Charters break mold by picking, choosing

[MountainLaurel]

For Miranda Restovic, trying to get her 3-year-old into a public charter school sometimes felt like applying to college.

One school drowned her in paperwork. A second required a screening test to determine whether the child could take a second test to determine whether he could even apply.

snip

Considered a trailblazing city in national education circles for embracing charter schools, New Orleans also might be the only city in the country where several charter schools have competitive admissions, requiring some or all students to have specific test scores, grades or foreign-language background to enroll. Locally, several educators note that the presence of such schools here reflects their origins: In the weeks after the flood, chartering appeared to be the only way for some schools, particularly a handful of magnet schools like Audubon, to reopen quickly.

Selective admissions were nothing new at those schools, many of which first employed them as an integration strategy in the 1970s. But converting selective schools into charters made the schools unique in that many states have sought to ensure that charters accept all students, regardless of academic ability, as a way to guard against them becoming havens for more affluent, higher-performing students.

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-10/1211088631204280.xml&coll=1

[msongs]

1. charters skim the most motivated then other schools are blamed for failing nt

[noamnety]

7. broad brushes are rarely accurate

but they do often play into people's fears.

There are different types of charters. Public charter schools are legally prohibited from discriminating against students. Your belief is that they somehow skim the best and brightest. Well, guess what? People who apply to them are just normal people, with a whole range of issues.

You know what happens a lot of the time? Traditional public schools have problem students they want to unload. Guess how they unload them - by giving them a choice of being expelled or transferring to another "alternative" school. Alternative in their mind often means any charter school, anywhere where that principal won't have to deal with them anymore.

Charters get a range - exceptionally gifted kids, kids with severe cognitive disabilities, kids who are rich, kids who are living in poverty, homeless kids, etc.

I can't speak for New Orleans, which has its own unique sense of law and public education at the moment. But I'm making the point that clearly you can't speak for all charters yourself, so please don't.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

2. Charter schools are backdoor segregation, for the most part.

I had to qualify it because there are actually a few in my state that cater to special needs children and do a good job of accomodating their needs, as well as not being discriminatory in accepting students. But many of the others basically enable affluent people to provide a private school environment for their progeny at taxpayer expense.

[juno jones]

4. Thank you for clarifying.

As mother of a son with asberger's, I actually have had good luck in the CA public charter school system. He needed a smaller classroom and more personalized attention from teacher and aides. He also didn't need the added social pressures of the regular public school. He had the same dedicated teacher for two years and he came out reading and writing far better than when he got in.

He is now in a public alternative high school and as part of his program is enrolled in the local JC nearly full time. I have seen that some of the charter schools are shady covers for racism and religious bias, but I have had my child in one system and can testify that they are not all like that, in fact in the case of my kid, they were the best choice I had.

PS The school was also open to all students of the district...

[Peregrine]

5. Yes

That is why my charter is 46% Hispanic and 32% white (the other % are black and asian) and 67% on free/reduced lunch. That is why another of my company's schools is in Downtown Miami serving the poorest neighborhood.

Yes we can pick or choose, but the bottom line is that we need to fill our seats. The number of students we can have is restricted by the county. Unlike public schools we can't overcrowd. We do have a waiting list, and my school uses "first come, first serve" as the basis for filling the seats. We do not get rid of students for bad academics or FCAT, but we do get rid of them for behavior. Charters are often the last stop for problem students before they go to "special schools." We get the ones expelled from public schools, and they come to us because the parents don't want to have to pay to send the kid to a private school.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

6. So when you kick a kid back to the public school system because of "behavior",

Do you have to give the money you got for him or her back to the state? Just curious.

[noamnety]

8. In our state there are two count days

one in the fall, one in the spring. If a student transfers, the school that had them on count day is the school that gets the funding. Sometimes we have students that join us after a count day, and their previous school gets the funding. Sometimes students transfer out shortly after count day, and we get their funding. If a traditional school expels a kid after count day, they keep the funding for that child.

That's a consistent rule for every public school in the state. When it comes to state per pupil funding, we live by the same rules as everyone else.

[tbyg52]

3. Yep. Same advantage private schools have - being able to pick and choose.

Just another reason to be against vouchers.....