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week
of 2/20/02
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Embracing
public school alternatives SMN  Time’s
are changing, and I guess I am too. I’m beginning to understand
those who believe that having alternatives to public schools —
in particular charter schools — can help children and communities.An acquaintance helped me come to this conclusion. Last week I was picking up my daughter from choir practice. The mom, who volunteers for many hours each week at her child’s public school, came straight up to me: “I heard you know something about a new charter school that might be opening?” I told her what our newspaper had reported about Mountain Discovery Charter School, which just recently received its charter from the state Board of Education. The new charter is expected to open this fall in the old Whittier School, serving students from Swain, Graham, Jackson and Macon counties along with the Qualla Boundary. As we talked about her child’s experience in the Haywood County school system, the mother expressed a mild kind of frustration. It just seemed that her child wasn’t being challenged, and she feared it would only get worse as she moved forward through higher grades and into middle school. She wanted to at least have some options. As a parent who wants the best for my own children, I sympathized with her uneasiness. I’m not one who will join those who make a habit of trashing our public schools. To the contrary, I believe that our public school system is among the finest achievements in this nation’s history. It is a place where the children of the poor and the rich sit side by side for years, a place where we teach children that through hard work — not birthright — they can go as far as their dreams will carry them. In fact, I would agree with those who say that one of the most irresponsible agendas of the political right is to lump all problems associated with education achievement on the public schools and the “teacher unions.” That’s a convenient scenario because it provides an absolution for parents who don’t do their job. The historical importance of public schools, though, is what makes the charter movement increasingly appealing. They are public schools. The money that the state and county would provide for each child goes to the charter school. Although many feared charter schools would become just a substitute for elite private schools, that has not been the case. In many cities, charters have been set up to serve low-income minority students who were falling through the cracks in the public schools system. In many cases, achievement levels for those students went up dramatically. Yes, charter schools will take money away from the public schools. Yes, that can cause problems and force existing systems to make some painful adjustments in the short term. But shouldn’t education be about the children? What if the students — and subsequently the families and the entire community — are better off? Isn’t that what public education is about, and shouldn’t professional educators be excited about such a proposition? It’s not unusual to hear politicians persistently prattle about how competition helps schools, that the free market system will work for public education. I disagree. Unfettered competition is not always a good thing, and anyone who adheres to that philosophy is hopelessly naive. Teachers aren’t mid-level managers who can track achievement like profits, who can copy a model used in one class and be assured that it will work on their own students. Education doesn’t work like that. But small, hard-working charter schools free from the confines of the public education system can, perhaps, help their students and serve as a kind of laboratory for new theories about education. Mountain Discovery will implement the New American Schools Expeditionary Learning instructional model, which emphasizes hands-on learning, team teaching and real-world experiences. It is not a radical concept but one that is definitely not mainstream. The mosaic that is America is constantly changing. Through the 20th century we built a public school system that became increasingly standardized and one that cast an ever-wider net. Now, though, many are beginning to see that keeping education local, giving parents real control over what their children learn, is a good thing. That, really, is what the charter movement is all about.
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