Myth of the Month
Charter schools do not offer anything different than traditional public
schools.
If that were true-then what are charter school critics complaining about?
Charter schools are a "different breed" of education for a number of reasons.
The public charter school concept and mission places it squarely within the
American education reform agenda intending to stimulate and promote a shift
within the public education system towards higher standards and create pressure
that will in the end meet the needs of children more effectively. Charter schools
are independent, public schools designed to free education from bureaucracy
and improve student outcomes.
Foremost, charter schools offer autonomy to those who teach within the schools.
Gary Miron and Christopher Nelson authors of Autonomy in Exchange for Accountability:
An Initial Study of Pennsylvania Charter Schools, documented that "…on the whole-the
teachers indicated that they have autonomy and can use their ideas and creativity
in designing the curriculum at their schools." A charter school teacher can
usually be expected to be innovative, creative, and offer individualized curriculum
without ripping through the red tape or stepping on administrative toes, since
little exists.
Secondly, charter schools also come in a variety of sizes. According to the
Center for Education Reform's National Charter School Directory, the average
charter school enrollment is 246, but the enrollment numbers vary from a couple
of dozen to well into the hundreds. Joe Nathan has written and studied extensively
about Smaller, Saner, Safer schools and makes serious points about school size
being the single-most important factor in predicting overall school success.
A previous issue of this newsletter offered additional insight and information
about small schools succeeding where larger ones fear to tread and provided
very contemporary research out of California that demonstrates for each 100
students added to a building there's a significant and commensurate decline
in student academic performance. Since charter schools, on average, are about
half the size of traditional district schools, it should be expected that charter
schools will out-perform others and thereby offer considerably different options
and alternatives for families.
Similar to the wide range of sizes, charter schools' curriculum is equally
diverse. Some charter schools offer a curriculum that focuses on the arts (Spiral
Tech Elementary located in Miami, Florida seeks to combine a core curriculum
with art, foreign language, music, and theater), others offer vocational training
(La Sierra High School located in Visalia, California offers students certification
in graphic arts, printing, culinary arts, hospitality, building trades, retail
sales, and maintenance), some emphasize science and technology, and many provide
"back-to basics" curricula.
A charter school not only offers teacher autonomy, smaller school and class
sizes, and a diverse curriculum, but a choice-so may the choice be with you.
