The Myth of Charter Schools

The Myth of Charter Schools

Having just read the article by Diane Kavitch, The Myth of Charter Schools, I am left with a number of conflicting emotions.  First, I did see part of the movie Waiting for Superman a while ago.  I remember the children waiting in a big auditorium with their parents, waiting for their name to be drawn to get into the charter school of their choice.  I remember the tears and trauma of the students who didn’t make it.  And I have to agree with Diane’s conclusion – couldn’t they have humanely sent out letters to those involved, instead of putting them through the pain and anguish of the lottery?  (It reminded me in a small way of the lottery in the Hunger Games…the need for a public audience.)

I guess I have never thought of Charter Schools much before this year.  I wasn’t aware of the huge debate around them.  I am a great lover of statistics and details, though, and I really appreciated the statistics she included in her article.  Only one in five charter schools show the extraordinary results proclaimed by many charter school proponents.  That means that 4 out of 5 do not.  Only 17 percent performed better on math test scores as compared to a matched public school, whereas 37 percent performed worse than a matched public school. 

I know that one issue in our district this year is that we have a small number of students leaving for two different new charter schools in our area.  One is a high school with an agricultural focus, which sounds wonderful.  The other one was started when a nearby town fought against the closing of their local elementary school.  I know that they used a lottery system to help with placement, so not everyone who applied got in their first year.

Both of these are noble causes.  I hope both schools end up being in the top 20 percent of the charter schools.  Our students here in Maine definitely deserve it.

I also was unaware that “for-profit” organizations see charter schools as business opportunities, and are “advancing an agenda of school privatization.”  Where is any governmental oversight?  How can we have organizations that are “mostly funded by the government but controlled by private organizations?”  I don’t know enough about these to understand this part of it.