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How Good Are Charter Schools For the Public School System?
theodp writes "'You go to these charters,' gushed Bill Gates in 2010, 'and you sit and talk to these kids about how engaged they are with adults and how much they read and what they think about and how they do projects together.' Four years later, Gates is tapping his Foundation to bring charter schools to Washington State, doling out grants that included $4.25 million for HP CEO Meg Whitman's Summit Public Schools. So what's not to like? Plenty, according to Salon's The Truth About Charter Schools, in which Jeff Bryant delves into the dark side of the charter movement, including allegations of abuse, corruption, lousy instruction, and worse results. Also troubling Bryant is that the children of the charter world's biggest cheerleaders seem never to attend these schools ('A family like mine should not use up the inner-city capacity of these great schools,' was Bill Gates' excuse). Bryant also cites Rethinking Schools' Stan Karp, who argues that Charter Schools Are Undermining the Future of Public Education, functioning more like deregulated 'enterprise zones' than models of reform, providing subsidized spaces for a few at the expense of the many. 'Our country has already had more than enough experience with separate and unequal school systems,' Karp writes. 'The counterfeit claim that charter privatization is part of a new 'civil rights movement', addressing the deep and historic inequality that surrounds our schools, is belied by the real impact of rapid charter growth in cities across the country. At the level of state and federal education policy, charters are providing a reform cover for eroding the public school system and an investment opportunity for those who see education as a business rather than a fundamental institution of democratic civic life. It's time to put the brakes on charter expansion and refocus public policy on providing excellent public schools for all.'"
They're called enterprise schools in my district, but the one that I was involved in was a big success. We had a plan, which was to bring E.D. Hirsch's Core Knowledge curriculum to middle school students, to prepare them for high school and beyond. We wanted the entire school to be an honors school. Students had to have a B average to get in. The school district went along with the plan, and we opened the school in 1998, and my daughter was in the first class. The NAACP warned us that they would be watching us closely because they suspected that we were creating the school only for middle class white kids. What happened surprised them and us. Middle class white kids ended up being a minority in the school. The biggest ethnic group came from lower class hispanic families who saw the school as an opportunity for their children with good grades to get ahead. We also had a number of black and asian kids from poorer neighborhoods. The district was more than happy to bus the kids from all over the city to the school. The NAACP quietly shuffled off. I think they were actually disappointed.
The school was a success, but it required the interest of parents, administrators and teachers who agreed with the vision, diligent oversight, and a district that entusiastically cooperated. If any of the above elements are missing you have a potential disaster on your hands.
Proverbs 21:19
I attended a charter school when I was in high school.
We had to take all the standardized tests and meet all the state requirements to graduate. I ended up having to take American History from the local university because I could not fit the required course into the art curriculum I has elected to pursue.
We also had admission requirements. We had admission requirements because in 9th grade we were expected to take Algebra. If you did not have the math background to succeed in Algebra, you were not going to do well. It was a college prep school and you were expected to be able to handle the curriculum upon admittance. This school expected it's students to graduate with gobs of AP credits and to test out of a lot of freshmen college classes. I started college with almost 30 credits from AP tests. Admitting someone who could not read or add numbers would have done no one any favors. It does not help the students who are prepared and ready for the advanced curriculum if they have to be held back for students who aren't. It does not help the students who aren't ready to throw them into a curriculum they are not prepared for.
My brother did not attend the same high school. Instead, he attended the public high school down the street from our house because he always struggled with school work and would not have done well in the high pressure environment.
This idea that every child should get exactly the same education is ludicrous. Not everyone can do calculus in high school. Not everyone wants to play football. Not everyone wants to study art. There is a difference between opportunity and forcing everyone into cookie cutter education. My brother could have also attended the college prep charter school I went to, but it was not an environment he would have succeeded in so he didn't.