Charter Schools

[Clodfobble]

Relocated discussion from the "What's Making You Happy Today" thread... if a mod wants to move the referenced posts over to this thread as well, that's cool.

Originally Posted by BigV

This is exactly the fear I have of charter schools. That they can pick and choose what students they accept *and* accept public money for the education of those students will inevitably lead to the weakening of our public education system.

Charter schools can't pick and choose their students. They can have a mission statement that kind of makes it clear what type of student body they're trying to create, but the application for a charter school lottery is literally a name, date of birth, and address to verify you live within the county limits.

Edit: I do admit though, upon further reflection, that they have a much greater leeway in kicking students out who don't meet the stated rules of the charter. But the charter itself has to be approved by the state before granting it (and reapproved every few years based on performance,) so there is never going to be anything discriminatory or academically-limiting. Usually it is just stricter behavior requirements than your average public school.

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

There is a lot of debate over each of those statements, especially the $ and success rates.

I'm not sure how anyone can be debating such easily provable/disprovable facts. In Texas, it is a fact that charter schools receive less money per student than public schools. I know a woman who runs a charter school personally.

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

Obviously, there are many different kinds of "charter schools".
But every charter school takes $ out of the public school system.

They also take a student out of the public school system. Payment to schools has always been per student (and more specifically, per student actually in attendance each day, which is why schools push attendance so hard and have to document it so carefully.) If I pull my kid out to homeschool him instead, I too am "taking" money out of the public school system.

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

When the charter school takes the $ from a finite and limited source,
or when the charter school appeals to more talented/motivated/capable students and parents,
the public system must manage with less funds and a more difficult population of students.

As I said, the charter school is not "taking" money from anyone. If a public elementary school gets too crowded, and they open another one a half-mile away, the new school will "take" half the old school's money. But they also take half their students, thus reducing their needed budget for books, teachers, etc. The only logical way to view a charter school, when you're talking about money, is as a public school that anyone can choose to go to.

Which brings us to why someone might choose to go to a charter school. It is true that, in some cases, charter schools are opened in rough areas of town, in order to allow kids to escape the ghetto and get an education sans violence. This does, on average, leave a more "difficult" population of students behind. But I don't believe those good kids were somehow being a positive influence on the gang-bangers, and I don't think it's fair to expect them to stay in a shitty environment and kill their own chances at college on the hopes that a few more bangers might graduate because of it. It should not surprise you to know that I also think No Child Left Behind is bullshit. People who aren't willing to make even the most minimal effort should be left behind, or at least addressed by some rehabilitation program outside of the public school system.

Reason number two people attend charter schools is religion. On this, I agree with you: if the only reason for the charter school's existence is to allow regular kids to get a regular education with religion included, I think they shouldn't get state funding.

But here's reason number three people attend charter schools, and it is, in fact, why I am at this moment trying very hard to get my own children into a charter school. It's because there are students whose legitimate needs are not being met by the school system, even when the public school they are assigned to is a perfectly good one. Most general education teachers are still not well-trained in how to deal with the massive number of spectrum kids they're being forced to mainstream, and even when they are, sometimes the environment just isn't suited to them, even though a full special education environment is not appropriate either.

When these kids leave the public school for a charter school, the end result is usually better for the public school. Many of them, for example, require a very quiet environment in order to stay focused and calm. A normal, boisterous classroom is likely to send a spectrum kid into meltdown mode, getting themselves labeled as one of the "difficult" children you referred to, and starting a cycle of punishment and removal which will only make things worse. As another example, it is normal to expect a certain amount of social savvy and drama among pre-teen students, but this can create an incredibly difficult situation for a spectrum child, and opens the way for vicious bullying. To put it bluntly, the school I am trying to get my kids into is full of mostly awkward nerds like themselves, and there is no such thing as bullying on that campus. Comparatively, my son has already experienced his first low-level bully in public school Kindergarten. Removing the handful of children that everyone picks on is not just better for the bullied victims, it allows the remaining population of kids to be less divided and more focused on their own education.

And in case you'd like to argue that these kids are not as common as I make them out to be, you should know that the charter school I am discussing had 900 students in its opening year (the lucky few among thousands who applied for the lottery,) and is already planning on opening satellite campuses within the next couple of years.