We’re really starting to reverse history here...and go back to when many kids went to private schools. Not unusual back then.
I thought charter schools were special government funded schools.
PRIVATE schools receive NO public funding.
Charter schools are like the Islamic school that got caught having prayer sessions that all students had to attend (or at least wait to end before boarding the school bus home).
Charter schools are required to offer all the same tests, and are subject to open enrollment, except in rare instances.
Yet, the teachers’ unions consistently fight to prevent them from getting the same revenues.
So, charter schools must do what they do with alot less money.
I’d like to see a comparison of all options, Charter, PS, Private, and Home.
Here in NJ a report came out two months ago. Catholic private schools ranked #1, followed by other Christian and prep private schools, followed by Charter, followed by PS. Home school was not included.
Charter schools mitigate some of the inherent problems of large public school systems.
For a school to do well, two things that are required are: 1. a strong principal; 2. parents who are on-board, who are on the team.
In large public school systems, it’s difficult for the principal of any particular school to be a strong principal. Where there may be 50, 100, 200, 500 schools or more within the entire system, the principal is little more than a mid-level supervisor. He’s not really the boss. He’s accountable to the myriad rules and regulations that uniformly govern the entire system. The scope of his authority is limited, as is his flexibility in creating a school environment that actually meets the needs of the students, as opposed to one that follows the dictates of the system’s central administration.
In charter schools, by design, the principal and faculty have much more leeway and authority to create an environment that they think will be the most successful. Of course, this means that charter schools can fail, if the folks in charge of the individual school aren’t really up to the task. In the Washington, DC school system, there have been many failed charter schools.
But it also means that charter schools and succeed, and even excel. That’s certainly the case, as well, in Washington, DC.
The second necessary component to successful schools is to have parents who are on-board, who are part of the team, who will stand with the principal and teachers when the going gets rough. But most public school systems alienate parents. They communicate overtly and covertly that parents are not part of the inner core of folks who are really in charge of the education of their children. The unstated role of parents in many public school systems is to provide free labor when needed, to endorse the actions and policies of the administration and faculty - no matter how lame-brained - and to provide additional funds outside the already-grotesque amounts of money stolen by many school jurisdictions.
The first way that many public school systems communicate these things to parents is by instructing parents where their children will be sent to school. In many systems, parents are told which schools their children will attend, and have little or no choice in the matter. Taking away educational choice from parents is a great way of telling parents that their real input into their children’s education is neither needed nor wanted.
Other ways include the inability of many public school systems to accommodate the reasonable requests of parents to modify or make flexible policies, rules, and regulations that are obstacles to their children’s education. This relates back to the first point - the need for strong, powerful, flexible principals and faculty. If the principal is one of 300 principals in his school system, it’s unlikely that he’ll be able to deal flexibly with any particular child whose real needs aren’t already fully anticipated by the inflexible system in which he works.
Of course, even the attempt to account for all the real needs of individual students winds up creating massively bureaucratic subsystems designed to meet the needs of these students, but which further alienate parents, children, and even faculty and administration.
Here, too, the charter school mitigates some of these problems, as the principal and faculty, with their wider leeway and authority, can collaborate with parents to create a learning environment more suited to the specific school community in attendance at their particular school, and can deal more flexibly with individual parents and students to accommodate their particular needs. Thus, the parent becomes a valuable partner in determining and meeting the needs of his child, not a nuisance to be handled or dealt with either by brushing the parent and his concerns aside, or by pushing the parent off into some bureaucratic nightmare system allegedly designed to meet the student’s needs.
As well, the very nature of charter schools empowers parents - permitting choice for parents - and giving them a certain amount of power and leverage in the educational process - “You WILL meet the real educational needs of my child or I will take my child AND the funding that goes with him elsewhere.”
Charter schools are public schools that can reduce many of the inherent difficulties of running good, competent public schools that truly meet the educational needs of most of their students.
Ping to an interesting thread on charter schools.
PING - charter schools work.