A letter from one Washingtonian (DC) to his west coast brethren: Reasons for rejecting charter school Initiative 1240 | Seattle Education

A letter from one Washingtonian (DC) to his west coast brethren: Reasons for rejecting charter school Initiative 1240 | Seattle Education:

A letter from one Washingtonian (DC) to his west coast brethren: Reasons for rejecting charter school Initiative 1240

by seattleducation2011

Charter Expansion (Ballot Initiative I-1240) Will Harm, Not Help, Public School Students in Washington State :  Insights from the Other Washington , the Washington (DC) Public Schools

Charter Expansion (Ballot Initiative I-1240) Will Harm, Not Help, Public School Students in Washington State:  Insights from the Other Washington, the Washington (DC) Public Schools

• Charter schools are private schools on the public dole:
• Unlike real public schools, they are not obligated to keep and teach the students they enroll
• They boost their standardized test scores and graduation rates by transferring unwanted students back to the real public school system or LEA.
• Charter advocates, like the Walton & Gates Foundations, aim to break up public schools and replace them with a lots of charter schools, run by charter boards that report to an appointed authorizing body over which neither the public nor the state legislature has oversight authority.
• They view the public the same way they view teachers’ due process rights:  obstacles to arbitrary management control.
• They are bipartisan or, more accurately, a faction within both major parties.

James Madison description of a faction in Federalist #10 fits them very well:

“a number of citizens …, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”

Dear Fellow Washingtonians,

You will be voting on whether or not to authorize charter schools to operate in