I read the fine article kindly submitted here and a great many of the comments here before commenting. First of all, the headline of this submission (which is the original article headline, and thus expected by Hacker News rules) is a misstatement of fact. The author of the submitted article is a Virginian who has been teacher of the year at his little-known high school, but NOT the "Virginia Teacher of the Year."[1] The exaggerations go on from there.

The author writes, "But public education is painted as a career where you make a difference in the lives of students. When a system becomes so deeply flawed that students suffer and good teachers leave (or become jaded), we must examine how and why we do things." Well, yes, but he could have asked different questions, and come up with the different answers earlier reached by John Taylor Gatto, a New York State Teacher of the Year decades ago.[2] Teachers should never kid themselves about how much the school-system-as-such is designed to enable learners to learn well. That has hardly ever been its main purpose.

Meanwhile, I have seen some examples of helpful reforms where I live. Virginia needs to catch up with all those reforms. Minnesota, where I now live and where I grew up, has had largely equal per-capita funding for public school pupils statewide since the 1970s. The state law change that made most school funding come from general state appropriations rather than from local property taxes was called the "Minnesota miracle."[3] Today most funding for schools is distributed by the state government on a per-pupil enrollment basis.[4] You don't have to live in a wealthy neighborhood in Minnesota to have adequately funded schools in your neighborhood.

The funding reform in the 1970s was followed up by two further reforms in the 1980s. First, the former compulsory instruction statute in Minnesota was ruled unconstitutional in a court case involving a homeschooling family, and a new compulsory instruction statute explicitly allows more nonpublic school alternatives for families who seek those. Second, the Legislature, pushed by the then Governor, set up statewide open enrollment[5] and the opportunity for advanced learners to attend up to two years of college while still high school students on the state's dime.[6] And Minnesota also has the oldest charter school statute in the United States.[7]

Parents in Minnesota now have more power to shop than parents in most states. That gets closer to the ideal of detecting the optimum education environment for each student (by parents observing what works for each of their differing children) and giving it to them by open-enrolling in another school district (my school district has inbound open-enrollment students from forty-one other school districts of residence) or by homeschooling, or by postsecondary study at high school age, or by exercising other choices.

The educational results of Minnesota schools are well above the meager results of most United States schools, and almost competitive (but not fully competitive) with the better schools in the newly industrialized countries of east Asia and southeast Asia. It's a start. More choices would be even better. (P.S. Many of these school system reforms in Minnesota were sponsored and championed by supporters of the state's Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, but most are also supported by Republicans here too. Choice is good for everybody and helps schools have incentive to improve.)

[1] http://www.doe.virginia.gov/teaching/recognition/

[2] http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

[3] http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/18public.php

[4] http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/mnschfin.pdf

http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/SchSup/SchFin/index.html

[5] http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/EnrollChoice/index.h...

[6] http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/CollReadi/PSEO/index...

[7] http://www.amazon.com/Zero-Chance-Passage-Pioneering-Charter...

From the article: "So my correspondent–who requires anonymity– decided that it would be helpful to reporters and members of the public to explain how to read stories about charter schools." So we don't know who is advancing these comments. It is plainly not Diane Ravitch herself, and we have no idea who the person is, so we have no idea if the person suggesting this checklist is a person with a conflict of interest in education policy.

I'll go down the checklist item by item.

"Does the story compare the demographics of the student population served by charter schools to the demographics of local public schools?"

What aspect of "demographics" is most relevant here? There are already charter school programs (not many, but a few) that do better with mostly pupils who come from poor homes and parents without higher education than many other schools do with pupils who come from high-income homes.[1] A lot of public schools in the United States serve up mediocre results while serving well off pupils.

"Does it include data on the charter school attrition rate?"

This is a fair item to put on the checklist, and should be reported more in stories about schools in general. In other words, a story about public schools should also report on their attrition rate, and on what rate at which pupils move in and out of the school district, and in general how stable or unstable enrollments are at all schools being compared. (The United States has a highly geographically mobile population, and it would be a very unusual school that has the same group of pupils enrolled by sixth grade as was enrolled in first grade five years earlier.)

"Does it include data on how the students who leave the charters compare to students who leave public schools?"

Again, this is a question well worth asking, but we shouldn't guess, until we have seen the answer to questions like this, whether charter schools or public schools would come out better in a comparison of this kind. We should be checking the facts in each individual case all around the country.

"Does it include numbers of students expelled?"

Since the early 1990s, I have been aware of homeschooling advocates who talk about "push outs" (not "drop outs") from the public school system, kids who are basically told to like it or lump it in the public school system. People leaving the public school system should always be looked at closely by researchers to figure out why they left, and whether they are later able to find a more fitting school situation in which they can learn better.

"Does it include numbers of students suspended?"

As above, this is a question to ask about any kind of school. Moreover, at the extremes, a school that never suspends any pupil is possibly a school that is not trying hard enough to maintain a learning environment for all other pupils enrolled, so a researcher would want to look at grounds for suspension, procedures surrounding suspension, what corrective steps are taken when a pupil is suspended, and so on. I've certainly seen suspension abused in public school settings.

"Does the story focus exclusively on test scores?"

This is a general defect of reporting on schools. At the broad statistical level, and especially for international comparisons of school systems, test scores[2] are mostly what we have to look at. What I also look at, as someone who has lived in more than one country and who reads more than one language, is the actual item content of textbooks and the attitudes toward learning shown by teachers and pupils. I think some school systems in other countries compare very favorably to those in the United States (not least because pupils in those other countries begin foreign language study much earlier than pupils in the United States, a fact not usually reflected in international testing programs). Educational researchers should be looking more closely at the actual item content of school textbooks and at the specific teacher practices in each classroom.[3]

"If so, has someone, with educational expertise, visited the school to determine if the school focuses on test prep at the expense of a rich curriculum?"

As above, we should be looking in detail at what actually goes on in the classroom. Indeed, we should be looking at whether persons employed as teachers are actually teaching anything, which we shouldn't assume sight unseen.[4]

"Are the test scores reported outside of school assessments such as the SAT/ACT or does the story only report test scores of exams that are proctored in-house?"

This is also important, and also a question that should be applied to news stories about schools in general, not just about charter schools. So far many of the worst cheating scandals in school testing programs have originated in regular public schools.[5]

"Does the story account for the fact that, due to the need to apply to the charter school, parents of the students at charters are, on average, likely to be more engaged in education than the parents of students at public schools?"

The policy response to this is to make school choices much more widely available to many more families. I have seen some examples of helpful reforms where I live. Minnesota, where I now live and where I grew up, has had largely equal per-capita funding for public school pupils statewide since the 1970s. The state law change that made most school funding come from general state appropriations rather than from local property taxes was called the "Minnesota miracle."[6]

Today most funding for schools is distributed by the state government on a per-pupil enrollment basis.[7] The funding reform in the 1970s was followed up by two further reforms in the 1980s. First, the former compulsory instruction statute in Minnesota was ruled unconstitutional in a court case involving a homeschooling family, and a new compulsory instruction statute explicitly allows more nonpublic school alternatives for families who seek those. Second, the Legislature, pushed by the then Governor, set up statewide open enrollment[8] and the opportunity for advanced learners to attend up to two years of college while still high school students on the state's dime.[9]

And Minnesota also has the oldest charter school statute in the United States.[10] We haven't had big problems with charter school performance here.

Parents in Minnesota now have more power to shop than parents in most states. That gets closer to the ideal of detecting the optimum education environment for each student (by parents observing what works for each of their differing children) and giving it to them by open-enrolling in another school district (my school district has inbound open-enrollment students from forty-one other school districts of residence) or by homeschooling, or by postsecondary study at high school age, or by exercising other choices.

The educational results of Minnesota schools are well above the meager results of most United States schools, and almost competitive (but not fully competitive) with the better schools in the newly industrialized countries of east Asia and southeast Asia. It's a start. More choices would be even better.

"Does it exclusively or primarily cite reports funded by pro-charter or conservative think tanks?"

Here it's regrettable that we don't know the identity of the author of this checklist. Do we know whether or not the author is funded by pro-public-school interest groups? Disclosure of that would be helpful here.

"Does it include quotes from academic scholars or does it just cite charter school advocates?"

I can recommend a website full of the writings of actual academic scholar to Hacker News participants interested in education reform. That is the Education Next website,[11] which is better supplied than most English-language websites about education policy with information about education policy outside the United States, which is important for a reality-check on issues discussed in this country.

"Does it identify advocates or simply call them 'experts' or 'researchers'?"

This is a funny question for a commentator who insisted on anonymity to ask.

"Does it compare the resources available to charter schools to those available to public schools?"

In Minnesota, and in all states I have checked, the resources available to charter schools (funding per student, and availability of buildings) are strictly less than the resources available to public school disticts, by law. Yes, lets's check that detail carefully.

It's commendable to receive a suggestion that we should check news stories carefully. We should always do that here on Hacker News. Let's check stories on education policy especially carefully, as public school spending is a huge part of state budgets[12] and a lot of interest groups are lined up behind the public trough.

[1] http://educationnext.org/when-the-best-is-mediocre/

[2] http://www.oecd.org/pisa/

http://timssandpirls.bc.edu/

[3] http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-Mathematic...

http://www.timssvideo.com/timss-video-study

[4] http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/students-take-a-stand-to-topp...

[5] http://www.ajc.com/s/news/school-test-scores/#top-stories

http://online.wsj.com/articles/for-school-tests-measures-to-...

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/07/21/wrong-answer

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/08/...

[6] http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/18public.htm...

[7] http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/mnschfin.pdf

http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/SchSup/SchFin/index.html

[8] http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/EnrollChoice/index.h...

[9] http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/CollReadi/PSEO/index...

[10] http://www.amazon.com/Zero-Chance-Passage-Pioneering-Charter...

[11] http://educationnext.org/

[12] http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66

http://www2.census.gov/govs/school/12f33pub.pdf

One state has not had that frankly insane practice for more than two decades. I have seen some examples of helpful reforms where I live. Minnesota, where I now live and where I grew up, has had largely equal per-capita funding for public school pupils statewide since the 1970s. The state law change that made most school funding come from general state appropriations rather than from local property taxes was called the "Minnesota miracle."

http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/18public.htm...

Today most funding for schools is distributed by the state government on a per-pupil enrollment basis.

http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/mnschfin.pdf

http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/SchSup/SchFin/index.html

The funding reform in the 1970s was followed up by two further reforms in the 1980s. First, the former compulsory instruction statute in Minnesota was ruled unconstitutional in a court case involving a homeschooling family, and a new compulsory instruction statute explicitly allows more nonpublic school alternatives for families who seek those. Second, the Legislature, pushed by the then Governor, set up statewide open enrollment

http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/EnrollChoice/index.h...

and the opportunity for advanced learners to attend up to two years of college while still high school students on the state's dime.

http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/CollReadi/PSEO/index...

And Minnesota also has the oldest charter school statute in the United States.

http://www.amazon.com/Zero-Chance-Passage-Pioneering-Charter...

Parents in Minnesota now have more power to shop than parents in most states. That gets closer to the ideal of detecting the optimum education environment for each student (by parents observing what works for each of their differing children) and giving it to them by open-enrolling in another school district (my school district has inbound open-enrollment students from forty-one other school districts of residence) or by homeschooling, or by postsecondary study at high school age, or by exercising other choices.

The educational results of Minnesota schools are well above the meager results of most United States schools, and almost competitive (but not fully competitive) with the better schools in the newly industrialized countries of east Asia and southeast Asia. It's a start. More choices would be even better.

I'll note for other readers of Hacker News who don't know (and thus don't trust) the domain of this submitted article that it is actually a syndicated news story from the Associated Press, and I would have to say that I think the article is well reported. (In other words, I trust the statistics behind the article, which come from the federal government's National Social Survey.)

The article includes some dire warnings about decline of social trust in the United States during the last forty years, and also some ideas about how social trust can increase. "People do get a little more trusting as they age. But beginning with the baby boomers, each generation has started off adulthood less trusting than those who came before them." I daresay it is correct that MOST Americans become more trusting as they age. In my middle age, I feel very comfortable both in the community I live in and as I travel about the United States. (I have been to all of the fifty United States, and to other territories of my country.)

To take the article seriously, and to suggest a possible help that was not suggested in the article, I will propose for your thoughtful discussion (I trust you here on Hacker News) one policy that might help. Let's take care of the economic gap problem mentioned in the article and some other factors that harm social trust by building all of the public school systems in the United States on the foundational principle of family choice. I have seen an example of how this policy could help where I live. Minnesota, where I now live and where I grew up, has had largely equal per-capita funding for public school pupils statewide since the 1970s. That reduces the effect of family income differences on the availability of adequately funded schools. The state law change that made most school funding come from general state appropriations rather than from local property taxes was called the "Minnesota miracle."[1] Today most funding for schools is distributed by the state government on a per-pupil enrollment basis.[2]

The funding reform in the 1970s was followed up by two further reforms in the 1980s. First, the former compulsory instruction statute in Minnesota was ruled unconstitutional in a court case involving a homeschooling family, and a new compulsory instruction statute explicitly allows more nonpublic school alternatives for families who seek those. Second, the Legislature, pushed by the then Governor, set up statewide open enrollment[3] and the opportunity for advanced learners to attend up to two years of college while still high school students on the state's dime.[4] And Minnesota also has the oldest charter school statute in the United States.[5]

Parents in Minnesota now have more power to shop than parents in most states. That gets closer to the ideal of detecting the optimum education environment for each student (by parents observing what works for each of their differing children) and giving it to them by open-enrolling in another school district (my school district has inbound open-enrollment students from forty-one other school districts of residence) or by homeschooling, or by postsecondary study at high school age, or by exercising other choices. And I think that builds social trust by making school communities more nearly communities of choice than communities of compulsion.

The educational results of Minnesota schools are well above the meager results of most United States schools, and almost competitive (but not fully competitive) with the better schools in the newly industrialized countries of east Asia and southeast Asia. And the social trust level in Minnesota seems to be above the United States national average, although I'd have to check the National Social Survey data to be sure about that. A good country to compare in this regard to the United States would be the Netherlands, which by its constitution has had pervasive school choice for the last century.

[1] http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/18public.htm...

[2] http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/mnschfin.pdf

http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/SchSup/SchFin/index.html

[3] http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/EnrollChoice/index.h...

[4] http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/CollReadi/PSEO/index...

[5] http://www.amazon.com/Zero-Chance-Passage-Pioneering-Charter...

Hear. Hear. I saw the original article to which the author of the article submitted here responds,

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/08/priva...

and I thought, "What a shallow analysis." I'm glad that there has already been a reply article, and I'm especially glad that it is gaining lots of karma here on Hacker News.

Readers who like deeper analysis of these issues may be interested in reading some of the books found in the online bibliography "Books on School and State,"

http://learninfreedom.org/school_state.html

part of my personal website. For a long time, I have been studying education policy, and indeed it was reading Paul Graham's essays

http://paulgraham.com/articles.html

on education policy that drew me to participating here on Hacker News. We can all come up with lots of ways to incrementally improve schools, and we can best do that by exposing any one kind of school to competition from competing providers.

I have seen some examples of helpful reforms where I live. Minnesota, where I now live and where I grew up, has had largely equal per-capita funding for public school pupils statewide since the 1970s. The state law change that made most school funding come from general state appropriations rather than from local property taxes was called the "Minnesota miracle."

http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/18public.htm...

Today most funding for schools is distributed by the state government on a per-pupil enrollment basis.

http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/mnschfin.pdf

http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/SchSup/SchFin/index.html

The funding reform in the 1970s was followed up by two further reforms in the 1980s. First, the former compulsory instruction statute in Minnesota was ruled unconstitutional in a court case involving a homeschooling family, and a new compulsory instruction statute explicitly allows more nonpublic school alternatives for families who seek those. Second, the Legislature, pushed by the then Governor, set up statewide open enrollment

http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/EnrollChoice/index.h...

and the opportunity for advanced learners to attend up to two years of college while still high school students on the state's dime.

http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/CollReadi/PSEO/index...

And Minnesota also has the oldest charter school statute in the United States.

http://www.amazon.com/Zero-Chance-Passage-Pioneering-Charter...

Parents in Minnesota now have more power to shop than parents in most states. That gets closer to the ideal of detecting the optimum education environment for each student (by parents observing what works for each of their differing children) and giving it to them by open-enrolling in another school district (my school district has inbound open-enrollment students from forty-one other school districts of residence) or by homeschooling, or by postsecondary study at high school age, or by exercising other choices.

The educational results of Minnesota schools are well above the meager results of most United States schools, and almost competitive (but not fully competitive) with the better schools in the newly industrialized countries of east Asia and southeast Asia. It's a start. More choices would be even better.

We do not want to have a society where an elite, educated aristocracy rules over an uneducated serf class. That means we need to educate everyone, including people who have less potential.

I agree with that goal. And that is why I support public policies that allow more learner choice in education, so that everyone can shop for a good fit, and all providers of education are on notice that they can lose revenue if they don't meet learner needs.

My basis of knowledge: I have lived in more than one country, and see that learner power to shop is an important incentive to improved education. I live in the state of the United States that had charter schools the earliest,

http://www.amazon.com/Zero-Chance-Passage-Pioneering-Charter...

and that had statewide open enrollment first,

http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/EnrollChoice/index.h...

so I have a direct experience base with living in a state with a moderate degree of learner choice, and that is not harmful to learners.