Charter Schools will not benefit New Zealand Education.

Charter schools are publically funded and privately run Primary or secondary schools. These schools have been freed from a selection of the laws and regulations that govern traditional schools. Recently, the New Zealand government announced its intention to implement charter schools into areas of Auckland and East Christchurch. Many throughout the local and national community believe there will be no, to very little, positive effects of Charter schools on the New Zealand educational environment and are concerned about effects these schools will have on: Registered and qualified teachers, their effects on other schools within the community, as well as the concern of whether or not, charter schools would provide a better educational experience overall for the children.

Charter schools are not required to employ qualified or registered teachers to teach its students. This has a huge impact on [registered and qualified] teachers, especially graduates seeking employment. There are huge concerns that qualified teaching graduates would lose out on jobs to unskilled and untrained 'teachers'. There is so much potential for charter schools to exploit beginning teachers in terms of working conditions and job opportunities. Another problem is that teacher trainees who dropped out or failed to make the cut, still have the opportunity to be employed by these schools, which in turn, end up undermining the value of trained teachers. "The potential ripple effect is that people will think, what's the point of studying?" says education officer Gemma Swan. Further concerns that graduates would be forced to take up poorly paid and supported positions in charter schools in a bid to gain employment is also rising. Gemma Swan explains that, "there is such a small pool of jobs as it is, that graduates may be treated poorly due to their lack of experience."

Effects on families and the community:

These many ways of teacher exploitation are not the only worries within the education community. Families and local communities could also feel the potential backlash of Charter Schools. An example of this is that charter schools have the negative effect of removing funding from local state schools. In other words, creating charter schools will increase the total number of schools with the result that all New Zealand schools would get a smaller chunk of the education dollar. This could potentially harm the pockets of families that live in low decile areas. Fewer funds from the government means families would have to spend extra money they may not have and the schools would be forced to make cuts in order to stay within budget. The government has currently put aside $19 million for the first [five] charter schools and critics such as the New Zealand Educational Institute say that the funding is wasteful given the small roles in the five schools - 369 students in total at first and then rising to 800 within four years. One of the new [charter] schools has promised a teacher to student ratio of 1:15 - a better ratio than current state schools.

Many parents, especially those residing in low decile areas, may wonder why the government is setting aside $19 million of the education budget and putting it into these new charter schools; especially when that money could be used to better the schools we currently have. The money could be put to better use in current schools through expansion: Adding more classrooms with fewer students and hiring more qualified and trained teachers. The money could also be well spent on improving facilities within current schools and giving students a higher quality learning environment.

How successful have charter schools been so far...

There is no evidence that Charter Schools are better than traditional public state schools. There is evidence that overall, they give slightly worse outcomes for their students. Charter schools in the United States have long been at the centre of on-going disputes. The United States has had charter schools for more than a decade and there has been no measurable improvement in that country's overall performance in literacy, maths and science. Charter schools aim to prove their success on the basis of test scores. Charters have a number of advantages that one might expect to lead to better scores than traditional public schools. - Selections of better students, smaller class sizes and additional resources from private sources. But even on the narrow measure of standardized testing, charters are still seen to not be achieving 'excellence'.

A national study done by the Department of Education found that, on average, charter schools performed no better than traditional public schools -Based on charter schools set up in the United States. Another study by two Stanford economists involved a much larger sample size - 70 percent of all charter students. Results revealed that an astonishing 83 percent of charter schools were either no better or worse than traditional public schools serving similar populations. Researchers found that poor performing charter schools outnumbered the good ones by a ratio of 2:1. Charter schools have participated in the federal testing program since 2003 and have never outperformed students in regular public schools. This raises the question of why charters are unable to surpass public schools in their academic results. For the charters that run for profit, a focus on the bottom line compromises education equality. When states hand money to private companies, their profit margin is the difference between the state funds and what they spend to provide the education. Therefore, it stands to reason that if they can cut costs, they can make more money. This is one problem that causes charters to drastically lag behind traditional public schools. It would make no sense why parents would support charter schools when the government is simply giving taxpayers' dollars to line the pockets of wealthy businessmen at the expense of their children's education.

On top of this, the quality of education at all charter schools is compromised by the fact that Charter school teachers are not required to be qualified or registered and on average, have far fewer years of experience than the teachers at traditional public schools.

The United States lags far behind New Zealand on recent performance tests in academic achievement. Importing ideas, such as charter schools, from countries that do less well than our own fails to make sense as well as identify and protect the best aspects about New Zealand schools and puts the well-being of all New Zealand children, their families and communities at risk. New Zealand children do not get fair and equal access to educational opportunities. Our schools are increasingly separated on socioeconomic and ethnic lines. Students with the greatest need for education support end up in schools in communities with the fewest resources. Schools, students, boards, principals and teachers are in the middle of a constant tug of war between politicians as they experiment in education. This cycle is unfair on children, teachers and families and is a tremendous waste of money and resources.  We should instead, be spending our money on improving our current schooling facilities, training more able-bodied teachers and finding more ways to be able to help those children and families living in low earning areas to get the best quality education.

References:

National Education Association. (2003). Charter schools show no gains over public schools. Retrieved                    from http://www.nea.org

New Zealand Post Primary Teachers' Association. (2013).  The charter school, free school, models and                  the New Zealand education environment. Retrieved from http://www.ppta.org.nz

New Zealand Principals' Federation. (2011). Food in schools. Retrieved from http://www.nzpf.ac.nz

Russom, G. (2010). The case against charter schools. The Internationalist Socialist Review(71).                             Retrieved from http://isreview.org

The New Zealand Herald. (2013). Parata lays out rules for new charter schools. Retrieved from                           http://www.nzherald.co.nz

Comments

Mille:
Hola Mille. =)

Okay, so good start. First of all just want to remind you to sift through it once again as I have found a few grammatical errors here and there so copy and pasting it in word should maybe help with some of them. 

Reading this first part, I am quite interested in finding out what path you're going to take your argument onto because your first paragraph is quite broad and just the tiniest bit vague in some places. 

I strongly agree with this topic though I do also agree with Lane in wondering if you think it should be compulsory throughout all school years or only a certain range. I think being a little more specific in what you plan to discuss would help this first part a lot. So basically, putting your three main (or however many you have) points in your introduction and then discussing them within each paragraph I think will benefit greatly.

Good start though Millie! =)


Ken:
My question is: How would you suggest that children below the age of 8 be stopped?
I agree with you that children so young should not really be using mobile phones but the problem is, how could you stop them from accessing one anyways?

Kyle:

Hola.

I'm wondering if you're targeting a specific age group in your discussion and whether you're discussing a specific type of antidepressant or generalising them? I myself suffer from Depression (properly diagnosed) and am on antidepressants. And these side effects seem a bit off for me. Lack of sleep tends to be a symptom of depression and antidepressants are meant to remedy that, which they do. Weight gain, is not exactly a side effect as loss of appetite and weight loss is another common symptom of depression and so you would also expect the medication to remedy that as well.  I do understand that every person is different and reacts to things differently, but I speak from experience. I'm not sure if you're only focusing on the antidepressant alone or also looking at depression itself and how that works and the symptoms of that because I feel that looking at depression would make what antidepressants do seem a lot more clearer. I also feel like you need to be a little more specific about the age range you are discussing because I do believe that they work differently and have different side effects for different age groups.

Kyle

Super good topic and super interesting as well. =)
My one problem with this post however, is the way you have relayed your information. I feel that using the video to communicate most of your information is quite confusing and so makes the post overall, very difficult to read.
The hyperlinks are used as in-text citations and so you still need to be able to relay the main gist of the information as if this were an essay though please correct me if I am wrong. 
The main thing about this post is that I feel you need to explain the video a little bit more yourself within the discussion and not just leave all of it to the video as it is a bit confusing.... unless that's just me.
Anyways really top job with this. =)

Lane:

I really love the way you have presented your blog. It makes it even more interesting to go through.

My original reaction to this topic is that I personally think the driving age should be raised. 
In regards to your statistic though, I feel it would be very interesting to see the age range of those who voted.

John:

Hey, 

This is a really interesting topic and I really didn't know much about what you were posting so very informative for me.
However, I feel as though this post doesn't really answer any controversial questions or debates. You have simply listed a whole bunch of areas in which space exploration has and has been influenced by and I feel like there is no real argument about the topic at all.

Hyperlinks

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11126190

http://ppta.org.nz/index.php/-issues-in-education/charter-schools/charter-school-links

http://ppta.org.nz/index.php/-issues-in-education

http://www.ppta.org.nz/index.php/-issues-in-education/charter-schools/2119-no-charter-schools-nz

http://www.nea.org/home/18126.htm

http://isreview.org/issue/71/case-against-charter-schools

http://www.nzpf.ac.nz/list/%252FCharter%20Schools

http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED536259.pdf

http://ncsrp.edgateway.net/downloads/HopesandFears2005_Ch4.pdf

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272706001393