Charter schools accountability
An editorial in the Ohio editions of Friday's Enquirer discusses a report by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation that says the worst performing charter schools must raise achievement or close, and all charter sponsors must be held more accountable for their schools’ performance. But the same report asks for more funding and fewer regulations for charter schools.
As stated in the editorial, those suggestions do "grate on charter-school skeptics, who want better performance -- not poor performance -- as a trigger for more state investment."
Charter schools are supposed to offer options to poor-performing public schools. Should we ruthlessly cut loose the bad ones, or prop them up and run the risk of creating a second tier of underachieving publicly-funded institutions?
posted by David Wells at 3:34 PM
3 Comments:
at 9:07 PM, October 12, 2006 
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at 11:17 PM, October 12, 2006 
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at 10:15 AM, October 16, 2006 
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Post a Comment*Kind of like Lifeway for Youth/Grace Fellowship Church the "private" foster care placement agency that placed Marcus Feisel with foster parents that simple googling would have revealed their lies.
charter schools are just a political way to get around public education in general. if more effort was made to hold the kids and parents more accountable, then public education would be the best bargain going on.
There are definitely a few great Cincinnati Public Schools. But the students who attend are the ones in which the parents give a darn about their child's education or they've passed the entrance test. This, of course, weeds out the less-than-bright children who are lumped together in the remaining schools, which brings down the test scores for those schools. It was a shame that the extra-curriculars were cut when the levies didn't pass. These help keep kids occupied and out of trouble after school hours, give them confidence, teach teamwork, etc. But in my experience, the schools are not devoting the funds to the proper place: My children went to kindergarten at a CPS. They were not lacking wonderful teachers and staff--they were very devoted to the children. But at one point, they held a fundraiser and with the money, they purchased new carpet and new VCRs. Not books or computers—carpet! My children, who now attend a private school, don't have carpet or air conditioning, but they have lots of extra-curriculars and special programs to supplement their education. Learning worldly lessons is just as important as learning how to add or spell.
As far as the Charter schools, since it is well-known that they tend to take in the lowest-functioning children, why would we expect that their test scores would be equal to or higher than the public schools? Shouldn't their test scores be rated on where they started to begin with and how much they improve instead of comparing the two? It seems that the charter schools are operating at a disadvantage to begin with. Also, should we really be creating a competition between the two as if the educating of our children is a business?
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