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Monday, December 20, 2004

Charter Schools

Here is an interesting oop-ed in the New York Post about a fight over establishing a charter school in Niagara:

And, indeed, Hague and his troops shouldn't have to fight. No group trying to start a charter school anywhere in the state could win a pitched battle with the established interests. The unions and the districts have more people and money. It's because of these entrenched interests, in fact, that charter schools were created - to route around the failed bureaucracies of public-school systems that have been shielded from competition.
I am generally in favor of Charter schools, at least the idea of them. I freely concede that any individual Charter school may be bad, and my friend Aric, who is working on his teaching degree, informs me that certain charter school provisions in some states are poorly designed. I have not personally verified his claims but I certainly have no reason to doubt they are true. Nonetheless, I have seen no evidence that Charter schools cause any significant harm, and it seems that they do, at least in some cases, do a significant amount of good. It also seems to me that giving parents more choices in their child's education can't be a bad thing in principle. However, Charter Schools may not be the solution to our children's education deficiencies, perhaps because the school systems themselves are not really the problem. Sandcastles and Cubicles has posted on this Fox News article about few students opting for better schools. I speculated in the comments on his post as to why that might be. The main thing to remember is that the goal (and despite my libertarian leanings I think it is a worthy goal for the government to be involved with) is to improve the educational opportunities and successes for children. If charter schools prove ineffective because of low involvement (for whatever reason) but serve to sooth our conscience and convince us that we are doing 'something' it would be better that they didn't exist at all.

1 Comments:

Blogger Man of Issachar said...

I agree IF charter schools don't work try somthing else.

though in some cities there are waiting lists from what i have read (that is enough to put a smile on my face, kids on a list to go to a better school, you have to like that)

12/20/2004 05:15:00 PM  

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