I'm a little confused (no kidding! cries the peanut gallery).
Folks who want to reform the education system often say that we need to hold teachers and school administrators more accountable. Our generally conservative state legislature wants to impose more rigorous and uniform evaluation of teachers. In the eyes of some generally conservative observers, the public school system just can't be trusted to do its job right. (Hmm... is such propaganda another aspect of the GOP effort to empower its extremists by undermining confidence in public institutions and alientaing the center out of participating?)
But on Tuesday a really big bipartisan majority of the U.S. House passed H.R. 2218, the Empowering Parents Through Quality Charter Schools Act. (Rep. Kristi Noem voted aye; Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich voted nay.) This bill directs the U.S. Department of Education to make more money available to states for grants to support charter schools, which work no better than public schools. Schools receiving funds under this program are to have "a high degree of autonomy over budget and operations." The charter schools are to be allowed waivers from federal, state, and local rules that the charter schools say stand in the way of their successful operation.
Now the bill includes other hoops through which schools and states must jump to get this money. But I find it curious that with cries for more accountability in education abounding, this charter school legislation includes language about allowing charter schools more room to operate outside of public scrutiny. Do charter schools deserve autonomy that regular public schools do not?
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Related: I am pleased to read in the latest Dakota Poll that South Dakotans may be as concerned about a lack of accountability in their local schools. In a generally glowing report on our satisfaction with our K-12 schools, the Dakota Poll finds the highest level of satisfaction among South Dakotans comes in our sense that our schools make "the community feel like a welcome part of the school system." The Dakota Poll notes that South Dakota's confidence in its public education systems stands in stark contrast to low confidence in public schools nationwide.
Also worth noting: one area of concern identified in the Dakota Poll is that our schools aren't teaching enough art, music, and foreign language. Hey, that's my job!
Definitely a charter school should be held to high standards of education and academic excellence as well as public schools. Should they get as much state aid as public, no since they want to do it on their own they should have a little more skin in the game.
If all public schools were good we would not have this debate. But in Phoenix where my brother in law taught in the public schools they outlawed homework since 80% of the students did not do any anyways. Later they had a study how all kids in Phoenix did quite similar, all low but the study did not say that. We do have some schools that are so disrespectful to quality education that the parents do need an option. At that time there were 1,000 charter schools in Phoenix. Did that fix the public schools, no. Did it give the parents an option if the schools were bad and were not going to change, yes. Would it be better to vastly improve the public schools so all kids could have a reasonable chance in the world, yes. The best we can do here is make sure that our public schools do not become such of a disaster. When they play numbers games like telling us for years that we had a 91% graduation rate when that was the percentage of twelth graders graduating rather than the 69% of all students graduating, then we do not really know if our schools are good or are they just giving us a numbers game to appear better than they are.
When the schools lie this kids will also. We are not going the right direction.