Obama's "Laboratories of Excellence" Hemorrhaging More Students than "Dropout Factories"

[Hannah Bell]

"You can't defend a status quo in which a third of our kids are dropping out," the president said this morning during a live interview on NBC's "Today Show." "You can't defend a status quo when you've got 2,000 schools across the coutry that are drop out factories." --President Obama, today

The corporate reformers now in charge of federal education policy want to replace urban public schools with the penal pedagogy corporate charter school model. They have a big problem, however. According to a national study by CREDO at Stanford U., charters outperform matched public schools in only 17 percent of the cases, not exactly a ringing endorsement.

The only charters that are consistently out-testing the public schools are the total compliance brainwashing camps like KIPP and the KIPP knockoffs. Ten hour days, three hours of homework, Saturdays, and 3 weeks more school in summer, etc. The problem here, besides the moral one exuding from KIPP's psychological sterilization program, is that these chain gangs lose 40-60 percent of their students to dropping out and pushing out. They don't hold low flyers or recalcitrants or "miscreants"--it would mess up the success story. From USA Today:

Ed Fuller, a University of Texas-Austin researcher, found that Harmony schools throughout Texas had an "extraordinarily high" student attrition rate of about 50% for students in grades six through eight. "It's not hard to be 'exemplary' if you lose all the kids who aren't performing," Fuller says.

The problem for Obama and the oligarchs on this part of their corporate takeover plan is that this loss of students is worse than the "dropout factories" that they decry as shameful. I'm sure they'll figure something to smooth out this small bump in the superhighway to the corporate takeover of schools.

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/09/obamas-laboratories-of-excellence.html

President Obama, also today:

"There's no silver bullets here," the president said. However, he said, "There are some charters that have figured out how to do a very good job. What we've got to do is look at the success of these schools and find out how do we duplicate them... What I'm interested in ... is fostering these laboriteies of excellence."

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20017666-503544.html

[seabeyond]

1. my state adopted 4X4. i cannot see that do anything but increase drop out

i dont get it.

if a student excels at math, then he has 4 years strugglin with english and history. if a students excels in all things but math then 4 yrs of math. not being a math person, and skating buy on the two years i had, i cannot see having to take four years

it seems to me like this is more encouragement for drop out.

there is admittedly exemplary public schools to. why not you that as a model?

[xchrom]

2. Recommend

[sabrina 1]

4. I rec'd it also. The unrec'ing censors are very busy tonight.

[sabrina 1]

3. Even Obama admits that there are only 'some'

Charters that 'have figured out' how to 'do a very good job'. Well, there are standard educational methods and experienced educators who figured that out a long time ago and before this rigthwing generated 'privatization' of Public Schools. Why not ask THEM, since they didn't just 'figure it out' lately?

He doesn't sound too enthusiastic about the 'success' of his Charter schools. I guess the bad news has reached the WH as it has everywhere else.

I rec'd this, but as usual the censors are watching to make sure no one gets any information that is not favorable to 'The Party'. And who cares about America's children when we have a 'party' to defend?

No wonder this country is the mess that it is. The priorities are so screwed up it is sickening.

[seabeyond]

5. we have one charter that gets high rating though not as high as our public. and one charter fails

right down there with some of our public..

the successful charter does not have the resources and advantage of the public. and the private are not competitive with our public.

[sabrina 1]

7. A friend of mine sent her son to a Charter school in Az.

She was not happy with the school and took him out after a year. I don't know why they are wasting money on this 'experiment' rather than working to fix the problems in the Public Schools.

I definitely would not want my child to be part of an experiment and from the results so far, it doesn't look like the experiment is going very well.

And education should be handled by educators, not businessmen. I feel for the kids who will suffer the most from all of this.

[Kolesar]

6. I did not know that President Obama founded charter schools /sarcasm

The article title is bullshit.

[sabrina 1]

8. I don't think so, unless he decides to distance himself from

this disaster.

Bush wanted to be the Education President, and his disastrous program, NCLB, was always referred to as 'Bush's NCLB'.

My advice to Obama would be to definitely distance himself from what will probably be the worst experiment in education in our history so far and that is saying a lot.

I don't know whose ideas these were, but he has fully supported them so he gets the blame. That's where the buck stops, and if he doesn't want that, which it kind of sounds like now that some results are coming in, then he needs to return to his campaign promises and stop the war on Teachers. Even Bush had to pull back from starting a war on teachers. People love their children's teachers for the most part, and parents do not like to see these unfair attacks on them. Whoever advised him to do this should be fired. And if it was his own idea, then he definitely needs some advice asap.

[madrchsod]

9. obama is not going to give up on his education policy.

to bad reality will prove he is wrong.

[madrchsod]

10. duncan is his b ball buddy who...

screwed up the chicago schools even more than what they were. i guess that`s good enough for barack.

[Hannah Bell]

16. you must not have made it to the end, or understand the uses of possessive

However, he said, "There are some charters that have figured out how to do a very good job. What we've got to do is look at the success of these schools and find out how do we duplicate them... What I'm interested in ... is fostering these laboriteies (sic) of excellence."

[Fumesucker]

11. K&R for the truth..

[Panaconda]

12. K&R

[Brickbat]

13. K&R. Anything can succeed and look like a silver bullet if it can pick and choose its students,

whether by lottery, test scores or the hateful "pushing out."

[LWolf]

14. k&r

[blindpig]

15. k&r

[eppur_se_muova]

17. SUCH a surprise. nt

[maryf]

18. K&R