CURMUDGUCATION: Believing in Charters

CURMUDGUCATION: Believing in Charters:

Believing in Charters

The charter talking point of the week was believing in charter schools and charter school students, and it suggests that at some point Franz Kafka and George Orwell had a love child who went into the PR biz.

Charter boosters are outraged-- outraged!!-- that anyone would criticize or question their success, because that must mean that those critics believe that poor African-American students are victims of their circumstances and these critics don't believe that such students can succeed. But charter schools do believe. They believe in all students. Now, here's a completion sentence. Can you finish it?

Because charter school operators believe that all students succeed, they work hard to serve_______.

If you said "all students," you lose, because most modern students are not devoted to serving all students at all. They will serve the chosen few, the students that they consider worthy of being saved.

They will brag about 100% college acceptance rates, when what they should be bragging about is their ability to winnow a group down to only those students they were sure they could prep for college.

"What are you saying," they will reply. "Are you saying that those students we got ready for college couldn't really succeed?"

Of course not. That group of students, however small, represents a real success. And if I were the parent of one of those students, that success would mean the world to me. It's like the old starfish story; any success is a Good Thing, particularly to the person who succeeds.

But there are two problems with this kind of charter success story.

One is that it is not replicable. All that these charter success stories prove is what every public CURMUDGUCATION: Believing in Charters: