Closing the Achievement Gap at Harvest Prep

[residinghere2007]

Originally Posted by stillkit

Which means exactly what? Which school system is it a part of?

It is a part of the local city's/county's school system.

Basically how public charter's work is that the school has a board, like a business and the board decides how money is spent, what type of field trips or curriculum should be involved in the school, does fundraises, and basically runs the school in a community setting. Parents can be on the board and you can get rid of board members that are inadequate by following the by-laws of the charter.

Charter schools still must take state mandated standardized test and they must achieve a certain amount of their children passing or excelling to make AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) as is mandated by the NCLB law. If they do not, they can also lose their funding. Charter schools are funded by local property taxes just like regular schools. In our area, they must accept any student from the district. Usually spots are highly sought after, especially by inner city black parents like me who do not want their children in inadequate traditional schools. A lottery is held every year for any open spots and a waiting list is established in case anyone doesn't turn in required forms or they move away from the district.

Originally Posted by HappyTexan

It's not the money. Most inner city schools get the brunt of the money and it's not helping.

Throwing more money at a problem that is not financial will not solve anything.

The results of this charter school show that.

I agree with this. Money is not the answer.

Here in Atlanta we have one of the highest amount spent per pupil in the country as well and we are still not as good as neighboring districts or others across the country that get less money. We have over $14K per year per student spent in Atlanta Public Schools. Most all schools have had new buildings, they have new computers and they still do not perform well. This has more to do with the acceptance of mediocrity versus money.

I do feel bad parenting weighs into the equation but I do feel that a lot of black parents do not know what the standards are for white children versus those in their child's school. White schools are more likely to have specialized curriculum like IB or Waldorf or Montessori. Black children on a whole are not encouraged to take AP classes by many teachers/counselors. Black parents usually don't know about AP or the other teaching methods I mentioned earlier. Schools in poor black neighborhoods usually do not have a gifted program for advanced students. Even students from poor backgrounds can be gifted. It is just a failure system wide. I also do not feel it is just a black people thing either and is something only black people need to address. All children can learned if they are encouraged to excel. Bring the dedicated teachers and give them the time, resources (not extraordinary resources, I basically mean lower class sizes, longer days, include homework period in the school day, do not threaten to take away funding from schools that are low performing and instead see where the students are at at that particular school and make sure they are progressing every year) and the children will learn and there will be no gaps between black and white.

[Katarina Witt]

Originally Posted by residinghere2007

It is a part of the local city's/county's school system.

Some charter schools are chartered by the state's dept. of education, and are a part of no school district.

In my area, many people send their kids to charters to "straighten them out", b/c they aren't doing well in their neighborhood school, so the students are no higher "quality" (what an awful thought, anyway) than students at a regualr public school.