Robert Pondiscio on building a better Edsel

Robert writes:

A fascinating email found its way into my inbox last week describing a visit to a high profile, “no excuses” charter school.  The email was written by someone who is solidly pro-reform and strongly pro-charter.   She spent the morning visiting Big Name Charter and pronounced herself aghast.  “The school is fantastically well run, and the kids are on task —- and it is all fuzzery all the time. The reading curriculum is Fountas and Pinnell; the math curriculum is so bad it has sparked parent uprisings across the country,” she writes.

I've had an email from a person involved in public education who says KIPP is firmly committed to constructivist curricula. I'll post if the person who wrote gives me permission.

For now, I'll share my correspondent's analogy: giving excellent teachers bad curricula and expecting them to perform miracles (which they do) is similar to depriving the best doctors of antibiotics, diagnostic tests, and effective surgical techniques and telling them to "heal the sick."

From my perspective as a parent who values a traditional liberal education taught via direct instruction and deliberate practice, I find myself asking once again: why is it parents in my group can't have what we want?

Why do we have to have what other people want?

And why do we have to pay for it?

Speaking of what other people want, our board of education election was held last Tuesday. The candidate we supported lost.

The candidate who won pledged to keep Math Trailblazers and said we would not be replacing Trailblazers with Singapore Math.

One of the candidates who won last year made the same promise.

Meanwhile we've got parents in town who are paying to have their children take private classes that use Primary Mathematics.

Are there any parents anywhere in the country paying out of pocket to provide their children private lessons in Math Trailblazers?

More and more, I'm thinking micro-schools could be an answer for parents like me.


update: my correspondent's email is up

Michael Goldstein on teacher choice

if grocery stores were schools

in today's Wall Street Journal:

Suppose that groceries were supplied in the same way as K-12 education. Residents of each county would pay taxes on their properties. Nearly half of those tax revenues would then be spent by government officials to build and operate supermarkets. Each family would be assigned to a particular supermarket according to its home address. And each family would get its weekly allotment of groceries—"for free"—from its neighborhood public supermarket.

No family would be permitted to get groceries from a public supermarket outside of its district. Fortunately, though, thanks to a Supreme Court decision, families would be free to shop at private supermarkets that charge directly for the groceries they offer. Private-supermarket families, however, would receive no reductions in their property taxes.

Of course, the quality of public supermarkets would play a major role in families' choices about where to live. Real-estate agents and chambers of commerce in prosperous neighborhoods would brag about the high quality of public supermarkets to which families in their cities and towns are assigned.

[snip]

Responding to these failures, thoughtful souls would call for "supermarket choice" fueled by vouchers or tax credits. Those calls would be vigorously opposed by public-supermarket administrators and workers.

Opponents of supermarket choice would accuse its proponents of demonizing supermarket workers (who, after all, have no control over their customers' poor eating habits at home). Advocates of choice would also be accused of trying to deny ordinary families the food needed for survival. Such choice, it would be alleged, would drain precious resources from public supermarkets whose poor performance testifies to their overwhelming need for more public funds.
If Supermarkets Were Like Public Schools
By DONALD J. BOUDREAUX
MAY 5, 2011

Having now spent a vast portion of my adult life dealing with public schools and the politics surrounding public schools, I believe every word of this!

chemprof on parents and choice

re: the proliferation of global-themed charter schools, chemprof writes:

I don't have a problem with parents choosing a charter that I wouldn't choose for my own kid, anymore than I have a problem with parents choosing progressive private schools. I do have issues with these kinds of content-free methods taking over neighborhood schools when I don't have the option of sending my own child elsewhere. I think most of us are clear that many parents have different goals for their kids, but with the current neighborhood school system, there is no room for multiple approaches, and when charters are limited, then that's all you have.

That is exactly the way I feel.

I have no desire to force other parents to embrace the kind of school I want for my child. None!

But, by the same token, I feel strongly that other parents should respect and support my family's values and goals for our child.

After writing and moderating the Irvington Parents Forum for several years now, I believe that parents can't all be happy with the same schools.

Since we all have to pay the same taxes, I believe parents should support each other's choices, and for me supporting each other's choices means supporting charter schools, tax credits for private and parochial school tuition, and funding for homeschooling.

I realize there are different ways to configure a system based on parent choice, but my essential point remains the same: parents in my group need to be able to send their children to traditional, teacher-centered, content-rich schools without having to pay private tuition.

$100 million to Newark public schools

I'm against it.

Seriously.

Public schools need the things money can't buy.

who decides?

from Steve H :

"It's a numbers game. The argument is how many people actually have it and use it. If it's not a significant portion of the population than you can make the argument that it's a ludicrous goal to set that says we have to get every student there."

Who makes this decision and when do they make it?


"This thread poses the argument that the kids have already figured this out, long before the adults."

What, exactly, do they figure out? Do they come to the conclusion that they are just not good in math; that they don't like math? Is that really the case or is that because of bad teaching and curricula? KTM is all about fixing the problem of K-8 math and making sure that kids don't come to the wrong conclusion. It's about keeping educational doors open. Besides, up to a point, I don't care what my son likes or doesn't like. He has to do the work. I will decide which doors to close, and I will thank the school and other adults for not making that decision for me. I would also hope that they would not make that decision for kids who do not have parents who protect them from do-gooders and societal bean counters.

I agree. I have put three children through the public school system, two with autism. For all three of my kids, educators have made assumptions about what they couldn't do that were flat wrong.

Probably our worst experience of this was the public school in Los Angeles where the teacher thought Jimmy was nonverbal. We had no idea they thought that, and when we found out Ed videotaped me working with Jimmy on his flash cards.

"vacuum cleaner"

"newspaper"

After the teacher saw the video, she said, "I wish you'd told us."

choice

from Flypaper:

"Many of us who support school choice do so because of our hope that competition will force recalcitrant districts and unions to reform."

I left a comment.

Two comments, actually.

what school choice does and does not do

comment left on Rick Hess' blog:

Choice doesn't guarantee success. There are many restaurants to choose from in NYC. This doesn't mean all restaurants are good. Same goes for charters. This doesn't mean restaurant choice is bad. But if choice is to be used for schools, maybe we need a "health department" to shut down the bottom 10%, and spread "best practices" from the top 10%. And make sure the results are presented to the parents in a user-friendly manner so they can make good choices.

Accountability doesn't guarantee performance. You can grade restaurants as Los Angeles or Zagat do, but this doesn't make all restaurants clean or worth visiting. But it helps the consumer make better choices, and helps identify those that perform well, and give those under-performers a guide to which head chefs they may want to hire, or which restaurants they may want to visit to steal good ideas....

Why Diane and Duncan Are Making the Same Mistake

Education Non-Myths

I couldn't resist sharing these maxims from a new blog :
www.incentiveseverywhere.com
whose author I know from a previous book he wrote entitled Power Teaching (it's in the list of books I recommended in a post a few months ago: http://kitchentablemath.blogspot.com/2009/02/recommended-reading-from-palisadesk.html



What follows is from the "Book of Right", the set of assumptions which will produce learning.

1. Although students come from different backgrounds, and some are much easier to teach than others, what education brings to the student is much more important than what the student brings to education.

2. All subjects are hierarchically arranged by logic and there is a sequence of instruction which must be followed by all but the most exceptional of high-performing students.

3. Reinforcement is a very powerful determinant of student achievement. The main reinforcer in education is the improvement the student sees in his skills. Ill-constructed curricula, the kind found in almost every government school, result in a steady diet of failure for most students.

4. Having a system of education which is not a civil servant bureaucracy is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for effective education. You can’t do it with such a bureaucracy, but just because you don’t have a bureaucracy doesn’t mean you can do it.

5. Higher order thinking skills are explicitly taught, not fondly hoped for.

6. Methods of teaching are determined by scientific research, not consensus based on experience and sincere belief.

7. Teachers use a curriculum and lesson plans which have been demonstrated to work best and are not expected to create their own.

8. Psychological assessments are used rarely, but assessment of student progress, which means assessment of the effectiveness of teaching, occurs at least daily.

9. Teachers are taught how to teach in detail rather than being expected to apply vague philosophical maundering.

10. Special education is rarely needed because students are taught well on the first go round.

11. If a student does not learn, the blame is not placed on neurological impairment, but on faulty teaching methods.

12. Self-esteem is not taught because it does not have to be.

13. Students are not given "projects" until component skills have been mastered and rarely thereafter.

14. No attention is paid to individual "learning styles" because these hypothetical entities have no effect on learning.

15. Academic success can be measured by reliable and valid standardized tests, although many of these tests are too simple.

16. Students are expected to perform correctly in spelling, writing, reading, and mathematics and it does not stifle creativity.

17. The precepts of Whole Language are not used to teach reading because these precepts are wrong.

18. Students are not expected to create their own reality because this leads to frustration and slow learning.

19. Students are not expected to learn when it is developmentally appropriate but when they are taught.

20. The concept of multiple intelligences is ignored because it has no positive effect on learning.

21. The teacher is a teacher and not a facilitator.

22. The spiral curriculum is not used because things are taught properly the first time.

23. The customer is the parent and the customer must have the economic power to move his child to another teaching situation when unsatisfied.

24. In private education, the cost of education is known. In public education, the cost can never be known because there is no motivation to tell the truth and every motivation not to.

25. The curriculum must be tested on children and provision must be made for mastery learning. Passage of time or exposure does not guarantee learning.

26. Students are not tortured by "creative problem solving" because this is just another crude IQ test and has no value aside from categorizing students yet again. http://incentiveseverywhere.com/2009/10/09/education-non-myths/


I'm not sure I agree that "special education will rarely be needed," because I have observed that students with certain exceptionalities (autism, some LDs, some language impairments) need the same effective instruction but can't benefit from it in an inclusive setting, at least not initially. However, I agree with the general case, that much "special education" is simply ineffective general education, watered down in in a smaller group. As Lloyd Dunne (I think) observed, "It's not special, and it's not education."

All students deserve better.

the Ravitch fallacy

here

private schools for the poor

Schools for the poor are the obsession of James Tooley's book, "The Beautiful Tree." An education specialist with a severe case of wanderlust, Tooley had always believed that in developing nations, the upper classes attend private schools while the poor rely on public ones. But during a drive through the slums of Hyderabad, India, in 2000, he came across an unexpected phenomenon: an unending line of small, no-frills private schools catering to poor kids.

Tooley began seeking out and finding private schools for the poor across the developing world, interviewing students, principals, parents and officials in China, Ghana, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Somaliland and beyond. Parents everywhere cited similar reasons for paying the small fees for private schools rather than sending their kids to state schools. For some, especially in rural areas, the public schools were too far from their homes. To others, teachers and administrators in private schools seemed more attuned to their concerns. And despite the foreign aid and state spending on public school facilities, many parents simply felt that their children learned more in private schools. "What's the point of having such nice buildings," asked a mother in a fishing village in Ghana, "if learning doesn't go on?"

The officials Tooley encountered in his travels often denied the existence (much less the superiority) of private schools for low-income children. "There are no private schools for the poor," a bureaucrat in China's Gansu province told Tooley, "because the People's Republic has provided all the poor with public schools. So what you propose to research does not only not exist, it is also a logical impossibility."

Undeterred, Tooley spent years surveying private schools across the developing world. He found that, on average, they had smaller class sizes, higher test scores and more motivated teachers, all while spending less than public schools. With the zeal of a convert, Tooley invokes the market's "invisible hand" to explain why private schools perform better: When parents pay the fees that keep a school afloat, he reasons, the school becomes more accountable to them. Tooley blasts development experts for recognizing the problems with public education and still insisting that more investment in public schools is the way to go. "Why wasn't anyone else thinking that private schools might be part of a quicker, easier, more effective solution?" he asks.

Schools, Weddings and Funerals on $2 a Day
By Carlos Lozada
Friday, June 19, 2009 8:27 PM

via Cato

Green Dot

I'm midway through the New Yorker article on Steve Barr and Green Dot -- wow.

Barr was born in 1959, just south of San Francisco, and lived with his mother in Monterey, near the military base, where she worked as a dental assistant and a cocktail waitress. When he was six, he and his younger brother spent a year in foster care. Later, they made their home in a trailer in Missouri, before moving back to California.

In school, Barr was a good athlete, and popular. Every teacher knew his name. His brother, Mike, was quiet and overweight. Mike tried playing in the band for a while. ("Why do you give the chubby kid a tuba?" Barr asked, sighing. "Do you know how hilarious it is seeing a chubby kid try to get on the bus with a tuba?") But soon Mike got lost in their large high school. Steve graduated, and went on to the University of California at Santa Barbara. Mike dropped out, and never really settled into an adult life. Eventually, he was in a motorcycle accident. After a series of surgeries, he lost his leg. He won a settlement, but that attracted the wrong friends. "You take a poor kid who has problems and give him a lot of money . . ." Barr said. When Barr was thirty-two, Mike died of a drug overdose. His mother died shortly afterward, and Barr began to drift.

He discovered charter schools by accident. When President Clinton went to San Carlos to visit California's first charter school, Barr tagged along, and encountered the school's founder, Don Shalvey, and a Silicon Valley businessman, Reed Hastings, who had just founded Netflix. Shalvey and Hastings were about to draw up a ballot initiative that would increase the number of charter schools in California. Barr decided to help. "He came out of nowhere," Hastings said. And he brought a very different approach. He persuaded them, for instance, to try to make peace with the California Teachers Association. "He helped us realize we were perhaps overly simplistic in demonizing the union as the enemy," Hastings said. "It turned out C.T.A. was open to a stronger charter law."

As Barr worked on the campaign, he started to think about his own years in school, and his brother's. High school, he decided, was the point where their lives diverged. When the charter-school measure passed, he broke up with his girlfriend, moved out of their apartment, gave up his convertible, and rented a decrepit place in Venice, sight unseen. He moved in on Christmas morning, to a room strewn with needles, vomit, and feces. "I'm thirty-nine, I'm alone," he said. "Merry fucking Christmas." He tied his chocolate Lab, Jerry Brown, in the corner, put on the Harry Belafonte album his mother used to play every Saturday morning, when they did chores together, and scrubbed the apartment.

A year and a half later, he opened Animo Leadership Charter High School, near Lennox. (He said that in Spanish animo can mean "courage" or "valor," but he prefers a Mexican surfing buddy's translation: "Get off your ass.") He hired five of his seven teachers straight out of college and rented classrooms at a night school. When one of the teachers quit in the first couple of weeks, he replaced her with his office manager. Barr worked mostly without pay for the next few years, spending the last of his savings and his brother's settlement, and doing such damage to his finances that Costco revoked his membership. He pitched in a lot himself. "Maybe the most fun I had was going to test-drive school buses," he said.

And he starting a surfing club. "There were a handful of kids at the school who were really fricking cool but weren't being reached somehow," he said. "There was a kid named Ricky. He was smart, charismatic. All the girls loved this guy. There was another girl named Stephanie, who I think had a crush on Ricky." They agreed to find twenty-five kids who would show up before school, at 6 A.M.

"We were driving to the South Bay, Manhattan Beach. It was real quiet," Barr recalled. "Halfway out there, one of the kids said, 'Mr. Barr, do you have to know how to swim to surf?' " Half the kids couldn't. Barr put his head in his hands and laughed.

"The Manhattan Beach school system, they actually have surfing in gym class, so you have all these blond-haired, blue-eyed kids in the water," Barr continued. "And here come these kids from Lennox. The Lennox surf team." He mimicked a slow, tough walk. "Their gear's a little off, you know, they're all Latino, and a couple of black kids. I remember them getting triple takes."

At the end of its first chaotic year, Barr's school beat Hawthorne High School in every measurable outcome. "When the scores come out, I have to call Shalvey"--Barr's charter-school mentor--"and ask him, 'Are they good?' " Barr said. " 'Cause I don't fucking know. I don't know how to read test scores." The night school eventually moved, and Animo Leadership took over the entire campus. Last year, U.S. News & World Report ranked it among the top hundred public high schools in the country.

I'm in the thick of the part where he takes over Lock High School ----

Laura/GeekyMom on what parents want

at 11d:

In general, I think that some of the research, like any social science research on a complex topic with multiple variables, isn't terribly definitive. And I think that different kids need different things when it comes to education. And different parents want different things. Some parents want a well-rounded type of education that teaches solid academic skills but also leaves room for art, music, socializing, etc. Others want just the academic rigors and still others want a more artsy kind of education. As a school, then, it's hard to please and meet all those different needs and desires. Add to that the desire of state and federal government to assess progress without necessarily coming up with the best way to do that and you have a recipe for bad schools. Or at least schools that are very far from the ideal that many educated parents want.

One of our regulars (lgm? lsquared?) left a similar comment the other day, which I had intended to post up front but can't find at the moment.

This is an important question.

Do we have a sense of:

a) whether different children need different things

b) whether different parents want different things (I would say 'yes' to this one)

c) if parents want different things, what do these different things boil down to?

d) if parents want different things, what are the 'deal breakers'? (i.e., on what issues can parents compromise without feeling 'rolled over' -- )

At this point, having experienced Hogwarts, I am a partisan for boys schools (for boys who want or need boys school, not for all boys), structure, and in loco parentis.

Those elements may not be 'deal breakers' for me, however. I'm not sure.

The deal breaker for me is direct instruction in the liberal arts.I want my child to receive a liberal education. I don't want him to receive an 'education' in 21st century skills. On this matter, there is no room for compromise.

As for the distinctions amongst a well-rounded and solid education versus an academically rigorous education versus a more "artsy" education -- any of these would be fine with me. They would be great, in fact, although C. would be mildly resistant to "artsy."

But is my attitude likely to be common?

Steve H on the GI Bill

After Crimson Avenger asked how school districts are responding to the stimulus bill, Steve H commented:

I was just thinking about the GI bill after WW II. If they really want to help kids, give the money to them and not the schools. You will get a lot more effort per dollar. A lot more school improvement will happen when kids and parents start paying attention and expecting more.

I agree.

Why?

Steve H on Everyday Math in Palo Alto

responding to Sean Cavanagh on Re-examining a Math Skirmish:

Cavanagh: 'Focal Points' reflects a growing consensus that A) the current math curriculum is overcrowded and confusing for teachers and students; and B) creating a more focused curriculum and encouraging students to master certain key topics lay the groundwork for their foray into more difficult math later.

Steve H: Everyday Math does not meet either condition A) or B). But then again, "encouraging" mastery is just so wishy-washy it could mean anything. The Focal Points are just used to get others to go away so that schools can continue to decide on all of the details.

Cavanagh: Which raises another question, in all of these skirmishes: Where are parents getting their information about the various math curricula?

Steve H: You can't pick and choose your arguing points. You know quite well that there are many serious, well-founded objections to these math curricula. By not focusing on real problems, like ensuring mastery rather than "encouraging" mastery, you either don't understand what's going on or you're trying to change the subject.

The Focal Points is an educational turf manifesto. It's designed to make others go away. It won't work. Details matter. It's time to move beyond the simple argument that parents just want what they had when they were growing up. Let's talk about why parents have to care about this in the first place. Because schools aren't getting the job done.

March 18, 2009

The notion that Well-meaning parents should not be able to vote based on five minutes of Google research is going to be hard to sustain given the fact that Google now supplies a very large portion of the "curriculum" to which American children are exposed.

In my district, which has adopted every known "initiative" promoted by ed schools and their ancillary consultants and vendors,^* "research" means Google and teachers routinely pull "projects," assignments, and tests from the internet.

e.g.: recent Advanced Placement writing assignment given to high school students: Google 10 pieces of nonfiction writing on the web -- any kind of nonfiction writing written by anyone at all -- and summarize each.

If Google is good enough for AP Comp teachers, it's good enough for parents.

What's Google for the goose is Google for the gander.


^* differentiated instruction, 21st century skills, media literacy, balanced literacy, reading workshop, writing workshop, Assured Writing Experiences (AWEs), middle school model, exploratories, interdisciplinary teaming, cross-curricular everything under the sun, character education, and so much more!

ignoring parents in Palo Alto
welcome to the Grand Canyon
a teacher-mom on Everyday Math
the plot thickens
enlightenment
Steven H on Everyday Math in Palo Alto
where parents get their information
"reality" in Palo Alto

Parents frustrated over math texts
Teacher committee recommends new math text
Ed Week on the ed wars

interview with my cousin re: her experience with EM

compare and contrast, part 2

Signed by President Bush in 2004, the program gives around 1,900 students from low-income [D.C.] families up to $7,500 to attend private schools of their choice. The five-year pilot program is up for renewal next year, but Ms. Rhee doesn't see school choice as a threat to her mission in the public schools. She shakes her head. "I would never, as long as I am in this role, do anything to limit another parent's ability to make a choice for their child. Ever."

Schoolhouse Rock
By COLLIN LEVY
Saturday, December 22, 2007 12:01 A.M. EST

In February 2008, the [Massachusetts] board... became the first to reject a charter school recommended for approval by the commissioner of education.

[snip]

During the board’s debate over the proposed charter school, Patrick appointee and board PTA representative Ruth Kaplan commented that charter schools are too focused on sending students to college, saying “families…don’t always know what’s best for their children.”

Accountability Overboard
By Charles D. Chieppo and James T. Gass
Education Next Spring 2009 (vol. 9, no. 2)

a rose by any other name

renaming NCLB at eduwonk

I'm particularly keen on Amy:

How about the Hire Teachers Who Know A Goddamned Thing Or Two Besides Pedagogy and Hoopjumping Act (HTWKAGTOTWPHA)? No?

OK, how about the Cry As China Leaves Us In the Dust Act? (CACLUDS?)

Maybe the Remedial Bachelor’s Degree Act.

Or the Never Come Near My Child With A Calculator Again Act.

As the parent of a kindergartner, I’m more & more in favor of the Hand Over the Per-Cap Money to the Parents So We Can Educate Them Act. Yes, i know NCLB gets there eventually, but it takes too goddamned long.

yowza

Amy doesn't seem to have had much of a honeymoon period with the public schools, now, does she? It took me 7 years to reach the Hand Over the Per-Cap Money frame of mind.

Crimson Avenger has a good one, too.

national standards redux

I've left a comment on the Flypaper post re: Randi Weingarten's op ed promoting national standards.

Weingarten thinks we ought to convene a "broad-based group" to "take the best academic standards and make them available as a national model."

All well and good; we've heard it before. Personally, I have no interest in the views of broad-based groups that aren't broad-based enough to include parents and taxpayers.

If you've time to weigh in at the Flypaper, that would probably be a good idea.


parents need a union
how to change the system (Moses on Caro)
Mary D: No Child Left Behind observations and reflections

what is area?

Ed just talked to a young man who, while he was going to college, tutored in a New York City middle school. One day he overheard a math teacher in the school ask another math teacher how to calculate the area of a triangle. The teacher needed to know because, "I have to teach area of a triangle today."

What Is A "Private School"? -- Segmenting The Market

In the United States (at least in some circles) "my kid goes to private school" has become a chant of status. However, not all private schools mean "highly selective institution of highly rigorous and demanding curriculum".

The "private school" universe should be properly segmented:

• Schools having a religious foundation


• Parochial schools of the Roman Catholic Church (PBS Ethics & Religon special) --typically under the authority of the local diocese.


• What the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) calls "religious conservative schools" -- typically Christian, teaching "back to basics" and a biblically-based science curriculum (i.e., creationism rather than evolution).
  
• Religious-affiliation schools requiring (or putting a strong emphasis on) attendance at a given church or membership in a given sect (think of the academies of the Seventh Day Adventists).
• Schools run by religious orders, but not under the control of any particular parish--the Sacred Hearts, the Notre Dames of suburbia. At least here in the San Francisco Bay area, the schools ' curricula include theology, but accept students of all (or no) religion, and do not require a profession of faith. Note: There has been a huge growth in Jewish day schools, and I have heard anecdotally that some non-Jews have enrolled because of the excellence in education.
  




• Secular Schools


• Private schools that follow a particular branded philosophy (such as Montessori schools, or Waldorf Schools*).


• Proprietary schools, stand-alone or chain, whose tuition includes a profit for the proprietors. (NECS lumps these into "nonsectarian private schools"--not distinguishing between not-for-profit and for-profit. ) Examples include:
  
  • CardenSchools
  
  
  • Challenger Schools (a chain based in Utah)
  
  
  • Stratford Schools (a chain based in Danville, California)
  
  
  • Pinecrest Schools (a chain in Southern California)
  
  
  
• Truly independent schools, usually with membership in the National Association of Independent Schools. Independent schools are non-public, not-for-profit, pre-collegiate institutions governed by boards of trustees.

What makes an independent school different from a private school? All independent schools, to deserve the name, must be not-for-profit. All independent schools are governed by a self-perpetuating board of trustees. The role of the board is to:

• Establish the school's mission


• Safeguard the mission


• Manage the school and its assets for future generations.

(more on governance in a future post)

That's not to say that a for-profit enterprise can't be good. It is just different.

The Council for American Private Education (CAPE)is an association of associations. It has a page outlining all the different types of schools that make up the CAPE landscape. The mission statement for CAPE follows:

Our nation is blessed by a rich diversity of private schools -- some rooted in religious traditions, some that provide intensive academic experiences, some that reflect a particular pedagogy, and some that are specialized for specific populations. These diverse schools and strong, often faith-based, communities help fulfill the American ideal of educational pluralism and collectively contribute to the common good.

One of the associations that make up CAPE is The National Independent Private Schools Association, an association of for-profit (proprietary) elementary through high school institutions.

Another type of private school is the proprietary academic school organized as a for-profit corporation. There are about 1,000 in the country, according to Jim Williams of the National Independent Private Schools Association. "We are the tax-paying schools," Williams says. "Most schools start with an idea, the vision of someone. Many of the people who start proprietary schools are disenchanted public-school or disappointed independent-school teachers who don't want to deal with a board of directors or a school board." He points out that most of the elite prep schools of the 19th century began as proprietary schools with fees paid to headmasters. "People who get involved with proprietary schools are pleased with what they see," Williams says.

================

*Some people make the case that a Waldorf school is actually a religious school
system hiding behind a facade of progressive, arts-based education.