When my friend is done with the charter school all the school books and such she has bought she has to give to the charter school.
My friend basically home-schools her children and gets money to buy whatever program or books she wants. She also uses the money for other things like field trips and swimming lessons, art lessons, etc. Then the charter school teacher comes out once a month to discuss any concerns, questions, or whatever my friend wants to talk about.
Corner Stone
I’m telling you people – if this is the kind of horrific future we have to look forward to due to global climate change, we all have to get off our ass and do something to fix it NOW!
From Cole’s twit feed:
“Power is out and I am completely naked on the back deck in the rain drinking scotch. America, fuck yeah!”
Ash Can
@scav: Hey, if I’m going to be irascible and swear and kick trolls, you can certainly make up a few words.
arguingwithsignposts
@Corner Stone: this is why we can’t have nice things.
schrodinger's cat
@Corner Stone: He probably wants to try Creakle’s methods, if that fails send the children to work in a blacking factory.
NotMax
Wanna bet how many of the retrograde sub-morons behind or attending this event use home schooling?
Flier for whites only pastors’ conference has residents upset
Can just imagine the curriculum. “No, Jimmy Ray, there’s a double ‘l’ in Kristallnacht.”
Soonergrunt
@superdestroyer:
As Corner Stone says here, I would be interested to hear your ideas on this if you have any.
Corner Stone
@schrodinger’s cat: Well, I saw that money was not an acceptable answer as The Answer. And I saw we just won’t accept making everyone equally poor, as I and others have strongly advocated here many times in the past.
So I was curious about these other lower cost improvement ways. I’d like to hear some of them please.
Mino
@kay: Ah, that must be the ads I have seen.
Try raising the minimum wage significantly and applying it fully. And apply salaries for excess stenographic overhead in the schools to supplies.
Davis X. Machina
@MariedeGournay:
This. It was an attempt to have a little R&D capacity in a ‘business’ that otherwise wouldn’t have any at all, not outsourcing in sheep’s clothing. The lab schools attached to universities were the model.
The first generation of (modern) school reform was based on sending ideas that worked in the charters back into the schools generally. Things like the Coalition of Essential Schools don’t parachute in to set up and operate their own schools, they try to transform them, with an explicit social-justice orientation.
RSA
@Corner Stone:
Me, too. But it’s not clear that superdestroyer is interested in possible answers. Based on earlier comments, I’d guess that the question really is this: “How can we get the most academic learning improvement without spending any more money?” Because otherwise we’d be talking about such-and-such a pot of additional money and the best way to use it.
evinfuilt
@NotMax:
You catch the comments on that… Wow, I don’t think all the residents are quite as upset as the others wished.
schrodinger's cat
@Corner Stone:
Well Victorian England had schools for the poor where they learnt their place in the society or if deemed undeserving for even that, they were sent to factories to work while they were still children.
ETA: I was referring to the school in David Copperfield, hi
kay
@Mino:
The on-line school thing is so weird to me, because we’ve been sending underperforming or delinquent kids to online schools here for years. Public schools went along with it, because they don’t know what to do with them, and outsourcing low-performers improves test scores. The delinquent or truant kids joke about it. They’re “going” to internet school. They finish the lesson in an hour, and then they’re free as birds, because their parents are at work, which means they end up back before the judge. It was a disaster on a small scale, and everyone involved knew it. I can’t imagine why anyone would expand it, other than “it’s lucrative!” Do they really think these parents are at home, checking lessons and hosting innovative and educational field trips? They make 20,000 dollars a year. They’re at work. The kids are unsupervised. Duh.
Ruckus
@Corner Stone:
Given the source I’d say the answer is if you just lower costs…
As in:
1. Lower taxes/cost
2. Who cares
3. Profit!
That’s not the answer you were asking for but would be the one provided. As a number of people have pointed out basic poverty is a huge part of the problem. And as rethugs don’t give a crap about anyone but themselves they will never solve the problem.
Conservatives must have a mental defect that just blocks out the concept of cause and effect. And/or they are unbelievably terrible at statistics(math of any kind?).
slag
@kay:
Wait. Are you suggesting that there’s no market-driven profit in helping poor people? Shocked! Shocked I say!
jake the snake
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Trade with you. The only day this week that did not hit 100+ was the 4th and that was because we finally got some rain.
scav
@dslak: Now THAT I can try as I’ve all the ingredients in house already. Mas Thanks.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@NotMax:
They are holding a cross burning after the
christian pastors conferenceKlan rally?That’s mighty white of them.