The Cleburne News - Seven reasons to say no to charter schools

The Cleburne News - Seven reasons to say no to charter schools:

Seven reasons to say no to charter schools

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Former Washington D.C. school chancellor Michelle Rhee has sent her followers to Alabama to promote charter schools, but Alabama should say “no, thanks.” The District of Columbia is no model for school reform. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is the gold standard of education testing, shows that D.C. has the biggest achievement gap between black and white students in the nation, double the size of Alabama’s. Alabama should not take lessons from one of the nation’s lowest performing districts.

Charter schools haven’t helped other states and they won’t help Alabama. Here are the reasons why.

1. Numerous national and state studies have shown that charters on average don’t get better results than regular public schools. A small percentage get high scores, more get very low scores, most are about average in terms of test scores. Why kill off a community’s public school to replace it with a privately managed school that is no better and possibly worse?

2. Charter schools weaken the regular public schools. They take money away from neighborhood public schools and from the district budget. As charter schools open, regular public schools must cut teachers and close down programs to pay for them.

3. Many of the “high-performing” charter schools succeed by skimming off the best students, even in poor districts. The more they draw away the best students, the worse it is for the regular public schools, who are left with the weakest students.

4. Many charter schools succeed by excluding or limiting the number of students they accept

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