Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Seems to me there's a serious battle afoot. The privates, parochials and public schools all have their crosshairs on charters, because they see their students (and therefore, their funding) going over to charters in ever increasing numbers. That would certainly explain the vitriol and FUD campaign of vague, nonspecific and irrelevant accusations about Latin, BASIS and the others.

This is silly, at least on the private school front. My children are at one of those always-talked-about private schools but we considered switching them to charter school recently for financial reasons. We were pretty open about it with families from school since everyone knew about our job situation at the time, and not one of the families we talked to had even heard of our lottery-pick charter schools, despite tons of press coverage and endless discussions on DCUM. I'm not saying that the charters aren't worth serious consideration, but the private school world is not even paying attention for the most part. I think the exceptions would be some of the less popular religious-based schools or the tiniest independent schools, but most of the latter are in the suburbs anyway. The notion that Sidwell, Georgetown Day, WIS, and the Cathedral schools will lose potential students to charter schools is nonsense. In fact, our children's school (again, rightly or wrongly) has people practically running each other over in an attempt to get in. There's no shortage of rich people in DC.

They lost my kids. We value living in a more urban/mixed use area of the city and as a result our neighborhood public school is not an option. If we had not gotten into a well-regarded charter we would have gone private. In fact, our social circle is almost entirely made up of families that can easily afford private school and are (for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to valuing racial and SES diversity in our children's schools and ease of commute) choosing charters instead.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Seems to me there's a serious battle afoot. The privates, parochials and public schools all have their crosshairs on charters, because they see their students (and therefore, their funding) going over to charters in ever increasing numbers. That would certainly explain the vitriol and FUD campaign of vague, nonspecific and irrelevant accusations about Latin, BASIS and the others.

Dc has been at Private for 6 years. I am one of only a handful of parents at DC's school who live in a ward other than ward 3. 90% of parents at Sidwell, Maret,STA,NCS,GDS et al are from ward 3( Foxhall,Wesley Hghts,Chevy Chase,Spring Valley) NOVA or MOCO, so Charter Schools are not even on their radar. I don't thnk these privates " have the charters in their cross hairs". Though all of these parents would say that their child attends private for the academics, and the "community" or moral compass , small class size etc... guess what: their local public school down the street is great and free and they don't send their kid there. This is not about the classroom.

I think Basis has a great concept, but it will only appeal to those already looking at Charters and that is only a handful of familes at any big private. Certainly not enough for anyone to get paranoid about suspicious neg PR.

Anonymous wrote:Seems to me there's a serious battle afoot. The privates, parochials and public schools all have their crosshairs on charters, because they see their students (and therefore, their funding) going over to charters in ever increasing numbers. That would certainly explain the vitriol and FUD campaign of vague, nonspecific and irrelevant accusations about Latin, BASIS and the others.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:a.) "up your game" is an idiom in common use, meaning "improve your performance". Get out more.

b.) To understand the paradox, you have to consider the source. Cato Institute is all about free markets and limited government. It's a paradox in that charters initially lessen taxpayer costs on one level by being a more cost-effective alternative on a cost-per-student basis than public schools, but it ends up increasing taxpayer costs because they are so effective that they draw away students from privates, which, while there's still a lower cost per student to the taxpayer, it potentially increases the number of students overall.

I think it is Cato wrestling with the fact that it's market competition in action (something they support), but is still dependent on taxpayer dollars (something they do not support).

Ha ha! Good explanation, and I love the image of Cato with its knickers all in a twist about this.

Cato is of a libertarian bent. Their knickers are definitely not in a twist. You need to get your foundations straight.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In short, it's competition. Privates, charters, and publics all need to up their game if they hope to stay afloat.

Trying to drag other schools like Latin or Basis down with negativity isn't the way to do it, the way to do it is to improve those other schools.

when did "up" become a verb?

I think it's a back-formation from "up the ante".

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Seems to me there's a serious battle afoot. The privates, parochials and public schools all have their crosshairs on charters, because they see their students (and therefore, their funding) going over to charters in ever increasing numbers. That would certainly explain the vitriol and FUD campaign of vague, nonspecific and irrelevant accusations about Latin, BASIS and the others.

This is silly, at least on the private school front. My children are at one of those always-talked-about private schools but we considered switching them to charter school recently for financial reasons. We were pretty open about it with families from school since everyone knew about our job situation at the time, and not one of the families we talked to had even heard of our lottery-pick charter schools, despite tons of press coverage and endless discussions on DCUM. I'm not saying that the charters aren't worth serious consideration, but the private school world is not even paying attention for the most part. I think the exceptions would be some of the less popular religious-based schools or the tiniest independent schools, but most of the latter are in the suburbs anyway. The notion that Sidwell, Georgetown Day, WIS, and the Cathedral schools will lose potential students to charter schools is nonsense. In fact, our children's school (again, rightly or wrongly) has people practically running each other over in an attempt to get in. There's no shortage of rich people in DC.

Anonymous wrote:Interesting analysis. Thank you to whoever posted this and to the Cato institute for sponsoring this research and posting it here.

In my familiy's own case, the analysis definitely rings true. Had my child not gotten into Yu Ying, we would have considered Washington International School, but likely rejected it over its tuition (around $30,000/year). We probably would have settled on a privately run Chinese program on Saturdays or Sundays, in addition to public school.

I'm all for giving parents more "choice" in education. I recognize there are different ways of doing this - school vouchers and charter schools being two methods.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:a.) "up your game" is an idiom in common use, meaning "improve your performance". Get out more.

b.) To understand the paradox, you have to consider the source. Cato Institute is all about free markets and limited government. It's a paradox in that charters initially lessen taxpayer costs on one level by being a more cost-effective alternative on a cost-per-student basis than public schools, but it ends up increasing taxpayer costs because they are so effective that they draw away students from privates, which, while there's still a lower cost per student to the taxpayer, it potentially increases the number of students overall.

I think it is Cato wrestling with the fact that it's market competition in action (something they support), but is still dependent on taxpayer dollars (something they do not support).

Ha ha! Good explanation, and I love the image of Cato with its knickers all in a twist about this.

Anonymous wrote:Not sure why the word "paradox" appears in the title.

It seemed obvious to me that increasing the caliber of public education would attract private schools families back to public schools.

It seemed obvious to me when last year DC charter enrollment increased by 8% but DCPS enrollment barely budged.

In fact, wasn't attracting private school families back part of the plan for improving public schools? If 70% of DC kids are low SES, but no school with more that 30% low SES performs well, don't we have to attract a large number of middle and high SES families back to drive the percentage from 70% down to 30% on average?[/quote]

This isn't a factual statement.