This election has so many momentous issues on the ballot, and one that strikes particularly close to home for soon-to-be teachers: Initiative Measure 1240. Lately, everywhere I go, I've been confronted with this question of whether or not Washington State should adopt the initiative to create charter schools.
Side note- literally, as I am typing this, a "Say Yes to 1240" commercial is on my television, trying to persuade me to vote YES ("for our children", as the man says. Oh, political ads...). Perfect timing for this blog post!
I feel like this is a really significant issue. If approved, it could have a dramatic change on public education in our state.
The point of my blog post this week isn't whether or not I think it would be a good opinion or what I voted for. I really just want to take the chance to delve into this issue further, and see what is being said about it across the interwebs...
An article titled "Big Money is Behind Charter Schools" begins the article by writing, blatantly, that,
"Voters in Washington state will have a chance to direct public funds
toward private bank accounts if they adopt an initiative to create
charter schools this November. Who are the bajillionaires behind the
campaign?"
This article brings a few important things to mind. These schools would serve less than 1% of WA students (but could that be because they are only proposing the creation of 40 schools? This article does not specify), students from charter schools haven't been proven to do better on standardized tests than students from regular public schools, and corporate sponsors of this initiative have raised millions in support and stand to gain a pretty sizable profit should this initiative be passed.
The Stranger's Election Control Board had this to say,
"There's a lot of money to be made off of I-1240, hence the $8.3 million
backing it got from the likes of Alice Walton, the Bezos family, Paul
Allen, and Bill Gates. (The idea that Bill Gates, who never set foot in a
public school as either a student or a parent, should tell us how to
run them is doubly insulting.)"
A site that was decidedly in favor of approving charter schools for Washington State wrote that charter schools "are free from
regulations that dictate curriculum and design", and are therefor more flexible in their curriculum and design. They also wrote that "charter public schools can be laboratories for innovation" and are committed to improvement.
This is what people are writing about this issue. What do you think? What might this look like?
I, too, have been ruminating on the concept of charter schools and trying to solidify my opinion of them. Sure, why not? seems like the first response. Everyone likes the idea of novel and "better" schools. But, we have novel schools in the public system already. These are the "choice" schools that several of us are placed in with our dyads. Children are on waiting lists and have lotteries to get in. But they're free, and part of the same public system. Why do we need charter schools to keep up with innovation like that? Why can't we just do more? And, furthermore, I only recently found out that public schools are exempt from standardized high-stakes testing. Are you kidding me? I'm guessing charter schools will be exempt as well. So what does that mean? We don't include the students into these tests that most likely come from affluent backgrounds, with more freedom for how they're taught and generally higher expectations, but the public students are tested and include all capabilities and all diverse abilities and backgrounds we see in public schools, and then have a public outcry over how bad the United States fares in relation to other countries? Seriously? Why don't we go ahead and create more charter schools that are not beholden to test taking the same way public schools are, see US scores go down further, then blame public school teachers for being terrible and underserving students. Gah!
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, a charter school staffed by Cohort 17 would be pretty bomb. ;)
/end rant.
*I meant to say, private schools are exempt from high-stakes testing. :)
DeleteI can only imagine how insanely wonderful and creative and fabulous and innovative and ridiculously brilliant a school full of cohort 17 would be! I'm only slightly biased :)
ReplyDeleteJust read this article from NPR on charter schools that a fellow cohort member posted on twitter. Loving technology tonight!
http://www.npr.org/2012/09/01/160401996/whats-a-charter-school-if-not-a-game-changer
Also, looks like charter schools will be exempt from high stakes testing as well...
ReplyDeleteEvery perspective I'm reading about seems to be striving for the same result- more innovative, high achieving, and "better" schools. I'm wondering how charter schools would accomplish that, and how the introduction of charter schools would affect the funding given to public schools?
It seems in the name of reform, charter schools have become the newest "solution". Is it just another band-aid to a troubled educational system? Shouldn't we focus on re-designing the system instead of just covering it up with another, possibly also faulted, solution?
ReplyDeleteI was so torn on this issue! On the one hand, yes, we should focus on fixing up our already existing public school system so that every child has the opportunity to recieve quality education. On the other hand, that is not happening and hasn't been happening for a while now. All of our school funding is going to schools that perform well on standardized tests, in other words, the ones that already have money and resources, while the schools that do poorly, the ones badly in need of funding and more resources, get little. And so far, we can't seem to convince our government that this does not make any sense. What is worse,the curriculum that teachers must follow is getting stricter and stricter. My Dyad placement teacher said that Bellevue was on the verge of e-mailing daily lesson plans to their teachers, which they had to follow exactly, despite where their students were at. WHAT?!?! Are you kidding me? Luckily the teachers thought this was a horrible idea as well and fought against it. Is this where our public schools are headed? If so, then I am all for charter schools! Especially one run by C17 :)
ReplyDeleteI should check the blogspot blogs more often :) I only read the wordpress blogs regularly!
ReplyDeleteAnother cohort linked to this blog, and I want to respond to it (albeit a little late).
So, I actually voted yes to the charter school initiative. I know we need to fix problems in the public schools, but the whole thing seems so stagnant at the moment. Bureaucrats are notorious for getting nothing done.
Charter schools are kind of a gamble, but if there is one really good one out of the 40, it would be a really good example of what public schools could be. And then, maybe public action will take place to fix the school system.
And.. I'd love to work at a c17 school!