Charter Schools at a Turning Point: How to Rein In an Out of Control Education Sector
If you read one article about education this week, you should read Jack Schneider’s columnfrom last week’s Washington Post. If you have already read it, I encourage you to read it again. Schneider is an education historian at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. In last week’s column, Schneider shows how charter schools have failed to fulfill the promises of their promoters.
Schneider’s analysis is fair and balanced as he notes that charters have a mixed record. While some are excellent schools that serve children well, “On the whole… charters have failed to live up to their promises.”
Schneider adds that the public is growing more aware of the problems charter school growth has caused for the public school districts where the charters have been located: “The charter school movement is in trouble. In late December, the editorial board of the Chicago Sun-Times observed that the charter movement in the Windy City was ‘in hot water and likely to get hotter.’ Among more than a dozen aspirants for mayor, ‘only a handful’ expressed any support for charter schools, and the last two standing for the… runoff election both said they wanted to halt charter school expansion. In February, New York City’s elected parent representatives—the Community and Citywide Education Councils—issued a unanimous statement in which they criticized charters for operating ‘free from public oversight’ and for draining ‘substantial’ resources from district schools. A month later, Mayor Bill de Blasio told a parent forum that in the ‘not-too-distant future’ his administration would seek to curtail the marketing efforts of the city’s charters, which currently rely on New York City Department of Education mailing lists. After a six-day strike in January, Los Angeles teachers forced the city’s Board of Education to seek a state moratorium on new L.A. charters, an outcome that reverberated across California and then repeated itself in Oakland.”
“But,” writes Schneider, “much of the movement’s potency was a product of promises, rather CONTINUE READING: Charter Schools at a Turning Point: How to Rein In an Out of Control Education Sector | janresseger
