Charter Schools

[mayorbrotherdan]

I just attended a conference on corporate social responsibility (CSR) at the University of Michigan, and I was really frustrated by the people that they got to fill out the last panel of speakers.  There was a guy from IBM that basically presented a list of the corporate green-washing programs that IBM is donating to, which are a bunch of non-

Comments

[mayorbrotherdan]

I certainly don't have the solutions. Jack Lessenberry argued in a recent radio essay that the Detroit school district should be broken up into smaller districts. I'm not sure how exactly this would solve the problem of fleeing students, shrinking budgets and unmet standards, but it sounds like a better solution than charter schools. I would intuitively think that there are certain inherent advantages to large school districts though. The cost of certain goods and services, like operating buses, heating, electricity, insurance, food preparation and purchasing school supplies should be lower when they are purchased in bulk. The economies of scale should make it cheaper on a per student basis to operate a large school district, rather than a charter school, or a relatively small school district. But in practice we see just the opposite. The per pupil spending of many large, inner city school districts is often astronomical in comparison to smaller, less urban school districts. And yet the educational outcomes seem to often be the inverse of the level of per pupil spending in inner city districts. Washington D.C. spends more money per student than any other school district in America, yet they are down near the bottom in terms of high school graduation rates. Spending less money per student obviously won't fix the problem, but perhaps shrinking school districts could somehow shrink administrative costs and make education more effective by removing layers of bureaucracy that intercede between elected officials, administrators and teachers. This is all speculation on my part, and I don't think that shrinking districts is in any way a panacea either. But it is an idea that represents a better starting point in the discussion about how to fix failing urban school districts than creating a relatively small number of private charter academies that can't hope to serve a large percentage of the children.