Charter Schools Fail: New Reports Call Their ‘Magic’ Into Question
Kendra Herber teaches at New Choices Community School, which the state is suing to close.| Mark Lyons for The New York Times
By Jeff Bryant | Originally Published at The Education Opportunity Network. May 7, 2014
By Jeff Bryant | Originally Published at The Education Opportunity Network. May 7, 2014
When members of the U.S. House of Representatives consider, beginning today, a bill to incentivize the expansion of charter schools, you can expect there to be a lot of heat but not very much light in their discussion of the need for more of these institutions.
The bipartisan bill, HR 10, is “likely to pass,” according to the experienced observers at Education Week. And “amid lots of cross-aisle fist-bumping,” there is apt to be “a much glitzier rollout, with lots of floor speeches about the power of charters to help disadvantaged kids. Debate is also expected to begin Thursday and final passage could happen Friday.”
In today’s climate of trumped up political truisms (remember “deficit hysteria?”), the supposed necessity of charter schools is just the latest one to hit The Hill.
In even in the most casual treatments of education, charter schools are now regarded by many as a given “improvement.” New York Times columnists David Leonhardt illustrated this intellectual nonchalance the other day, writing for the paper’s magazine, that our nation’s “once-large international lead in educational attainment has vanished,” but “there are some reasons for optimism in education” – principally, “charter schools” that “offer some lessons about what works and doesn’t in K-12.”
Echoing Leonhardt in the halls of Congress, Senator Mary Landrieu (D, LA) recently harangued U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan during a Senate committee meeting for not giving enough federal financial empathyeducates – Charter Schools Fail: New Reports Call Their ‘Magic’ Into Question:
