Band-Aids That Will Not Stick: Why Charter Schools Are Not the Answer
(DNAinfo/Leslie Albrecht)
Like the caffeine-charged salesmen who insist that this latest gadget in the palm of your hand will actually deliver eternal happiness and assuage your inner discontent for good, the knights of the charter school movement have a lot of promises and a lot of answers. They have big names (President Barack Obama, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, billionaire Bill Gates) and big publicity (Davis Guggenheim’s film Waiting for “Superman” earned many stellar reviews and a place in the public consciousness) on their side. Unlike virtually every other political issue in America, conservatives and liberals appear to be coming to the consensus that American education is failing and charter schools, publically-funded private schools, are the anodyne that will save American children and return our educational system to its supreme perch.
“I really think that charters have the potential to revolutionize the way students are educated,” Gates has said.
What exactly are charter schools, trumpeted as the Great Hope of twenty-first century education? The simple