Next week, Education Committee will hold a hearing on legislation allowing more charter schools to open in the state’s lowest performing districts. Boston Globe publishes column by prominent Democratic lawmaker – Sen. Barry Finegold – and former Akamai Technologies CEO – Paul Sagan – calling for the Legislature to lift the cap. Several urban communities are closed to new charters, leaving parents without the hope of having additional choices and leaving tens of thousands of children on wait lists. The bill also calls for various district reforms to allow superintendents to have more authority to turn around underperforming district schools. Both elements of the bill are critical to improving our public education system. Finegold’s bill is S.235 and it is co-sponsored by Rep. Russell Holmes – a Democrat from Mattapan – who filed H.425.
Here is the link to the column: http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/04/30/podium-charter/Zj3eFgao1WOlMLrkQ2s5tJ/story.html.
Not until they start really delivering on special education for all children. I’ve had the “cherry picking” experience in one charter school where they didn’t follow the ed plan, and then “suspend, suspend, suspend, expel.” It sure keeps costs down, but it didn’t contribute to this boy’s education. He went back to “regular” school, because they had no choice but to take him. And then they convened the appropriate hearing to determine whether the issues were related to his disabilities and made sure he had appropriate services.
Let”s have a honest discussion about the purpose of charges schools and then we can talk.
Instead of being restricted to the US Army, I should be able to choose to be protected by a different one. One that only fights battles it’s guaranteed to win, treats its soldiers like crap and cycles through them amazingly quickly, has contributed no new ideas or successful approaches to military science, skimps on equipment, relies on the American military to bail it out when the going gets tough, has celebrity generals who spend two years on the lines and have forgotten how to even hold a gun, but has squadrons of paid lobbyists.
I mean, it’s only fair.
Words of truth, from Diane Ravitch:
What we need to improve education in this country is a strong, highly respected education profession; a rich curriculum in the arts and sciences, available in every school for every child; assessments that gauge what students know and can do, instead of mindless test prepping for bubble tests. And a government that is prepared to change the economic and social conditions that interfere with children’s readiness to learn. We need high-quality early childhood education. We need parent education programs. We need social workers and guidance counselors in the school. Children need physical education every day. And schools should have classes small enough for students to get the attention they need when they need it.
We cannot improve education by quick fixes. We will not fix education by turning public schools over to entrepreneurs. We will not improve it by driving out experienced professionals and replacing them with enthusiastic amateurs. We will not make our schools better by closing them and firing teachers and entire staffs. No high-performing nation in the world follows such strategies. We cannot be satisfied with the status quo, which is not good enough for our children, nor can we satisfied with the Bush-Obama-Duncan “reforms” that have never been proven to work anywhere.
Finegold lost any support he would have had from this progressive in the future, it is time for progressives to fight back. Our President and our Governor who the grassroots progressive movement put into office are wrong on this issue. Time to apply the pressure. The movement to fight back is happening right here in Chicago, the teachers broke Rahm during the strike and we are fighting the closings tooth and nail.
And it’s the Gilded Age all over again-the people-most brown and poor- vs. the powerful who want to socially engineer and privatize their neighborhood schools, including the ones that are working.
Time to stand up and fight! This is a big issue for me, and I for one want to stop voting for Dems that are wrong on this issue.
has been pretty awful on a number of issues.
to criticize disappointing legislators?
He’s been firmly against any kind of tax increase, voted for more dumb “war on drugs” sentencing stupidity, led the charge on pension “reform” (to the point of proposing the retirement age be increased by one year EVERY SIX YEARS), and he’s taken the lead on this charter school stuff.
Progressive Mass has a scorecard with 37 votes in the 2011-12 session. Finegold voted for the progressive position as they defined it 14 times, against it 18 times, and did not vote 5 times. Not quite Timilty-land, but still enough bad votes to make me unhappy.
If charter schools are so great, why limit them to the “lowest performing districts”?
Why not allow a charter school in Weston. Surely someone can educate those children even better for the $20k per year that the town is spending.
Let’s open up the impact of charters to everyone in the state, not just those who are poor.
hard to tell over the internet.
But thats entirely the point. Weston gets top notch schools due to its property tax base, while charter schools act like resource drains on the public schools in the poor areas they are located. It’s a social engineering experiment dictated by ideological hostility to unions, and it’s not results based. I am all for trying new ways and approaches to teaching students, I am all for raising standards and increasing teacher accountability, but there is a way to do this that is cooperative and not combative and that improves the public schools we have.
We have already seen the right wing denigrate them as ‘public schools’ and I am honestly starting to think that we are seeing an orchestrated campaign to demonize teachers and to take away the last public good that is compulsory, universal, and the great equalizing engine of opportunity. The ‘Race to the Top’ where states compete for resources is the educational policy equivalent of the Hunger Games.