What You Need To Know About Charter Schools
Parents, pundits and politicians, did you get what you expected? If you thought you would get the biggest bang for the buck by pouring taxpayer dollars into charter schools and devoting yourself to public school disinvestment might it be time for a reassessment? After years of being embroiled in myriad contentions – education management organizations versus a public community school education. Do teachers need experience and credentials or are barely trained individuals sufficient? And what of their commitment? Today we see that the diversion plan is not all it was promised to be and we have to ask ourselves a question. Did we blindly trust? Were we helpless in the face of power? Did the “big guns” such as the Gates and Walton Foundations have us over a barrel? Given time and greater perspective, let us look at the assertions and possibly, reject them.
By Annie Baxter | Originally Published at National Public Radio. Marketplace. July 1, 2014
Every year, hundreds of new charter schools open in the U.S. – largely in low-income, urban neighborhoods. This fall, Sejong Academy in St. Paul, Minnesota, will be one of them. The Korean-immersion school for kids in kindergarten through sixth grade will be located just a few miles from the nation’s very first charter school, which opened in St. Paul in 1992.
A big idea behind charters, which now educate roughly 2.5 million kids in the U.S., is to try out concepts that traditional public schools typically wouldn’t, like focusing on the outdoors, Korean language immersion – or even yoga.
Sejong Academy’s founders hope their curriculum will appeal to a big population of Korean adoptees in the Twin Cities. Plus, they think non-Koreans might like learning another language. Board chair Grace Lee, herself Korean-American, thinks Sejong will offer richer cultural lessons than your typical public school might.
“I think of course a lot of schools will say, ‘Oh, we promote global diversity.’ But how are they demonstrating that? Are they just having some ethnic food at an open house, or something like that?” she says.
The real battle between charter schools and their traditional counterparts is far more pitched. One of the contentious aspects is that the roughly 6,500 charter schools in the country are public schools, and they get taxpayer dollars. But they’re run independently, meaning that in many states they are not subject to the same rules and regulations as are traditional public schools. Each school is overseen by a so-called sympathetically
