cawacko
Well-known member
A lot of schools get tagged as crappy schools when what they really have is crappy students with apathetic parents and lousy local support yet the schools and educators get blamed.
Charter schools and vouchers have largely proven what their critics predicted they would. Subsidize prosperous families children's private education on the tax payers dime and drain public resources to charter schools that have largely underperformed both academically and financially if not outright failed. We have spent lavishly on charter schools in Ohio with the results that the vast majority have failed and drained public resources.
If you want to effectively address improving public education there are two issues that need to be addressed.
#1. Finance. The tried and tested method of local property taxes is largely responsible for the inequality we see in public education. So how do we find an equitable manner to finance public education? A whole lot of really smart people have been trying to answer that one.
#2. Parental engagement. What do we do in poorer and disadvantaged communities in which parents are not engaged in their children's education? The old adage you can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink comes to mind. The best schools and the best teachers cannot succeed with students who do not want to learn. So how do we fix that?
You need to read more on the topic if you think it's a bunch of rich kids going to charter schools. Rich people aren't sending their kids to charter schools in places like Oakland, Harlem, Mikwaukee, New Orleans and Newark.