Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Boston Globe exposes Charter Schools

The Boston Globe today has a good article exposing how Charter Schools are not teaching english language learning students or special education students at anywhere near the rate that the public schools are.

As many people have pointed out to me, the charter schools are not drawing from the same pool, and hence have an easier path to good test scores.

The reason that I oppose expanding the Charter School cap is that it is another stratification of a society which is already separated into different socio-economic classes. We need to work towards making all of our public schools good schools.

I went to public schools growing up in Massachusetts, Ohio, and Vermont and I am proud of the education I received. It can be done, if we have the will to actually work at it. I applaud the commitment and the work done by educators in the Charter Schools, but what we need to do is take what they have learned is working to educate kids (longer school days, longer schools years, parental involvement, discipline, acknowledgment of accomplishment) and bring that in to the public schools.

I firmly believe in "we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men were created equal". I believe part of that creed, is giving all of our citizens an equally good education.

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