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July 2, 2020 - Dennis Prager Show
07:46
Thomas Sowell: The Problems With Public Schools
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One of the most important thinkers of my lifetime, Thomas Sowell.
And his latest book is Charter Schools and Their Enemies.
So where were we, Tom Sowell?
You were asking about the difference between the charter schools and the traditional public schools.
Charter schools are public schools, and the points of contention.
The charter schools have the facts on their side.
The other side has the rhetoric.
And there are far more people who hear the rhetoric than there are who hear the facts, which is the reason for writing the book in the first place.
The rhetoric says, look, when you put them all together nationwide, charter schools and traditional public schools, there's really not much difference.
And in a sense, that's true, but it's like many things that are true and totally misleading.
The white students plus Asian students are a majority of the students in traditional public schools nationwide.
Black students plus Hispanic students are a majority of students in charter schools nationwide.
Now, for years, generations, white students and Asian students have been scoring higher than black students and Hispanic students.
Now, when the charter schools come along and close the gap, the people say, well, the charter schools are no better than the others.
If they're no better than the others, how come the others had this huge gap for generations on end, and now the charter schools have closed the gap?
My book, the data I collect, compares students who are comparable.
That is, in more than 100 New York City schools, There are charter schools and traditional public schools holding classes in the same building.
And in all the cases in my sample, blacks and Hispanics add up to a majority in both kinds of schools.
And so we're now comparing comparable populations in comparable neighborhoods.
Going in the same building.
And when you do that, you find that on the statewide mathematics test, 10% of the students in the traditional public schools in those buildings passed the math test.
And in the charter schools, 68% passed the math test.
Right.
So my question, or at least in my mind, was what do they do better?
Since they're also public, publicly funded, what do they do better?
An excellent question that really I didn't think of in those terms.
And one very big difference is this.
Traditional public schools are unlike virtually any other institutions I can think of offhand.
Every kind of institution, whether it's a sports league, it's a medical facility, a church, Automobile dealerships, they have a clientele, and they must attract that clientele and hold that clientele if they want to survive as institutions.
That is not true of traditional public schools.
Compulsory attendance laws mean they are supplied with a clientele regardless of whether they educate them properly or don't.
Public schools don't even compete with each other because each one has a monopoly in some particular territory.
So, you know, it's perfectly, I mean, it's so obvious.
They don't have to compete in terms of excellence.
That's right.
Or even confidence.
Never mind excellence, my goodness.
Okay, you're right.
That's fair.
I threw those figures out that would show that the kids in the traditional, in the charter schools in New York City, which is where I got my sample, passed this math test nearly seven times as often as the kids in the same building, in the same classes, taking the same test.
Have enemies of the charter schools debated you?
No, they have not.
I would be surprised if they did.
I would be shocked.
I would help sponsor it, monetarily.
It sounds like a great idea.
Yeah, of course it's a great idea, but as I tell my listeners all the time, the left doesn't debate, they smear.
They silence, which is the main thing.
I'd be very surprised if my book gets reviewed in places like the New York Times.
No, of course.
That's correct.
You know, I don't even get criticized.
That's right.
That is correct.
90% of all criticism that I receive is from my junior assistant whose job it is to go through my stuff.
Well, that's funny.
That is funny.
Not your wife?
Huh?
No?
You don't get any criticism from your wife?
Wives have been known to say a few negative things now and then.
Shocking as that may be.
Totally.
Totally.
I'm sorry I raised the issue.
It's obviously a sensitive one.
When I look at the public school, I report regularly about the curricula.
That they now advance.
I'm curious if this has made its way into charter schools.
For example, the 1619 rewriting of American history.
That will be now normative in American public schools.
Will that be taught in charter schools?
In California, I suspect it will be.
The new legislation last year that I referred to.
is imposing on charter schools the same bad practices that are in the traditional public schools.
See, the idea behind charter schools initially was that they would be freer to experiment since they wouldn't be covered by all the minute regulations that apply to the traditional public schools.
And if they came up with things that were successful educationally, then the traditional public schools would have the option of adopting these things.
What has happened has been the exact opposite.
That when the charter schools come up with something that contributes to their turning out a better educational result, the backlash is to restrict the charter schools and impose the things that are failing in the traditional public schools.
For example, the new legislation last year makes it virtually impossible to seriously punish.
Any student who simply disrupts the classes or schools that they're in.
Now, one of the things that charter schools do is have some sense of discipline so that kids who are, you know, act out, hit other kids, yell and carry on so the class can't go on, they can be suspended.
Now, they cannot be under California law.
Yeah.
More with Thomas Sowell.
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