From Charter to Chattle...you figure it out!!! Disclaimer--this is not a generalization to demonize ALL charter schools. This is my professional opinion as a 12 year veteran teacher who has witnessed what takes place when charter schools are abused and used as an antidote to a holistically failing American education system that has intentionally refused to properly fund our schools, ignored the misappropriation of funds intended for our schools, allowed for-profit testing companies to override adequately educating our babies, avoided all accountability for ensuring that ALL schools have and effectively utilize resources intended for our students, disassembled the teacher's unions so that educators are left vulnerable and disposable and deliberately utilized location and socio-economic status to continue the Jim Crow Era segregation in our schools!
Please be mindful that this is not a detailed examination of the negative issues regarding education. If it were I would have to include the preexisting conditions of parental and student involvement in this academic avalanche.
Right now I'm taking on the physicians perspective as I examine our infected educational institutions and offer a diagnosis of the illness bases on the symptoms. Once the patient/student is in the hospital/school I am commissioned to focus on the present condition and I am faced with the challenge of immediately coming up with a plan of action which will initiate the educational rehabilitation process!
Okay Cousin Cathy Applegate Scurlock you asked for this. Going all charter is an EPIC fail. I currently teach in New Orleans and from what I have experienced the schools have been hijacked by for profit pimps. Seemingly, charter schools should open up new doors of academic opportunity to replace schools that had previously failed the students, parents and the communities.
Unfortunately in the present condition, New Orleans students are being reduced to digits, dollars and data. What I mean by that is the cultural, psychological, emotional and social well-being of the children are being ignored so that they can be forced into a learning method with the sole purpose of test preparation. The digits are the number of students who fill seats and take the high stakes test. The dollars are how much money the school earns for each student who enrolls, how many grants the school receives, donations and the total amount of money that the board can raise for the school. The data represents the standardized test scores, attendance, suspensions, expulsions and levels of academic growth as revealed by assessments.
When integrity is omitted from this process and accountability is compromised you end up with bootleg educational institutions where academic standings are more relative than realistic. When new grading scales are put into place schools can justify academic growth by simply lowering the bar. The D's and F's that used to stand for below average and failing are morphed into an all inclusive I for incomplete. Students are sold a dream that they are "almost there" when they are actually further behind than they could possibly phantom. Parents are manipulated into believing that their child is missing assignments and assessments when the reality is that they are failing to comprehend the content and they genuinely need more help beyond the instruction provided during the regular class period. Consequently the student ends up missing the mark altogether and the ship headed towards scholastic achievement sails right bye them. Special Education Departments transform into cash cows and the resources are funneled into everything except accommodations for individuals with disabilities and their educational needs. Grossly inexperienced school leader's salaries rise while their experience in the field of education and child development evaporates like steam because it is that vanishing vapor. Highly qualified veteran school leaders are replaced with ambitious comrades who lack the professional, academic and cultural foundation necessary for our children to succeed on a grand scale.
School leaders become opportunist who utilize stock market ingenuity in an environment where sacrifice and intestinal fortitude are supposed to collide with classroom management and content knowledge. What we are witnessing now is an academic interstate with an expresses off ramp that leads to sub par educational experiences, poverty and mass incarceration. It with take collective voices of opposition to regain control of our tax subsidized schools. In the words of Tom Cruise in the movie Jerry McGuire, "All I wanna know is whose coming with me?"
