>n Los Angeles (and California in general), charter schools are not as
>independent as this. In my understanding, each one has a different
>charter.
>Also, the charter is by an agreement between the public school board and
>those who want to establish the school, who are usually parents and
>teachers rather than entrepreneurs.
>
>I'd like to hear from someone who knows more about this issue than I do,
>however.
>
>Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Charter schools are motivated by two
different and sometimes conflicting agendas.
The details of chartersvary from state to state
and reflect the relative power of these different
interests in writing the enabling charter
legislation.
On the one hand, parents of children in large
urban school districts want more control over the
schools, the curriculum, schedules and so forth.
All with good reason. Urban schools are notorious for
inadequate and inequitable funding, entrenched teachers
unions, maddening bureaucracy, politicized and
unprofessional school management and so on.
In cities like Boston, middle-class parents withdraw
their children from the public schools and pay private
tuition as a matter of course. Like most US cities, Boston
offers "magnet" schools for the upper grades with
admittance based on an entrance exam, but most of the non-exam
schools are really rotten. For parents and educators, the problem
with urban school systems is not simply lack of funding, but the lack
of any accountablity to parents, excessive centralization, etc.
For parents, the idea of setting up public sector schools
free from public sector bureacratic management with its
inexplicable rules and bitter, burnt-out staff, is VERY enticing.
Many parents who use charter schools believe they are now
able to get, for free (or with their taxes), what they had previously
paid a Catholic school or a Montessori school to provide. Most are
not anti-union or anti-public education. Indeed, Deborah
Meier, a vocal advocate for public schools, opened a
charter school in Boston a few years ago.
However, the charter school movement would
never have gotten off the ground were it not for the lobbying
of a private education entreprenuers allied with right-wingers
whose probable agenda is to privatize schools and retreat
from a public committment to educate all children. The political
impetus for extending charters has come mostly from the
Republican party. Charters in Massachusetts can go
to anyone who wants to open a school, including private,
for-profit corporations and a number of charters are run
by for-profit businesses.
So there is this tension in the charter-school debate.
On the one hand, progressives want to advocate decentralized,
innovative, responsive, parent- and child-friendly public
education, which charters or something like charters can
provide. Indeed, some would argue that charters are the
salvation of public education in US cities. On the other hand,
any progressive who follows this debate is aware that
it is being orchestrated to a very large degree by the right-
wing. What's a progressive to do?
I suggest you read whatever you can find by
Deborah Meier, one of the sanest voices in this debate.
Ellen Frank
>
