My daughter’s family lives in Gilbert Arizona, an area with a high population of LDS. Three of my grandchildren attend a charter school called American Leadership Academy (ALA). The charter has about 20 schools in the Gilbert area and North Carolina, with K-6, Jr High, and high schools. It was founded by an LDS man, but has no official ties to the Church. But here is the interesting fact, my grandkid’s high school in Queen Creek AZ with 1200 students is 90% LDS. The public schools are probably 10% LDS.
The ALA schools are not religious in any way. No prayer before class, no other overt reference to LDS or any other religion. But many of the faculty at the school my grandkids attend are BYU graduates, and the principal is a former ASU professor with an undergrad from BYU.
I attended a Veterans day assemble at the school last Friday to watch my granddaughter dance. The whole school attended, and they had several speakers who were veterans. They talked about serving their country and fighting in wars. There was a former graduate from the school that is currently serving in the Marines. The whole thing was very moving and inspirational, something that did not happen in the public school my other granddaughter attends.
Of course there is a LDS seminary across the street with release time like the public schools in the area. My daughter tells me that the ALA schools have much less problems with drugs and alcohol than the public schools.
The charter schools in Arizona are funded by the state, so my daughter pays nothing to send her kids there. This creates competition between the public and charter schools, as the state pays them about $5000/yr per pupil.
As I previously blogged about, I attended elementary school in an almost 100% LDS community in Laie Hawaii, home to BYU Hawaii. It was normal for me to attend church and school with the same group of friends. That all changed when we moved to California and I attended Jr High with only a few other LDS kids. It was really eye opening to be exposed to all the different lifestyles.
What has been your experience with predominate LDS schools? Is this good or bad? Obviously the Church thinks it is a good idea, as BYU is the ultimate LDS school.
Wheat & Tares 
Interesting you bring this up. We lived in Arizona (since moved). We were aware of some of these charter schools but were dubious about them as we knew there was probably somewhat of a monolithic culture compared to a public school. Plus they seemed a bit Trumpy. We sent our oldest daughter to a public school and in retrospect regretted it big time. This was a well rated public school, but she was overwhelmed with culture at large and ended up succumbing to several of the temptations typical of teenagers but happened AT school I.e. drinking, severely immodest dress (she changed at school), and that’s just what we know. She quickly lost her testimony and the ramifications of the decision to send her to that school still have reverberations to this day. We wisened up with our younger one and sent her to one of these charter schools for high school (Heritage Academy). It is night and day compared to public schools. The actual education was much better, so much so that this kid even noticed it. None of the behavioral problems we experienced with the older one. Delinquent behavior isn’t tolerated in the least. Hands down would have sent all my kids to these charter schools if we had known better.
i live in that same area and my kids all went to the local public high school. Several of the public high schools in or adjacent to Gilbert are the among the very best academically in Arizona. I’m not criticizing anyone’s choice of where to send their kids, but an observation. People that we’ve known who actually pull kids out of public high school and send them to the ALA school in Queen Creek have tended to be extremely conservative, and vocal about things that they don’t like at the public schools. Too many people who aren’t white, aren’t LDS, maybe LGBTQ, etc.
IMO those charter schools are good prep for going on to exist in a bubble of like people, such as BYU. But they don’t train a person to exist in a world of people with different beliefs and standards than their own.
As a side note, they are also a grift for their founders/owners. So much of the building and operational work is outsourced to privately owned “management companies” or construction companies, privately owned by the same people who operate the schools. They can do their own no-bid contracts and enrich themselves at the trough of public education funds in the process. A former bishop who I don’t trust or respect at all owns a different network of charter schools. The reviews from employees on Glassdoor are awful. It’s telling that when hiring a teacher, they have to sign a contract agreeing to a financial penalty if they resign during the school year. Very uncommon for a teacher to do that unless the work environment is toxic.
I’ve lived in the same school district for the last 20 years in a well-to-do suburb of Phoenix. Have sent all 4 of my kids to the public school system. Our Ivy League educated stake president also sent his kids to the same public school, so that helped validate our choice…
There’s a number of charter schools to choose from. Trivium, ALA, Odessey, AAEC. It’s true that the charter schools are smaller (graduating classes around 30-50) and more insular, but that may or may not consider that a good thing. Yeah easier to get drugs at the public schools. Charters are less diverse than a public school from a demographics standpoint but also from a curriculum standpoint.
The local high schools have International Baccalaureate (IB) classes and Advanced Placement (AP) classes. They have functioning sports teams and music programs. You can learn to weld, become car mechanic certified, and become a cosmotologist at the public high schools. Dozens of clubs at the public high schools, some of which are definitely not conservative, eg LGBT clubs.
My unscientific observation is that graduates of AZ charter and public schools seem to be about equally successful. I’ve seen kids from both programs succeed and fail. My own kids all benefited from the AP classes and are pursuing STEM graduate degrees. If I recall, Malcolm Gladwell’s research revealed that as long as parents are involved in the child’s education, it doesn’t matter much where your kids attend school.
In Saint’s Volume 3, it goes over how the church got out of the business of K-12 schools to support public schools. I don’t think that the church encourages charter schools. It seems to be more of the overlap of American conservatism and LDS population, than anything encouraged by the church.
The church should come out against sending kids the charter or private schools (below University level), as a sort of missionary effort.
ALA’s founder makes millions off building these schools and selling them to his company. TBF, he was a pretty shady guy before he started doing that. I think it’s immoral to grift off public education funds when in my AZ district we’re losing reading and math specialists and special services because of lack of funding (and before you come for me, Arizona spends less on public school administration than almost any other state, so, no, the funding isn’t going to bloat the beaucracy). We’re 51st in educational funding
It’s not accident they skew LDS. They signal big time to LDS people- you go in one and you feel like you’re in a LDS church building based on the layout, materials used, and finishings. They definitely want LDS people to walk in one and associate it with feeling like they were at church.
They also follow BYU’s playbook and recruit football players from local public schools to make their teams perform better, and spend gobs of money on former NFL players (often former BYU players, too) to coach so their schools get a lot of press and attention for how well the football teams perform. This can lead to messed up priorities (like letting a kid who had been involved in the murder of a 16 year old play in an important game and given Player of the Game by the coach last year).
When I told a friend we were moving to AZ 6 years ago, she advised me to get my kids into a charter. After looking into ALA, We picked our local schools instead. My kids were able to walk to the elementary school each day and get to know the kids and parents in our neighborhood who also attended the school. Beyond how my kids benefitted from the academics, extracurriculars, and athletics, we all benefitted from the community that having this school in our neighborhood created.
I cannot imagine that anybody who values the idea of universal public education would support the charter-school concept, since: a) it takes money away from the public-school program; b) it allows whoever is in charge of the charter school to teach any concept they hold, regardless of the ‘public-good aspect’ of such concept; c) it doubles the need for pupil transportation networks (i.e. 2 sets of school buses); d) it fosters an us-vs-them atmosphere.
The public-school system invariably suffers from the presence of a charter system.
As follow up to my original comment, I think the idealized situation for our kids would have been for them to go to public schools, but then have a strong friend group that would help strengthen them to make better choices in that setting. In retrospect, our older daughter simply did not have that and had little chance of acquiring that based on the school she went to (semi-inner city). Not all charter schools are equal, but some are VERY good and Arizona has as a plethora of them both good and bad.
As further follow up, I don’t have a problem with the public schools up until about 8th grade. For high school, I’m glad Arizona has more options.
My kids are in a charter school in Utah. It is decidedly *not* religious or conservative coded, and seems to intentionally err on the liberal side of signaling to attract a different crowd. There are lots of children and parents that present as not being Mormon/religious at least not in the standard expected Utah county way. Many of the teachers are not practicing LDS. This is one of the main reasons we chose this school. I am conflicted because I understand well the greater good argument, that charter schools are a drag on the public School system. In this case I’ve had to pick what’s good for our individual family over the greater good. My oldest attended public school for several years before the charter school. He’s so much happier now. He’s excited about his education and making plans for the future- something he never did before. Something I never experienced growing up in public school. I have noticed that anything with patriotic terms in the name tends toward conservative and quasi-religious.
I have several problems with charter schools, but here are the big ones:
Support: Some areas give charter schools more money per pupil than they give to the public schools. Maybe the public schools would benefit from better support, too. Plus, charter schools can have requirements that public schools can’t. For example, some of the charter schools my friends’ children go to require parents to provide a certain number of hours per year volunteering at the school. That leaves out the children whose parents can’t or won’t do that. Which kids are most likely to struggle in school? The ones whose parents can’t or won’t get involved with their education. That puts higher pressure on the school to provide more for those students, and that makes the students who are left in the public schools cost more than the ones that go to a charter. Whether or not the reimbursement rate is the same, it still feels like gaming the system in favor of the charter schools.
Special needs: Public schools are required to accept every student that lives within their boundaries. Charter schools can pick and choose. All of my children have disabilities with varying support needs. I really wonder if we would have been able to find a charter school that would accept them as students. Students with higher support needs cost much more than the average, and very likely cost the school more than they are given from the state. It was hard enough getting the services my children needed from schools that were legally required to provide them. I don’t think we would have lasted very long at a school that didn’t have that requirement and would lose money in the attempt.
So, yeah. Not a big fan. Our educational system definitely has problems, but taking money and resources away isn’t going to fix them.
One last thing. I know it has a lot to do with the area I live in, but most of the folks I talk to who really want charter schools seem to want essentially the home school co-op they already have their kids in (religious focus, none of “those” people) but funded by the government and requiring less of their time. I don’t really trust that. It is already too easy to develop tribalism and avoid interacting with anyone outside of our bubbles.
Not related to charter schools, but the fact that Arizona will give parents ~$7000 towards private school tuition is reprehensible.
Why?
One of my sons is in a public charter school (no tuition). The others are in regular public school. The charter school was a necessary change for him, and I’m glad we had that option. It doesn’t have any particular religious or political viewpoint. They’re all fine with their various experiences. My one son needed a particular educational experience. The others would have been fine anywhere.
It would have been easier to have all three of them in the same schooling, but alas.
I’m a professional musician who also taught 9 years in the public school system in Utah. A while ago one of my music students invited me to attend her ultra conservative charter school’s patriotic program because she was reciting the Gettysburg Address. As a former 5th grade teacher who oversaw the music for the 5th grade’s yearly patriotic program for the entire student body at my school I was curious to see how this school would do theirs.
Absolutely nothing could’ve prepared me for what I experienced. Frankly I felt that I was watching a combination of a Hitler Youth rally with a John Birch Society meeting. Fortunately both Benson and Cleon Skousen were already dead, or else they probably would’ve been included in the program as well. They WERE hailed as Mormon patriots by the principal, and there were portraits of both men hanging up in the front hall along with Lincoln, Washington and the American flag. I was so shaken by the level of ultra right wing indoctrination that the poor kids were spouting and livid with the adults (faculty, administrators and parents ) sitting on the front rows and throughout the auditorium who thought that this kind of garbage was appropriate and acceptable to teach to children. After my student beautifully recited the Gettysburg Address I’d had enough and slipped out to go home.
With this kind of indoctrination at school and at church it’s no wonder that ultra right wing politics are still so popular in my county and Utah in general. Oh, and there was not one child of a different racial background other than white in the entire school. Every single child looked like they could have been out of some “Features of the Aryan Race” photo from the Third Reich. I rest my case.
The small school district where I live has a reputation for bullying and racism, often ignored at the district level. Sports programs are prioritized over academics. Several years ago we started sending our kids to a charter school instead. The charter school has fewer LDS members but better standards. My state now allows teachers to use Prager U content as part of their curriculum. I worry less about that showing up in the charter school than at the regular public school.
A somewhat intense rivalry exists between the families who send kids to charter school and those who send kids to public schools. About half the kids in my ward attend charter schools. One charter school teaches Latin and wear uniforms. Whenever there’s a drug or alcohol incident the charter school families quietly rejoice they don’t have to put up with that. The graduation robes of one of the charter schools look more like PhD level regalia than simple high school robes. It’s actually quite ridiculous.
On the other hand when a charter school kid doesn’t thrive in college as hoped, it’s cause for quiet rejoicing among the public school clan. I know a handful of charter school kids who went to BYU and couldn’t handle the rigor of STEM classes there.
I agree with the comment above that Arizona definitely has not figured out its school system. AZ consistently ranks among the worst states in the IS for education.
Toad,
In your earlier comment, you hit the nail on the head, explaining that no school system has an across the board advantage with every student if their parents are involved.
I homeschooled my kids. Here in Nevada I got tons of support from the school district. My kids had IEPs and physical therapy, speech therapy and occupational therapy from the school district. They attended a few highschool classes, according to their interests and skills. The flexibility of homeschooling allowed our family to cope with my kids very difficult special circumstances.
My opinion after homeschooling 5 children, some gifted, some with learning disabilities and autism and special medical needs, is that a student’s success has less to do with the school and more to do with the individual student. A kid that does well in public school, will do well in homeschool. Those that struggle with public school and require extra support on the part of parents and staff will also struggle in homeschool and require extra effort and support on the part of the parents.
I think that applies to charter and private schools too. Often the graduates of exclusive schools would have done well in any setting. Private school students do well because special needs students are excluded from the school. Special needs students will struggle and require extra support in any setting, but when they are excluded the school’s graduates will automatically look better.
I am not saying parenting or teaching is futile. Obviously specific interventions can help students with specific problems. Parents who read fluently for pleasure are much more likely to raise competent readers and writers.
However, the main driver of education will always be the child. The motivation of the child to learn makes an enormous difference, (and varies from kid to kid). Plus the brain the kid is born with has certain innate skills and deficiencies that vary according to genetics and development.
At one time I believed kids were born and parents raised and educate them. Today, after raising my children I see much more clearly the limitations that effected my influence. And to a great extent, today I find that my children raised me to be who I am today.
Our oldest attended an online charter school for most of middle school. This worked for her socially for the most part. She attended the 2nd semester of 8th grade and has started 9th grade in the public school system, at her request. In all environments, specific support (usually introduction to the world of my oldest and related translation skills) was/is needed.
I grew up in Colorado where my high school class may have been 5-10% LDS. It was good to have other Mormon kids around, and in my opinion good to not live in a monoculture. I went to BYU and found living in a completely Mormon environment a bit different but it wasn’t a big deal. I imagine going the other direction might be a bigger shock for some.
This is tangential to your original question, but as I’m married to an academic in the field of education I hear about the data regarding charter schools. The test score statistics show that charter schools are not on average any better than public schools. Some are better, some are worse. Obviously there may be specific situations where a charter school is a clear step up and a benefit to those who are able to attend, but I think parents should be cautious about regarding a charter school as a panacea before doing their homework. When I hear of a big group of parents from a church community intentionally sending all their kids to the same school, it could be due to the school being great, or it could be due to groupthink.
I’m late to this discussion but after 43 years in education as a teacher, principal, director, and union advocate I have some strong feelings.
I’ll conclude with a story about my daughter. She lives in a very diverse neighborhood with rich/poor, minority/white, traditional and not traditional families. It’s a pretty liberal neighborhood. When people in her situation with children began talking about schools, her neighbors were all comparing Charter Schools. She said to them, “if you put in the same effort into our public school as you are required to do with any of the Charter Schools, it would benefit all our children.” To hers and their credit many of them decided to send their kids to the neighborhood school and now volunteer with the PTA in the classroom and on Field Trips. ALL CHILDREN benefit. Maybe the school has a “C” grade but that C indicates more poverty coupled with less opportunity that a suburban school. It does not refer to the dedication of the teachers, administration, or parents that school. It took faith to put their children in the school. Students succeed though in whatever school they go to if their parents are involved.
I personally believe we would have a better school and society if we followed the Finland Model of Education, where all schools are public schools, and all parents help all students, and we don’t divide our children into us and them.
Instereo,
I really appreciate your clear summary and history of education in America. Sometimes it’s really helpful to see these things summed up into one place. I have a tendency to focus on individual children and parents trying to make choices for individual needs. You take it more macro, showing how these choices impact society as a whole.
Instereo’s summary is spot on. I worked most of my life in public ed in Utah. I have experience with charter schools. The best regular ed, special ed and resource teachers are NOT working in charter schools. Private schools struggle with their own demons. Students benefit from experiencing cultural differences and variations in ability mostly available in public schools.
One final comment, not necessarily about Charter Schools but about the constant criticism of Public Schools. When people put down public schools, who are they putting down? Usually, we think of teachers and who are the teachers. 80% of teachers are women, with a few more in elementary than secondary. This percentage is up from the 1970’s. So, in the over-generalized statements against public education, we are putting down women who have dedicated their lives to helping children grow and learn. Maybe people don’t like public education because these teachers have organized into Unions and have a voice about their job that is not appreciated. Charter School teachers are also about the same percentage of women but aren’t allowed to be in unions. Hence, they have no voice. Just mentioning this makes much of the anger against public schools and the acceptance of Charter Schools seem obvious. I know that students benefit much more if they have teachers advocating for better schools, working enviorments, and higher standards without fear of being fired. In other words, if they are members of a union.
A “fun” sidenote to Instereo’s history is what happened in Virginia after Brown v. Board. Rather than integrate the public schools, the state adopted a policy of “Massive Resistance” that shut down any schools that faced federal desegregation orders. Tuition grants helped white students go to private schools but black students were on their own. In one county, there were no public schools (and no educational facilities that accepted black students) for five years. When Massive Resistance officially ended, the state shifted to a policy of limiting desegregation as much as possible.
My immediate reaction to any proposal with even a whiff of all of that is negative. It’s easy to take lots of small steps in that direction, each easily justified, and end up somewhere horrible.
Teachers of elementary kids see/hear a lot about family culture (including the stuff that the parents aren’t proud of). Teachers of older kids know what they know based on the student’s body language and other cues if the student isn’t saying anything directly. Teachers don’t have the time to really connect to parents if the parents aren’t showing up to school functions or talking to the teachers about the difficulties their child is experiencing. It’s a situation rife with distrust, misinformation, and misunderstanding on both sides. Also, teachers can hold it together to have effective classroom management for a lot longer than parents can – and unless you put in the work to learn techniques and have hard conversations with yourself about what you need and what your child needs – you can’t do it (also, teachers have a classroom structure and additional supports that parents don’t).
It took me years to learn how to tell teachers what they needed to know about my kid when my kid was walking into their classroom. I have a hard time communicating how I support teachers because PTA is not for me. I was highly motivated to figure it out. I am still highly uneasy about forming the relationship and I am aware that my communication style is equally intimidating to them as they are to me. It’s a good time:)
I have to admit my views on charter schools have forever been poisoned by my one BYU Professor talking up his kid’s charter school, with one of the main bonuses was that his kids didn’t have to go to school with Mexicans.
My brother lives in Mesa, and from what he tells me, the charter schools there mostly seem to be a way for the Mormons families in his ward to avoid having their kids get exposed to different viewpoints and different people.
With all due respect to @Instereo’s comments, I have to disagree on several of the basic claims about the origins of charter schools and their management. I work in education policy.
For one, the first charter school in the US opened in Minnesota in 1992–it was separated by about three decades and a thousand miles from the “Southern Resistance” that many Southern states engaged in during the roughly 10-year period after the Brown v. Board Supreme Court decision came down in 1954.
Also, the 1983 publication of “A Nation at Risk” was indeed influential in education policy, though it was also an incoherent grab bag of policy recommendations. It was published after about a decade of “white flight” had begun to threaten public schools’ stability in some areas, while private schools were gaining market share. But the report increased public attention on public schools and helped forge a bipartisan prioritization of public schools; thus, the report began to turn the tide pretty dramatically by the late 1980s in support of PUBLIC schools. Charter schools were not in existence at the time (see above) and were not expanded, contrary to the claims made above.
I agree that charter schools are often, though not always, seen by teachers as less desirable working environments. Charters typically pay teachers less (about 5-10% less), have smaller benefits packages, etc. in comparison to neighboring public schools. The culture of charters can often require more (unpaid) hours of teachers’ labor to be part of the program. As @Instereo notes, most charters are at the very least resistant to teacher unions and some are outright hostile to them. However, some teachers like charter schools particularly because of the particular focus or mission orientation of the school.
There are many public misunderstandings about how charters operate, and those are evident in some of the comments here. You can think of charter schools as a hybrid model, where they still play by most public school rules (finance policies, testing, non-discrimination), but are allowed some private autonomy in some areas (like curriculum focus, labor management).
Pertinent to this post, charter schools are not allowed to discriminate students on any criteria, including demographics or religion, nor can they overtly teach religious material. Of course, they can also market themselves to attract certain types of students or uphold people with high status in both social and religious circles, which can subtly create a predominantly LDS student body and promote a curriculum that subtly nods to church authorities and values. Similar “heritage” style charter schools exist across the country catering to religious or racial/ethnic minority groups in other places. This heritage model is not the norm among charter schools, though; the most common types of charter schools try to differentiate themselves through some kind of academic focus–for example, focused on a bilingual instructional model or STEM education.
On average, charters do not perform much better than neighboring traditional public schools. However, that glosses over important nuances in certain contexts. Charter schools in urban contexts tend to perform significantly better than their nearby traditional publics; charters in suburbs or rural areas tend to perform worse academically (these are averages). The commonly accepted explanation behind these results is that charters, by definition, must differentiate–and they tend to differentiate by focusing on academic excellence in urban settings (where performance in neighboring public schools is otherwise low) and they tend to differentiate by filling a specialized niche in other settings (where academics in the public schools may otherwise be fine enough).
I categorize the “heritage” charter schools described in this post as most similar to charters filling a specialized niche in non-urban settings. Thus, I would expect students attending them to perform either slightly worse or perhaps just as well as any they would’ve been expected had they chosen to attend a neighboring traditional public school instead.
Notice that the comparison here is how the individual student would have performed in a charter versus public school. Students from good family backgrounds (educated, two-parent household) often do well regardless of the school they attend, and the difference that the school provides is actually pretty minor in comparison to the advantages they already enjoy coming from their family’s inputs. Thus, it’s very likely that the Mormon charter schools described here, by attracting lots of students from educated, two-parent households really appear to perform well based on typical metrics for school success (test scores, graduation rates). However, this result would be more appropriately attributed to the types of students (and families) selecting into the school, not because of any unique academic model the school offers; in fact, the unique model the school offers may very well be a hindrance (compared to the traditional public, which may offer AP courses, etc).
BYUalum:
Thanks for pointing out some differences in our views about Charter Schools. I agree that Charter Schools were not codified until 1992 in Minnesota, and it then spread to other states. The idea behind Charter Schools was much older. I started teaching in 1979, and there was a “Charter School” in the district where I began. It was run under the authority of the district. Still, it was very much “parental” controlled in terms of curriculum and administration and it became a charter school when they were recognized by the state years later.
Even though neighborhood and charter schools are called public schools, there is a huge difference between them. Neighborhood schools have districts that have local elected school boards that hire teachers and administrators to run local schools in their community. Charter schools may have a board, but they aren’t elected by a community. Neighborhood schools are accountable directly to a community while charter schools are accountable to a board of directors who have not been elected by the community.
I agree that charter schools are under the same rules regarding discrimination that public neighborhood schools are under. Discrimination is much more subtle. It may not be intentional, but it may happen in how charter schools operate. Applications mean that some students can get in and others can’t. Requiring parents to be involved at the school can limit which students can attend because of the need for a parent(s) to work, have child care, or any number of other reasons that may fall on students of lower income. Transportation may also be an issue that limits who can attend a charter school. Research may show that, in totality, charter schools in a state reflect demographic equality, but looking at individual schools shows more demographic inequality. There may be charter schools in lower socioeconomic areas with high minority attendance that balances out numbers statewide but other schools that are predominantly one demographic or another based on who was able to make it through the application process, meet additional requirements and can get to the school.
Finally, I agree, based on the legal recognition of charter schools at the time, that Nation at Risk was about the “problems” of public education and didn’t discuss or include charter schools. However, the report did not talk about the success of public education around the nation. The result of the report was a distorted view of education as a whole in our nation and a justification for replacing local control of schools with both state and federal control. Charter school recognition by states after the report allowed state charter boards to organize schools statewide under their control and take away the control of local school boards for some of their students. Maybe in some areas, that was something that needed to be done because the local areas were not providing good enough schools, but in other areas, the local districts were, but they still lost students to charter schools because the laws were applied statewide. Ultimately, what happened was that instead of one public school system accountable to local school boards, charter schools allowed a second “public” school system to be created that was independent of the community and accountable to the state, not the local community.
I also agree some charter schools outperform public schools, particularly charter schools devoted to science and math. But, there are also a number of charter schools that underperform compared to public schools when they don’t have a specialized curriculum. I believe that if public schools were just starting a more differentiated school program when charter schools started, i.e., magnet schools and specialty schools. Funding changes and a changing school landscape limited this adaptation to the needs of the community. In other words, state interference with charter schools usurped local initiative.
I think it’s sad charter schools are here, probably to stay. I think that it’s one of the reasons our society is so divided. I believe in public schools and democracy. I see charter schools as a way to divide us. I agree that people succeed in charter schools, but like you, I think it is because of parents and the effort they put into their children. They would do well wherever they went to school.
@Instereo — Thank you for the thoughtful response here. I think if we were to meet in real life, we’d talk for hours and would both have fun doing it!
I am aware of magnet and other differentiated district-run public schools pre-1992, but I didn’t know there were some known as “charter” schools, too. I agree that A Nation at Risk generated the motivation for greater state and federal involvement in public schools; this shift might have ended poorly in some places, but I would argue that on net this has been a good thing by doing more to systematize the provision of public education overall, taking advantage of economies of scale, etc.
I think charter schools, as a whole, have been a positive development for public schools. Many of the top-performing charter school networks, like KIPP, have done more to improve educational outcomes and attainment for a whole generation of underprivileged students than any other educational policy or intervention that we’ve tried. Showing what is possible to achieve for this segment of the student population (who, not too long ago, many would simply write off as unreachable) has been a major game changer in education. Of course, education is not the only social policy that can help these families and students, but charter schools have demonstrated a new frontier of possibility that many thought unreachable.
I also agree that the presence of charter schools does take something away from the community aspect of public schools, which I think is something that we should also be mindful of. Though I would stop short of blaming charters as the reason for (or even a contributor to) social divisions; I think many charters have been key in helping to revitalize many inner cities across the US that were otherwise losing middle-class families once they had kids starting kindergarten.
I think we’d both agree that private vouchers and the new educational savings accounts that are becoming increasingly popular in red states are a significant threat to the operations of public schools. To me, these are much more of a game changer–and threat–than what charters have been.