Lausd Must Do What's Right for Area Children
Posted on: Thursday, 24 July 2008, 00:00 CDT
By Caprice Young
LAST week the Los Angeles public school system was rocked with sobering news: According to the state, one in three Los Angeles Unified students is dropping out. But buried deep within the data was a sign of encouragement -- charter high schools are showing strong signs of reducing this trend. In fact, every charter high school in Los Angeles Unified last year reported a dropout rate significantly lower than not only the school district's average, but the state's as well.
Yet despite this and other positive developments within the growing charter school movement, critics continue to cast aspersions on charter schools, repeating the same tired arguments that they've unsuccessfully used for years.
These arguments basically boil down to four points: Charter schools make their decisions locally, they select the best students, they're smaller, and they cause the district to lose funds as taxpayer money follows students to the schools they choose.
Yes, charter schools get to make their decisions locally, and since they're held accountable for how their students learn, this school-site control encourages innovation that leads to greater learning.
In contrast, a public-school system where seven school board members make every decision affecting nearly 700,000 students will have difficulty improving student achievement. I remember serving on the school board, when seven grown-ups would spend half a day debating the merits of whether schools should use forks or sporks during lunch. These decisions and vastly more important ones that impact learning should be left to educational professionals.
The second argument of preferential student-selection has consistently been debunked by academic research. Charter schools accept all students using public lotteries, not special selection. A 2005 Rand Corp. report again put this myth to rest when it found that in California, "African-American and Hispanic students were more likely to transfer to a charter school than other students, and this was especially true for African-American students." This underscores why public school choice is critical to closing the achievement gap, considering that a staggering 41.6 percent of African-American students drop out of district schools.
Third, it's unfair to dismiss charters' higher performance simply because they're smaller. Parents want the option of enrolling their child in a smaller, safer public school where every teacher knows every student by name. They know that when children feel safe, chances are greater that learning will occur -- and the data prove this.
Last, it's true that charter schools do take away some control from downtown headquarters. In charters, money is spent on students, rather than in bureaucratic red tape.
Critics such as LAUSD school board member Julie Korenstein need to ask themselves what's worse -- seeing thousands of students choose charter schools, or watching tens of thousands of Los Angeles Unified students drop out of school altogether?
Commenting on last month's report that found that most charter schools are academically outperforming their neighborhood peers, Senior Deputy Superintendent Ray Cortines said, "I think that what it says is that they have some best practices, and those should be replicated in the district in all schools. I would say the same about islands of excellence in the Unified district. ... We need to each learn from each other."
Cortines is right. Let's stop attacking each other with tired falsehoods that don't stand the test of credibility. Let's focus as partners on doing more of what's working for kids.
(c) 2008 Daily News; Los Angeles, Calif.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
Source: Daily News; Los Angeles, Calif.
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