Papa Johns and the Free Market System

Hey everybody. Over this past week, we as a class spent a large chunk of time watching, analyzing, and deconstructing John Oliver’s segment about the ubiquitously horrible and corrupt charter school system run by a bunch of greedy selfish monsters (*cough* sarcasm *cough*).  It was truly eye opening to realize that I am nothing more than a sh*tty pizza (I don’t know if I can swear in this but I’m just gunna go for it) being made by a Papa John’s pizza shop. Sarcasm aside though, I did find it particularly helpful to dissect Oliver’s argument about charter schools, especially considering that my project revolves around charter schools and what it is about specific one’s that make them more successful than others. (This also explains why I just randomly knew all those statistics about charters schools).

Anyways, in addition to learning more about my topic as the class discussed the video, I continued to read more about the multitude of studies and meta-analyses that attempted to understand and describe the state of charters schools throughout the United States (a task which I have learned often results in super vague conclusions). After reading a bunch of 50 plus page papers and trying to decipher some crazy cryptic statistics, I began to understand how all of the various influences can affect the performance of a charter school.

To understand how these various influences (socioeconomic status of student and community, state charter laws, school philosophy, etc.) affect student outcomes, two sources that can be put in conversation with one another are my sources by Christopher Lubienski and the Center for Research on Education Outcomes from Stanford University (CREDO). To save you all the boredom, I won’t go to in depth regarding what each one is about; however, in order to put them in conversation with one another, I have to provide at least a brief description of each.  With that being said, the Lubienski source is one of the foundational sources regarding the theory behind how charter schools affect the educational industry. From what I have seen, this paper is often cited in other well-known studies, and is one of the most important papers regarding market theory and education. On the other hand, my CREDO source deals far more with actual results than theory, as it is not only the most current study regarding the effects of charter schools, but it is also the largest one ever conducted in the field. As a result, it provides the most accurate data concerning the level of achievement of charter schools.

What is interesting to note between these sources is that in theory, having a greater number of options for schooling should result in increased achievement for all schools, because the competition between charter and public schools should result in both parties improving their teaching methods. However, in reality, charter schools have far fewer positive gains than would be expected. Although there are numerous social factors at play, this discrepancy between actual and expected results is one of the largest ongoing debates in this field today.  This discrepancy also helps to justify my research, because providing an in depth study of one of the most successful charter schools has the potential to help understand why some charter schools excel, and others fail.

Anyways, hopefully that last part was not too boring and dry. I am currently writing this in a redbull fueled, post vector-calc take home test dazed state and so I can’t really tell. With that being said, I’m signing off now, because I probably need some sleep. (593 words)