Homestead mailing list

["Lynda" <lurine AT softcom.net>]

Huge generalization.  There is NO one way to set up a charter school.  Each
states laws are different.  Most states' charters answer to the state board
of ed, not the local school board.  It would appear, as usual, that the
public school folks (William F. Buckley) etc., never learned one of the
basic principals of public school, do your homework!

There have been dozens of charters that have been shut down due to fraud and
misappropriation of funds.  And where in the world did he get those numbers
on charters and public schools?

Further, until the government stops messing with the public school system,
Little Johnny never will learn to read.  Y'all do know that the reading
levels on books have been raised which means that a child who *supposedly*
reads at a 5th grade level is actually reading at what was, when most of us
went to school, a 3rd grade level.

IF there is going to be a public school system (and it will never go away,
no matter how much some of us may wish it would), then it needs to go back
to small and local control.  Charters are a joke and just one more way for
fat cats such as Bill "gambling isn't a sin" Bennett and some of the
scummier members of some political families (Neil ring any bells) to make a
buck off the taxpayer!

Lynda
----- Original Message -----
From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
To: <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Friday, January 14, 2005 6:48 AM
Subject: [Homestead] William F. Buckley on charter schools


> August 17, 2004, 1:33 p.m.
>
> Can You Read?
>
> Charter schools vs. public schools: the real battle.
>
> The New York Times treats as the topmost news item of the day a report
that
> students at (most) charter schools are doing worse than students at (most)
> public schools. These are data put together on fourth grade students. The
> question asked was: How well are they reading?
>
> We are told that the public school students are one half year ahead of the
> charter school students. This is certainly headline news, and what makes
it
> a headline is that the findings are so unexpected. If the poll had
> established that students do better, learn more quickly how to read, at
> charter schools, that news would have got nowhere on the front page. Why?
> Because it would merely confirm what the reader would assume, or intuit
> from the basic facts.
>
> A charter school operates outside the authority of the school board. If
> dissatisfied parents join forces and hire a lawyer to walk them through
the
> bureaucratic paces, they can organize a charter school. The hiring of
> teachers and arrangement of the curriculum would be left to the organizing
> council, and lo! a charter school has been founded. There are about three
> thousand of these, 88,000 public schools, and the new federal program
> called No Child Left Behind anticipates a growth in the charter schools
> corresponding to the growth of the number of public schools that are shut
> down because they perform so poorly.