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Charter Schools - a Godsend in Failing Neighborhoods

If there is one thing that charter schools are about it is accountability. They receive their federal funding, but they are freed from havin... thumbnail 1 summary


If there is one thing that charter schools are about it is accountability. They receive their federal funding, but they are freed from having to report to restrictive federal regulations, so that they can achieve results by their own lights. But achieve those results they must. When students get admitted, they understand that it isn't any ordinary school they are in - they are made to take up pledges that they will work well and do their homework, and teachers understand that if they don't help their students actually make progress on their tests, they lose their jobs.

The implicit understanding in signing up for such strict results-oriented programs is that if you actually do show results in these punitive conditions, you have it made - you will be well-rewarded. That's not how a charter school in upstate New York, that has a ten-year history of proud achievement, found the real world plays out. Their test scores really did beat every public school in Albany - and yet the state is shutting them down.

The name of the charter school is the New Covenant, and parents, children and teachers cannot believe what they're hearing. Parents and teachers attached to the school have risen up in arms against the state for its decision. The school has always helped children from troubled homes, gang children and others, maintain some kind of normal childhood by keeping them in school, and going the extra mile by - would you believe it - keeping parents in jail abreast of all the homework and test results. This is the kind of school you read about in Reader's Digest, where the teachers are special, and the tough children are special.

And yet, the area's charter schools committee is ordering that it be shuttered. Why would they do that? Because even if the school has helped its students make remarkable gains in science and math scores, the school's students haven't done well on English tests, and the school has repeatedly had trouble with teachers and students leaving all the time. President Obama has a great deal invested in the role charter schools play in our communities. He sees charter schools, these great places that have public funding, but private management, as the answer to the country's failing education system. The problem is, everything about America's public education system relentlessly depends on numbers and analyses. If a school is doing better than the public schools in the area, just not as well as it should, it is still seen as expendable. No matter that the whole neighborhood would be lost without it.

What did they expect? These are good teachers, not miracle workers. The school did improve in English too last year; but it fell about 8% short of the mark it had to make. On the one side, the requirements of fairness mean that you can't just give one school a special reprieve; pretty soon everyone else will expect one, and the system would break down. And on the other hand, some random "system" is not what we want deciding our children's lives. We don't want everyone to be judged on numbers. Even if that "everyone" is a school and not really a person.