Charter School Problems Just Continue to Surface
You have to give John Merrow credit for being fair, thorough, and dogged. Merrow is the reporter, just retired, who has covered education for the PBS NewsHour. Merrow has never been ideological and he has shown himself willing to change his mind. He is the guy who filmed the tough Michelle Rhee firing a principal and later, after USA Today broke some of the evidence, went on to question the impact of Rhee’s rigid and punitive philosophy when it emerged there was a D.C. test-cheating scandal. Merrow doggedly investigated and exposed allegations of test-answer erasures one piece of evidence at a time to create a convincing case, despite that Rhee herself has continued to deny it.
Now Merrow is looking at charter schools. He explains that he has been covering charter schools since they were first discussed back in 1988. Here is the vision he remembers described at a conference he moderated: “(T)he dream was that every district would open at least one ‘chartered school,’ where enrollment and employment would be voluntary and where new ideas would be field-tested. Successes and failures would be shared, and the entire education system would benefit.” Merrow continues: “That naive optimism would be laughable if it were not for the harm that has befallen many students and the millions taken from public treasuries by some charter school operators (regardless of whether their schools are ‘for-profit’ or ‘non-profit’).”
He faults the Obama administration, which has provided billions of Charter School Program grants to start and grow charter schools across the states: “President Obama and his Secretary of Education are always careful to say that they support ‘good’ charter schools and oppose ‘bad’ ones, even as they approve spending federal funds to support charters schools. I question whether that qualifies as strong leadership.” The U.S. Department of Education has Charter School Problems Just Continue to Surface | janresseger:
