Are Charter Schools Really ‘Helping Poor Children?’ | PopularResistance.Org

Are Charter Schools Really ‘Helping Poor Children?’ | PopularResistance.Org:

Are Charter Schools Really ‘Helping Poor Children?’

EDUCATE! EDUCATION 
By Jim Naureckas, www.fair.org
April 3rd, 2014

 Richard Cohen doesn’t understand why people are so down on the rich.  The Washington Post columnist (3/18/14) writes:

The rich are incessantly accused of being slyly manipulative and self-serving. For instance, they support charter schools. Apparently, there is nothing worse.

I am mystified. Charter schools are not private schools. They are free public schools open to any student, usually by lottery. Some rich people support them, provide funds for special programs and, in return, get vilified for their efforts.

“They’re helping poor children,” Cohen insists, while opponents of charter schools, he suspects, “would rather hurt the rich than help the poor.”

But are charter schools really helping poor students–or any students? “Say what you will about New York or Washington charters, but by the usual measurements–test scores, etc.–they are succeeding, some of them stunningly so,” the columnist writes–contrasting them with “the old system,” in which “failure was a certainty.”

Who can argue with success? (cc photo: Multitude)

The link on “test scores” goes to aWashington Post article (7/30/13) headlined “D.C. Students Reach New Heights in Annual Standardized Tests.” Note that the subject of the headline is “D.C. students,” because the story reports gains by students in both charter schools and the “old system” alike.

But not quite alike: If you look at test scores over the past seven years, you see that D.C. charter schools have raised  test scores by an average of 15.o percent–while the old  Are Charter Schools Really ‘Helping Poor Children?’ | PopularResistance.Org: