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Anthony Sabatini, who is running for Congress in Florida's 11th district, reportedly made the remarks during June's Florida Teenage Republicans Youth Summit.
Charter schools are not a monolithic entity, I’m sure some are terrible- but I’ve also seen some that seem to be good, obviously I’ve never been enrolled in one but at least in the public school district I went to it was terrible for a lot of teachers- and harmful to my education and mental health.
No reason to speculate. Charter schools have been studied extensively:
It makes no fucking difference if the school is charter or not unless you’re a Black or Latino kid in a big city. At least from the perspective of test scores.
This suggests that there’s really no advantage to charter schools unless you’re using them as a means to limit class sizes in big cities (which is where that measured effect of improved scores for Black and Latino students comes from). In other words, 30+ years of studying charter schools has once again proved that the biggest factor in improving test scores is smaller class sizes. Every other factor from curriculum to “good teachers VS bad teachers” to teaching styles to how many hours kids spend in classrooms is all nothing in comparison.
Having said that, charter schools have some major statistical advantages over regular (funded via socialism) schools:
They don’t have to take all students. In any given year a regular school has to adjust the number of teachers and classes based on enrollment. If there was a single-year baby boom (e.g. a big storm came through ~6 years ago) they’ll have to hire teachers and somehow “find room” for kids they weren’t sized to handle. This makes the logistics of a charter school much simpler than a regular one and has an enormous impact on measurements of “efficiency”.
It’s far too easy for charter schools to force out kids they don’t like (e.g. underperforming or special needs).
Charter schools don’t have to follow the same curriculum as regular schools. This means they can “teach to the test” far more than regular schools can. This gives them a huge statistical advantage over regular schools that have to give kids a more well-rounded education.
…but forget all that for a moment: The fact that even after 30+ years of evolution charter schools still aren’t outperforming regular schools indicates that they’re a waste of time. If we actually wanted to improve education in this country there’s a few simple changes we can make that would have vastly more impact than charter schools:
Reduce class sizes. The fewer students per teacher the better they do!
Start school later for older children. High school kids should not be waking up at 5AM to go to school! Study after study has shown this has a great big negative impact on academics!
That’s it! Do those two things and the science says our kids will be better educated. Everything else is just shifting the deck chairs around or just wishful thinking (“let’s make all teachers great teachers!”).
BTW: If we want teaching (as a profession) to improve over time we should probably start by paying them more and making it a more stable career. You know, to keep them around instead of having them get so dissatisfied that the majority leave the profession after a few years. Other things like not passing idiotic “Don’t say Gay” laws would also help in this regards.
No reason to speculate. Charter schools have been studied extensively:
https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20104029/
To summarize the conclusions of the study:
This suggests that there’s really no advantage to charter schools unless you’re using them as a means to limit class sizes in big cities (which is where that measured effect of improved scores for Black and Latino students comes from). In other words, 30+ years of studying charter schools has once again proved that the biggest factor in improving test scores is smaller class sizes. Every other factor from curriculum to “good teachers VS bad teachers” to teaching styles to how many hours kids spend in classrooms is all nothing in comparison.
Having said that, charter schools have some major statistical advantages over regular (funded via socialism) schools:
…but forget all that for a moment: The fact that even after 30+ years of evolution charter schools still aren’t outperforming regular schools indicates that they’re a waste of time. If we actually wanted to improve education in this country there’s a few simple changes we can make that would have vastly more impact than charter schools:
That’s it! Do those two things and the science says our kids will be better educated. Everything else is just shifting the deck chairs around or just wishful thinking (“let’s make all teachers great teachers!”).
BTW: If we want teaching (as a profession) to improve over time we should probably start by paying them more and making it a more stable career. You know, to keep them around instead of having them get so dissatisfied that the majority leave the profession after a few years. Other things like not passing idiotic “Don’t say Gay” laws would also help in this regards.