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Originally Posted by Happy Monkey
That's all they need. Students who aren't especially gifted aren't what brings down the quality of a school; it's students who disrupt class. If one school can kick all of its disruptive students to another school, it's going to weaken the other school.
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Except these charter schools are extra; the state is already running enough public schools to evenly cover the area. The disruptive students are by definition already expected to be at their area public school, and that doesn't change by their not being allowed to go to charter school. If the good students leave, it's true that the overall ratio of disruptive-to-good students goes up at the home public school, but as I said in the original posts back in the Happy thread, I'm okay with that. I don't believe good students should be forced to suffer from shitty classmates. (I also thought it was stupid when my junior high school briefly tried to blend Honors and regular classes together, thinking it would promote diversity. They abandoned that disastrous little experiment after one semester.) Students should be separated according to ability--both academic and behavioral--just like people are in real life.
Actually, the model I favor most has complete fluidity based on ability level and not age at all--if the six-year-old is doing "grade 5" math, then he's doing it alongside the ten-year-olds who are on par. And if there's a ten-year-old stuck back with a bunch of on par six-year-olds, well, good. That's the level he's at. Let's not pretend he's doing as well as his peers and drag everyone else down to his speed. Our desired charter school doesn't do this, but many of them do. Charter schools are about using widely different models of teaching where they are appropriate, without the state mandating a one-size-fits-all policy for tens of thousands of children across the board.
The irony with what you're referring to is that actually, if the disruptive students are disruptive enough, they
will get kicked out to a charter school--it will just be one of the AEA charters instead.
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Originally Posted by Lamplighter
Charter schools on the other hand are eligible for private donations,
may co-locate with other schools or churches or unique locations, etc.
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The original question was not how much charter schools spend, but whether charter schools "take" money away from public schools. We have shown they don't. In fact, since the district is no longer responsible for building/transporation/etc. costs for those students who step over into the charter side of things, the district actually has more overall money to spread among the schools. They may choose to up the amount given per student, benefitting both kinds of schools, or they may choose to up the amounts given for building/transportation/etc. costs, benefitting only public schools. But either way, for every student who switches to the charter system, the state can be assumed to have more money to distribute, not less.