Those who have followed the work of our
Small Schools Workshop over the past 19 years, know that we are not "anti-charter." Many charters emerged from the early small schools movement that we helped create. Small schools and charters were first seen as a way to drive changes and offer innovative alternatives within large, bureaucratic and undemocratic school systems. Early charters and small schools were usually created by teachers and often democratically run with an eye on personalization, teacher autonomy and power to create learning environments where students could grow and develop physically and intellectually.
But today that early charter "movement" has been derailed, captured by the worst, anti-public school politicians and profiteers. Helped by a decade of
No Child Left Behind (now called
Race To The Top) politics and policies
