Now We Know Our ABCs. And Charter Schools Get an F.

[eridani]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/09/24-0.

The evidence against charter schools is overwhelming. Their relative ineffectiveness is documented by studies from Stanford University, the Department of Education, Johns Hopkins University, and the RAND Corporation.

In addition to their poor performance, charters are more segregated, less likely to accept students with disabilities, and conducive to a widening of the racial and rich-poor education gaps.

Also, charter school teachers have less experience, and their turnover rate is higher.

Yet the media-supported myth of school privatization persists. Charters sustain this myth, according to noted education scholar Diane Ravitch, by "skimming off" the most motivated students from disadvantaged neighborhoods. They claim to select students randomly. But a study of the highly regarded KIPP Charter School chain shows a pattern of "selective attrition" in which underperforming students are "counseled out." About half of Kipp's students leave between the 5th and 8th grades.

Charters can pull off their charade of success, because the privatization myth keeps disillusioned parents waiting at their front doors. There are currently about two million students in 5,600 charter schools throughout the U.S., with 600,000 children on the waiting lists.

In the end, perhaps the strongest argument against charter schools is that they've never been scaled up to a level that accommodates the majority of students. The profit motive wouldn't allow such equality of opportunity without drastic cutbacks in teacher salaries and student support costs. After all, the people at the top need to grab their salaries first.

[Squinch]

1. Another factor will limit the spread of charter schools:

Teachers are leaving the profession as fast as they can (wonder why) and very few new teachers are replacing them. There was an article on California's new teachers that said that 40% fewer students were certified to teach last year, and enrollments are down by 50% in teacher education programs. I am guessing this is not unique to California.

The average number of years teachers have been teaching, teacher experience, has plummeted. Because the curriculum is now such a cookbook, the new teachers don't really know how to teach, they just know how to follow the (usually ridiculous and ineffective) teaching recipe. They are ineffective, and they know they are ineffective.

Pretty soon, to hold onto a teacher with any experience, you will have to pay a premium. And to get anything that even resembles decent results in your school, you're going to need those few experienced teachers.

If you can't get cheap teachers, the profit motive of the charter schools falls apart.

Already it is becoming clear that the charter schools are incubators for poor, burnt out teachers who leave after a year or two. And they don't get the results that public schools get.

This movement can't last.

[proud2BlibKansan]

2. I hope you're right.