-—School reform has now been embraced wholesale by the elites in both parties
Yes because American education is indiputably a disaster.
*The most recent NAEP assessments indicate that less than one third of U.S. fourth graders are proficient in reading, mathematics, science, and American History.
*More than half of low income students cannot even demonstrate basic knowledge of science, reading, and history.
*U.S. eighth graders ranked 19th out of 38 countries on mathematic assessments and 18th in science.
*U.S. twelfth graders ranked 18th out of 21 countries in combined mathematics and science assessments.
-—It is nearly impossible for random chance to account for demographic differences in charters and traditional public schools in a system
The authors were verifying the randomness of the specific lottery which they were relying on to “eliminate both observed and unobserved background differences between the students who attend different types of schools” in the specific groups measured in this study. It has nothing to do with the larger comparison of student populations you address. The elimination of systematic differences (sampling bias) between a control group and an observed group is not just sound, but critical, scientific methodology.
— The Post Office is required by law to serve all Americans while FedEx gains advantages by servicing profitable routes an denying service to unprofitable ones.
You were using the depressed demand for charter schools as a surrogate for measurement of educational quality.
Contrasting the Post Office and Fedex is actually a good analogy because the vast majority of customers use Fedex rather than use the Post Office because of its extremely high quality service. ((((BTW Fedex ((((and UPS (this market is not a duopoly)))) does serve remote service areas via cartage agents http://images.fedex.com/us/services/pdf/CartageAgents.pdf)))))))
Fedex’s concentration of service has very little to do with their dominance in express service vs the Post Office, I can assure you since I am in that industry.
To extend your analogy if the government decided to kill Fedex (which is what happened since obama killed DC charter schools) to bring its business volume back to the Post Office, this would not provide evidence that Fedex’s quality of service was not satsifactory. Rather it would be an indication that the Post Office knew it could not compete. You are aware that the Post Office’s 9 billion dollar losses are structural from pensions right?
— Statistics is a mathematically science. It is a tool and not an answer.
Not sure what you are trying to convey here. Perhaps it goes back to your reluctance to work in an environment that uses measurement for accountability.
-— Bill and Melinda are underwriting third world sterilization campaigns. Sorry if I distrust them
Yes I realize that the Gate’s have some initiatives that are vile and objectionable. Somehow in this case they have aligned themselves with the better interest of failing innercity kids. We can’t wait for a mythical, ultra-rich morally unimpeachable philopher king to address the national disaster that is our failing school system.
-—Your dyslexic kid would stop a school from getting 100% reading proficiency. He might stop them from getting 100% math ....
My situation far preceded no child left behind. I had not heard that ‘No Child Left Behind’ would lead to eugenics. That is indeed troubling.
-— How do think teachers were embezzling funds? Stealing field trip money? You had to be an administrator to steal funds....
This is very revealing. I have worked in a company with Activity-Based-Costing. Each action, move, engine start, oil fill, hour-to-hour staffing decision etc etc had dollars and cents associated with it. Lets say taxpayers were spending 12000 per year per kid and the teacher was paid 60000 per year. Building energy, maintenance, insurance. Translate the cumulative taxpayer spend per hour and that is what the teacher was draining from the educational process. Possibly it isn’t a large amount but it was unethical to take what really belongs to the kids and the taxpayers. Perhaps teachers really don’t see any value in the time that their students are in the room and doing what they are supposed to be doing - learning. I certainly wondered about that when my kids came home from school and told me that they had watched yet another entertainment video that day.
-—Is there a difference between performing surgery on a patient who has a good work ethic and one who has no work ethic?
Can the doctor measure work ethic? Will it show up on some blood test? an x-ray? (Putting on glove... bend over Mr Patient, I’m going to manually palpitate your work ethic) The only similar behavioral metric I can conceive of a surgeon assessing is ability/predisposition to follow post operative instructions which might influence readmissions which is an important metric. Might lead the surgeon to decide on surgery vs complex medication schemes. Are you trying to say a doctor would withhold appropriate care based on patient behavior? of course that is happening in the UK and will happen with Obamacare? Yeah, don’t see how this makes your point.
— millions for specialty school....?
All we wanted was for him to be given more time for reading intensive tests and similar classroom accomodations. This shouldn’t have required threatening lawsuits.