I used to be excited by charter schools, but after watching them in action, I have to say they have the same problems many small organizations have- a bunch of nuts can take control of them and absolutely ruin education for a whole group of kids. Now that might be what the parents want, but it's not fair to the children. And like denying medical care, I don't think it's ok to have parents deny their children an adequate education just because they have an agenda that makes them so odd they can't stand public education (and I don't care whether they are touchy feely leftists in Berkeley or crazy Christians in Idaho).
That's not to say public education is perfect, but when you look at the numbers coming out for charters, in many cases they are underperforming regular schools, and often substantially underperforming.
Part of the problem with reforming public education is that everyone feels they are an expert on it merely because they went through it- even if they have no idea what's happening in it now. And some people read one news story from one school in the country and think that the bizarro thing that happened in nowhereville Florida is happening everywhere. Hello. The reason stories from nowherevilles make the paper is because the stories are bizarre.
But people don't get that. They also seem to believe that whatever subjects they don't believe are being taught, aren't being taught- without even checking the curriculum. We had someone on this very thread blithely suggest history isn't stressed- even though it's covered more than almost any other subject! And I've seen wing nuts say stuff like that constantly- which is no very big surprise considering how wrong they are on so many topics, but this one is so easy to look up.
I think the biggest positive argument for public education, for people who want a secular government and some sort of melting pot, is the nutty and/or religious, definitely segregationist, coalition advocating for charter schools and vouchers. And I don't mean segregationist in terms of race- these people want to separate themselves for all sorts of "purity" issues, from religious to political- but in a democracy where we need to rub shoulders with each other, and learn how to get along, the kind of folks who want to build their own schools so ideological impurities don't assail their children should not be encouraged with federal money. |
