Response to Peter Morgan’s Post 'Quality Education'

Your assertion that detecting quality education is largely subjective is not congruent with my view in general.  Some of it can be subjective as you say.  But a great deal is not.  Teen-age pregnancies, High School dropout rates, standardized test scores; post secondary success and lifetime income are all things that can be measured. All are measurements at least in part of education quality.  All are real consequences of the presence or lack of quality education.  http://educationnext.org/great-teaching/ and http://educationnext.org/low-performing-teachers-have-high-costs/ are articles on recent large scale research (20 years, 2.5 million students). 

As to spending levels, you totally miss the point that most critics make.  Schools do not manage money well. Much of what taxpayers pay has nothing to do with education.  Here is a video by one of the successful educators in the US.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDuG4Ege8Aw&feature=relmfu Educators and their allies make rules such as requirements to be teachers, paying Masters in Ed teachers more money, class size, building specifications and staffing levels that have little or no bearing on education outcomes subjective or objective. 

Again your comments on Charter Schools miss the main point: choice. People who send their kids to charter schools are afforded the dignity of choice.  A child entering a public school is assigned a teacher, a school and a curriculum –take it or leave it – up your nose with a rubber hose if you do not like it.  I get comments from parents almost every day to that effect.  Parents who send their kids to Charter schools select the school for their own reason.  They are not treated as stupid idiots who are too dumb to make good choices for their own kids.   

If parents do not like the Charter School, they can leave and select another. The argument that Charter schools are just for inner cities is again bogus. They are concentrated there because a few people such as Dacia Toll, a Yale Law student and Steve Barr, a left wing political operative, decided to find ways of closing the “achievement gap” between poor blacks and Hispanic and white suburban schools.  But if you look at the top schools according to Newsweek that was just published a great many of the top schools in the US are suburban Charter Schools with open enrollment, lotteries because they are over subscribed.  Even local schools like Mystic Valley Charter School have far more applicants than places.  Some great schools such as BASIS schools cannot build schools fast enough to meet demand. 

Your observations on teacher quality and evaluations contain a germ of truth and a lot of half-truths and education speak nonsense.  It is true that teacher quality is essential and that it is hard to determine beforehand the ability of people to teach.  That is why for the good of kids, teachers who are not teaching should be canned sooner rather than later.  Teacher evaluation is inexact.  But repeated evaluations even of different types that produce similar results is not inexact.  There is almost no chance of a teacher who has poor evaluations in successive value added tests or has had multiple evaluations of any sort is a good teacher.  In fact Gates Foundation developed a student questionnaire that evaluates teachers consistent with value added and with observations. 

Finally the excuse that it school outcomes is largely out of the hands of educators is demonstrably false.   You might find the rare exception that makes your case.  But the fact that American Indian Public Charter High School ranks 32nd on the Newsweek list in my mind blows your argument away.  This school ranks at the bottom of every factor you mentioned and then some.  Students are selected by lottery from some of the poorest children in this country who live in some of the most violent neighborhoods you could find. Yet it is one of the best schools in the country.  And Ben Chavis is the founder.  He is the one in the video above who holds that schools waste money.