by Catherine Delahunty
This week I met the two American visitors who represent both sides of the Charter Schools debate.
Mike Feinberg is here advocating for the KIPP model of Charter Schools and Karran Harper Royal is a New Orleans parent activist who tells the story of the impact of Charter Schools on state education in New Orleans.
Mike paints a picture of failure across the USA education system which he says his “Knowledge is Power Programme” can help solve.
Karran describes a beaten-down community manipulated into a competitive model of education.
In my personal meeting with Feinberg he was careful to claim that Charter Schools are not a silver bullet, but he did support unregistered teachers and he is a graduate of the “Teach for America” programme (like the Teach First programme here) which takes bright tertiary students and parachutes them into schools with minimal training.
Mike manifests great enthusiasm for academic learning, long hours at school, constant testing and KIPP’s motto “work hard be nice”.
But what was revealing was what he didn’t mention: The value of critical thinking for example, or the benefits to corporates both from the underfunding of state schools and their ability to pump more funds into their favourite charter school.
Rich Americans sponsor Charter Schools because “work hard be nice” is good for them. Work hard in school and don’t question the goals of corporate America, be nice because authority knows best for you. Greed and inequality cannot be challenged. It’s no surprise then that multi-millionaire Julian Robertson sponsored Feinberg’s trip here.
I suggested to Mike that we actually don’t need his model and that he is being used as a political weapon in a war against public education.
Karran Harper Royal spoke about draconian disciplinary methods she’s seen in New Orleans charter schools reminiscent of Victoria Britain. She described how at one school there was a line in the playground behind which some kids must work in silence. She talked about attrition rates and of schools counselling out “failing students.
Most importantly she warned Christchurch people to keep fighting if they want genuine parent participation, not some Orwellian definition of “choice” that undermines their local state schools. She believes in public education free of corporate interests and I say amen to that
Published in Society & Culture by Catherine Delahunty on Thu, September 27th, 2012
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on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
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I suppose what I’m particularly concerned about is the possibility that religious social conservative control of some charter schools could especially be detrimental to the educational progress and retention of LGBT students, especially as transgender students still aren’t protected wholly under the Human Rights Act 1993.
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What does Catherine Delahunty know about education? Is she the kind of person we should be looking to for advice about improving the education sector in NZ? I think not. Catherine never actually completed her BA – she’s a drop out so hardly a good role model.
Mike Feinberg, on the other hand, has built a career through his (not-for-profit) KIPP schools on helping children succeed in education. Perhaps if the KIPP schools were in NZ when Catherine was growing up Mike could have taught her a thing or two about persevering with one’s education?
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It isn’t as if charter schools require educators, parents, children or even taxpayers to do anything different – the beauty of the charter schools idea is that people who don’t want to, don’t need to change. It’s all totally voluntary and even costs the same, or maybe less per child than state schools. So why not try something new, which just might produce some educated, motivated students? Even if it’s a failed experiment that produces mediocre educational results – well, that’s what we are getting right now, so we have nothing to lose.
As an aside, I was sitting near you Catherine and I must say your behaviour during Mike’s speech was appalling. Arriving late, interjecting in a hostile manner while he was talking, and leaving early – you didn’t represent the Greens very well at all. I can see why you aren’t a more public face of the party.
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To be against them for liitle more than they share the same title “charter school”, shows incredibile ignorance.
We should be looking at those charter schools that are highly successful where public schools have failed, and adopting their methods for NZ.
Our childrens education is far too important to be used as a political football, like all the hysterical nonsense around National Standards, which like numerous schools have said, is little different to the assessments they were already doing.
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I think we are learning a lot about Charter Schools and the USA context which from my meeting with Mike Feinberg is very different from our own, as well as the schools being diverse there are some real worries about some of their foci and methods.
We do need to think about the “for profit” clause in the National/ACT agreement as that is a key part of the model being proposed her. The Green believe in innovation in education within strong public quality education. The fact that I didn’t complete my BA doesn’t mean I know nothing about education, I ran a centre for social change education for ten years with a strong pedagogy of participatory learning.. And yes I was muttering a bit in a frustrated way in the back row at the meeting,too much time in the House perhaps, but certainly not interjecting, we had a very polite question session. I am delighted to be hosting Pasi Sahlberg from Finland to talk about education at Parliament this week with a National MP and another speaker (Assoc Prof Graeme Aitken) to put another point of view, lets debate more models before we make changes and lets try and find great ideas to strengthen our public schools which already do better than most in the USA,
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Some charter schools have had a lot of money and effort thrown at them as Potemkin schools. On the whole, charter schools have done less well, even, than the poorly performing and under resourced US State schools. This has already been proven by many studies.
There are much better uses of our education dollars. Identifying what makes some Students, in some State Schools, do better than others and extending it, for example, so that all State schools are excellent.
There is nothing to stop the resources being used to allow State schools to improve and to help those that need it.
A solution which we already know, works. But that would conflict with National delivering State education dollars to their mates for private profit.
Though most of the variance between schools, as we already know, is due to the economic level of the students, not the school.
NACT’s problem is that currently, NZ State schools, unlike US ones, are so good that private schools cannot make it on their own in NZ.
They do not want excellent State schools. It interferes with making a profit from privatisation. The people who fund NACT want their greedy paws on even more of our tax dollars, and wealth.
You want to imitate the USA where they spend the highest amount in the world for health and education, but lag way behind in delivery and quality overall.
As I said, Supporters of charter schools and NACT standards are either greedy or delusional. Why copy the education system that was 28th in the OECD in 2009 and dropping.
Sweden introduced Charter schools. Along with a general swing towards Neo-liberalism. They have dropped, in all indicators, since.
Britain is talking about giving up their version of National standards, because it has been an abject failure.
I don’t know what you think you are arguing about with testing, Photo. No one ever said we should not test. Just that we have to be careful we are really testing for the results we want and interpret the results properly. High stakes tests have no place in early primary school. NACT standards are too narrowly focused, restrictive and intolerant of individuals to do the job. An wasteful and expensive fuckup.
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Our education system was NOT BROKEN, it, like anything, can be improved and Teachers already know what is needed.
The last thing we need is ignorant dicking around, by politicians, yet again!
They would never do it with Doctors. But then their trade Union is much more powerful than the Teachers one.
Last time that was tried they told the Government to get fucked.
The first rule that ignorant new management often break is “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.
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Karry says “There is nothing to stop the resources being used to allow State schools to improve and to help those that need it.”
The current govt has increased the annual education budget by $2,000 million (20%) since they were elected.
That’s a massive increase in resources. And if it’s not measured, we have no idea if it’s made any difference or been a big waste of money.
Kerry says “Our education system was NOT BROKEN..”
Tell that to 20% who finish the education system without a basic ability to read, write or do maths.
Or the 80% of people in prison who can’t read.
Or the massive number who drop out.
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Please catch up ,Photo.
It was never more than 15% and was decreasing over the last few years before NACT got in.
Considering that includes kids with physical, social and intellectual disabilities and those who, in other countries, could not afford to go to secondary school, it is just teacher bashing BS.
If the education budget has been increased it is not going to State education.
30 plus to private schools, so they can compete with State schools, 60 to NACT standards and I suspect the rest to contractors and committees to try and avoid helping kids. HCN now spends 3 times more time in meetings to decide if a child can have funding than they spend with the child.
The money for teaching, remedial programs and other initiatives has disappeared. From the working end of Teaching, funding has been heavily cut.
And, a flawed and too narrow measurement is worse than none. (though we already have many methods in use) Especially if ignorant RWNJ’s like Photo, try and use it to justify ideological, and failed, education decisions.
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Good onya Catherine.. more debate before the Key/Banks Party try to ram it through (like every other bill recently).
We already have private schools in Aotearoa, do we really want more with UNQUALIFIED teachers ?? I think NOT !
Kia-ora
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Kerry says “If the education budget has been increased it is not going to State education.”
What a load of total and utter crap.
Increases from 2007 = 2012 are
Primary and secondary $1,196 million per year
Tertiary $611 million per year
and in early childhood the increase has been $727 million per year.
$2,000 million extra – no wonder teachers are deperate to stop polititians seeing if it’s actually made any difference.
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Excellent analysis of Charter Schools from a NZ academic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9XNG-S7uFQ
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I am shocked by this post.
No discussion at all of what is best for the student. Catherine – isn’t that where the debate should be?
Plus the usual wealth-bashing from this particular Green Party MP… For the record the Robertsons donated their substantial Art collection to the Auckland gallery.
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John – yes an excellent appraisal if your goal is to confirm your pre-existing belief that charter schools are bad.
No appraisal regarding what leads to the best educational outcomes.
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Hi Ryan,
I suspect that it’s difficult to measure the educational outcomes of the ones who drop out of US education, because many of them will die or disappear fairly quickly. This is documented indirectly in “Where have all the liberals gone?” by Jim Flynn.
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