The Clown Car World of Republican Education Policy
I tried to get through all six of the candidate interviews at Campbell's Brown's little union-bashing festival, but I honestly couldn't take any more and skipped John Kasich. As Peter Greene said, it's easy to get sucked in at first... but after a while, the sheer tonnage of BS just gets to be too much.
Peter did a nice job cataloging the memes the Republican candidates spewed throughout the day. I'd like to follow up and present some actual evidence that refutes just about all of their reformy talking points:
- "Teachers unions protect bad teachers and protect the status quo, which has kept students from achieving." There is no evidence that teachers unions have a negative effect on student learning.
- "Vouchers! Vouchers! Vouchers! Vouchers!" No! No! No! No!
- "Charter schools succeed because they are free of bureaucracy." Everyone agrees that charter schools vary substantially in effectiveness. The overall effect of the entire charter sector on student outcomes, however, is very small. High-profile, "successful" charter operators are only a small portion of the overall sector, which includes many for-profit operators running schools that have demonstrated problems with waste, fraud, and abuse.
As to the small number of "successful" charter operators: evidence continues to show much of their "success" is due to serving different student populations than their hosting school districts. Often attrition rates are very high at these charters, and they don't "backfill" open seats. Many also enjoy significant advantages in resources over their hosts.
- "Competition increases pressure on public schools to perform." While there is some evidence accountability pressures can raise test scores, the effects of private voucher - See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-clown-car-world-of-republican.html#sthash.b04SbJRZ.dpuf