According to the Chicago Tribune, Poor Kids Thrive in Charter School. (Here’s a no registration required version, and a related story). This brings to mind a thesis that all we need to do to improve schools in poor neighborhoods is turn them over to private management and let them be charter schools. Free them of government oversight and teachers unions; let the miracle of free markets do the rest. Unfortunately their anecdote does not prove the headline.
The school in question is the Preuss School, run by the University of California at San Diego. Here, 750 specially chosen students from around the area attend a $14 Million facility one more month a year, one more hour a day, and have double-length classes that meet every other day. Parental participation and volunteerism is expected. Evidence of their success is high attendance, high college admissions rates, and high rates of actually taking the SAT. A better title for this essay might be “Select Group of Poor Kids Thrive in One Particular Charter School.”
What they have proven is that the sort of student who will enroll in such a school, and whose parents will support such a decision, are achievers.
Companies that run private and charter schools — companies like Edison and Nobel — do not have $14 Million facilities. Nor can any school district afford to turn every campus into such a facility. Few organizations have the ability to make teachers work more hours. Neither private companies nor average school districts have the backing of major universities and the bottomless pool of Education Majors those universities are training. This model is replicable, but absolutely cannot be made universal.
Speaking of what is best for the children, what was the American Academy of Pediatrics thinking when they published a report suggesting a wait and see attitude for kids’ ear infections? Waiting a week might be reasonable, but “For children who are not at risk for speech, language or learning problems, ‘watchful waiting’ for at least three months is recommended instead of treatment.”
Just what every parent wants to do, spend 3 months watching and waiting with a kid whose ears hurt. Besides which, almost by definition a kid who has an earache for 3 months is at risk for speech, language, or learning problems. The strange thing is that the members of the AAP will wonder why parents find this advice unacceptable.