Charter Schools aren't the solution

I don't know if any of the people who voted for National thought they'd get a failed experiment on the educational opportunities available to poorer kids in New Zealand, but they have.

My friend Stef has written a brilliant post about this, at http://traintheteacher.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/charter-schools-and-loser-students/

Here's a snippet. Go read the post. It's important. You'll find it stimulating.

I did. I know that "Oh" that Stef talks about.

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Would our futures have been improved if the best and brightest among us got shipped off to a shiny charter school?

I don’t know.

But I do know that if you have a system which not only tolerates but encourages the idea of winner and loser schools the natural corollary is that you must also tolerate loser students. For the kids who are told that they are somehow less worthy a person by virtue of which school they attend that really sucks. Believe me the kids in the so-called failing schools know when they’ve been given up on not just by their local community but society as a whole.

And when a society treats whole communities as dumping grounds for problems associated with poverty it is little wonder that schools and teachers serving them are often viewed as lesser quality. Quite frankly I don’t blame parents for wanting to do something, anything really, to get their kids out of dodge.

But what exactly are they running away from? Is it really a bad schooling or is it about ensuring their children have sufficient cultural capital to gain entrance into the middle class?

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The problem is that we have is a tail of 20% of students who are under achieving and I’m willing to wager a steak and cheese pie that this tail is found largely in the schools serving our poorest communities.

But poverty isn’t destiny right?

When kids come to school hungry they won’t learn as effectively as the kids who don’t.

When kids are taking extra time off school because they are contracting preventable diseases they won’t learn as effectively as the kids who don’t.

When kids are in unstable living in overcrowded and at times unpredictable living situations they won’t learn as effectively as kids who don’t.

The ‘Poverty Is Not Destiny’ (or ‘Demography Is Not Destiny’ if you like alliteration) crowd that will soon pop up will imply that these issues are not very relevant since they are out of the teacher’s control.  They will say that teachers who speak out against the regime about to be implemented are lazy and seek to shift blame away from their performance.  I’d say that they are worse since they deny the importance that poverty has on student performance.

More importantly why is New Zealand trashing the idea that our education system should guarantee a child, whether they are rich or poor, can rock up to any school in this country and get a great education taught by highly qualified teachers? A kid’s life chances shouldn’t come down to whether their parents happen to not have capital, cultural or otherwise, to choose the ‘right’ school for their kids.

Comments

[David Craig]

All those years of Liberal Conservative coalition in Australia gave them something we havent got here: a two tier health and education system. I was pleased/ relieved the Nats werent seeming to be moving in that direction: and now this. Shit. We have got a fight on our hands in education, I think more important than standards (though that matters too).

[mspy]

the charter-school movement is one of the chances to involve entire communities in redesigning all schools and converting them to "client-centered, learning cultures