Posted on 08/29/2014 6:45:50 AM PDT by Academiadotorg
Charter schools are gaining momentum, and a recently-passed bill in the House of Representatives will help make it easier to start and maintain charter schools. The Success and Opportunity through Quality Charter Schools Act, an amendment to the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, was introduced to address the growing education sector. charter school poster
The concerns, elaborated by the House Education and the Workforce Committee, are that charter schools “face difficulty in securing facilities to house their schools” and “have difficulty obtaining the funds necessary to build or rehabilitate facilities.” Also, they [are] concerned about charter school quality and [helping]them to become successful. The committee hoped that the bill would help charters expand their “reach out to special populations, including at-risk students, students with disabilities, and English learners.”
The bill’s summary reads:
“The Success and Opportunity through Quality Charter Schools Act consolidates the two programs into one, refocuses the new program to promote high-quality charter schools at the state and local level, and allows states to use federal funds to start new charter schools as well as expand and replicate existing high-quality charter schools. Additionally, the bill authorizes a Charter Management Organization (CMO) grant program to support CMO successes in opening quality charter schools nationwide.”
The cost of the bill will be close to $300 million for the upcoming fiscal years 2015 through 2020 and the mandates are made up of several major parts:
“Grants to support high-quality charter schools will be awarded to a State Educational Agency, the State Charter School Board, the Governor, or a Charter School Support Organization. The grants will support the expansion and replication of high-quality charter schools, and new, innovative charter school models. Additionally, each state will use a portion of the funding to support quality initiatives aimed toward improving charter school authorizing.
Facilities Aid will be awarded to continue credit enhancement activities and support state facilities aid for charter schools. National Activities will allow the Secretary of Education to operate a grant competition for charter schools in states that did not win or compete for a state grant and a competition for high quality CMOs. This section also requires the secretary to offer technical assistance to help eligible grantees apply for the grant, as well as to help grantees properly implement the grant. The secretary will also be allowed to disseminate best practices to ensure all public schools may benefit from charter schools’ success. Finally, the secretary will conduct an evaluation to examine the effects of the legislation on charter schools, including student achievement.”
Public charter schools don't wash as "public" means a mix. This is a rehash of debate that's been going on since the sixties.
"Public" schools can't have it both ways.
Believe it or not, here in D. C. we have an Edmond(sp?) Burke charter school
My daughter teaches at a charter school.
The teachers unions have declared all-out WAR on them.
Including all of the usual knee-in-the-groin tactics
that have been perfected by people like the Teamsters.
Local union teachers and their local union chief were on the radio railing against them. The union chief made the audacious statement that “we aren’t doing anything that is not for the benefit of the children.” I suffered an immediate B.S. overdose and almost drove into the ditch.
If Tom Wolf gets elected Governor, charter schools are D.O.A. in this state. Have not seen the union hacks working so hard to elect someone in a very long time.
We have that in our school district. I HATED it because it skimmed off all the A to B+ students from our schools and we were left with the "B" students as the TOP grade getters.
That is, the standards for the rest of the district dropped!
The BEST students MUST stay in the public schools as role models and to keep academic standards high.
The BEST students MUST stay in the public school mix as role models and to keep academic standards high.
it’s not a bad rule of thumb to stay open to ideas that union leaders are closed to.
I don’t care for this bill. All educational issues should be decided at the county level. No state interference, no federal interference.
The BEST students MUST stay in the public school mix as role models and to keep academic standards high.
As one of those guys who was one of the top grade achievers in high school I find your comment full of communist rhetoric. The top students MUST sacrifice what is in their best interests in order to increase morale among the rest of the students.
The problem is that no one told the low-achieving students how this was going to help them, and they were constantly taking out their frustrations by physically attacking the physically less adept, but academically better students. I was shaken down for lunch money, assaulted, and held in very low esteem by the athletically inclined students. After a year of this my parents wisely moved me to a private school, where high academic standards were rewarded.
Now, explain to me why I should have suffered physical and emotional abuse every day to raise the standard of the school, when by moving to a school that was clearly better for me I avoided the abuse and was much more successful academically? It is the duty of the school to entice the better students to stay, the concept of forcing them to stay at an inferior school is immoral.
Oh great, sacrifice the better students for the lesser.
Academic standards don't depend on the student body, but on what standards the teachers and parents enforce.
I hear ya CurlyDave.
As a high-achieving student in a typical public school you are NOT a role model. More often a laughing stock or a victim.
Public school teachers don’t like the A to B+ students being drained away because it affects their FUNDING. Pure and simple.
Not one argument made by those union teachers or their union boss related to anything other than jealousy over public funding lost to the charter schools.
Parents decide what’s best for their kids. Parents owe absolutely no loyalty to poorly performing public schools just because their children happen to live in a certain attendance zone. It’s up to parents to look after the best interests of their children.
===============================
AMEN!
What sacrifice? People may be created equal in the eyes of God, but that is IT.
There are always MANY people who are smarter, more ambitious and more disciplined. Always.
Therefore there will always be people who do better than anyone else.
What parents ought to do is figure out where their children HONESTLY fit into the I.Q., ambition and discipline chart.
My mother and her brother BOTH had I.Q.s close to genius.
*My mother went to college (rare back then), worked her way through college and moved to California for work.
Later when my dad was ill she went BACK TO SCHOOL, got her teacher's credential, taught, went back to school to get her "Dean" credentials and Master's Degree.
After my father passed away, she started art school at 55 years old and became quite an artist in water color and etching.
She also started law school. Took the California State Bar and passed it the FIRST time. She was 60 years old. [It took Richard Nixon three times to pass it.] My mother practiced family law for 20 years and retired at 80.
**Her brother finished high school, got a U.S. government job and worked in Customs on the Arizonz-Mexico border until he was 55 years old.
Then, he retired, sat in a chair, read, watched T.V., got diabetes, had several toes amputated, lost his vision in one eye and was almost blind in the other eye (glaucoma), had two heart attacks, REFUSED to exercise in any way, shape or form, was hospitalized often because of the diabetes and his heart...and finally succumbed to a heart attack in his mid-70's.
His last years were MISERABLE.
Brother and sister: they had all the choices in the world. Their parents wanted them to be happy, did what they could to help their children and saw how each life unfolded. The "unfolding" was the CHOICE of each individual.
Communist rhetoric? Please. There is NO sacrifice involved. CREAM ALWAYS RISES TO THE TOP.
Those TOP ACHIEVERS will achieve, if they are so inclined. Sometimes it might take years. My husband started college at 29 years old, worked his way though, became a mechanical engineer (They can do ANYTHING.) at 34 years old and never looked back. He was CREAM and he did rise.
As for the rest of the students it is not morale. PLEASE don't misquote me. The achievers provide an
EXAMPLE...EXAMPLE...EXAMPLE...EXAMPLE...EXAMPLE...EXAMPLE...EXAMPLE...EXAMPLE...EXAMPLE...EXAMPLE...EXAMPLE...EXAMPLE.
Are you clear on that? NOT morale...EXAMPLE. HUGE difference. But, you know that.
Lol. You are assuming that the physically less adept, but academically better students are the norm. SO UNTRUE.
Academically better students OFTEN excel everywhere and anywhere they choose. The Student-Athlete is not a new phenomenon. You see them on college basketball, football and baseball. THEY get to choose if they want to pursue athletics, scholastics or both.
I could have done that but there weren't the women college athletes like there are now. Oh well.
There are those who
-- excel at athletics but are as dumb as a box of hair. They won't go anywhere with their athletics. We all know that.
-- excel at neither athletics NOR academics and are RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF BOTH.
--are dumb as a box of hair and have two left feet and couldn't find their bottoms with both hands if they had a month to think about it.
Following the laws that our good Lord laid out and trying to be the best person we can be OUGHT to be our goal and if we get the chance to excel at something...we are lucky.
I trust God's plan for me IMPLICITLY.
If you suffered physical and emotional abuse, then it was the RIGHT move to get you the HECK out of that hell-hole of a school.
SOMEONE, MANY PEOPLE at your school dropped the ball. Teachers and administrators know who all the bullies are. If they stood by and allowed you to be tortured like that, then SHAME ON THEM. May they rot...
I had an acquaintance whose son was treated like that. It was horrible for them. They REALLY, REALLY wanted their son to go to public school but...it didn't work out.
They COULD HAVE sent their son to the local private Jewish school...but didn't. Dad was a doctor; mom was an attorney. They sent him to a local CATHOLIC school. Whaaaaaat?!
I couldn't get a straight answer out of my acquaintance, so I gave it up. I never saw her after that...HER choice. She changed "circle of friends."
==============================================
No school CAN force students to stay. It's all on the parents, where it should be. Schools ARE SUPPOSED to be safe. In your case, before you were forced to leave the following OUGHT to have happened.
*There should have been many conferences with the school administrators, counselors and teachers.
*There should have been many conferences with the PTA.
*There should have been a phone call or ten to the local government supervisors about that school and its bullying problem.
*There should have been calls to the local POLICE DEPARTMENT.
*There could have been judo/jujitsu/self defense/boxing classes for you to take.
There are SO many steps to take before throwing in the towel.
==============================================
My husband, brought up a white boy in tough non-white Oakland always said: "There's no defense against a 2x4 from behind on the back of the head."
One time he took me over to Oakland to see where he was born and brought up.
He and I drove under the elevated train tracks. There was a group (six or so) of young, mid-teen black kids SLOWLY walking in front of him and they SLOWED DOWN just to be jerks. So he honked at them. THAT ticked them off.
The group came toward us...then suddenly stopped, turned back and continued to yell abuse at him, from a distance.
They saw the LOOK in my husband's eye which said: You might get me but YOU ALL are going to DIE. They saw that he meant it and decided that discretion REALLY WAS the better part of valor.
He passed four years ago: I sure miss him.
He hated bullies.
I am certainly happy your husband rose, but don't be so smug about it.
I went to MIT, and graduated a semester early with a S.B. (that is not a typo, the degrees at MIT were awarded in Latin) Chemical Engineering, and by the age of 27 had a Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley, again in Chemical Engineering.
How did that benefit me? Well, for one, I started with a Ph.D. level salary seven years younger than your husband started with a bachelor level salary. I started in a supervisory position.
Seven extra years added to a professional career is a large difference. Again, if the public school wants to keep high achievers they should attract them.
* * * * * *
I understand the example part, but that sure was't the treatment I got from other students at public school.
* * * * * * *
Communist rhetoric? Please. There is NO sacrifice involved.
You obviously haven't been in this situation. There is a large personal sacrifice involved.
Any time a school wants me to sacrifice anything, with no benefit in return, that is communist thinking.
my daughter in law to be teaches at a charter school. There’s enough of a waiting list to start another school but the union has the school district around the throat.
Didn’t NYC do away with charter schools and dc did away with vouchers, so we can she how democrats are making great inroads in education.
*There should have been many conferences with the PTA.
*There should have been a phone call or ten to the local government supervisors about that school and its bullying problem.
*There should have been calls to the local POLICE DEPARTMENT.
*There could have been judo/jujitsu/self defense/boxing classes for you to take.
There are SO many steps to take before throwing in the towel.
How do I tell you that these things are no real remedy at all. Why? Because to run the full gamut would take time, a lot of time, probably 3 or possibly all 4 years of high school. And they would be ineffective in the end. But, time is of the essence here. After the school failing me for a whole year, they didn't deserve another chance. This was many, many years ago, and their attitude was that they tried (surely a minimal effort) and there wasn't anything they could do about it. So, my family voted with their feet and I went to a different, and clearly much better school.
Voting with your feet is always very effective.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.