What About Charter Schools?

Dr. Wendy Ghiora

Posting #62 – August 21, 2010


After a long career as a public school teacher and principal, I decided to leave the “traditional” school system in 2004 and join a public Charter School. Many former colleagues joked and said, “Oh, so you’re going over to the dark side?” I took this in good humor.


Joining a charter school was the best career decision I ever made. As an educator and school principal, it was like a breath of fresh air. I saw school leaders working together with their teachers not to find the easiest, fastest way to raise State Test Scores, but to find the best methods to really get through to the kids so they could understand and use the tools and the information being taught. After retiring, I continue to work in the education arena as an author and consultant.


Currently, I am keeping my eye on the nation-wide growth of the Charter School Movement. As an educator I attend numerous professional events. As I do so, I notice a lot of “bad mouthing” of Charter Schools by administrators and teachers employed by traditional schools. One example I hear a lot is: “Charter Schools steal the cream of the crop students from our schools.” I have to hold myself back from laughing out loud when I hear this one. I know for a fact that most charter schools are besieged with parents wanting to enroll their children, who have been suspended or even expelled from the traditional school system. Although most folks wouldn’t consider these kids the “cream of the crop,” they seem to thrive in charter schools and become some of the best students you could ever want to meet.


I attended the 2009 National Annual Meeting of the NEA (National Education Association) in San Diego, California. It was difficult for me to believe that so many of the resolutions being voted on had virtually nothing to do with education. It was also quite disconcerting to discover several “anti-charter school” resolutions being voted on and passed. Being the idealist that I am, I assumed all teachers and teacher organizations would want “what is best for the student,” and support those endeavors unconditionally. It was a rude awakening to realize, the NEA (which, by the way, is the largest labor union in the country) does not like charter schools for the simple fact that charter schools do not mandate their teachers to belong to the teacher’s unions and pay annual dues. Could it be? No, that’s impossible. Is the NEA trying everything possible to stop the Charter School Movement and try to insult the integrity of teachers and staff of charter schools solely for political and financial reasons? Aw, come on.


That said, I recently encountered the following article I would like to share with you:


Charter schools don't work? Results say differently
By: Gregory Kane
Examiner Staff Writer
June 21, 2010
There's bad news on the charter school front. All 107 seniors at Chicago's Urban Prep Charter Academy have been accepted to college.
That's only bad news for opponents of charter schools who've been railing against them for years, claiming that such schools "don't work."
In mid-May, I attended a symposium sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies, which is located on the campus of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University in Greensboro. The subject was the racial achievement gap in education and what can be done to eliminate it.
(Full disclosure: I'm a fellow at the institute, which has sent me on several assignments over the years. The most recent: a visit to Canada in mid-March to investigate and write about Toronto's achievement gap.)


Attending the symposium were Mary Frances Berry, former head of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, former National Association for the Advancement of Colored People President Kweisi Mfume and National Action Network chief Al Sharpton, among others. Even after IFAJS founder and Director DeWayne Wickham urged those attending to "think outside the box" when it came to solutions to close the achievement gap, I still heard the same refrain:
Charter schools don't work.


The implication is that because charter schools don't work, then we shouldn't have them. What the charter school bashers don't realize is that if this logic applies to charter schools, then it applies to failing public schools that aren't charter schools as well. They clearly aren't working; that's why proponents of charter schools support charter schools in the first place.


It would be more accurate to say "not all charter schools work." Chicago's Urban Prep Charter Academy is clearly one that does.
Its students have eight-hour school days, not six-hour days. They wear uniforms that consist of tan slacks, white shirts, red ties and dark blue blazers. When a senior is accepted to college, he then sports a tie that's red with gold stripes.
And that "he" is, in this case, gender-specific: The Urban Prep Charter Academy is all-male. Students are selected by lottery and most of them are black, reflecting the Chicago neighborhood where the school is located. When Tim King founded the school in 2006, news reports say, only 4 percent of the current graduating class was able to read at grade level.
Chicago's Urban Prep Charter Academy isn't just working, it's absolutely rocking. Geoffrey Canada's Promise Academy charter school in Harlem isn't doing too badly either.


Canada is the guy who started the Harlem Children's Zone as a way to combat poverty and poor education. Promise Academy is the middle school in the HCZ. According to several news reports, students there have shown fantastic gains. One study showed that the achievement gap in math separating Promise Academy's students and white students in New York has been eliminated.


Lesser known than Canada's Promise Academy or Chicago's Urban Prep Charter Academy is Baltimore's KIPP Ujima Village Academy, a charter school for students in grades five through eight. In the 2008-2009 school year, KIPP had 343 students: 334 black, three white, three Asian, two Hispanic and one American Indian.


It's a predominantly black school in a poor, crime-ridden section of Baltimore. But in 2009, 78.6 percent of KIPP's students scored at the advanced or proficient level in math on state assessments. That compares to 63.5 percent for Baltimore City and 77.9 percent for the state. (In reading, 83.2 percent of KIPP's students were advanced or proficient, compared to 72.4 percent for the city and 84.4 percent for the state.)


When will critics of charter schools just be honest and admit that they just don't want them to work?

In my opinion, many of these critics have been fed distorted data or outright lies by supporters of the traditional public school system. Don’t’ get me wrong, there is a myriad of great traditional schools with awesome teachers working their assets off to give their students the best education they can. However, there are also “traditionalists” who are afraid that if charter schools start outshining traditional schools, some of the gravy train of funding which mostly goes to traditional schools will be re-examined, and a portion of it will go to charter schools; not that money has anything to do with decision-making about children’s’ futures . . .


Charter Schools and Traditional Schools both offer free education. Both are capable of getting outstanding results, but many don’t. Isn’t it fair to allow parents to have alternatives and choices in the type of education their children receive? Couldn’t the Charter School Movement be viewed as the impetus to get traditional schools to try whatever it is that is working in Charter Schools instead of as the villain, luring teachers and students over to the "Dark Side"?

Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what's right. ~Isaac Asimov