What’s the Point?
Even as the debate over charter schools in Massachusetts heats up, the ultimate goal of the experiment is increasingly unclear…
It’s time for a field trip, reader, and today we’re headed to a little place I like to call *an alternate reality,* otherwise known as Malden, Massachusetts. Shall I summon forth the scene?
A special meeting of the Board of Education is underway. Members have convened to discuss the single most successful school turnaround in state history: once failing Brockton High School, which 15 years ago under went a teacher-led transformation. Board chair Paul Sagan has allotted extra time to hear from teachers who helped lead the acclaimed literacy initiative, subject of national accolades (although, weirdly, mostly ignored in Massachusetts). Secretary of Education James Peyser has a question. Is it true that a third of each graduating class or some 300+ kids per year, at a school where 63% of students are considered *high needs* and 20% are still learning English, routinely qualifies for the state’s Adams scholarship, guaranteeing four years of funding to any public university in the state? Peyser does the math on his phone, then checks it on his other phone. He strokes his chin, musing aloud that this number dwarfs the combined total of grads from Boston’s charter schools, and seems to include not just girls but boys too. Another question, this one from state Commissioner Mitchell Chester: this teacher-led concept sounds promising. Since every school has teachers is it replicable? At which point Board members pause to check their calendars to schedule a visit so that they can see for themselves what lasting, teacher-led transformation looks like.
OK—so that’s not exactly how things went down. Instead, the Board voted to gift Brockton with a new regional charter high school that will compete against Brockton High by offering less—Look Ma, no art or music!—all the while draining an estimated 5% of the city’s total education budget per year.
Is it just me?
Any questions? You—the agitated woman in the second row who keeps making weird faces at Secretary Peyser. Why that would be me, and as it
happens, I do happen to have a question. Several of them, as a matter of fact. Is it just me or is there no longer even basic agreement—even amongst the edu-crat officials who are supposedly running the show—about the point of the great Massachusetts charter school experiment? Remember that bit about laboratories of innovation? If the repository set up by the state’s Office of Charter Schools is any indication, that particular dream has died. I couldn’t find any *best practices* more What’s the Point? | EduShyster:
Any questions? You—the agitated woman in the second row who keeps making weird faces at Secretary Peyser. Why that would be me, and as it
happens, I do happen to have a question. Several of them, as a matter of fact. Is it just me or is there no longer even basic agreement—even amongst the edu-crat officials who are supposedly running the show—about the point of the great Massachusetts charter school experiment? Remember that bit about laboratories of innovation? If the repository set up by the state’s Office of Charter Schools is any indication, that particular dream has died. I couldn’t find any *best practices* more What’s the Point? | EduShyster:
