Charter School Initiative - Letter to the Editor

Dear Editor,

The May 22nd editorial "Advocacy Groups File Initiative for Charter Schools" prompts me to ask why?

Charters schools were created to provide for experimentation and innovation, but . . .

1. If the object is to reduce bureaucracy and have more innovative teaching, name one innovation that has been developed in a charter school?

2. If the object is to save money, name one charter school effort that saved taxpayers money?

3. If the object is to improve the academic achievement of average or below average students, name one charter school that takes those students and makes them academically superior students?

What are the motives of the pro-charter school advocacy group?

1. If the object is to create a special, separate or elitist schooling experience, at public expense, then charter schools have done that.

3. If the object is to separate your child, at public expense, from those children who are different ethnically, socially, economically, the charters schools have done that too.

4. If the object is to take the best students out of the public schools and leave the rest – the kids of poverty, the less physically or mentally able kids, and the minority kids – the charter school movement has done that too.

Charter school initiatives are a way to avoid the major issues facing our state legislators and the US Congress – providing adequate resources to deal with the effects of childhood poverty.  Ask the teachers, the school administrators, and health care professionals, and others knowledgeable about learning. They will all agree that health care, nutrition, and early childhood educational programs are the means to student achievement – not charter schools.

Jack McKay