The Government has recently announced its framework for charter schools to be introduced into our education system. It would be convenient to believe that this is an initiative solely driven by John Banks and ACT. However information released under the OIA shows National was considering this model well before the election.
Much of the research I have read – especially that coming out of Stanford University – tells us that any ‘gains’ from charter schools are nominal and inconsistent, plus there are major concerns around quality. Such schools also suck money from the public purse and privatise the profits, while having less accountability than their wholly public counterparts.
So Charter Schools can:
- Pay teachers whatever they like
- Employ unregistered teachers
- Establish a governance board that is not necessarily made up of parents
- Screen which students may or may not attend their school
- Vary the delivery of an education curriculum or not draw from the NZ education curriculum
Charter Schools are particularly attractive to adherents of faith-based schools and private sector interest groups. One only needs to ask why such schools were not established under existing provisions of the Education Act as ‘special character’ schools. Could it be that these schools do not want to conform to the same obligations as other taxpayer-funded schools, or be accountable to the wider public who want to promote tolerance through diversity of opinion and faith rather than the prospect of ‘closed community’ thinking?
National is promoting charter schools as a fix for the ‘long tail of underachievement’ (read Maori and Pasifika) and a remedy for the significant issues faced by network provision in Christchurch post-earthquakes. However, aside from local forums in South Auckland (where the government plans a charter school) and Christchurch, there has been a deafening silence when it comes to wider consultation.
New Zealand already has an education system that caters for diversity – we have public schools, private and integrated schools, kura kaupapa and wharekura. If we want to improve outcomes for ‘underachieving’ students then let’s look at shifting the mindset around the ‘norm’, so that curriculum content, relationships between student and principal, recognition of the corresponding importance of language, culture and identity align to educational and vocational pathways for young people.
All of that can be achieved through the public school system.
True, but a charter school can also:
1. Pay teachers on performance (good ones get more than bad ones). Anathema to the left I know.
2.Equally they can employ registered teachers (as is likely as who wouldn’t want to work for more money based on your performance?)as well as unregistered ones. To that point I have witnessed some appalling registered teachers. A registration is no guaruntee of teaching skill, it merely states you survived your first two years without damaging anyone too severely. It keeps criminals out, which is a good thingh, but this can be acheived by Police vetting, like any job.
3. Establish a governance board with the correct skill and experience mix to run an entity in the manner you would run any organisation.
4. Exclude students who don’t fit the character of the school (as all religious schools do now), or have a negative effect on the other students.
5. They can choose not teach to NCEA assessment standards and actually teach to a sufficient standard so that Universities and Polytechnics aren’t having to ‘fill in the gaps’ just to get students started. This happens now, my son does baccalaureate instead.
“The ‘long tail of underachievement’ ” did not improve and in some areas, got worse under 9 years of Labour, why is it only now such a concern?
“All of that can be achieved through the public school system.” Ha!
Interestingly enough, research by Harvard (November 2011 dated) on charter schools in NYC led to this quote
“We show that input measures associated with a traditional resource-based model of education
– class size, per pupil expenditure, the fraction of teachers with no teaching certification, and the
fraction of teachers with an advanced degree – are not positively correlated with school effectiveness.”
Also research from MIT suggests that charter schools (in Massachusetts anyhow) in urban areas with lower performance per average (such as south Auckland) produce better outcomes particularly for minorities.
I would be particularly interested in seeing some comment (slightly unrelated) on the Gillard Labor Government’s plan to introduce performance reviewing into Australia.
John Banks says a Charter School can be built by God in six days (and on the seventh He rests).
Forget evidence … Just believe!
Will children be forced by the state to attend charter schools? If not, why the scare mongering?
Charter schools are simply a means to break the last vestige of trade union rights and to give the private sector access to tax dollars spent on education.
The private sector that is so good at education that most private schools had to be bailed out by tax payers.
Note; that despite all the tax payer dollars and effort poured into charter schools in the USA, 83% do not do any better than State schools. (Stanford University study, among others) The majority do worse. Given the poor performance of State schooling in the USA generally that is not a recommendation.
Why follow the disaster that is schooling and health in the USA.
We will see a few initial Potemkin charter schools do well, then the poor results of others will be buried.
They will not have any better results than resourcing State schools properly, to use already proven programs to reduce the tail. Successful programs such as remedial reading and Teacher aids in every classroom are being starved of funds so the Government can fund ideological nightmares such as charter schools.
If NACT was serious about bringing up educational achievement they would be working on reducing child poverty and funding extra help at early primary level for those falling behind, instead of gifting the private sector money out of education funding.
If the private sector are so good at education why don’t they start their own schools. Wait! they did. We are paying to bail them out right now!
I suppose withdrawing funding from, and dumbing down, State schools will make charter schools look better.
Same principle as putting overpaid MBA’s in and demanding extra dividends from, SOE power companies, to enable the private ones to compete.
http://kjt-kt.blogspot.co.nz/2010/08/performance-pay-for-teachers.html
“In less easily defined jobs like management, performance pay has failed to deliver better performance.
In fact higher pay to top management and higher performance pay, in British research, correlates with the worst performing companies”.
The evidence for and against these schools is already in. I attended the meeting in South Auckland and heard a lot of information which was collated by Educational experts from Massey University in PN. It was truly alarming. Here are some of the facts as I recall them. After the introduction of charter schools, Sweden has fallen, according to international studies such as PISA, from 13th pace to 26th. Targeting places such as Christchurch which have suffered a disaster has led to central New Orleans now having no public schools. Some ‘choice!’ As for helping the underacheivers, two thirds of black males in some states of America are thrown out of these schools and returned to the public education system. Their failure is not counted in the Charter Schools achievement results. Schools are not businesses. Schools are there to educate the whole child; to socialise children and expand their minds. Competitive models have been proven to lead to a narrowing of the curriculum and teaching to the test. Charter Schools are everything to do with the privatisation and destruction of our first class education system and nothing to do with fairness and helping the ‘tail’ which incidentally is, on new figures, about 13% i.e. normalto low internationally. Initiatives are already working to help these kids, but I fear the funding will be deflected instead to this appalling experiment. A lot of debate and information can be found on the Stand up for Education facebook page.
charter schools will never be a fix for the ‘long tail of underachievement’ – that is only spin.
Charter schools only have two purposes – privatisation of the education sector and bring down the cost of education for the govt.
To privatise, first get rid of the teachers collective contract by setting up schools outside the rules of a state school. The charter school can then employ who they want and pay what they want. They will have a contract to “deliver” outcomes in Literacy and numeracy so will teach to those.
This will be a sorry mess for the chldren who get caught up in these schools.
What a farcical govt.
Rex, if you are that worried, don’t send your kids to a charter school…it can’t get any simpler than that.
Unfortunately Indiana I didn’t make it clear what I was saying. This is about the deconstruction of the state education system – and privatising schools so that they cost the govt less. Be clear about charter schools real purpose and it has nothing whatsoever to do with fixing the long tail of underachievement. if the govt truly wanted to fix this they would be putting the resource into completely different areas.
And the evidence about charter schools performance in USA shows very patchy educational outcomes – why spend so much money on something that is so dubious?
We have an excellent state school system – make it more effective by building on the pedagogy that has developed in the kiwi classroom with kiwi solutions to those areas that are not effective. But clearly identify the causes first. Much educational failure is not about schools – it is about what is going on in the community. if you have a year 5 child turn up to school, having already been to 6 schools since he was 5, can you honestly say it is the schools fault that this child is way below expectation?
Charter schools have no place in NZ.
What is wrong with you Indiana? It’s not about some personal choice that a parent makes. The State mandates that all kids must attend school between the ages of 5 and 16 so the State has an obligation to ensure there is a good local school available for every child. Syphoning a few fo the best off and pumping them through a profit-driven charter school just leaves all the other kids worse off.
Tell me the country in the world that has improved its educational perfromance with league tables, performance pay and charter schools. You won’t be able to because the top-performing systems do none of that. We are copying UK, USA and now Australia all in a race to the bottom
“All of that can be achieved through the public school system.”
So why hasn’t it then. Maybe because teachers (teachers unions) refuse to even contemplate doing anything different. Look at the National Standards debacle. Too bad if parents wanted some tangible feedback on what a school was achieving. What would they know – they are only parents. So did the teacher unions look at trying to influence National Standards to address any issue – no it was the teachers way or the highway. So teachers have now put themselves in the position of “problem”, not part of the solution. The 20% tail has been there for years – what have the education professionals done. Protected their patch. Yep. Anything else. Ummmm.
I sent my kids to state school in a zone I did not live in based on the feedback from parents who had kids in the school that I was zoned for. One of the best things I have done for my kids. If a charter school opened up in my zone now, I would not rush to change my kids school as I am very satisfied with where they are now. If the charter school cannot get its role numbers up, then I would expect any government not to continue to fund a school where it cannot warrant the funds based on low role numbers, like any state school in NZ.
Parents to have a personal choice as to which school they send their kids to, even home schooling. To say that charter schools will take away this freedom of choice is misinformative. No child will be relocated from their current school to boost role numbers at a charter school.
Plain and simple it is a matter of choice which school you send your kids to.
If kiwi solutions are so good, where is the evidence they are being adopted by other countries?
What is wrong with you Indiana?
Indiana is a National Party shill! Indiana has been trying to undermine reasonable discussion on this blog-site for a long time now. Her success rate is zilch thus far.
Indiana is best ignored.
One Track:
“All of that can be achieved through the public school system.”
“So why hasn’t it then?”
You must remember that schools are constrained by the resources they receive from the govt – they only receive enough money for the set teacher-Pupil ratios. They only receive enough money for general operations [eg admin costs] In order to provide programmes over and above this the school has to generate the money to pay for it. So to provide an extra class, a school has to find an extra $65000.00 [approx] – no easy task when the typical gala day raises $10 – $15000.00. So if you want the schools to do more, such as providing fully resourced extra assistance to children who are under achieving, the govt has to stump up with more cash. Instead they want to move that money to the private sector.
And can you tell me what country or jurisdiction has improved underachievement with charter schools? If you can show me one I would love to go and see it.
Your comments suggest to me that you haven’t had the opportunity to spend time in a primary school. I think you might be just very surprised to find out what actually goes on in the way of extra programmes etc. For example, enviro education, ICT developments, Inquiry learning and remediation programmes – usually done on the smell of an oily rag ! ! !
We need kiwi solutions for kiwi problems. Not imported failures.
@Anne
I actually thought she sounded reasonable – but it sounds like ‘reasonable discussion’ to you involves no opposing viewpoints?
Indiana – two questions for you:
If the choice is already there why introduce charter schools?
Is every suburb going to have a charter school so parents can have a choice?
If the choice is already there why introduce charter schools?
What is wrong with having more to choose from? Do you think parents will be incapable of making the right informed decisions?
Is every suburb going to have a charter school so parents can have a choice?
Most likley not, but a parent may choose to send their child to charter school, but live in a suburb that does not have a charter school. Much like I sent my children to an out of zone school, or those that send their kids to private schools as not every suburb has a private school.
IMO the issue here is about gambling with kids’ futures. Too bad if ten years down the track the ‘graduates’ from these ‘for profit’ schools come out as dumb as they went in. Sure, they can recite the Bible backwards, but what use is that to employers looking for 21st century skills and adaptability? I reckon you guys need to figure out this is not about teachers, it’s about the kids. It will be a stretch for you, but maybe try it?
Indiana – we have a state school system which ranks as one of the best in the world. Better than USA. Better than UK.
If there is a need to fix something, why take all the money and create a parallel system when that money would be far far better spent in the existing state system? Just so parents can have a choice, which you say already exists???
Doesn’t make any sense until you understand the agenda behind implementing charter schools, which has nothing to do with student achievement.
I said it before “these Tory buggers suck!” They don’t like kids, except maybe John Keys Kidz, over soldier on a winters day. It as if, if it for people – they don’t like it. Mr Robertson – Why you not ripping Mayor Quimby a new one? Come on bro – harden up man. He takes bribes and wants to run schools the American way – and we know there education system a bit of a fail – that system brought us both Bushes. Were Aotearoa/NZ we smarter and as such better.
Love out
yarp Adam, and coz like we are so oresome at spellings and everthink.
School does not = education.
Monopolies are bad.
Forget league tables.
Consider the morality of the initiation of force, which has no place in a modern society.
Taxation is theft.
Compulsion is immoral.
Apparently Parata is considering photo-id’s for registered teachers.
Will the people in front of the children in these charter experiments be required to have the proposed photo ID’s as well?
Rob S
Haven’t been around long have you mate. Are you another NAct govt. shill?
Sheepdog – come out from you pseudonym – and I’ll give you a HUGG!
Charter schools will be like Christian madrassas with John Banks teaching all classes from the Bible by video link.
Nact have set out to do the utmost damage possible to the state system and push privatisation.
Misguided, Lange had a go a remedying a personal grievance and when guided by Picot a private school advocate and neoliberal, was stupid enough to blindly dismantle a well performing education system and produce tomorrows schools.
Area Education Boards who were elected by school committees who were also elected, were abandoned after nearly a hundred years of fostering and protecting the state school system with expertise and fiscal efficiency as well as an Inspectorate of highly trained and experienced professional staff.
Schools are now divided, standing alone run by unskilled parents. The School Trustee Association is in the Govt pocket and does not serve schools.
Lange was foolish and we have not plugged the many holes caused by the 1989 change.
Nact’s National Standards are just another ploy to appeal to conservative knockers who usually have little understanding of education across the various strata of society. Education is much wider that teaching literacy.
Where are the Charter schools on using the fabled National standards. Teacher standards, pay rates and the lot thrown out. Hypocrisy ? Nah just not hiding the agenda, Fools believe what they are told.
Nact do not want a cohesive society. International money and power has learnt well to create “us and them”.
Education for the masses is being reduced across a wide slice of the western world with raising of fees and other means of exclusion. Meanwhile the taxes are diverted to private entities such as the proposed charter schools for the rich. The criticism of the state schools is anecdotal and defies hard data.
A study of comparative education internationally shows our state system to be among the best on offer.
Our nation has been developed on the backbone of a one education system provided for all with the majority attending. Compulsory, free and secular since 1877, formed out of a largely private mix which was inefficient, fracturous and costly.
In recent years school “fees” have crept into the burden carried by parents where legally State Schools are still free. The State School System has set the standards that private schooling has to follow and compete with.
The mooted charter schools are but a device to further divide. Coincident with selling off state assets hard won over generations while beneficiaries are bashed, solo mothers and their children further disadvantaged, growing unemployment, union bashing and all the while Nact borrowed more to balance the deficit caused by the private bankers.
CEO’s pay continues to rise exponentially and the gulf of wealth inequity widens steadily without any mechanisms to address the consequences of channeling even more to the wealthy.
Living beyond our means ? Hardly but the real cause of our problems is not talked about.
Parasitic Bankers and their lackeys in political guise.
National and its ‘kept couple’ are truely pathetic and indicate the depths to which that coalition will descend in attempts to compromise the sensible concerns (and solidarity) of the majority of the state teaching profession.
Once, it was the seriously destructive ‘voucher proposal’, now we have ‘charter schools’…. Amazingly and disturbingly foisted on us just days AFTER the election. Clearly, this was a dirty little ‘secret’ considered too dangerous to trumpet before a close fought election. That is the measure of the integrity of these wreckers. For wreckers they surely are, and for no good purpose at all, except to appeal to the disaffected, the uninformed, and to attempt to undermine our state teachers. – never mind the indirect damage to public education
There is no doubt that we have one of the best education systems world wide.. not without its problems – but toying with the “charter laisse faire gamble” is the work of those wishing to cause destructive change for the sake of seeming in the short term to be ‘doing something’.
We have independant and integrated schools. So with those options and the mostly very good state system, there is ample opportunity to try new initiatives to help less achieving students… but with serious, experienced, and proper oversight.
I see today Banks is reported (DomPost) as a creationist( ‘according to Genesis’ -yes indeed!). Perhaps the ‘charter school’ gimmick is a desperate last stand to try and entice someone, anyone? – the fundamentalist faction(?) – to ACT. But I doubt ACT has a healthy political ‘destiny’, even there… in some sort of ‘life with Brian’?.. John?
So God help his deceit.. because he is not really THAT stupid, is he?.. But, I suppose if you can forget a Dotcom Helicopter trip and ‘pennies from heaven’ you can easily dismiss dinosaurs and science.
Evidence is clear that ‘the Right’ likes a dumbed down electorate as it suits their selfish ends. Witness much of the the support for the GOP(yeah right) in the States(Half of them are creationists too, John!).
It would be perverse to suggest that any NZ government would deliberately damage our education system for electoral advantage, except perhaps that such is NACTs dislike and fear of a strong and educated teacher lobby, that rational thought is lost in the contest.
Hekia, are you being used?
Auckland Grammar School is a State School and has one of the finest records academically, culturally and sport’s wise.
It is based on strict discipline and achievement, if you attend Auckland Grammar School you obey the rules otherwise you are asked to leave and that includes teachers.
Striving for mediocrity does not count. Trying to be average does not count.
Some excel academically, some excel on the sports field, some excel in the arts and music.
At Auckland Grammar School you are encouraged to excel in the subjects you choose to take.
Quote Sir George Fowlds Minister of Education and Health 1899-1911
“Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might”.
The union/state monopolists who think they have a right to control the nations children are running scared at the idea that the actual people will finally have the chance to free themselves of their bondage and be able to make their own choices for their children…..squim baby squim!
Originally education was provided by the private sector via “charter like’ for profit schools….and literacy rates climbed at a phenomenal rate…then the state grabbed control and downhill it went….
So Charter Schools are designed to reduce that tail ???
Yeah, they are going to go to all the current state schools and take those children who are not making it and give them a targeted education.
I should think that, quietly, principals around the country will be rubbing their hands … only it ain’t gonna happen.
BS Indiana! Over two thirds of parents send their kids to the LOCAL school because that’s all they can afford, because they can’t run the kids across time while working full time, or because they are kept out of the school they want to go to or because they live in a rural area. Shopping around may be good for the idle, urban middle class but the rest of us need the guarantee that out nearest school will be a good one. Syphoning tax payer funding into a proft-driven charter school which will be carefully selecting kids that produce the best results for hte least investment is one way to ensure that my local school is worse off in all respects. You seem to live on your own planet with no clue about what life is like for most people – but that doesn’t stop you pontifcating. The reason Finland is so successful educationally is that it has a network of high-quality local schools so it doesn’t waste money providing niche schools of choice for those who are afraid to let their kids mix with anyone of a different class, race or religion.
Well said Acrosstic.
Choice doesnt actually exist for most people and charter schools will not provide an alternative choice either.
Choice as an idea is dreamland.
We have good schools in NZ – lets invest every dollar we can into those schools to make them better – the kiwi way.
@Anne – not really, I just think people are allowed a viewpoint regardless if it is opposing, is daft, or is parroting a party line.
@Accrostic – where did you come up with the 2/3rds statistic? I am interested in reading the source (unless it is one of the 70% of statistics that are made up on the spot). Your comment ‘idle urban middle class’ lights up your ideological views like a search light by the way – funnily enough the are idle people in ALL social strata, not just the middle or the rich, and I don’t think class warfare is likely to fix it (Stalin guided towards that – and that went REAL well).
@Paul B – One logical extension of your argument is lesser educated people end up in blue collar jobs or on benefits (a traditional vote pool for the left). Why would the political centre-right want that.
Jacko – You have your history very wrong.
@ Rob S
Your assertion seems to be that a dumbed down electorate would suit Labour and consequently National would never want that.
I disagree. John Key has huge support among the redneck and less educated.(I would assert that he likes their blind ‘devotion’!)
A broad full education encourages critical thought..but National`s idealogy originates from free enterprise (fine) but that can easily degenerate a little to favouring the wealthy (and wealth) for its own sake – which can become an exercise in selfish adavantage. I believe that that has occured (It will even sell our assets for THEIR financial advantage!)
A sound education system should encourage very wide interest and inquiry and promote social character and values.
What worries me most about the National/ACT education agenda is that it may seriously damage the ‘balance’ of the State Education system. Without representation by all levels of society (wealth, ethnicities,privilage, poverty , and all!) an education system becomes selective and often in a bad way. It must become less relevant.
The State system should represent our whole population.
National & ACT seem to wish to compromise this and not for a good reason.
A dumbed down population suits the “right”!
An education system that trains much of the population for mainly servile purpose, or just utility, suits the “right”!
Of course the ‘DUNACT’ coalition realises that its base idealogy represnts rather few indeed, so it must present itself as a ‘centre right’ group, and it encourages many to that belief. It suits that agreat deal of their followers are fairly ‘dumbed down’.. to swallow the deceit!
@Paul B – Yes, that was what I was saying (I wouldn’t be the first to say it). Can you quantify rednecks and uneducated? I’m serious I have been looking for statistics on voting patterns versus education level.
The only thing I could find was a reference to an 80′s American paper ‘By example, Sigelman et al. (1985), in their multi‐election analysis of Kentuckian voters, found education, as measured on a scale ranging from no formal education to a university degree, to be one of the strongest predictors of electoral participation. ’
If I frame this up with the very low votes for Labour in the last election, it contradicts what you are asserting.
I am with you very strongly in the need for schools to be teaching critical thinking, but having been through the system not so long ago, and having performed job interview’s on interview school leavers and uni grads, I would be hard pressed to stick up for our education system in this respect.
I will point out though that troughing is not just extended to right wing politicians, there are plenty of dodgy examples on the left (and I would guess a few trusts here or there protecting salaries from the taxman).