Chartering the Wrong Course 2
I am more and more leaning to believe that the charter school movement is one more Trojan Horse for raiding public funds to stuff private pocketbooks.
Elmer Smith of Philly dot com cites a study that is pushing the lean even farther:
Do you know where your children are?
They may not be where you think. If they are among the 40,000 students enrolled in one of the city’s 71 charter schools, chances are they are in no better place today than they were when you transferred them.
If they are one of the 3,460 Philadelphia kids who are enrolled in cybercharters, they are at best in limbo and probably lost in cyberspace.
That may be the most sobering finding in the data released last week in a Stanford University study of charter schools across the country. The report by Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes asserts that students in cybercharters are performing far below students in traditional district schools.
In reading and math, cybercharters performed below average in comparison with district schools at every grade level tested. That was without exception.
(snip)
That may be the best business model in all of education. But at a time when the state is claiming that it can’t afford to provide for basic education subsidies, paying the same rate for cyberschools as for brick-and-mortar schools is an unconscionable waste.
Afterthought:
No, charter school grasshopper, “Trojan Horse” did not originate as a computer term.
June 27, 2011 at 6:54 pm
There is a reporter from the Philly Inquirer on Fresh Air today talking about Philly Charter schools. She says that 19 Philly charters are under federal investigation, which is shocking.
June 30, 2011 at 1:21 pm
[…] a follow-up to this post, here’s a pointer to Monday’s Radio Times, which spent an hour discussing the Stanford […]