Your thoughts on Charter Schools.

[zenjenn]

As for charter schools, I'm from Arizona which has either the 1st or 2nd highest rate of students attending charter schools, and they were all terrible. I'm not necessarily against them, but I haven't seen them improve quality of education.

My question to this is, if these charter schools are so terrible, why do parents let their kids continue to go there? Why not just remove them from the terrible school? Charter school enrollment is in no way mandatory.

I have to think that either the schools are meeting the needs of those families, or the families are not being informed as to the school's failings. The latter is part of the transparency issue.

Regarding the former, some charter schools are meant to serve students with learning disabilities, mental illness, or behavioral problems. I think that has to account for at least some of the "terrible" charter schools. When you have that as your entire student body, your school may not look so hot on paper, but as individuals the students still may be performing better at those schools than they would be in a regular public school environment.

Of course some are just going to be crummy failures and will need to be shut down. That's expected when you run experiments.

[FatTails]

I can speak for one particular charter school I know of personally. At this school children skip grades constantly. The learning is done more at the students' pace (read textbook, do homework) and many are finishing the year's work and starting the next grade before the year is out. I know of several kids that started college at 16 because of this. All of them are currently doing terrible in college. I don't know if it's because they are emotionally immature for starting so early, or if the charter school they attended really let them down. I have no opinion on the matter, but this is just my personal anecdote.

[phxmomto1each]

Originally Posted by nerdtron

As for charter schools, I'm from Arizona which has either the 1st or 2nd highest rate of students attending charter schools, and they were all terrible. I'm not necessarily against them, but I haven't seen them improve quality of education.

Umm, I beg to differ. The TOP schools in Arizona are charter schools. BASIS is the very top. In 2014, 18 of the top 30 public schools were all Charter Schools. Of the top 50 public schools in Arizona, nearly all of the top 10 are charter schools. Great Hearts Academies (which I selected for my kids) has 19 academies and serves over 9,300 kids, and a whopping 95% of Great Hearts students attend 4 year colleges. The Global Report Card from the George W. Bush Institute ranked over 14,000 U.S. public schools and the only ones from AZ to make the top 25% were ALL charter schools. I am guessing that commentator has never stepped foot inside of a charter school.

As for the original post, I think charter schools are great because competition breeds improvement. I LOVE that I was able to select which school would be the best fit for my family, without having to settle for an average public school or move to a neighborhood in order to get into a really good public school. As a result of the growing number of parents choosing charter schools over public schools due to the concern that public schools were not academically rigorous enough, many public schools have had to make educational improvements in order to keep students there, such as self-enclosed honor programs or full-immersion foreign language programs. I read a recent study that charter schools were found to be 40% more cost effective than traditional schools, and for every $1000 spent at charter schools there was an 18 point increase in Math and Reading in a National Assessment test. In AZ, charter schools receive $1,200 less per student than public schools, yet many schools are excelling.

I like that charter schools can hire the teacher that best suits them, such as at our school where faculty members are not obligated to have a teaching certificate, and are instead drawn from technical and professional fields, private and non-traditional schools, and college and graduate schools. The schools look to hire teachers based on their own love of learning and knowledge of the academic subject matter. And as a parent, I like that teachers are paid based on quality of work, reviewed by all parents, and can be fired for poor performance. Because they are privately run, charter schools select their curriculum. For example, my kids' charter school is a classical liberal arts academy, it stresses small class sizes, a common, advanced curriculum that they teach equally to every child (with group or individual tutoring as needed) with no honors program or electives. The sequence in math, science, foreign language, fine arts, and the humanities exceeds the State standards in duration and content, and because they stress developing well-rounded individuals, all students take courses in music, French (or Spanish at some schools), Latin, Art and P.E. There is no pop culture permitted, students and parents must sign and abide by a strict honor code and dress code, and the school highly focuses on virtues like respect, integrity, humility, honesty and courage. They also offer great after school activities and sports such as chess, drawing, astonomy, running, choir, drama, soccer, basketball, volleyball, football, etc., field trips, symphony performances at school, plays, etc.

Will there be bad charter schools, yes of course, but they close sooner rather than later because parents simply chose a nearby public, charter or private school. Also, the law in AZ has been amended over the years so that now there is a great deal of oversight and accountability of charter schools. They must file annual report cards and receive annual financial audits. They must participate in State and nationally mandated testing programs including AIMS, and maintain alignment with AZ's mandated academic standards, must provide curriculum samples and state objectives prior to receiving charter status, keep a public file of education qualifications and work experience of all employees, submit annual school profile data, and can lose their charter status and be sanctioned for non compliance.

As a graduate of a local public school, I am SO thankful that I was able to chose a charter school for my kids, and I LOVE the one we selected. I think It will be a great thing for Alabama children if they allow Charter schools to open in that State.

[FatTails]

Ok, so that's what we call cherry picking data. Sure, the top charter schools in AZ are great. I don't deny that. But I've read the stats, and the stats say charter schools don't perform better (or worse) that public schools, on average. That last part is key. Some charter schools are far superior to public schools, but there are charter schools on the other side of the bell curve that perform far worse. On average, it's a toss up. Again, I have no strong opinion on charters, but you can't pick the best 10 charter schools and claim that proves they are superior. Charter schools might be better, but you need evidence that goes beyond picking the top 1%.

I will admit calling all charter schools terrible was a mistake on my part. I personally was not impressed with the charter schools I was familiar because it seemed the students graduating from those schools were not prepared for college. But this is quite a small sample from quite a large pot.

[phxmomto1each]

I think we can agree there are good charter schools and good public schools, and as I said in my prior post, bad charter schools and bad public schools. I certainly did not mean to imply that charter schools are superior to public schools. I went to a public school, as did my husband and our families, and my mom was a public school teacher, and we all turned out alright. However, I wanted more for my kids than I believed our local public schools could provide. My point was that the beauty of charter schools is that parents now have a CHOICE in the school their kids attend. My parents never had a choice in my school, I just went to the one in our district. With my kids, I got to research every school in Phoenix and select the best fit for my family. We actually live in a very good elementary school district and almost selected a public elementary school, however the middle school and high school we fed into were terrible. We would have had to have paid for a private school or move. But because of charter schools in Arizona, we got to select a school that provides everything I have ever wanted for my children's education. I would not send my kids to a charter school that did not provide the basis for their success in college. And because I know I am a research nerd, I will spare you the statistics I have on our charter schools college success. As in any marketplace, the schools that provide an excellent education will thrive, and those that don't will cease to exist. Charter schools give more options to select from, and I firmly believe that is a good thing.

[Tourian]

Gov. Robert Bentley signs Alabama charter school bill | AL.com

For better or worse, it's done.

[zenjenn]

But I've read the stats, and the stats say charter schools don't perform better (or worse) that public schools, on average.

Once again, the point of charter schools isn't for them to perform better than public schools. It's for them to serve the students in them better than those particular kids might be served in a regular public school.

- If 150 dyslexic students scattered among 20 public schools in a district are consolidated into a charter school that serves the needs dyslexic students, that school performing no better or no worse than other public schools is exactly what you want.

- If a bunch of students from farming families/students with an interest in farming are consolidated into a charter school that incorporates agricultural studies into the school because it is will serve the goals of those particular students, there's no reason to believe that school will 'perform better' (in fact, it might perform worse based on standardized test measures) but it still may serve those students better.

With a few exceptions (such as charter schools for gifted students or charter schools experimenting with a new general education model), very nature of a charter school makes traditional methods of measuring school 'performance' largely meaningless.

Again, there will no doubt be crummy charter schools and excellent ones, but there's nothing about the concept of charter schools sets up an expectation of 'better' performance. Ultimately since enrollment in charter schools is not compulsory, 'success' should be measured by the satisfaction level of the students/parents and whether the students go on to live happy and productive lives after graduation.