Charter Schools and Their Enemies

Charter Schools and Their Enemies by Thomas Sowell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I so much enjoy reading Thomas Sowell. In this book he explains the success of the charter schools in America and why a lot of traditional public schools dislike them. Below are quotes from this outstanding book. The first section explains what a charter is and the second section explains why some public educators of traditional schools are against charter schools. As always he includes many facts and stats to back up his words.

Public charter schools are public schools not created by the existing government education authorities, but by some private groups who gain government approval by meeting various preconditions set by authorizing agencies. These agencies issue charters enabling these schools to operate as public schools eligible for taxpayer money and to enroll public school students who apply. By allowing more autonomy and flexibility in public charter schools than the more tightly controlled traditional public schools, it was hoped that new educational policies and practices that emerge from this experiment might produce some better educational results. In that case, traditional public schools would have these new policies and practices available to use if they chose to, thereby benefitting the much larger number of students in the traditional public school sector. If, however, a charter school has educational outcomes that fail to satisfy the authorities, those authorities can revoke its charter and end its access to taxpayer money and public school students.
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What reason can there be to be hostile to successful charter schools? Actually, there are millions of reasons - namely, millions of dollars. The 50,000-plus students on waiting lists for admission to charter schools in New York City, where per-pupil expenditures average more than $20,000 a year, represent more than a billion dollars a year that could be lost by the traditional public school system in New York City alone, if all the students on those waiting lists were able to get into charter schools. And that is just the initial financial loss in one city during one year.

Substantial declines in the number of students remaining in traditional public schools would also mean fewer teachers employed there, and correspondingly declining union dues, since most charter school teachers do not belong to a teachers union. The sums of money involved in union dues nationwide are billions of dollars.

Schools of education would likewise be affected negatively, if many more students were able to transfer out of traditional public schools, where degrees in education are important for advancement in a teaching career, and go into charter schools, where those degrees mean far less than a teacher's actual performance in educating students.

Although charter schools are a small part of the education sector-educating less than 10 percent of the students in kindergarten through high school nationwide-the threat that they represent to a whole way of life in the much larger traditional public school system is out of proportion to their current size.

Charter schools' rate of growth, over their relatively brief existence since the 1990s, has been much higher than that in the traditional public school sector. Over the period from 2001 to 2016, enrollment in traditional public schools rose 1 percent, while enrollment in public charter schools rose 571 percent. Moreover, the concentration of charter schools in low-income minority neighborhoods across the country has made them a far larger presence in those communities, with the net result that most charter school students nationwide are either black or Hispanic. Most important of all, the abysmal educational outcomes that have long been the norm in such communities have now been highlighted in the glare of disproportionately better outcomes in many charter schools in those same communities.

I hope that gives you a taste for this excellent book. If you enjoy reading truths about education then you will enjoy this book.

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