"moving a chunk of non-IEP kids into more non-secular schools with lower standards"

When we applied to public schools for my child, the one we were most excited about was a charter school, not one run by the local school district.

As far as I can tell, charter schools have some selection pressure that is absent from government-run schools: if a charter school does poorly, parents don't choose it, and it closes. If a district-run school does poorly, the district will allocate kids there anyway.

The highest achieving charters have also been able to get mediocre non IEP kids to transfer back by setting them up to have trouble keeping up and not supporting them when they struggle.

Edit: And on the lower-performing side, you have schools focused on religion and/or patriotism, which tend to be less concerned about getting low performers out, but which aren't based as much around effective academics so much as ideology, and which do not meet the civic bar for education. Though I've also seen some that are just there to basically act like the charter equivalent of for-profit colleges: give parents in low SES areas a message of hope and then just minimize costs in the classroom.

https://www.tucsonsentinel.com/opinion/report/020515_charter...

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-education...

https://harvardpolitics.com/arizonas-experiment-with-charter...

https://www.12news.com/article/news/education/az-public-scho...

https://azmirror.com/2024/06/06/it-costs-arizona-332m-to-pay...

https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/laurieroberts/...

I also have numerous acquaintances working in various capacities in schools (public, charter, and private) and have to say I regard all the things mentioned in the linked articles as severely under-reported. Retaliation against teachers and staff who try to get kids services at charters is a thing. Public school districts and counties having to foot evaluation costs for parochials is a thing. Refusing and avoiding evaluations for kids in charters so they can be kicked out for behavior and then the publics have to foot the evaluation costs is a thing.

I completely think if local districts (and/or families) had a spine or the right legal resources they could be suing charters who've not even tried to follow or service existing IEPs left and right when those kids are constantly enrolling in publics mid year (with those kids generally exhibiting broad spectrums declines against academic and IEP goals).

The parent comment captures the education system’s attitude toward teachers perfectly. The problem is always due to a shortcoming of the teacher, and the solution is always the responsibility of the teacher.

Do you have pull out programs, self contained classrooms, etc.? How common is it to have manifestation hearings for the kids your wife thinks are risky in the classroom?

The charter school my wife taught at (in CA) had to prove itself to the district and fight for public dollars, hence the inability to lose any kids (and dollars).

The charter school I went to years ago sounds more like the kind you’re talking about. Basically a private school that received no public funding.

To me a charter is just a school that is privately run, usually for either ideological or profit motives, or both, that parents can choose to send their kids to instead of a public school, and which gets money from the state, usually a bit less than a public school would, for each attending child. In turn, the charter school is usually subject to different and less stringent oversight and standards than the public school.

Unlike publics, usually charters do not have to accept mid-term enrollment and parents have to figure out transportation. In demand charters can cap their enrollment and use a lottery for admissions.

The key though is this point:

> gets money from the state, usually a bit less than a public school would, for each attending child

So the charter is under the same pressure as the public school since compensation is directly tied to headcount, the top priority is keeping kids or you won’t survive. I’m not sure how the schools you’re mentioning are able to push kids out and not lose money. Maybe they’re just in affluent areas.

All that to say, I’m not a huge fan of charter schools but I doubt they’re the source of our problem.

One side of the coin is basically softened McCarthyism as a school, which "encourages families to be actively involved in religious organizations of their choice" and [paraphrasing] "supports the national Motto of the United States: In God We Trust."

The other is taking advantage of the angst among professional and white collar parents and runs a curriculum several years ahead of grade level, and takes advantage of filled wait-lists to create high pressure and somewhat rigid environments where kids who don't perform at a high level in even one subject get held back a year and get pressured to leave.

I can't speak to the more "American Exceptionalism" oriented schools as much, despite relative ubiquity - I've heard of them refusing to service IEPs here and there.

But the BASIS style ones are constantly sending kids back to the public schools that are somewhat psychologicaly damaged despite performing at quite a high level. Typical policies are things like "After grade 9, students must maintain an average score of 3 or above on all AP Exams or the student may not receive full financial support for AP Exams beyond the six that are required for graduation." I have the impression that students go back to publics because of things like not wanting to repeat a year because of struggling with Mandarin and developing self esteem issues. I think they (BASIS) also have non required courses available that have extra fees associated and aren't actually included with the state funded enrollment.

Both angles are able to effectively select student populations that cost less to serve than the student population overall and avoid IEP kids and services for them.

Obviously there are others, but anecdotally, other types don't seem to have a lot of longevity.

e.g. the last article is about Arizona's ESAs, which compete with charter schools.

Sadly, when the risk of enforcement is low, many administrators will ignore the law. (This applies to government-run orgs as well.)

If anything, there should be some sort of behavioral/educational reform schools, probably operated in something closer to a military fashion, to help out not only these kids, but the countless others who they'd otherwise be disrupting.

This issue is one (of many) for why if I did decide to have my children go to school in the US it would be at a high performing private school. I'd actually prefer they have the less bubbly experience of public school, but I'm not willing to tolerate having their classes disrupted by kids who are just bee-lining to jail anyhow. I had that upbringing and I think it substantially delayed my 'educational maturity'.

What's really sad is that now the parents are not only paying extremely high taxes to cover the standard school, but now also are having to shell out extra to make sure their child gets the eduction they deserve.

Why this is shocking is that Denmark (the whole nordics) has an extremely strong public education tradition which is being very quickly eroded. Just 20 years ago private education was seen as something for the elites (e.g. Royalty) but now it's becoming an expected expense.

Almost everyone is frustrated by this: teachers, parents, students, as well as their special needs counterparts. The only people winning are the politicians who get to morally grandstand.

I was doing my best, but with others' constant attention seeking behaviour (shouting, interrupting the teacher, and other more insane things) it was impossible for the teacher to teach and me to concentrate.

If it wasn't for my last year at a private school I wouldn't be where I am now.

I understand they want to create an environment where the kids may feel guilty or something else, but the problem isn't with who they're with in school, most likely. And by problem I mean the CORE problem. That is in most cases a deep issue at home.

We're basically running social experiments on kids.

There are problem kids, but the effect of concentrating them is much worse than the effect of distributing them, much like piling things on one section of net is more likely to break it than distributing them.

There is, in IMO, a ceiling to the percentage of behavior and academic IEP kids you can have in one classroom without it impacting regular kids substantially. (Though for very extreme kids it might just plain not be viable or safe at all.)

Historically reform schools have not been an effective model, but they were also often basically just a way to keep problem kids away from more normal ones and would have treated teen pregnancy the same as severe autism the same as emotional disorders.

You do see more and more self-contained rooms in publics for severe case kiddos that can't be in normal classrooms, which is a bit similar.

Which is to say one child really can ruin the experience of other children. But making it so that private schools and charters have means to keep down the ratio of destructive traumatizers, IEP time wasters, etc., compared to publics doesn't solve anything. It just artificially makes public schools seem worse, cost burdens them, and creates more social stratification.

You basically end up with a tiered system where most public schools have turned into bad reform schools that can't avoid underperforming. Meanwhile, it's not that charters are good, it's just that they've been able to take advantage of two layers of selection to filter out cost centers that decrease performance.

And in turn you are now damaging the prospects of any kid whose parents aren't interested in keeping them out of the public school compared to the other options.

Being from Arizona and having some experience with the charter schools there, I'm curious which ones you have in mind

Note that their "officially" Christian schools are private: https://christos.greatheartsamerica.org/

So in theory their charters are more secular, but they're going to get as far up on the line as they can.

I have (a not close) relative who is sending his kid to a different charter where their whole website is about how much patriotism and flag rah rah is in the curriculum and how they adhere to traditional gender roles, but for the life of me I can't remember the name.

Another chain focused on God and "Patriotism"

That is an interesting contrast with the British equivalent. Religious schools are generally academically much better, so much so that people lie about their religion (and start turning up to church etc.) to get in (IIRC it is a condition of state funding that a minimum proportion of students are followers of the religion).

I'm sure there are outliers in either school type, but categorizing religious schools as lower performing doesn't to fit my experiences at all.

On top of that, they are quite generous and inexpensive as non-state schools. Listed tuition does vary considerably, as some elite Catholic schools are truly very expensive. However, they're not representative of typical tuition costs, and in either case, they usually offer financial assistance. They even lower tuition for each subsequent child you send to their school. Some schools (like Regis in NYC) are completely free, if you get in.

On top of that, Catholic laity have been founding schools independently in the last ~20 years or so (that is, these are private schools that are not under the direct authority of the bishop of the local diocese). These tend to emphasize a return to classical curricula (like the trivium and quadrivium), updated and supplemented accordingly.

(Those with a prejudice against religious schools as a whole also fail to understand that a guiding worldview is always present in any school. This cannot be avoided. In fact, it is nonsensical. It is the backdrop that determines the organization and structure of curricula in the first place. State schools in the modern liberal state naturally insinuate and teach a liberal worldview, one that bona fide Catholics merely tolerate as a matter of practicality, but utterly reject as a matter of principle, as the liberal worldview along with its liberal anthropology is at odds with the Catholic worldview. Education is ultimately a matter of intellectual formation which is something that entails some measure of moral formation as well. The liberal arts are first and foremost about freeing a person to be able to reason and reason proficiently, not about producing economic actors first and foremost, though you could naturally expect someone with this formation to be well-prepared for the world of work as well as a consequence of having been formed intellectually and morally.)

When I read this, I thought there was no way it could be true.

When I Googled it and looked at the first few search results, I thought “It must be just a few schools.”

It’s not.

I have always thought that equality of outcome is an unrealistic goal, but I was wrong. You get equal outcomes if you just give everyone an “A.”

Reminds me of Bart Simpson coming home from school with an “everyone gets a trophy day” trophy.

He believed radio carbon dating was a lie and the earth was literally ~5k years old.

There are confounding factors that SAT scores don't surface.

An interesting question is, would that person in your example answer a question about radio carbon dating correctly on a test? It's possible they know the correct answer to mark but have separate philosophical beliefs. This would further support the idea that the religious schools have high academic achievement even if the beliefs differ.

Self directed learning, reading comprehension, maths skills, critical thinking skills, ability to identify and reject sophistry, these abilities have some overlap perhaps but can each be skilled up separately and impact how a person can later function in roles that depend on the ability to identify true/false propositions.

Do you view the utility and practice of having overlapping confirmations and methodologies for radiometric dating (radiocarbon, potassium–argon, uranium–lead, etc.) to be a philosophic belief?

Do you think that it is wise to spend time and money formally training "high potential" people to have such deeply systemic errors in reasoning to the point that they flat reject peer reviewed, high confidence data and methods as a positive?

We aren't talking about being a Theist, Deist, ETC. We aren't talking about religious beliefs as most christians support radiometric dating, we are talking about educational materials for the young that reject following the data in pragmatic, well documented, well confirmed, high utility fields and rejects them out of pocket with untestable unobservable and sometimes demonstrably false alternatives. I don't want my curriculum to be the blind (or the sophists) leading the blind and to pretend these are equivalent because this self selected group trends towards higher SAT scores seems to miss the point.

I am pro-homeschooling and private schools generally and have multi generational exposure and participation in these things. Let a family believe whatever it wants to believe intellectually, I generally believe these variations to be positive in ensuring the human race is more diverse in exploring the "search space".

That being said, one of the smartest people I know, with all the raw materials in the world became a PHD scientist in molecular biology and bioinformatics and got nerd sniped by his YEC background, the years he's spent spinning his wheels due to an inability to follow the conclusions of his cognitive dissonance means he might as well not have become a scientist at all. It's enough that his family did that to him and it's fine or whatever, but we shouldn't have tax paid educators and curriculums participate in the cognitive crippling of children if our goal is to have a functional and productive society.

There are many people who hold beliefs that run contrary to the evidence on a variety of subjects from all educational backgrounds.

"...because this self selected group trends towards higher SAT scores seems to miss the point."

If it does, it's a point that hasn't been made yet. This entire post is about test scores, which is the way education is measured. If you're contending that public schools produce better reasoning than religious schools, then please provide that data.

"but we shouldn't have tax paid educators and curriculums participate in the cognitive crippling of children if our goal is to have a functional and productive society."

This part left me unclear, as this is also the same sort of complaint many parents are having about some of the ideologies being taught (or how they're being taught) in public schools, which are publicly funded. Most states do not publicly fund religious/private schools.

"Do you think that it is wise to spend time and money formally training "high potential" people to have such deeply systemic errors in reasoning to the point that they flat reject peer reviewed, high confidence data and methods as a positive?"

So how did your example achieve a PhD if he contradicted the peer reviewed evidence? I assume the review board and degree was from a secular school and you have implied the secular school process doesn't permit these sorts of reasoning flaws. Perhaps their reasoning on most subjects is solids and they have a few blind spots. This is generally true of most people, including those from public schools. Also, let it be known that many successful scientists have challenged existing positions successfully to discover new things. Science encourages challenging existing positions as part of the process to make new discoveries. This is one of the reasons there are so few "laws" in science and so many "theories".

"We aren't talking about religious beliefs as most christians support radiometric dating, we are talking about educational materials for the young that reject following the data in pragmatic, well documented, well confirmed, high utility fields and rejects them out of pocket with untestable unobservable and sometimes demonstrably false alternatives."

Ok... so what is your point? The vast majority of religious schools support radio cabon dating just as you admit that most religions do. I'm pretty confident that my comment chain has been using qualifiers to indicate that there may be outliers, but that in general religious schools do not have lower academic standards as indicated by the test score data. There may be outliers in any of the various school types, but the data is pretty clear that the current measures of academic success are test scores and post-secondary education, for which religious school score at least as well on. This refutes the original comment that religious schools have academically lower standards. Unless someone has actual data and not just anecdotal that says otherwise.

Unless you have well designed co-hort studies most of the data just isn't really useful. The SAT, like any other measure that becomes the standard, is going to be gamed. I'm trying to highlight why a shallow and cursory glance at any data can be misleading and adding specific observations as food for thought.

Take it as you will. Test scores surely are directional and with universal declines that is worrying, but that isn't the sole topic of discussion in the thread is it?

The intial ellipses is pretty indicative, it seems clear that radiometric dating is a charity belief and is not something one thinks is a valid mechanism for acquiring accurate data and facts that map to observable, testable reality.

I think most people wouldn't have so much difficulty distinguishing philosophic positions and fact acquiring methodologies, I mean some people view physical reality as not existing and all material endeavor and observation to be a waste, surely that's an equally valid worldview to inculcate and spend tax money on, so as long as mandatorg testing scores are within the margin of error these beliefs have no downside to fund with tax dollars?

I mean if we draw no lines than why teach math or have an SAT at all? Being able to identify and record observable facts are not a critical part of education in some people's estimation it seems.

Unless you have well designed co-hort studies most of the data just isn't really useful."

Interesting that you claim the data isn't really useful, but then are forceful about a narrative being wrong. This seems like the issue you are complaining about - holding beliefs without facts or contrary to facts.

1. "Religion" is not a monolithic category. It is effectively synonymous with "worldview". The content of a given worldview matters. So, pace modern doctrines of "tolerance", not all worldviews are equal. The notion that they are is simply absurd, as they all vary and differ and make different claims.

2. Doctrine is inevitable. As the Chestertonian quote goes, there are only two kinds of people: those who accept dogma and know it, and those who accept dogma and don't know it. A person cannot function without doctrine. The trouble is that the liberal order has managed to convince us that its doctrines aren't doctrines at all. They're just taken to be "obviously true" or "obviously neutral", which they are not.

3. Since doctrine is inevitable, then all schools at the very least insinuate the doctrines of the governing worldview in the manner things are taught and structured and in the way the school is run. In state schools, these are typically liberal doctrines. That is obvious: why would the state propagate doctrines of a worldview other than the one that it is governed by? It may demonstrate a certain tolerance for other worldviews, but the limits of this tolerance are determined by the doctrines of the governing worldview. This is inescapable, and it is dishonest to deny it.

4. Teaching doctrines is not opposed to knowledge. In fact, if a doctrine is true, then learning it is learning knowledge.

5. Now, among schools we classify as "religious", Catholic schools certainly teach both religious subject matter as well as all the sorts of subject matters you might expect to be taught in a school. We're not talking about some weird American Protestant sect here. Fides et ratio.

Too many lean into the crude caricatures of their imagination.

I have to say, however, that it seems slightly tendentious of you to pick out liberalism (albeit in broadest possible sense of the word) in this manner. Is there anything to justify seeing this issue as being specific to, or concentrated within, liberalism? Prior to your comment, liberalism has not been an issue in this discussion.

On the other hand you have more traditional religious private schools, whether Catholic, segregation academies, etc., and these kinds usually have good academic standards and are probably more comparable to what you refer to. They are also rarely intersecting with the charter system.

Any child of any ability, race, socioeconomic background has a right to an education.

That is promise of public education.

The charter school can be selective. They can deny education.

The charter school - better for your child? Sounds like it.

Better for society, no.

Charter schools cannot be selective.

https://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/ch/cefcharterschools.asp

  A charter school is a public school that may provide instruction in any combination of grades (transitional kindergarten through grade twelve).

  A charter school shall admit all students who wish to attend the school; however, if the number of students exceeds the school's capacity, attendance shall be determined by a public random drawing.

[1] https://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/administrative-failures-pl...

[2] https://www.legalaiddc.org/blogs/client-spotlight-unemployme...

Public education is notoriously bad at addressing the situation when some particular child frequently disrupts education of twenty others who would like to make use of their right. This is something that the noble proclamations like yours tend to just ignore.

Better for society, no."

I'm curious how you think this is true. If it's better for the children in them, then they should have a better education and be more likely to contribute to society yo their maximum potential. So there's the positive side. What we would have to show is that there is a significant negative side for the students still in public schools that was not there before. The only real argument I've heard from this was about how to reduces funding from public schools. However, it also reduces costs for the reduced number of students, so it doesn't seem like a big factor. In fact, most studies show public schools having significantly higher per student budgets than the charters. So what is the negative impact on society?

Don't these scores sort of suggest a negative impact? We've been leaning further and further into charter schools in the US and I don't see where education is thriving.

If there are positive impacts on society, I would think you could very easily show us over the past 20 decades. We have more than 10x the number of charter school students today than in 2000.

==In fact, most studies show public schools having significantly higher per student budgets than the charters.==

I thought charter schools were public schools.

You are presenting a generic correlation between downward trending test scores and prevalence of charter schools. Are there any studies with a real correlation that corrects for other factors? Let's remember that correlation is not causation. Especially consider that achievement was already on a downward trend and that 10x number you quote is only resulting in 6-10% of all public school students today. Even if there is a correlation with the number of charter school students and a decrease in test scores, what is the actual reason or mechanism? Just saying overall scores are still going down and charter enrollments are up doesn't show anything.

The outcome for society is that every single student got a sub-par education, because things moved at a glacial pace, had constant interruptions, students felt unsafe, the pace was so slow that students felt bored, etc.

A far better outcome would have been to make a small public school for the highly-academically oriented students (top-10%, future doctors and engineers) a disruption-free normal curriculum (middle-80%) and a special-needs school for all the students who had learning disabilities, behavioral issues, etc which prevented them from being able to thrive in a conventional classroom.

What about the students that fit into more than one group? I did not "thrive" in any classroom nor would I still. I had behavioral problems and a learning disability (though I was still an A/B student). I still became a software engineer, but I didn't know I had a learning disability until my 20s. Had I know when I was a kid, where would I have been placed? I had special needs, which were completely ignored (and still are), but I turned out average to above average enough.

Well actually, I did have one instance of being in an 'under the table' special needs program when I was in 6th grade. I was never told why I was in this program for part of every school day, and my parents were never informed. Idk about anyone else, but I did not enjoy being treated like a 'lesser person' because of something I could not control.

Also, what good are these special needs programs for students with learning disabilities when there is no place for many such people in the working world? If anything, I find these programs set people up for more failure than success. The golden rule of non-visible disabilities is to never mention them to any prospective or current employer. Often times, it's a one-way ticket to an eventual PIP/lay-off/firing. 1.5x time on tests is cute, but virtually no employer is giving someone 1.5x on a deadline because they are disabled.

2. Religious private schools do not need to meet the same educational requirements as public schools.

3. Charter schools have some selection pressure, but public schools dont have a profit motive.

4. "Charter Schools" as a category is wildly varied, with some excellent institutions, and others that are grifting off the taxpayer dollar.

The most important thing however, is the vicious cycle they introduce. Public schools are required to educate every child, regardless of the expense of doing so. Charter schools face no such requirement. So when charter schools exist in that system, every student that leaves the public school and takes their little chunk of funding with them inherently makes life more difficult for the public school they're leaving. This in turn increases the incentive for every other high achieving student to leave, which makes the public school's situation worse and worse each time.

Charter schools where I live are required to educate every child. Admissions is via lottery. Is that not the case where you live? (Of course, this doesn't apply to private schools, which definitely cherry pick students, but we're talking about charter schools.)

Re: "public schools don't have a profit motive", this is technically true, but there are plenty of people working for public school districts who contribute little yet draw large salaries and lifetime pensions. A charter school that doesn't make ends meet is forced to shut down. A government-run school district that doesn't make ends meet gets given more money. (This is true in San Francisco at least. I realize that teacher and admin compensation varies widely across the US.)

BTW in most places (even places like Arizona which are relative pro school choice), the per-pupil funding of charter schools is much much less than the per-pupil funding of government-run school districts.

Because charter schools (at least here in California) have to accept any student, just like any other public school, they don't contribute to the cycle you describe. (Obviously private schools do, but I don't think you're advocating outlawing privately-funded schools.)

In AZ also keep in mind that the funding difference is complicated by education scholarship accounts, which are bankrupting the state.

Here they’re required to educate BUT they can do a lot to deter expensive students. If they don’t have support staff, kids with special needs won’t apply. If they require a test to advance grades, those kids will leave. If they require lots of homework, anyone without a nanny or stay-at-home parent and lots of support will leave.

My wife used to teach at one of those schools and it followed an arc over a decade where they started claiming they were cheaper but once they added the legally required support staff they were only cheaper to the extent that they paid their staff less by hiring young teachers and burning them out before they got old enough to expect better pay or have major health insurance expenses.

That is basically the arc of every charter school: every few years you’ll hear about someone doing miracles on a tight budget, but over time it’ll either disappear as regression to the mean sets in or turn out to be some form of selection to avoid expensive children. There just isn’t one weird trick an entire profession has somehow missed.

Is this a state thing? In California, I don't get to stop paying taxes if my children go to a charter school. Or, am I just not understanding the point you're making re: "funding?" Are charter schools not also public where you live?

  * NOT subsidizing private schools
  * NOT determining school funding based on child count

Which is entirely not how things are run right now. Government inefficiency frequently relates to 'yearly budgets' and places that look to continue to spend a given year's budget because otherwise it'll go somewhere else. Rather than just doing what's necessary when it's necessary irrespective of how much or little doing the most effective and efficient thing costs.

> (btw for the acronym haters: "Individualized educational program". Those of older gens may know it as "Special Education")

Thank you for spelling this out. I've spoken with some educators in the charter system and was always a bit confused by what they meant with IEP.

As a taxpayer I hate waste. As a long-serving business owner I accept that some level of waste is a cost of doing business.

There are several problems with the concept of "waste".

firstly it's most obvious in hindsight. It's much less obvious in foresight. We spend money with an objective in mind, and in some number of times we fail to meet that objective.

Take marketing as an example. It costs money to attend an event. Will we get a return? sometimes no.

Of course the easiest way to avoid waste is simply not to take risks, not to spend anything. If we prioritize "avoid waste" we create an environment where "nothing is attempted".

Your suggestion to criminalize this with personal accountability makes things worse. What you'll get is no money spent at all, because the risk of spending -any- money could see you in jail.

Secondly, in order to criminalize waste you need to detect it, measure it, prosecute it, defend it, and so on. None of that comes cheap. So you spend money to save money?

Of course we already do this to some extent. We keep books. We have audits. If we detect waste we might examine it, consider alternatives, learn lessons to avoid it. But that's a long long way from the costs of criminal prosecution.

Thirdly you create perverse incentives for bad actors. Don't like a teacher? Accuse them of waste. You can probably find some cause. Your competitor got a contract at a local school? Be sure to loudly proclaim that as waste because you "would have done it cheaper". Sure you would do a crap job that may have failed in 2 years instead of 20, but who's to say?

Send a few teachers to jail - does that increase or decrease the likelihood of people growing up wanting to be teachers?

So yeah, I dislike waste. But preventing waste comes with a price, not just in money. Be careful in what you choose to optimize.

In a system with a mixture of public and private schools, the public schools will always be a necessary feature of the selectivity of private schools. Not only to accept "problem" kids, but also to operate in areas where it's not profitable to run private schools, or in cases where private schools run into financial and management problems and must be bailed out.

So it's not so much that the private schools are "better" but that they both function as interdependent parts of a system.

On the other hand, there will always be a need for special education... mainstreaming all kids in one classroom hasn't worked very well either.

This article is good and its conclusions are mostly[0] sound:

https://open.substack.com/pub/sfeducation/p/wanted-careful-a...

[0] I strongly disagree with the conclusion that, if government-run schools have excess capacity, then we should prevent charter schools from being opened or expanded.

Any source for this? My understanding is that most states have criteria for what needs to be taught in a primary and secondary school, regardless of public or non-secular. In my experience (attending, touring, friends who are teachers), the non-secular schools had higher standards.

"concentrating behavior issue and IEP kids in public schools"

Public schools in many areas are increasingly doing this by sending G-IEP to entirely separate schools. Indirectly, they are also doing this by increasing school population. Smaller communities tend to better self-police. The biggest issue is the lack of appropriate involvement followed by the lack of leverage the school has. In some areas, some non-public schools even get district IEP resources for their IEP students, so they aren't all avoiding it.

IE public school has to pay but the money goes to the non-public.