Choosing the public they school Philadelphia Inquirer 11/20/2009:
"Advocates of charter schools claim they can offer something traditional public schools cannot. Each charter school touts its own special conditions for success: longer hours, better approaches, less bureaucracy, etc. Even though six charter schools in Philadelphia are being investigated for irregularities, their improved achievement scores - as well as fewer discipline problems in some cases - seem to be convincing arguments for dismantling traditional schools in favor of charters.
However, as much as we all yearn for a neat answer to our educational problems, the current charter school model is not it. Despite constant claims that charter schools do much more with exactly the same students, they don't.
Recently, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the Rev. Al Sharpton, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich visited and praised two Philadelphia public schools. They found that the traditional McDaniel Elementary School had made admirable progress. But Mastery Charter Schools' Shoemaker Campus, which was a traditional high school until 2006, had made giant leaps in social and academic progress - all while purportedly educating the same students in the same building."
"Advocates of charter schools claim they can offer something traditional public schools cannot. Each charter school touts its own special conditions for success: longer hours, better approaches, less bureaucracy, etc. Even though six charter schools in Philadelphia are being investigated for irregularities, their improved achievement scores - as well as fewer discipline problems in some cases - seem to be convincing arguments for dismantling traditional schools in favor of charters.
However, as much as we all yearn for a neat answer to our educational problems, the current charter school model is not it. Despite constant claims that charter schools do much more with exactly the same students, they don't.
Recently, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the Rev. Al Sharpton, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich visited and praised two Philadelphia public schools. They found that the traditional McDaniel Elementary School had made admirable progress. But Mastery Charter Schools' Shoemaker Campus, which was a traditional high school until 2006, had made giant leaps in social and academic progress - all while purportedly educating the same students in the same building."
