Feb
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Blog Post #2 – Charter Schools – Tiffany Fan
February 3, 2015 | Leave a Comment
From these four articles, it shows how charters schools and the effects of their existence in society is a controversial topic that is constantly spoken about by the informed public and political figures. One of the biggest issues in the creation of charter schools is the seemingly close privatization of education. The way that the charter schools and public schools are operating defeats the purpose of the charter schools being in existent. The charter schools were sort of experiments in which it develops a way of better satisfying and educating students. However, there are always two different views to an issue of the bettering of public education with the use of charter schools.
In one point of view by Pedro Noguera’s article, “Why Don’t We Have Real Data on Charter Schools,” it demonstrates how statistics are limited in charter schools whether it is financially or with test scores. Thus, when test results are reported, it shows how charter school students and public schools students are performing generally similarly, where 29 percent of students are performing better than public school students and 31 percent of students are performing worse. In addition, Trymaine Lee’s article, “Separate and Unequal: The Charter School Pedestal the Public Can’t Reach,” it shows how in Harlem’s Success Academy, they are performing better than public schools. If this is the case, charter schools should collaborate and share their educational techniques with those in public schools in order to improve education for students as a whole. It is difficult to pinpoint the exact causes for the success.
On the other hand, in Ben McCarron’s article, “A New Charter School In Newark Faces Growing Pains,” speaks about the statistics of those at People’s Prep, where it shows the benefits of charter schools. This includes the improvement in ACT scores and improvements in language arts. The first component of the purpose of charter schools have not been fulfilled where education should be improved because of the lack of statistics that charter schools provide and the cooperation between public and charter schools.
Another issue demonstrated through the growth of charter schools is the use of money. With charter schools having many teachers fired constantly and with no report on their use of money and with Eva Moskowitz earning more than double of the public school chancellor, it puts to question how they are spending the money given by public funds. Also, their selection of the students attending charter schools seem bias as there is an approximately 25 percent different in those who receive free lunch in comparison to public schools. Because charter schools are considered private, they are not required to reveal their financial distribution.
Since public school students who are separated by the charter schools students by merely a staircase are able to see the things that they desire for, is it really following the No Child Left Behind Act? Students are limited to their acceptance into charter schools because of their lack of ability to speak English, because of their special needs, and because of their income. This makes co-location a big issue in this growing dilemma. In addition, it changes the statistics to charter schools for their better when they could take control and look at the bigger picture, to improve all students’ education. I believe that there are certain lines that cannot be crossed if there comes into existent of more charter schools. One of them is taking over and eliminating the school of public school students and in Success Academy’s case, PS 811. To remove the education available to the students in public schools is beyond fair and defeats the purpose of charter schools. It also puts public school students in a position where they feel lower than those of charter school students.
As a possible solution, charter schools need to be more transparent, in order to locate the successful aspects that they incorporate. In this way, we can improve public education in which it uses those aspects and tries it in these new ways of teaching, instead of focusing on competition. Thus, we can see how beneficial are charter schools exactly and what can charter schools and public schools do in order to not make it feel like one is below the other?
