A response to the charter folks
The charter folks keep on blasting me over the fact that my high-schooler attends a public school that admits by audition, San Francisco School of the Arts. They ask how I can criticize charters if my own child goes to a selective school. I just posted a response to one of them as a comment, but I'm going to blog it too.
First, I'm not picking on the families who choose charter schools — I make a point of leaving them alone unless they approach me to discuss it.
But I know that charter schools are harmful to public schools — and deliberately so, as they're a weapon in the right-wing arsenal aimed at privatizing public education. So I speak out about them, a small voice trying to counter the massive pro-charter lobby and PR campaign.
Second, I think it's fine for public schools to openly set admission requirements (such as artistic or academic criteria), as part of the school's design. The key is openly. Some people do object to that, and that's a matter of debate. It's quite well accepted throughout our communities that some public schools are openly designed with admission criteria, so it's not a radical notion.
One (and only one) of the objections I have to charter schools is the secret, covert picking, choosing and dumping of students. Many charters cherry-pick or design admissions processes that self-select aggressively for students who are likely to be successful. Then, pretending that they don't do that, they bash traditional public schools — the ones that accept their rejects and dumpees — and hold themselves up as superior. Even if the schools don't do that themselves, the charter lobby's mightily funded PR operation is busily doing it. That does damage to public schools.
Again, the difference is between an openly designed selection process and a secret one — plus the use of the results of the secret selection processes to attack public education as part of an orchestrated campaign to privatize it.
— Caroline
First, I'm not picking on the families who choose charter schools — I make a point of leaving them alone unless they approach me to discuss it.
But I know that charter schools are harmful to public schools — and deliberately so, as they're a weapon in the right-wing arsenal aimed at privatizing public education. So I speak out about them, a small voice trying to counter the massive pro-charter lobby and PR campaign.
Second, I think it's fine for public schools to openly set admission requirements (such as artistic or academic criteria), as part of the school's design. The key is openly. Some people do object to that, and that's a matter of debate. It's quite well accepted throughout our communities that some public schools are openly designed with admission criteria, so it's not a radical notion.
One (and only one) of the objections I have to charter schools is the secret, covert picking, choosing and dumping of students. Many charters cherry-pick or design admissions processes that self-select aggressively for students who are likely to be successful. Then, pretending that they don't do that, they bash traditional public schools — the ones that accept their rejects and dumpees — and hold themselves up as superior. Even if the schools don't do that themselves, the charter lobby's mightily funded PR operation is busily doing it. That does damage to public schools.
Again, the difference is between an openly designed selection process and a secret one — plus the use of the results of the secret selection processes to attack public education as part of an orchestrated campaign to privatize it.
— Caroline
Labels: Charters
3 Comments:
Right there with ya!
Caroline,
I agree that camouflaged selectivity is odious, and I don't doubt that some (most?) of the charter schools do it. But my understanding is that they aren't allowed to do selective admissions. Am I wrong about that? Wouldn't the logical conclusion of your argument be that charter schools should be allowed to practise selective admissions openly, just like SOTA or Lowell?
Jeff
I think the law varies from state to state as to whether it's OK to design charter schools with (openly) selective admissions. As I understand it, it's legal in California and some charters do it. I believe that the Oakland School for the Arts has an audition requirement, and that there are some California charters designed as magnets for gifted students, with academic requirements.
I don't have a problem with it if it's a specialty school with an openly designed selective admissions process. I have problems with charter schools for other reasons, but that's not one of them IF it's done in the open as part of the school's design.
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