Quote:
Originally Posted by zthatzmanz28
And this is breaking news? Since their inception, charter schools have opperated with little or NO accountability (school boards hand picked by the CEO) and showing little responsibility towards traditional stakeholders...
Education for profit is a failure.
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Not for those making the profit
I wouldn't call it a failure. In spite of someone taking profit out of the school, if you closed the charter I taught at, those kids would have gone back to worse schools. Perhaps it could have been better if they would have spent some of the money on attracting and keeping good teachers (wages are so low and raises so infrequent teachers (at least those not friends with the owner)with several years of experience can still leave and get a 20% raise by taking a job as a first year teacher in a public school.) but it is better than the alternative for many of those kids.
Unfortunately, charters have become training grounds for new teachers to cut their teeth around here. I've heard that the charter I worked at turns over 1/3 of their staff every year. There was a core of long term staff, most of whom, were either related to or friends with the owner and a couple more who didn't seem to be. I don't know why they were willing to stay for the low pay, no retirement, no support in the over crowded classrooms and lousy benefits. I was let go because I didn't jump on the - insert school name here - train as my dd says. One of the teachers still there says I was labled a weed in their garden because I complained about doing labs in a "lab" (using the term loosley here) that didn't meet the minimum requirements for a chemistry lab. Apparently, I was supposed to smile and be glad I was privilidged to be part of the great charter school experience
....while the owner, I'm certain, made booku bucks....It is very hard to accept sub standard wages, lousy benefits, no retirement plan and no support in the classroom (they didn't even buy us white board markers last year) when you know the owner is doing very well for himself and there are other jobs out there that actually have a future.
Working in a charter school has made me pro union. Well not pro union but so anti situations like this that I see the union as the better option. Which, of course, made me a weed in their garden.
Personally, as a parent, I see a high turn over rate in teachers as a red flag. Do you really want your kids going to school somewhere with a revolving staff? The best teachers my kids have are teachers who have several years experience. While there are some there, there are also a lot with less than 5 years experience. I think one of the measureables for schools should be the avereage time on the job for their teaching staff. Parents should be made aware of how quickly teachers leave. With my kids in the elementary school, I did not realize what a problem it was. It's still there but less of a problem at the elementary school and all but one year, my kids had the long term teachers. That year, my dd had 3 different teachers because one of her teachers quit and was replaced, then another teacher in the school quit and they decided to take dd's teacher and move her to that class and hrie a new teacher for dd's class. That was a rough year. When I realized the high percentage of first and second year teachers at the high school, I decided to move my kids back to our district.
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