Post a commentMost charters do an outstanding job of educating. This seems fair, but the problems that spurred this from a few schools are the exception and not the rule. The charter movement has overall done a terrific job.
Remember charter schools were brought to us by Republicans who wanted to get government rules and mandates out of the education system. Now we are slowly bur surely putting them back in. Perhaps we should remember that the public education system exists as it does for a reason. The "free market" is not an elixer for improving our schools.
Gary, the first thing we have to do is take politics out of education. That is a BIG source of the problem. To that end, I am pleased to see that this excellent start in the right direction has bi-partisan support. One of the reasons our public school system is such a mess is because it has become a political football and that needs to stop! I've only had an opportunity to skim the draft of the proposed bill, but I feel it is an excellent first step. I would like to see more focus on the PDE and on how it dropped the ball in the Agora situation and provisions in the bill to do a total overhaul of the PDE so that it can and will provide proper oversight in the future. I would also like to see more of a roll for parents and taxpayers in the governing bodies of these schools and would like to see them elected rather than appointed. However, I do believe this is an excellent first step.
They have done a good job, but they have clearly outgrown the current laws. When you have a movement that grows, as quickly as the Charter Movement has, you have to make adjustments to fit the growth. This change is good for the movement and more importantly the eduction of our future.
The parents of Agora and Philadelphia Academy Charter that saw a wrong and spoke up should be commended for their efforts. The awareness will create a brighter future for all of us.
Charter schools were initially invented by teachers for the noble purpose of becoming laboratories of innovative practice to be shared with the broader system. They were not meant to compete with regular public schools for cash and students, but as agents for change and reform in public education. The original rules allowed charters to cap enrollment, seal enrollment in advance and using the admissions process, to screen the most difficult learning problems. Public education has been the loser, as money meant for all children was siphoned off by theives and frauds. While I am glad for the overhaul, I am also concerned by the changing nature of charter schools as quasi private schools funded by public money. (At least they have dropped the enrollment cap to make it more open to all children.) Somewhere in the formula should be a cap on the percentage of public schools turned over to charters. Where this is headed is anyone's guess, but if each school becomes a self-governing entity, how can any of it be monitored adequately. The accountability must be assured. I am also concerned that local school districts, which should have been more vigilant in the past, lose all control of their charter schools. I hope this bill does not create more problems than it solves.
wasn't this one of the reasons that charter schools were formed so this kind of stuff wouldn't happen? it seems to me that there is even more abuse of taxpayers money now with these charters but no one will admit they were wrong
get rid of the caps on charters. create a voucher program. open the public education market and let the people have the choices. competition helps all children. those who argue for the status quo are comfortable with low-income children stuck in failing goverment-run schools. the real siphoning going on is at the 60% of district schools where students don't meet the nclb goals, but teachers and administrators don't get bounced. don't be fooled by maggie and her ilk. the overwhelming majority of stealing, cheating and failing are happening ing government-run schools. don't buy that "laboratory" nonsense. it's about competition. those who don't what competition know they cannot compete.
@ PeaceOut - Thank you for your kind comment. You'd be amazed at how much flack the whistle blowers from both schools have taken especially from fellow parents. It has been painful for all involved and the Agora parents are still under a defamation suit which should have been thrown out on the day it was filed. You have NO idea how very many parents and staff hate the whistle blowers and blame them for "tarnishing the charter movement" instead of blaming those who are responsible. If everyone in this Country who suspected anyone of wasting taxpayer dollars stood up and blew the whistle, we wouldn't be trillions of dollars in debt right now!
Pointguard, I agree with you 100%. What happened here is not because the schools were charters. It happened because the taxpayers didn't have enough say in how they were run and because the PDE and SRC failed to provide appropriate levels of oversight.
gladys and pointguard, both of you are right on track. Large school district bureaucracies are in the business of feeding themselves. It's not about kids or education ultimately. Competition with appropriate oversight leads to a system where the best, most responsive, and most efficient schools will succeed. Status quo schools will fail. Gladys, have you ever wondered why in all of this mess there have been no investigations or questions of high level district employees? Talk about crazy.
The headline should read "They wrote bad legislation and have taken 12 years to fix it." How can you allot state funds/taxpayer dollars, but not mandate accountability? Where's the "checks and balances." You wonder that there were abuses? I wonder that there weren't more. Perhaps an acknowledgment of the virtue of the charter concept and a condemnation of the second class job PA is doing educating its kids.
The spin coming out of Harrisburg is unbelievable.
Thank you PG for admitting that you want to destroy public education. That was exactly my point. All this talk of vouchers and choice is just a smokescreen for the real agenda which is to deconstruct what you patronizingly call "government schools". What will you replace them with, and more importantly, how will you pay for them? You throw straw man arguments about "corruption" in the government schools, but you never stick to the point of what charter schools are designed to do and what has happened as a result of criminal management of them. Your solution taken to its logical conclusion will result in chaos. Sure, give every parent a voucher for private schools with no guarantee of admittance, no provision for those who do not make the cut, not even a cap on tuition. It will become whatever the market will bear and, as with these scandals, an open invitation for for profit enterprise and all the evils which have beset these unsupervised schools. Let's be frank. You are not interested in educating all children, but only children whose parents put the effort it takes to get admitted into any of these schools. That is called elitism with overtones of racism, since the poorest and most vulnerable children are from minority communities. Has anyone stopped to think what happens with universal choice and vouchers, where a private school can still control its admissions, raise its tuition or do anything it wants. Only public schools, including public charter schools can get the scrutiny and the regulation that we are seeing here. Once you tear away the controls, the result will be totally unpredictable. Your business model is fatally flawed and you know it.
mags, i didn't do anything to destroy public education. you and your gang have done that already. we all know that deconstructing a failing system is the point of education reform. you "predict" that my solution would lead to chaos. i can "show" you that your solution has produced chaos. you want frankness? you and your peeps hold yourselves as the guardians of education for all children. the fact is your approach educates only a very few children. the minority communities that you feel it your job to protect doesn't need you. you're killing them by the generation with your over-priced, under-performing schools. you know that government-run schools are largely minority and low income. those who had an option to exercise have done so. that's why you hate choice. the biggest threat to an ineffective school system is the option to go somewhere else. your system is fatally flawed and everyone but you can see it.
PG, again you admit your purpose for all to see. You claim that the city public schools are overpriced, when they cannot even afford to have libraries, art education, school counselors or materials or pay competitive wages. Please do not continue to hold up the requirements of NCLB as proof of failure, when the standards of proficiency vary from state to state, making the whole system a blatant sham. How is it possible, with all the failures you cite, that 40% of young adults are now enrolled in college - a record? How did that happen? You claim to offer a "choice" to inner city children. I have heard this lame claim for years. Did you ever look up the results of the voucher experiment in Cleveland where NOT ONE of the local private or affluent suburban schools would take the vouchers and the kids were forced to "choose" the parochial schools, where they did no better than before. Are you trying to bail out the cash strapped parochial schools here in Philly as well? I have read the plan called "Tough Choices or Tough Times" with the express purpose of having corporations run every school in America for the purpose of training workers for the new economy. What a farce! Think of Agora and Philadelphia Academy magnified by the millions. It isn't about saving the children. It is about making a profit on their backs. You know it and you are part of the plot.
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