Are Charter Schools Threatening DC Public Schools?
Mon, 02/26/2007 - 11:38am
What is the greatest threat to the success of our neighborhood public schools here in DC? The answer is simple: charter schools.
Charter schools are private schools set up with and funded by our public tax dollars. They are initiated to steal funds and high performing students from urban public schools, perpetuating the failure of traditional neighborhood schools. The Right supports “public” charter schools as a means to begin the privatization of public schools altogether. The Left supports them as they do all social programs that help heal their legacy of guilt, while at the same time institutionalize racism and classism.
Charter Schools recruit heavily in the lead up to each school year. Not surprisingly, they concentrate most of their energy on high performing students, with active families, who live in homes where education is highly valued. But, they’ll generally accept any student; to begin the school year, that is.
DC’s Public and Charter Schools are allotted funds based on a weighted student formula in early September. By late October, after schools are allotted their budget dollars on a per student basis, neighborhood public schools are flooded with charter school cast-offs who couldn’t fit in at a private school with "a code of high standards of conduct and civility", "a classical curriculum formed around the trivium of grammar, logic and rhetoric", and a "headmaster". Students whose parents cannot fulfill a promise to support a school's "annual fund" and "development efforts” are simply kicked out of the charter schools and sent back to their neighborhood public school. The same is the case for any students with a social or learning disability. After the public money comes in, it doesn't follow a child back to their neighborhood school; so, to the charter schools, students are disposable.
Here is the parent agreement for The Washington Latin School, A D.C. Public Charter School; clearly this is not a school for the public:
1. I will send my child to school, well fed and appropriately clothed. (in a $250+ uniform)
2. I will support the school’s Standard of Conduct & Civility, its Honor Code and its efforts to encourage a healthy alcohol-free, drug-free, and smoke free environment.
3. I will maintain a clean, quiet, well-lit space and oversee two hours of supervised study time every school night.
4. I will attend Parent Association meetings and special events that support my child.
5. I will support the Annual Fund and other development efforts of the School.
In a perfect world, these are reasonable expectations for any parent; but, the reality is we live in a city rife with poverty and unemployment, where only 1/3 of adults can read at a fourth grade level; so, if parent or student can’t keep up with Headmaster’s expectations at the Washington Latin Public Charter School, they’re asked to hit the bricks, but not until late October.
DC Public Charter Schools are for rich families who don't want to pay for a private school, nor deal with the "riff-raff" in public schools. As long as they are financially able to support "Annual Funds", and "development efforts", and $250+ school uniform policies; and, their kids are a “good fit”, then they are welcome at the city’s charter schools. But, why should our tax dollars pay for their private schools, especially to the detriment of real public schools, which are stripped of dollars and the active, middle and upper-middle class families that tip the scale to high achievement and test scores?
Soulless bureaucrats are systematically destroying neighborhood schools by sending tax dollars, high performing students, and active families outside of their own communities for schooling. If rich parents want to send their kids to private schools, let them pay for it themselves. If they want to be a part of our existing communities and schools, we welcome them. In the meantime, let us not sell our children out to politicians who think they know, so much better than us, what's best for our kids, and our communities.
About the author
Cory Chimka is a teacher who plays guitar and vocals in the Washington, DC band, the fed.
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Charter schools are right for DC
Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 02/26/2007 - 12:21pm.
Interesting article, Cory.
The statement "[Charter schools] are initiated to steal funds and high performing students from urban public schools, perpetuating the failure of traditional neighborhood schools" is most telling about the author's point of view. To him, it's all about "saving public schools," but it's important to realize that it's the education of the student that counts, not the survival of the institution itself.
Motivated students who -- by no fault of their own -- live in poor neighborhoods deserve an equal opportunity to succeed. Students who don't have the financial resources of middle- and upper-class families depend on publicly-funded charter schools as a tool to help lift themselves out of oftentimes generational poverty. Let's face it, the privileged children of senators and diplomats are attending private schools, not charter schools. Charter schools offer the financial opportunity to escape poorly performing public schools.
Those most threatened by charter schools are the public school stakeholders with the most to lose. What's the priority here, giving children the best educational opportunities or teacher employment and job preservation?
Consumer choice in everything is good and monopolies, at least in the long run, never produce better service. It's competition that improves performance.
Rebuttal
Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 02/27/2007 - 12:56am.
The core issue involving charter schools and public schools is the promise of improved performance. Do charter schools lead to higher performance? From everything I've read, at an aggregate level charter schools do not perform significantly better than public schools. So, what is the cost of the "choice" that charter schools permit? According to Cory the charter schools take on the students and dollars in August and shed the students but not the dollars in October. That basically creates an unlevel funding playing field. The per pupil funding for charter schools will thus be higher than that of public schools. Uneven funding between charter schools and public schools screams political no-go. So, funding for public schools goes up to level the playing field, and the DC taxpayer gets the same school performance but gets to pay more taxes. Sounds awesome...
On a related note, the US Congress, our friends in the big house on the hill, passed a law that requires the DCPS to offer charter schools the right of first refusal (at a below market rate) when they try to sell it. So rather than sell to their competition, the law incentivizes DCPS to hold on to buildings it doesn't need, raising operating costs.
So the whole competitive market idea falls apart as follows:
1. Because they can boot students without booting the money, charter schools face no risks when bringing in new students.
2. They also don't have to pay the full cost of capital to open their schools.
Basically, DC subsidizes a private sector industry that does not perform any better than the DCPS.
Regarding the "motivated students," a more accurate description is "motivated parents." What fourth grader is “motivated” enough to choose the best school for their education? So we should punish students for having unmotivated parents? But wait, it gets better. We’ll reduce the number of people that suffer from generational poverty (maybe), and ensures that a smaller group will have even less of a chance to pull themselves out of poverty.
The Horatio Algers by-line of students suffering from generations of "generational" poverty pulling themselves up by their bootstraps once given the choice of schools typifies the US polity’s approach to complex social problems. Why don’t we save some money and just by more bootstraps? Much like public housing in the fifties and welfare in the sixties and seventies, the charter schools fill the aughts’ need for a social silver bullet, provided by a self-interested, profit-driven (not a value judgement, just a fact) business sector. As H.L. Menken once said, “for every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” Fixing public school performance in low-income areas is a lot more complex than “school choice.”
By the way, I was "always" taught that speaking in absolutes like, "everything is good" and "never produce better service" is a surefire way to prove yourself wrong.
A soulless bureaucrat
To Soulless Bureaucrat
Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 02/27/2007 - 9:22am.
Is racism or school segregation always "bad," or is that too absolute for you?
Looks like someone got a brand new copy of Bartleby's for Christmas.
Here's one for you:
It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.
-Albert Einstein
Charter schools continue to
Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 02/27/2007 - 5:31pm.
Charter schools continue to segregate this city's children. Only, it ain't about Black & White anymore; it's about Green, man! Did you mean Bartlett's Familiar Quotations? I've never heard of "Bartleby's".
An Entirely Different, Entirely Soulless Bureaucrat
My mistake
Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 02/27/2007 - 8:57pm.
You're right. Bartlett's. My mistake.
What would you really expect from a product of sub-standard monopolized public education?
Thank you
Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 02/27/2007 - 11:48pm.
to the other soulless bureaucrat. We mindless drool factories need to stick together.
On a sidenote, I've always found ad hominem rejoinders the most powerful of arguements.
a soulless bureaucrat
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