The Charter School Free-Riding Problem
There's a piece by NY Daily News Editorial Board member Alyssa Katz that's been passing around the edu-bloggosphere to the great consternation of charter school cheerleaders. The piece points out, in personal terms, an issue that those of us who study charters have known about for a while:
The usual end-of-year school rites for our fifth-grader are especially bittersweet this year, because it is her last at the charter school where she has learned, played, made friends and grown since kindergarten.Unlike many kids at her stage, she had a choice to stay at her K-8 school — but as a family we together decided to jump from the charter to a district junior high run by the city’s Department of Education.Some extracurricular forces eased the choice. My husband, who’s logged hundreds of miles driving to and fro, will hand our girl off to a convenient bus. She in turn will be thrilled to shed a loathed uniform. Me, I look forward to an end to lunch box prep, thanks to an improved cafeteria menu.But the bottom line is that her elementary-school years were marked with a whirlwind of teachers that, if she and her classmates were lucky, would last the year and then move on.
The ritual became as certain as winter succeeded fall: Some parent would post on the school Facebook group that their child’s teacher was leaving mid-year. Moans and commiseration ensued.Our child avoided that fate until last fall, when, two weeks in, her promising teacher — a veteran at three years servedJersey Jazzman: The Charter School Free-Riding Problem:
