chicagodads

Energy, health care, education. There’s a lot to be said as a parent about any of these main points of the president’s speech last night. But, since we’re on the topic of education right now and since I wanted to hit this point anyway, I noticed that under Obama’s talk of education reform, he hinted at “expand(ing) our commitment to charter schools.” I was not aware that the federal government has a commitment to charter schools in the first place, but with former Chicago Public Schools chief Arne Duncan now in charge of the Department of Education (and a $100 million bonus), I guess that shouldn’t surprise me.

This is an observation I have from talking to many parents and interested parties in Chicago: the assumption is that a charter school is necessarily a good or bad thing. Now, for proponents of public education, because of the way that charter schools are set up, they may be a bit dangerous, and certainly a threat to funding. But, if the districts and the nation were as dedicated to quality education for all as they like us to think that they are, it shouldn’t be a problem. For the time-being though, I’m going to concentrate on shorter-term issues rather than meta- and structural issues.

A charter school is primarily a different way of governing school. A group will come to a school district and say that they want to run a school (or a few). This group may anywhere down the line from a for-profit company interested in education to a rag-tag group of dissatisfied educators (I know of one such in a south-side neighborhood). Often this group has a driving philosophy and several ideas of how to practice schooling that are different than how they see the district performs and views schooling. The views could be anywhere as distinct as a sense of maintaining ethnic pride (much how the Catholic schools started in the 19th C.), to a return to a strict adherence to ‘classic’ education, to specialized mini-schools based on professional options, to running a 4-12 grade college-prep school (under the notion that a 9-12 grade prep school leaves too much time to gap in certain schooling areas). The district allows these associations to run a school  (usually a “failing” school or vacant campus) with public money under that group’s charter (including budget, philosophy, rules, etc.) of how they will run the school.

Now, because of the way budgets are set up in most school districts - especially Chicago’s - each school gets a certain amount of funding related to how many students they bring in on a typical day. So if another school opens up across the way from yours and then you are forced to compete with that other school, but your hands are tied behind your back as to how you may compete (as most brand-new schools now secure grants to get them brand-new equipment and as charter schools pay their teachers less so that they can spend more on equipment), well, guess who may win in the short-run?

That is the essence of what a charter school is. And, as you can probably guess, the concept of charter schools is only as good as each local charter school is. A charter school for a charter’s school sake is not necessarily a good thing, and in fact, can be dangerous. At the very least, with our child(ren), we will take the issue of whether to send her/them to a charter or non-charter school on a case-by-case basis.

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