Feb
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Blog Post #2 Andrew Chen
February 3, 2015 | Leave a Comment
Before reading these two assigned articles, I had little knowledge about charter schools, and the plight of some public schools because of such charter schools. I went to a public elementary school, a public secondary school, and a specialized high school, so I was not exposed to the influence of charter schools, or the occurrence of co-location. My ignorance in the past on this subject had previously led me to believe in this system of “equal opportunity for all” in terms of education. When charter schools are first introduced to be a way of bringing innovation to a more rigid public school establishment, I thought of it to be a pretty good concept. However, later lines in the articles bring up the problems of charter schools, and my view quickly changed.
The article written by Trymaine Lee is both emotional and heartbreaking. I had previously not known about the co-location occurring in Harlem for the Harlem Success Academy and the Sojourner Truth School. One is a charter school and one is a traditional public school, yet they both share the same building. This bit of news disturbed me a little, as I immediately thought about the inequality of education and attention that occurs between the two schools. Gay Zacerous, a speech therapist from the Sojourner Truth School backs this up by saying that “It’s like our children have their noses pressed up against a store window seeing things they can’t afford.” With the public school and charter school sharing the same building, this is essentially the case.
Because the critics of charter schools say that the privately funded institutions, under the Bloomberg administration, take away from public education in the form of a “Trojan horse”, they believe that it undermines the established system for public schools, at the expense of the less privileged students. I think this practice is wrong as I believe that everyone should have the same opportunity for education, and prioritizing one type over the other shouldn’t be done. Both public schooling and charter schools should receive the same funding, and no one should bar a public student from using “charter school facilities”. Have we come this far in society to restrict education and teach the children of our generation that these educational differences are okay?
In the article written by Pedro Noguera, it states that charter schools aren’t all that impressive to begin with. In a 2013 study at Stanford University, “only 29 percent of charter schools outperformed public schools with similar students in math, while 31 percent performed worse.” If the results from charter schools weren’t much better than public schools, what’s really the point of establishing new charter schools, or even keeping current ones? This is able to go hand-in-hand with Mayor De Blasio’s denial of a plan to relocate 200 additional charter students into the already crowded Harlem school building. If he had passed that plan, it would cause more tension in the school, which isn’t going to lead to a solution anytime soon.
Noguera also mentions that because public schools are required by law to show how they use their funding and that charter schools aren’t bound by such rules, it is hard to see where the funding is allocated for charter schools. While dozens of public schools have been closed due to budget problems, more than $729 million have been involved for charter schools (PA), despite reports of scandals. I think with more exposure to the charter school and public school issue, it will bring it to the attention of more concerned parents about the education and funding inequality. A few questions that I want to bring up is whether charter schools are really necessary for the children of the United States, and how can the issue between charter schools and public schools be resolved with critics on both ends?
