CHARTER SCHOOLS AND THE FUTURE OF PUBLIC EDUCATION
BY STAN KARP IN RETHINKING SCHOOLS | VOLUME 28 NO.1 - FALL 2013 | HTTP://BIT.LY/1CPPAVL
Ethan Heitner
7 October 2013 :: Somewhere along the way, nearly every teacher dreams of starting a school. I know I did.More than once during the 30 years I taught English and journalism to high school students in Paterson, New Jersey, I imagined that creating my own school would open the door to everything I wanted as a teacher:
Colleagues with a shared vision of teaching and learning.
Freedom from central office bureaucracy.
A welcoming school culture that reflected the lives of our students and families.
Professional autonomy that nourished innovation and individual and collective growth.
School-based decision-making that pushed choices about resources, priorities, time, and staffing closer to the classrooms where it matters the most.
But reality can be hard on daydreams, and I got a glimpse of how complicated these issues are when my large comprehensive high school embraced the reform trend of the day and moved to create small theme academies inside the larger school. As the lead teacher of a new communications academy, I soon faced a host of thorny questions: Who would our new academy serve? What would the