Ever since the first one opened in Minnesota 18 years ago, charter schools have been regarded by many teachers, union leaders and school-district leaders as interlopers on their public education turf. Districts complain that charter schools attract the best students and siphon off public money that would otherwise be theirs.
Charter-school operators and advocates dispute both claims: they say that charter schools are public schools, and they usually receive less funding per student than traditional public schools do. They also say they're more likely to serve minority and disadvantaged students than local public schools, giving them an alternative to failing schools, where before they had none.
The back-and-forth by advocates in both camps has gone on for years, fueled by research studies, anecdotal evidence and political maneuvering. Most recently, the movie Waiting for "Superman" stoked the debate, portraying charter schools as the savior of students stuck in failing public schools -- and teachers unions as the force fighting to keep them there.
Amid the policy fights, it's easy to forget that charters and districts share -- or, at least, should share -- the same essential goal: to educate students well.
Now, that realization seems to be sinking in, and in a growing number of communities, charters and districts are putting their differences aside. Charter-district collaborations have sprung up in New Haven, Conn., the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, Philadelphia, Denver, New Orleans, Washington, D.C. and a number of other cities.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced last week that it would encourage some of these efforts by awarding $100,000 grants to cities where the parties are willing to sign "compacts" pledging cooperation and teamwork. (Disclosure: The Gates Foundation is among The Hechinger Report's many funders.) The nine recipients, which enroll 30 percent of all U.S. students in urban settings, will be competing for six larger grants of undisclosed sums.
Each city is starting at a different point, which will affect how much they can achieve. For instance, cities like Los Angeles and Rochester, where there has been a lot of animosity between charter schools and districts (and their teachers' unions), "have a little bit farther to go just to build the trust," said Erin Dillon, a senior policy analyst at Education Sector, a nonpartisan Washington, D.C. policy think tank. She's most eager to see what happens in Denver, where cooperation is already the norm and where she suspects the parties will be able to accomplish the most.
In Denver, where the grants were announced, Superintendent Tom Boasberg said "all of our schools, district-run or charter, serve all of our kids, and all means all."
West Denver Prep, a charter middle school in a section of the city home to many Latino students and some of the state's lowest-performing schools, is one of the best-performing schools in Denver. Founder Chris Gibbons said that, with the district's help, he will expand to 12 schools by 2020. The compact, he said, signals that "adults are putting aside differences and disagreements" to ensure all kids have access to a college-prep education. "This next era is about quality schools, great schools, college-prep schools -- not about the types of schools or the ways we run them."
By next August, nearly half of Denver's 40 charter schools will operate in district facilities; charters and traditional schools in the city each enroll about the same proportion of poor, minority and special-education students, who can be more challenging to educate.
Also receiving grants were Baltimore; Hartford, Conn.; Minneapolis; Nashville, Tenn.; New Orleans and New York City. Charter schools have been central to the reform strategy pursued by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his schools chancellor, Joel Klein, as they've sought to shut down weak schools and replace them with new ones, run by the district or as charters.
The grants from the Gates Foundation will provide the cities with access to consultants and advisors that the foundation has lined up for them. The possibility of receiving significantly larger grants also may encourage doubters to go along.
Each of the compacts is different, but a major goal of all is to increase the number of successful schools and shut down those that are failing. Many of the charter schools taking part agreed to increase their enrollments of English language learners and special-education students. Historically, these students have been more likely to attend regular schools, which generally are better equipped to meet their needs. The participating cities also will work on increasing the effectiveness of teachers and creating programs of study in sync with newly developed national academic standards in math and language arts.
Compacts like these are consistent with the original concept behind charter schools. Albert Shanker, the late former president of the American Federation of Teachers and among the first to espouse the idea of charter schools, thought they would use the freedom from bureaucratic regulations they enjoy to come up with innovations that traditional schools could then adopt. This is one of the arguments in favor of charters made by President Barack Obama.
But, understandably, charter schools soon came to be seen by those who advocated school choice as a way to infuse competition into public education, according to Diane Ravitch's The Death and Life of the Great American School System. She says that when that occurred, Shanker, a staunch advocate of public schools, became a critic of charter schools.
It's too early to say how much these partnerships will accomplish, said Dillon of Education Sector. But simply putting out there the notion that charters and districts don't have to be bitter enemies is an important initial step.
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report , a nonprofit, nonpartisan education-news outlet affiliated with Teachers College, Columbia University.
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Butrymonwicz writes for the Hechingerreport, a public school bashing site with articles like:
"Small classes are a luxury we can no longer afford", except if you have the Broad Foundation or the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backing you up.
"New Brookings report from scholars in favor of value-added measures" nice to have some right wing groups doing your "research" for you.
Be sure to take note of the complete lack of educators on the staff and faculty.
-It's time for charter schools to stop claiming, as you said above, that they serve as many minorities, ELL, and special needs students as local schools. They don't.
-It's time for charter schools to be up front about their often huge attrition rates and reasons as well as the practice of counselling students out of the school. They should also point out that when a student gets transfered out of a public school for behaviour or other issues, another troubled student gets transfered in. Not in charter schools
It's time for charter schools to admit they are comparing their results to schools that have larger class sizes. Charter advocates claim class size isn't important, then cap their classes. Hypocrisy.
-"Reformers" need to stop scapegoating/attacking teacher's union and hard working unionized teachers.
-Charter school lobbyist and 'reformers' need to start releasing their calculations for claims they make (Hoxby), be honest about the inaccuracy of value added scores, and stop misquoting research. If I hear that teachers have the #1 impact on a students success again, purposely leaving out the, "in the school' bit, I'll hurl.
When charter schools stop with the propaganda, maybe they won't be enemies anymore. If you don't have something to hide, you don't need to lie and distort to make your point.
Shanker's vision is not consistent with the current version of charter-based reform.
Seriously, start talking about the disease and not the symptoms.
In the second paragraph, the story says "[charter school operators] also say they're more likely to serve minority and disadvantaged students than local public schools, giving them an alternative to failing schools, where before they had none". Later, it states charter schools agreed to enroll more special education and ESL students because "Historically, these students have been more likely to attend regular schools, which generally are better equipped to meet their needs".
There is a reason why most charters have city-wide attendance boundaries. What good does it do to be located in a low-income community when the students who live there have to walk past the charter school they used to attend when it was a neighborhood school to get to their new neighborhood school (often having to cross gang lines in the process)?
The charter schools in Chicago (many launched under Arne Duncan's tenure) are more interested in dominating the education market than sharing best practices (if they have any) and resources. Most do not allow for local school councils, are held to different "accountability" measures, and are allowed to replicate without meeting pathetically low state standards. I think this "sharing" is so charters can learn how to actually run a school, not the other way around.
Until the day when a typical teen's idol is neither a ball player nor a so-called celebrate, none of these matters.
Until students, parents and the entire nation realize that education is the most important investment of the kids', and the nation's, future, none of these matters.
Human, is what matters. Fancy equipments and shining new gadgets are supplemental, not essential.
"Once unencumbered by self-induced and manufactured cultural ignorance, it becomes clear that politics worldwide is entirely about money, power and national mythology, with or without some degree of human rights. America still has all of the above to one degree or another. Yet for all practical purposes, such as advancing the freedom and the well being of its own people, the American republic has collapsed.
Of course, there is still money to be made by the already rich. So the million or so people who own the country and the government use their control to convince us that there is no collapse, just economic and political problems that need to be solved. Naturally, they are willing to do that for us. Consequently, the economy is discussed in political terms, because the government is the only body with the power to legislate, and therefore render the will of the owning class into law.
But politics and money are never going to fill what is essentially a public vacuum that is moral, philosophical and spiritual. Not many ordinary Americans talk about this vacuum. The required spiritual and philosophical language has been successfully purged by newspeak, popular culture, a human regimentation process masquerading as a national educational system, and the ruthlessness of everyday competition, which leaves no time to contemplate anything."
~Joe Bageant
http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2010/12/america-y-ur-peeps-b-so-dum.html
I think it's very relevant.......
Sad thing is, the person who designed this system later regretted it. He saw that pro-voucher, pro-business, anti-union groups were flooding to them as a way to break the union and privatize education. Charter schools were never really about the students. That is where the rift between the two come in.
Read for yourself in "The Death and Life of the Great American School System," by Diane Ravitch
Again, there are always going to be people/corporations who want to take advantage of the system; but there are far more who are working to make it better.
I am perfectly aware of the difference between various types of schools (there is no such thing as a voucher school; only private schools who receive students via publicly funded vouchers). Creating a multi-tiered educational system is in and of itself, a big part of the problem. We need good education for all students, not just ones who do well on standardized tests.
Milwaukee has many voucher schools, those that exist solely to get the vouchers from the city to educate kids. The problem is they exist soley for they money and do not even tey to educate kids. But I can tell you those kids all get great grades which make parents VERY happy.
99% of charter schools are run by rich, usually Republican people who are looking at making a buck rather than educating kids. The ones around here make it a point to get every single kid they possibly can labeled as "special ed" to get the bonus, and then park REAL special ed kids in the corner with a coloring book. They spend the money that doesn't go into gold plated faucets (literally, the guy just built a new mansion with gold plated faucets) busing the parents around tea party express style so it looks like there's a grassroots
Oh yeah, and he's the new education advisor to the GOP governor-elect of PA
This is hardly isolated. . Please realize the problem is not in our schools, but in the environment that the kids live in that makes it very difficult to learn and/or learning is "for white people". Combine that with parents who can't be involved because they're working 3 jobs in poor areas and there's your recipe for disaster. In order to change our schools, first we must change our raw material, and that means making sure that the poor can afford 3 hots and roof over their heads that doesn't have gunfire coming through it, andspend time with their kids .
Since when to Republicans obey the law when it comes to their wallets?
Many charter schools are in the same financial trouble as traditional schools. If you think opening and running a charter school is a get-rich-quick scheme, I've got some fabulous oceanfront property for sale in Iowa.
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2009/12/13/2009-12-13_charting_new_territory_in_ed_salaries.html