Most Charter Schools Are Public In Name Only
Above photo: From pixshark.com.
Charter schools are public schools.
But are they?
Really?
They don’t look like a duck. They don’t quack like a duck. Do you really want to serve them confit with a nice orange sauce?
Sure, charters are funded by tax dollars. However, that’s usually where the similarities end.
They don’t teach like public schools, they don’t spend their money like public schools, they don’t treat students or parents like public schools – in fact, that’s the very reason they exist – to be as unlike public schools as possible.
Advocates claim charters exist as laboratory schools. They are free to experiment and find new, better ways of doing things. Once they’ve proven their successes, these improved practices will eventually trickle down to our more traditional houses of learning.
At least, that’s the ideal behind them. But to my knowledge it’s never happened.
As a public school teacher, I can never recall being at a training where charter operators taught us how to do things better with these time-tested strategies. I do, however, recall watching excellent co-workers furloughed because my district had to meet the rising costs of payments to our local charters.
Moreover, if the freedom to experiment is so important, why not give that privilege to all public schools, not just a subset?
The reality is much different than the ideal. In the overwhelming majority of cases, charter schools are vastly inferior to their more traditional brethren. To understand why, we need to see the differences between these two kinds of learning institutions and why in every case the advantage goes to our much-maligned, long suffering traditional public schools:
1) Charters Don’t Accept all Students
Charter schools are choosey. They don’t take just any old students. They only accept the Most Charter Schools Are Public In Name Only | PopularResistance.Org:
