Education elsewhere, plus schools under fire at home

A few months back I was talking to a friend of mine about the role of charter schools in education. At the time she was teaching abroad in France, and had plenty to say about our educational system when compared to theirs. Unfortunately, her blog about this got lost when the server she was using crashed, but I would like to post what I can remember from our conversation.

You see, in much of Europe, education is not only public, higher education is actually affordable. In France specifically students are put on career pathways as they enter high school, so that when they leave they have some focus to bring into the "real world." On one hand, this system allows students to focus their education, and it allows them to avoid taking classes they find unnecessary (such as art history), but at the same time it is limiting because students tend to get pushed into their track based on their grades in primary school. This is similar to how we push students into certain tracks in our public schools, with honors programs, regular classes and special education. Only, instead of those titles, the honors equivalent students get to take science classes, and the "lower end" students are forced into marketing.

As Alison described this to me, she started talking about how she wanted to combine the best of our school system with the best of theirs, and start charter schools here in the States that provided students with better education than our current public schools allow. I am not entirely sure how she intends to do that in her home state of Washington, because charter schools aren't legal, but I did find her ideas intriguing. So, I looked further into them, to see what was being done elsewhere.

To start with, after a half-an-hour of diligent "Googling" I could not find any evidence of charter schools in Europe, though I did find a paper on ERIC about the push to provide vouchers for private schools in the Czech Republic published back in 2001. Vouchers are an entirely different alternative education topic, and I would like to address them in the next couple of days, however, I do not want to get too far off topic today. In my research I discovered a school district in Louisiana that is implementing career pathways in their public schools. The article presents these pathways in a positive light. Having recently discovered that charter schools are not required to hire certified teachers or administrators, I'm tempted to say I would prefer it if my state decided to restructure their school system, much like the district in New Orleans, rather than allowing for charter schools.

When I set out to write this blog, I wanted to investigate charter schools, both for advantages and disadvantages. Clearly over the last couple of weeks I have discussed quite a number of disadvantages, so, for parents who would like to hear the other side of the argument, I found this article from the Oakland Tribune. Public schools are notorious for being unsafe, part of the reason I started looking into charter schools was because I wanted my child to be safe. This article not only discusses how charter schools tend to be safer than public schools, but a principal is quoted as saying, "students feel a real sense of accountability. This is their school and they are helping to build it." To me this sounds like a very positive potential aspect of charter schools.

I'm not so sure how I feel when I read about schools like this one in New York that is planning on offering teachers 6-figure salaries. I am pretty certain a salary like this would attract high quality teachers, but I don't think my college professors even earned that much! Since the funding is coming from the general public, it seems odd to me that charter school teachers can be paid so much more than public school teachers.

Another noteworthy charter school in the United States right now, is one in Minnesota. It is currently under attack for not drawing a clear enough line between church and state. Recognizing the website I pulled this from is highly biased, I found a second source, that confirms that the school may be encouraging students to practice religion.

I am finding that charter schools have good intentions, and while they sound like a good opportunity to put education in the hands of the local community, they tend to fall short of expectations. If you want to read more about that you should review my last two posts. I need to quit writing for now, but later this evening I will try to find more positive examples of charter schools, as well as perspectives from other parents around the country.