LETTER REGARDING CHARTER SCHOOLS TO THE UNDERDOGBLOG
Dear Underdogforkids:
Having been a General Contractor, 4th-7th Grade & Continuation High School Teacher (10 years) and a Professor of Teacher Education (also for 10 years),I tend to see Charter Schools as similar to a home remodeling product of years ago.
The product was know as Tex-cote, it was sprayed on to the exterior of your home, (no matter what the house was made of), and was promoted as "Never Have To Paint Again!” It came with a twenty year (20) guarantee, however, within (usually) five (5) years it began to peel and fall off your home and home owners were soon to discover that the company who had done
the work were no longer in business and the guarantee they had been given was worthless.
This I'm afraid, will be the result with many of the Charter Schools,as new fixes to Education, Secretaries of Education, Superintendents and every political entity with their fingers in Education, are to become analogous to "The Emperors New Clothes.
Mike V. Bennett, transitioning From Being An Educational Artisan/Craftsman To An Architectural One, Once Again.
You can reach Mike Bennett at STORMOVERMTN@gmail.com or Diana Chapman, Theunderdogforkids editor at hartchap@cox.net.
1 comment:
This is a polarizing issue and parents will take whatever steps they feel necessary to have some say in their community and schools. Is this the fault of a huge bureaucracy like LAUSD? Absent parents? Or the union, also created first to protect teachers rights, now in a gray area that is not necessarily in the students' best interests when it comes to hiring/firing, competency, and accountability? There is plenty of blame to go around but our kids are caught in the middle. Parents who create charter schools have often tried and failed to change existing, low performing neighborhood schools and have taken the only other option they have. Starting a Charter school takes extraordinary commitment and organization, and to devalue them as shoddy workmanship is disingenuous.
Our children are the hands of teachers and yet we have no control over the selection, oversight, or evaluation process. Until this is remedied, then charters will continue to develop so parents can have more say in how, where, and by whom their children are taught. For the sake of students in existing charter schools, let's hope that they don't all fail as Mike Bennet predicts. This isn't about proving anyone wrong, but focusing on solutions that actually work. And many charter schools do.
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