Talk:Charter school

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Article Grading: The following comments were left by the quality and importance raters: (edit · refresh) Perhaps my comment is more of a question. It appears the article on Charter Schools speaks to the Academic standards only. What ratings do Charter Schools get for administrative excellence compared to public schools? Are Charter Schools managed better fiscally? It appears they are on par academically with there public counterparts. --Bowapt 01:58, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

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This article looks to me like a good candidate for NPOV editing. —LarryGilbert 00:54, 2004 Mar 15 (UTC)

Full disclosure - I wrote the article, and I went to a charter school (one of the best in the country, btw, and I loved it). I went out of my way not to hype them, and I think I might have gone too far the other way ;) →Raul654 01:05, Mar 15, 2004 (UTC)

I think this article is incredibly biased in favor of charter schools. There's almost no information on the drawbacks to charter school legistlation. Jcantara 2-20-2006

I am not sure what "incredibly biased in favor of charter schools" means. As the article is now, it explains their origin, legal status, and variation among the states. In terms of performance, that differs from state to state, and the only evidence I am aware of are evaluations. These have been done for only a minority of states; so, summarizing them summarizes the experience of only a minority of states. There are complaints about charter schools, and it they are reported as such, they should be included. A major complaint I hear often is that charter schools "steal" public funds from the regular public schools. This is difficult to substantiate. It is true that if a student leaves a regular public school for a charter school, the regular public school loses the per pupil monies for that student. But it also loses the student, and does not have to educate her. Moreover, whatever millage funds the regular public school gets from taxation stays with the regular public school, without having to pay whatever costs the student who left represented. But is is performance, scholastic performance, which is needed to conclude about the promise of charter schools, and such data is still in short supply. I can tell you that in Arkansas some charter schools are doing very well, much better than the state averages, and some are not doing well. But the ones which are doing very well all are schools which have been functioning for 3 or more years. The school which are not doing well tend to be new schools, with only 1 or 2 years of experience. Will they do better when they have another year or two of experience? Are the schools reported from New York or other states which are not doing well charter schools with only 1 or 2 years of experience? There are a lot a data we do not have. Is such data are not easily retrieved, it is best to simply report the legal and institutional facts, and leave the performance for later. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jacob Silver (talk • contribs).

Contents 1 Accountability of charter schools 2 obsolete merge proposal 3 Mark B. Cohen 4 needs a more balanced coverage 5 Is this article meant to be US only? 6 Charter School Hotbeds 7 Charter schools are a type of private school 8 Reorganization

[edit] Accountability of charter schools

Hmm, I tried to add some information to tone down the misleadingly positive viewpoint and make the article more balanced, and most of it immediately was edited back out. The article as I originally saw it gave a completely one-sided view, such as its assertion that charter schools are accountable and can be shut down if they fail to meet certain criteria (in reality, this is often difficult to impossible, which makes charter schools almost entirely UNaccountable). It's really sinister that the charter advocates immediate revise to show an unbalanced, incomplete, inaccurate, totally positive view. The truth will come out eventually, but in the meantime, it's creepy. Cgrannan, 7-29-06

Here is a factually accurate account of a charter-school issue that I added to the entry in response to a request for a citation. Someone removed all references to the student deaths, and also added an entirely inaccurate comment claiming that this school's scores were not low for the district. I've reinstated the accurate account, though I anticipate that the charter advocates will censor it again:

One example was the 2003 revocation of the charter for a school called Urban Pioneer in the San Francisco Unified School District after two students died on a school wilderness outing. In addition, an auditor's report found that the school was in financial disarray[2]. The school also posted the lowest [3] test scores of any school in the district except those serving entirely non-English-speakers, and was accused of academic fraud, graduating students with far fewer than the required credits.[4] Yet charter-school advocates led a heated and divisive protest against revoking the charter. Cgrannan 16:43, 1 August 2006 (UTC) Cgrannan, 7-29-06

You totally slanted your account, rather than just reporting the facts. It could just as easily stand as an example of how easy it is to revoke the charters of non-performing schools, if the school was closed after only one year of operation - school boards only get voted on every two years, which is slower accountability for the performance of non-charter schools.

Furthermore, your account was factually inaccurate - the article you referred to says that the charter was not revoked because of the deaths, but because of the financial irregularities.

Lastly, you said that I removed all reference to the student deaths, which statement is false. Go back and look at the diffs - I de-emphasised that issue, because as the reference you provided stated, that was not considered sufficient to revoke the charter.

Argyriou 01:40, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

The move to revoke Urban Pioneer's charter began because of the deaths.The financial problems, academic fraud and low test scores would not have been sufficient to provoke the move. That's clear from reading the entire body of news coverage, though perhaps not from any one article. When the deaths were the only known problem, the school board voted (not unanimously) not to revoke, and the other problems were the deciding factor -- but the deaths were the key issue and the one that made it a Page 1 story. I've revised to reflect the chronology more clearly. Cgrannan 16:43, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

It's still not clear that the example is an example of the difficulty of revoking a charter, or of the lack of accountability of charters - after all, the school was closed after only one year of operation, while pure public schools with worse performance stay open and school boards stay in office. Argyriou 18:47, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I believe that a reasonable person without a bias would see the fact that there was intense controversy as a clear demonstration of the difficulty of revoking a charter. Two student deaths on a school trip; financial shambles; academic fraud; very low test scores. It should be a no-brainer to revoke that charter -- any reasonable person would view it as a school board member's duty. Yet the outcry was so loud and the controversy so intense that after the two deaths (as you noted yourself), a majority of the San Francisco Board of Education voted to let the school remain open. After the bad news kept coming, the board finally did vote to shut it down. The organization then called the California Network of Educational Charters -- now the California Charter Schools Association, the state's primary charter school advocacy group -- forcefully opposed revoking the charter and led the opposition. I still run into community members who think that shutting the school down was an outrage (if you present them with the string of facts that I just cited, they grudgingly admit that maybe it was the school board's duty after all). Urban Pioneer also hired a high-priced damage-control specialist from a publicity firm (despite the unpaid teachers and other fallout from the school's desperate financial condition) who was quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle as likening the Board of Education to the "Taliban" and calling the move to revoke the charter a "witch hunt." (The PR man, David Hyams of Solem & Associates, was a former, longtime Chronicle editor who had a lot of clout with his former colleagues in getting his comments into the paper.) All this, while not information that should appear in the actual entry at that level of detail, should make it clear that it was very difficult and contentious for the Board of Education to revoke the school's charter. ' Cgrannan 03:20, 2 August 2006 (UTC) cgrannan

Two student deaths on a school trip; financial shambles; academic fraud; very low test scores. Set aside the deaths, because I haven't done the research, but it took years of that for the state to step in and take over Oakland Unified. That's far less accountability than charters have. Argyriou 03:27, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I would disagree. But this isn't a forum for debating the merits of charter schools. The point is that it's not a neutral point of view to state that charter schools are accountable as though it were unassailable fact -- instead, it's one-sided promotion of the charter-school movement's PR. Actually, there's strong disagreement on that issue. That's one key reason so many local boards of education reject charter-school proposals. And because so many local boards of education reject charter-school proposals, the would-be charter operators increasingly turn to county boards of education and the state Board of Education (at least this is the case in California) to grant them charters. Then there's no accountability at all to the district the charter is located in. ' Cgrannan 06:13, 2 August 2006 (UTC) cgrannan

Yes it is hard to close a charter school. Because of the emotional attachment of students and parents, it's difficult to close ANY school. The fact is that many charter schools have been closed across the country for academic, financial and operational reasons. They can be closed. They do get closed. That's a fact. Your effort to insert material about student deaths, by comparison, is deliberately inflammatory. Tragically, student deaths do occur - everywhere. Here in Chicago, a student at a district-run high school drowned in the high school's swimming pool a couple of years ago. Students from another school drowned in a hotel pool on a field trip. Yet there is no reference to these deaths in the Wikipedia article about the Chicago Public Schools, nor should there be. Do these deaths DEFINE what the Chicago Public School system is? No, they are tragic aberations. So why do you try to define the whole charter school movement this way? Why? Because you are trying to interject your biases and opinions into something that is supposed to be factual. [[69.47.34.30 14:07, 20 January 2007 (UTC)Richmond 20 January 2007]

[edit] obsolete merge proposal

Merge this with Charter Schools?

[edit] Mark B. Cohen

Somewhat to my surprise, 'State Rep. Mark B. Cohen' actually exists. Did he actually make the comments his anonymous fan, User:209.158.227.190 , quotes him as saying?

—wwoods 23

57, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] needs a more balanced coverage

The AFT study that is futured in the New York Times is critisized by a large number of researchers in the education policy area due to errors in methodology. see http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110005492 and http://www.ncsc.info/newsletter/August_September_2002/AFT_Response.htm.

There's an interesting story about that whole controversy here: [1] --GD 21:36, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sme of that has been fixed - does this article still need the POV tag? Argyriou 19:13, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes. The article gives far too much credibility to the attempts by charter supporters to debunk the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress study and cites widely debated reports by avid charter-school partisans (such as Caroline Hoxby). I don't believe it ever mentioned the book "The Charter School Dust-Up," a scholarly analysis of these various reports, until I inserted it, and I don't have the time or resources to dig up and insert other information that counters these one-sided, pro-charter viewpoints to the necessary extent. Cgrannan 06:13, 2 August 2006 (UTC) cgrannan

I've done some balancing-out for the "Recent Findings" section, tried to make it more neutral. I also tried to make things more concrete by denoting specific criticisms of reports. What do you think? (See here for the current version). --Wade A. Tisthammer 17:50, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Is this article meant to be US only?

Is the intent of the article to be US only, or is it to be about charter schools in general, with sections about earch country (and sub-jurisdiction)? Speciffically, I'm wandering if it's appropriate to add a section about Canada (Alberta to be exact), or should that go in a new article? What little mention their is of other countries exists in this article, seems to only be from the prospective of what the US can learn from them. --rob 08:23, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

We should consider looking at other schools, and UK foundation schools. --Tjss 16:22, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Charter School Hotbeds

I am wondering if there should be some mention of Dayton, OH, Kansas City, MO and Washington, DC. I believe that these three places have the highest precentage of students attending Charter Schools. According to the Washington Post (and other sources) at least 14% of all public school students attend Charter Schools (in these three places). I made note of this on the discussion at Talk:School_choice#Some_more_information_on_School_Choice.

[edit] Charter schools are a type of private school

The foregoing is a judgement, and, if not, is wrong. Charter schools' authorization, financing, and regulation is all public. They are part of the public school system of any state in which they exist. It may be that there is poor oversight in many cases; this would have to be documented. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jacob Silver (talk • contribs).

In Alberta, the School Act, section 31, says: "31(1) A person or society may apply to the Minister for the establishment of a charter school to be operated by a society incorporated under the Societies Act or a company registered under Part 9 of the Companies Act." That is, in Alberta, charter schools are operated by a society or not-for-profit corporation; they are not operated by a public school authority. In Alberta, a charter school may not use the word "public" in its name. Legally, they are a class of private school.

In addition, the facilities used by charter schools, in Alberta, are not, in any case that I know of, owned by the provincial government. In most cases, the school facilities used by charter schools are owned by a public school or separate school district, and they are being used by the charter school subject to a direction or authorization from the Minister of Education.

The reason we don't call separate and/or francophone school authorities private is that they have a universal electorate within a described population, and the board of a separate and/or francophone school authority is elected according to the Local Authorities Election Act, and may be removed by the Minister according to the provisions of the School Act. The Board of a charter school is not accountable to a universal electorate, it is not elected according to the Local Authorities Elections Act, and the Minister, while he may terminate a charter, may not remove the Board of a charter school from office.

By corporate organization, by exclusion from the provisions of the Local Authorities Election Act, and by freedom from the threat of removal of the Board by the Minister, charter schools, at least in Alberta, are private institutions. A similarly careful analysis of the charter school provisions in American states would lead to a similar conclusion.

David King 23:55, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Note: For others interested, there's been a discussion of this atTalk:Alberta charter schools and User talk:David King, where I've said why charters are public schools. We've been talking about Alberta schools, and I would like to hear from some Americans on the matter .--Rob 06:43, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

The situation in Canada is drastically different from that in the United States, because in the United States, private schools do not receive government money, so any school which does is a public school. In Canada, the distinction between public and private schools is different. (I know that local school boards in the U.S. sometimes give money to parents who place their special-needs kids in private schools, but the money technically goes to the parent as a reimbursement for services that the local public school is required to provide, but cannot internally. The money technically does not go to the school.) Argyriou 18:49, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually private American schools can receive direct public funding, and not become public. The main thing that is different in the US, is that *religious* private schools can not receive any public funding for constitutional reasons. Also, a number of private US school can't receive public funding without having to change admission rules, which may be deemed discriminatory. But, charter schools, on both sides of the boarder, are fully secular, and equally public (in the sense of ownership, non-discriminatory admission, ultimate accountability/control, and funding). --Rob 20:28, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reorganization

In addition to NPOV editing, the setup of this article doesn't, to me at least, make a lot of sense. Overview, great. But for the second heading of "Charter school popularity"--what? I think that this whole article should be redone to look more like the article on High School, arranged by countries. As a student in a charter school, I'm not going to pretend to be completely unbiased. Anybody want to help revamp this page? jniedecker 23:14, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

But charter schools (as the term is used here) only exists in two countries, with a mere dozen in Canada (all in one province). So, I don't think you could use the same organization as high school. But the article could use some improvement (like NPOV), so feel free to rework it. --Rob 23:44, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I didn't do a good job of, um, talking. High school is by country; this page should be by state, I think, seeing as the laws vary drastically. --jniedecker 16:14, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Oh, ok. If you want to have sections per-state, I think that's good. Perhaps some comparison table of the different states (and one province) would also be good? --Rob 16:40, 11 May 2006 (UTC)