Highlights From The Comments On Cult Of Smart

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-cult

DeBoer argued that charter schools succeed through selection effects: they only take the best students. Several commenters pointed out this was illegal. It is, but they’ve found loopholes. Here's Alexander H:

I attended a charter school all 4 years quite recently. Admissions was entirely by lottery, open to everyone in the district. I can tell you that even in freshman year, the student body was not even remotely close to representative of normal kids; it was basically an entire school of the kids who would normally be in gifted / accelerated programs. And by graduation, it was even more refined to super talented & smart people, because the students who left to go back to their local normal schools were mostly from the rear of the pack. I think that I got a lot better of an education there than I would have at my local school, and I would attribute more of that to the quality of my classmates than to the teachers or curriculum , though both of which were also better [...]

[Despite the lottery, admission was selected by] whose parents were involved enough, interested enough in education, valued education enough. Simple as that, I think.

Michael Pershan recommends his own review of a book on Success Academy. A key quote: