<p>The assumption seems to be that charter schools only exist in poor neighborhoods with problematic schools. That is not the case. They also exist in middle-class neighborhoods and are often the school of choice for families who have a successful public school down the street. For example, there is a high school charter in a middle-class neighborhood near my office whose emphasis is on math/science and technology. They combine academics with hands-on technology and problem-solving. It’s a small program and they place their students in amazing internships in the community. Many of the savviest parents of technically inclined kids apply for that program and I have a friend who turned down a spot in a well-known and well-established math/science program for that charter. The charter school has a week of orientation activities the way colleges do and the kids bond before school even begins. </p>
<p>There is another charter school that is a performing arts school and it’s sought after by parents whose kids are performers. I know people who were very active in their traditional public schools who opted into that charter. A friend of mine who lived in an area with good schools loved the small charter school her son attended and felt the smaller environment was better for him. Another parent I know pulled her child out of a respected elementary school where she qualified for the gifted program to put her in a charter school. Another friend of mine recently told me she visited a charter high school that has three college counselors for three hundred kids. Our school has one college counselor for 3,000 kids. Parents are catching on to the fact that charters get to control their funds and make their own decisions. </p>
<p>In addition, within our school district several established traditional high schools decided to go charter which was no small feat. A school that breaks away from the district is not as independent as an independent charter (it’s complicated) but they still gain enough autonomy that it’s attractive. These schools want to make their own decisions about curriculum, food, calendar, hours, and how money is spent. The traditional-gone-charter high school near me will not have the five furlough days that the traditional public high schools have this year because they were able to manage their funds in such a way as to avoid that. A lot of money in our district goes to support a lot of bureaucrats and the buildings that house them. Charter schools don’t have to pay for all of that and so more money gets to the school itself and the students. </p>
<p>So is there a need? There is more than a need, there is a demand. There is a growing desire in many communities, both poor and middle-class, for choice, and a growing recognition that every school is not right for every student. There is also a growing desire among teachers, administrators and parents to figure out what is best for their population of students and to be able to make their own decisions.</p>
<p>I disagree that a demand is more than a need. A demand is just that–“I want!”
Parents with means can always choose; I don’t want to pay for their choices.</p>
<p>Charter schools and vouchers suck public dollars to support cherry-picked students at the expense of everyone else. The more cherry picking that goes on, the less successful the “regular” schools, who take everyone, will appear to be.</p>
<p>It’s like comparing inner city hospitals and doctors to private, for-profit ones and saying, gee whiz, those city hospitals are losing more patients (never mind the greater rate of health problems in the community). Let’s take those with insurance and ship them out to our shiny new facilities.</p>
<p>Oh, wait, those city hospitals now have even *poorer *rates of success. </p>
<p>Garland, I don’t know how much personal knowledge you have of charters in your district, but your statements just don’t hold true where I am.</p>
<p>In my district, the charter schools get about 2/3 of the funding (per student) that the local comprehensives get. They can’t cherry-pick students, because they are required to choose by lottery. At the schools I’m familiar with, the ethnic and socioeconomic composition is about the same as the comprehensives. The self-selection into the lottery system does mean that they may have more motivated parents, but they’re not all middle-class by a long shot. I know lots of charter students with an EFC of 0 and non-English speaking parents. I also know some foster youth who chose the charters.</p>
<p>The charters in my area get a disproportionate number of kids with learning differences, because they’re drawn to a smaller-school environment. The charters have to fund their required ratio of LD specialists out of a very meager budget that is set by the state and does not come from local property taxes.</p>
<p>Anyway, I don’t know where you are, but the picture you’re painting doesn’t look anything like where I am.</p>
<p>The more cherry picking that goes on, the less successful the “regular” schools, who take everyone, will appear to be.</p>
<p>We already have that in Seattle without charter schools.
THe lenght of time the average person stays in Seattle is 5 years. When people want to start families they move to the suburbs, which is more diverse than the city.
The families that * do stay* in the city, are just as likely to send their kids to private school or to home school them as send them to public school.</p>
<p>Many people, including our family can’t afford/ or don’t want to move- despite not graduating from high school myself ( although my husband did), and being solidly blue collar- our oldest attended private school K-12( after recommendations from several people in the school district) & our youngest did for three years- & if I had known what we were going to go through, I would have kept her in private school despite the sacrifice and expense- because money is just money- but their childhood is over in a flash.</p>
<p>Most families are like ours and send their kids to private school for at least part of their education.
But does the district ask why? Do they care?</p>
<p>They are like the phone company- they are there- they will always be there, they don’t have to do what they claim * " Everyone achieving- Everyone accountable"* is on every correspondence from the district. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>And even when repeated state audits show illegal/unethical behavior, nothing changes- because the laws have no teeth.</p>
<p>If there were NO alternatives to public schools- it wouldn’t change anything, because the community ( including teachers) has little impact on what they do in administration in our district and administrative policies ( or lack of) directly impacts what is happening in the buildings.</p>
The tricky part is that the truth of this statement varies from district to district, and from school to school within a district, and from classroom to classroom within a school, and from student to student within a classroom. So, yes, strictly speaking, they don’t serve all students, if by “serve” you mean “deliver an effective education to.” But I think the nature of the problem is both exaggerated and (maybe more importantly) distorted by statements like “our public schools are failing.” </p>
<p>I sent my kid to a vanilla urban district elementary school, and it was a good school, and it didn’t fail my kid at all. Other parents in the same school might report a different experience. Certainly parents in other schools in the same district would. In order to make things better, you have to zero in on the reasons for those differences. And then when you’ve found them, you have to figure out how to address them in the context of a budget that is continually shrinking, not rising. And you have to do this knowing full well that many of the most important factors limiting student success are entirely beyond the school’s or the teacher’s control–so in a realistic world, it would be understood and accepted that there are limits to the improvement in results that can be expected. But you don’t live in a realistic world; you live in a political world where it’s much easier to say “anything less than success for every child is unacceptable” than it is to make that happen. So you go about your work knowing that the deck is stacked against you and, furthermore, that you are being compared to competitors who have the deck stacked in their favor. Welcome to the world of an urban public school principal. </p>
<p>The principal of our son’s elementary school worked, I would estimate, 100-hour weeks. The woman probably slept about 3 hours a night. Her job was her life; she was cognizant of, and took responsibility for, everything that happened in her school and much of what happened outside of it. And this probably had everything to do with what a good school it was. But you know what? She died of cancer before her sixtieth birthday. I can’t prove that stress killed her, but I have my suspicions.</p>
<p>A system in which a school can’t be run effectively without the principal working herself literally to death is an untenable, insufficiently supported system. The schools need more commitment from the community. Yes, this means more money, but beyond that, more respect, more support, more of a sense of importance and centrality. I grew up in a small New Jersey town where the elementary school was near the heart of the community both literally and figuratively. Being a teacher there, though it didn’t pay well enough, made you a respected citizen, not a punching bag. We need to recapture this somehow.</p>
<p>Id like to see the superintendent be an electable position- instead of chosen by a headhunting firm from Minn.
( then maybe they would also be paid what a public official should make, instead of more than the governor)</p>
<p>It’s unfortunate that an entire line of reasoning can be destroyed by relying on faulty information. </p>
<p>No matter how much is made of cherry-picking students, it remains a spurious argument. The reality is that drastic restrictions imposed on voucher programs have ensured that those schools target a population of students that is overwhelmingly considered at-risk. </p>
<p>Speaking about cherry-picking, would you also claim that the presence of private schools make the “regular” schools less successful? Do the local catholic schools in your community undermine the success of the public schools? Do the private universities undermine the success of public community or four year colleges? </p>
<p>As usual, it is easy to rely on hollow rhetoric and idle speculation to pepper a conversation with soundbites. At this time, students who benefit from voucher program represent a rounding error. Where is the evidence that the voucher programs have had a NEGATIVE impact on the communities that have adopted them? How do a few thousand students endanger a system that educates millions? Charter schools have the same impact (in number of students) as the homecoming movement. How large is the charter impact today? How does a system that represents about 3% undermine a school system that has enjoyed a quasi monopoly for many decades? </p>
<p>Of course, the danger for the public education system does not come from the failure of the “new” programs but from having to admit that an alternate system can educate disadvantaged students for less money and perform equally, or … better. Fwiw, do you, Garland, know what is the value of the typical voucher in the United States, and what is its proportional value to the expense per student in the same district? </p>
<p>In the United States, the voucher system is expected to fail. Charter schools do NOT operate on a level playing field. In the past years, the Catholic system that has worked so well for our country (and saved billions of dollars) is limping towards an uncertain future. Is this good for the next generations? Is this what is BEST for the … children? </p>
<p>Despite the simplistic claims to the contrary, our public system of education does NOT provide equal opportunities for all children. Urban education is hardly comparable to the public systems that have been built in our surburban Shangri-La. This country DOES have school choice, but it is solely based on wealth. People who can afford to move do abandon the decaying urban centers. People who can afford private schools do rely on them. </p>
<p>Is it really so hard to look at the evidence with a bit of objectivity?</p>
<p>Garland’s scenario is exactly what I see playing out here in Ohio. And the charter schools are allowed to get rid of students. This usually happens in November, just after the date the money is dispersed. Most of the behavior problems find their way back to the public schools.</p>
<p>The principal of our son’s elementary school worked, I would estimate, 100-hour weeks. The woman probably slept about 3 hours a night. Her job was her life; she was cognizant of, and took responsibility for, everything that happened in her school and much of what happened outside of it. And this probably had everything to do with what a good school it was. But you know what? She died of cancer before her sixtieth birthday. I can’t prove that stress killed her, but I have my suspicions.</p>
<p>The current principal of my daughters inner city high school is like this- I surely hope he doesnt’ die before his time, he is a good man.
However when she attended her previous school, we had three principals just in the time we were there, the year before we left I was chair of the PTA and we were dealing with an interim principal who tried to close long standing programs, who didn’t show up for meetings ( that * she had scheduled*) with the PTA board- and when being advised that the community including the teachers had voted not to hire her as a permanent principal told us that " the principal union would find her a job", which they did, & she rotated for several years between different schools until she was moved into the admin building.</p>
<p>For this upcoming year, at least 20 % of the principals are new to the district- .</p>
<p>momofthreeboys, In our district, we have a high school that was rated “academically unacceptable” that is less than two miles down the road from a high school that recieved the highest rating possible here in Texas. That, to me, speaks to how there truly is no one blue-print for success. </p>
<p>*Do the local catholic schools in your community undermine the success of the public schools? Do the private universities undermine the success of public community or four year colleges? *</p>
<p>Is it just me- or does this sound like the argument against gay marriage?</p>
Yes, yes, and yes, but the alternative–compulsory public school attendance with no other choices–is unacceptable, of course. And that’s OK. The beef with charter schools is that we are spending public money to fund a competing system with artificial advantages as a covert union-busting scheme, instead of using that money to make the existing public system better.</p>
<p>Also, even if you’re right about cherry-picking on the “input” end, xiggi–and I don’t think you are–you haven’t addressed the issue of cherry-picking on the retention end. If struggling students wind up leaving and re-entering the district schools, then of course the district schools are going to have more struggling students, and the charter schools are going to come out looking good for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the work they do.</p>
<p>emeraldkity4, I disagree strongly about electing superintendents. The last thing we need is more politics in the system. The Boston public school system has been steadily improving since the day the school committee was changed from an elected to an appointed body.</p>
<p>xiggi, I say this with out sarcasm and not as an insult but you strike me as the least objective poster in this thread. </p>
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<p>Of course they can. It’s not always the case but often when parents who do have the resources remove their child from the public school, that parent is no longer invested in the success of the public schools. </p>
<p>Further, the students with the most invested parents in terms of willingness to donate their own money and volunteer hours are now giving that time and money to private schools. How could that not hurt the public schools in a district that is already in a precarious position? </p>
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<p>Our country does not guarentee a free education at the college level.</p>
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<p>It may certainly be best for the children who could attend the Catholic school but was it good for the children who were left in the public schools in that district? You’re focusing on the fact that charter schools or vouchers cost the system X amount of dollars out of a budget of Y. But that is not the only issue as I addressed above. </p>
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<p>Not one person here has made that statement. Further, your insulting tone is getting tiring. I find your claims about charter and private schools to be simplistic as well but I’ve refrained from using such a loaded word and instead addressed the issue. You might want to try that as well.</p>
<p>EK–it’s not the existence per se of alternate, less open institutions that undermines the public school system --it’s the shifting of resources and public dollars one way, and struggling students the other way.</p>
<p>If someone argued that gay marriage harmed heterosexual marriage because it took some more desirable marital prospects out of the picture, leaving a weaker hetero pool to choose from, there might be some equivalence.</p>
<p>But I’m pretty sure no opponent of gay marriage has ever argued that. ;)</p>
<p>Artificial advantages? Do charters ONLY have advantages? </p>
<p>How does a charter school fund its infrastructure? Are the budgets by FTE student at a charter school comparable to the local public schools?</p>
<p>Fwiw, should we not look at the reasons WHY parents and students even want to attend a charter school? Are they simply brainswashed by greedy profiteers and union busters?</p>
<p>I never ascribed the line “Despite the simplistic claims to the contrary” to any particular poster in this thread. Not every word that is posted is in answer to another poster. </p>
<p>Pug, first, you might want to review the TOS for ad hominem. Then, if you find my posts to be insulting, do not hesitate to hit that report button.</p>
<p>it’s the shifting of resources and public dollars one way, and struggling students the other way.</p>
<p>But in some areas- that isn’t whats happening.
My kids who have " special needs" weren’t the only ones forced out to private schools and while my oldest stayed in private through high school graduation, my youngest wasn’t adequately served in public, until high school DESPITE having an IEP for 6 years. </p>
<p>( I was told signing the document, didn’t mean I agreed, just that I was at the IEP meeting & things that had been added during the meeting, were erased when the final version was copied. I eventually removed her from SPED in middle school because it was a waste of her time & was demoralizing- she would have been much better served at a charter school that was accountable to the community)</p>