Charter schools

Great Debates
1

“Charter schools are elementary or secondary schools in the United States that receive public money but have been freed from some of the rules, regulations, and statutes that apply to other public schools in exchange for some type of accountability for producing certain results, which are set forth in each school’s charter.” From Wikipedia

Some people are vehemently against Charter Schools and argue that charter schools take precious public dollars away from traditional schools.

In my home district in Tucson, more than 500 children a year leave regular public schools, and this causes a large decline in the funding that goes with them. So the school district is harmed by this large move to charter schools.

On the other hand, children and parents give a greater choice in which schools they want their children to attend. Around here there are charter schools for at-risk youth, kids who excel in art, the academically precocious, and families who want Montesorri education.

Here’s a CNN article that lays out some of the pros and cons:

Boudreau argues that it is actually the charter programs that have hurt students, the majority of whom remain in conventional public schools. Because of the public funding that goes to charter programs, traditional schools must increase class sizes, cut extracurricular activities and end their own pioneering initiatives, Boudreau explains.

“Most charter schools don’t have to work with the local school system,” Boudreau says, “so they aren’t necessarily benefiting the local community.”

Boudreau disapproves of for-profit companies running charter schools because state funding goes directly into companies’ pockets, she says.

“These are businessman who have no commitment to education,” Boudreau says. “Stockholders make a profit off of taxpayers’ money.”

But charter schools are public schools, Allen asserts, and money should move to the charter school when a student enrolls, the same way it would if the student were to switch school districts. Charter schools do not select their students, but instead must welcome any student who wishes to enroll.

Charter programs can, however, cap their enrollment, which allows them to offer low teacher-student ratios. Schools often advertise for students through mailings or newspaper ads in surrounding communities. If demand exceeds the classroom slots, students are then chosen through lotteries.

So the debate is: are charter schools helpful or harmful to public education?

P.S. Full disclosure, I have 1 child at a charter school and 3 at regular public schools.

2

I’m a liberal and support charter schools and vouchers. I don’t know how liberals got on the wrong side of this one, other than that the teacher lobby was so opposed.

I think it is immoral to restrict free education to the district in which you live. Cities and states with higher incomes have a bigger tax base and can spend more on schools, even thiugh the kids they serve are probably easier to teach than those from less affluent communities.

I’d love to see the next Rosa Parks from DC show up on the first day of school in Georgetown and dare them not to allow her to enroll.

3

I’ve never really understood the strong opposition to vouchers either. But in any case there aren’t the same problems with charter schools since they aren’t allowed to be religious, which seems to be the main objection to vouchers.

But some people are still opposed to charters because they take students away from public schools. I freely admit I’m one of the people who was lured away from a regular public school by a charter that was superior for our needs. If they didn’t exist I would still be at our regular public.

But I’m glad we have the choice of charter schools.

4

I’m not particularly educated about this topic, so will follow the thread with interest and I don’t think I like the idea of charter schools because of your first sentence:

“Charter schools are elementary or secondary schools in the United States that receive public money but have been freed from some of the rules, regulations, and statutes that apply to other public schools in exchange for some type of accountability for producing certain results, which are set forth in each school’s charter.”

Being free of rules a regs, for “some type” of accountability is too vague for my tastes.

Some of the reasons I lean against charters:

Usually, when I hear about a charter school in the news in my area, it’s because the money went mysteriously missing or the principals were caught shopping at Victoria’s Secret or some such place.

I have been also hearing not very good news about the people who are pushing for charters like James Leninger. He seems to have a strong Christian agenda (first google link, unread: http://www.texscience.org/reform/leininger.htm) which makes me suspicious.

We are having some serious problems on the Texas State Board of Ed right now with fundamentalists attempting to sway public education. http://www.texasmonthly.com/2008-10-01/feature5-2.php and http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/robison/6241719.html

Children’s education are too important to experiment with. We should spend our money on bettering our existing schools.

My kids attend a very good district. They are getting a good education and both qualify for special services at each end of the SPED spectrum that are of good quality. Why not make all our school good since the expensive parts are in place already instead of fragmenting the services.

5

I’m not sure that charter schools are a good solution, but I don’t think these are good reasons against them.

Not being “educated” on something is hardly reason to oppose it. Learn. I’m sure there is less-vague information out there.

Charter schools hardly have a monopoly on mismanagment, fraud, etc.

I hope my principal wore underwear too. I don’t particularly care where she purchased it.

I disagree with him too. What does that have to do with charter schools?

The only way to determine if a new method works is to try it out. As long as no one is being forced into a charter school there’s no problem. It’s not like public schools don’t try out new methods. New Math anyone? With charter schools, at least the parents have a choice. What makes a school better? Has it been shown that simply increasing funding cures all ails?

That’s great that your kids are in a good district. Many aren’t. So let’s just make all schools good! Just like that. Easy as pie.

6

I have already stated I don’t have a wealth of knowledge on the subject and subscribed to the thread because of that, so a line-by-line lecture from you to get educated on the topic is not really all that helpful or welcome.

Perhaps I wasn’t clear. Is it OK for a charter school to buy Victoria’s Secret underwear for the school operators with school funds? http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C05E3D61F3AF936A35757C0A9649C8B63

7

How do we find out which methods are better for educating without experimenting? Not that experimenting is limited to charter schools.

8

They are harmful to the public education establishment.

That is not the same thing as being bad for students or the nation as a whole.

9

My state has been #49 in terms of how much money we allocate to public schools. And with last week’s cut of $190 million out of this fiscal year’s budget (for the next 5 months), we’ll probably be #50.

Chant: We’re number 50!!! We’re number 50!!! Woo hoo!

So my kids have all gone to normal public elementaries, but when it came time for middle school, there is only one decent school in the district and it has a several hundred kid-long waiting list.

But I heard about this school that is rate #1 in the nation by Newsweek. That’s right, a respected national news magazine ranks it the single best school in the entire country.

It’s close to my house. It’s free. It’s the best school in the whole country. It’s a charter.

So now my son goes to BASIS Tucson http://www.basistucson.org/press/Best_in_nation.pdf

How can I argue with charter schools?

10

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11

To me the scary thing about charter schools is that they aren’t permanent - their existence is dependent on them meeting their charter and having sponsorship. Around here, that has meant that a lot of charter schools have operated for a few years, then disappeared. I want my kids to experience some consistency in education - I moved schools around a lot myself as a kid and I don’t think it was ever the best thing for my education. This is especially risky with elementary schools, since its an extended period of time the kids are there, which increases the risk.

12

That may be, but it’s part of the point of Charter schools in the first place. If they fail to achieve what the parents set out for them, they fail. If the community won’t support it, they fail. It’s harsh, but it’s also fair. Not that it decreases my sympathy for the people who are hurt in the process.

13

I’m sort of torn on this one as well. My mom is a reading specialist at a middle-school and is a pretty staunch supporter of increasing funding to the schools we already have. Yet I think in many areas charter schools (and IMO opinion to a much lesser extent vouchers) seem to have made things somewhat better, from what I have seen in the media. I tend to think that these sorts of solutions, while very republican and somewhat elitist, are a good way to mend a very bad problem in the short term, but that we need to seriously invest in education as a whole to make the U.S. (and the world) a better place, i.e. to make school itself more appealing to a youth that just gets more and more complex in the modern world. It seems many older people would rather blame the children for not preforming or for getting involved with drugs or whatever, rather than considering that the institution itself might be in need of a makeover. But said makeover costs money…so Washington treats teachers like a special interest group rather than a vital part of the country, like infrastructure or security. This needs to change, I think, but right now may not be the best time, although I’m fairly confident it is very high on Obama’s to-do list.

14

I am afraid that the teachers themselves, through their union, does the same thing.

While I’m not trying to criticize, I have seen precisely zero evidence, except that Obama was once vaguely involved with some school program that doesn’t seem to have done anything, and which had little to do with overhauling the educaiton system.

Anyway, it’s primarily a state matter.

15

I live in DC. We have a lot of Charter Schools and the current school system is losing students to them quickly. The reason for that is that the main school system sucks. It doesn’t seem to be a question of funding but rather that the system is dysfunctional. According to this, DC spends more per student than any state in the country. Yet somehow, the physical buildings are in bad shape, and test scores don’t get better.

16

smilingbandit: You’re right, there isn’t much hard evidence of this, although I have read somewhere that he wanted to help teachers keep their jobs in the next few years (which hits at a personal level, which is probably why I phrased it the way I did). Sorry that I can’t provide a cite for this, so it should be taken with the appropriate grain of salt.

17

Caffeine.addict: I agree, throwing money at the problem doesn’t help, and although my first post does indicate that funding is needed, I think that a new approach to teaching kids is what really will count in the future. There is another thread in the Great Debates that questions why african-americans seem to do worse in school than their counterparts, and I think it is a cultural issue, and see this as a big problem in this country, namely a cultural/age driven divide that has caused so many youth to lose interest in a higher education.

18

I sometimes wonder if running schools (and other institutions) as businesses is a good idea. Theoretically, since any business exists to turn a profit, the better the school, the higher the profits and so on in a circular fashion. The problem is that I’m considering a WELL RUN business. You know, NOT a business in which people spend those profits on, say, drugs. There has to be proper re-investment because it’s still a business that MUST serve the public in a very serious way.

We have other regulated businesses, why can’t these schools be run like a business but still follow certain rules…about minimums that they must teach, minimum test results, minimum qualifications for teachers, etc.?

19

Unsurprisingly to me, most discussions of charter schools quickly tell you who’s got a generally good school system and who doesn’t. Those with good schools are worried about their school’s money being drained away by “experimental” schools (which, btw, not all charter schools really are) and those with bad schools know that it’s not the lack of money that’s making them bad, and view charter schools as the only opportunity they have for their kid to get a decent education, the rest of the district be damned.

I fall into the later group. My son’s been in the regular school, because I really did want to believe that my involvement with his education could overcome the difficulties of his school. It can’t. We’re looking into charter schools now, but every one has a waiting list and lottery.

Some charter schools are good and some are bad. They’re not all getting the top scores; you have to educate yourself about each school before you make a choice. Some are actually worse than the regular school.

Some are very experimental, and some are very conservative. The system as a whole *can *support the larger school system by working as a laboratory to test new (or old) ideas for eventual inclusion in the larger district. They can also serve as needed release valves for students with special needs - either behavioral, curricular or pedagogical - who can’t be best served in the main schools and serve as a distraction and waste of money. They can be a great way for a very bright (or very dull) student to get a focused, quality education without taking extra class time away from the average student. They can give kids with a specific talent or interest, like math, theater or architecture, a focused curriculum which addresses his or her interests with like-minded people. They can give kids who might not otherwise get it a college education (one of the schools we’re applying to is DeVry’s Advantage Academy, which will provide both a high school diploma and an associate’s degree in 2 years - for free!) or the encouragement they need to work for an apply to college in a district where that’s not taken for granted. They can give kids who aren’t college material specific job training for a good paying career right out of high schools. (Many of the “tech” schools left in Chicago are charter schools.)

And of course they can be fleeing grounds where the top students end up because the regular schools are sinking. But the thing is, if the regular school wasn’t so bad, the charter school wouldn’t be an attractive alternative. Do you really think I’m enjoying the idea of getting up an hour earlier, picking him up two hours later, actually being there for the many more mandated parent events than at his current school, paying for all the extra fundraisers this “free charter school” demands? Of course not. If his current school was any good, I wouldn’t consider it. But they’re not. The charter school is successful because the regular school sucks; the regular school doesn’t suck because the charter school is good.

I did try to help out the regular school, really I did. But the steerage rats bit us, and so now we’re taking our life raft and getting the hell off this sinking ship.

20

The objection is not religion, it’s exclusion. Public schools have to accept all students regardless of their family’s ability to pay. Private schools do not; they ask for a direct payment.

Okay, fine, if you think a private school is better and you want to pay your money to send your children there, I certainly have no objection. But vouchers are public money. It’s my tax money being used to send children to a school - a school that I can’t afford to send my child to (because the voucher doesn’t cover the full cost of tuition, it’s only a partial rebate). Vouchers redistribute money from people who can’t afford to send their children to private schools and use that money to subsidize people who have higher incomes and can afford private schools.

It’s the equivalent of promoting car ownership by giving out a tax-supported rebate of $2000 on Lexuses. The people who couldn’t afford a Lexus still won’t able to afford a Lexus at the lower price. But the people who can afford to buy Lexuses will get a discount that’s paid for in part by the people who can’t afford to buy a Lexus of their own. And those people will find that because they had to pay for somebody else’s Lexus that their car buying options have dropped from a Camry to a Corolla.