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KS,

Your reference to Haven Academy proves the point that opponents of charters schools – who, by the way, oppose them from an institutional and public policy perspective, not opposition to any one particular school, charter parents or teachers – are trying to make above the din of pro-charter propaganda and PR in the mainstream media: that they are creating a separate-and-unequal tier of schools that receive public and private subsidies denied to public school students.

The NY Times article you referred to states that:

– the school has a “support services coordinator” for the at-risk students who attend. It
sounds great: too bad neighborhood public schools are denied similar services. Why
can’t Eli Broad, Bill Gates, the New Schools Venture Funders, et. al. provide that to
the public schools? Where’s your personal outrage over the denial of such services to
public school kids over the decades? Your outrage is highly selective, focusing mostly on
teachers, and dovetails with the anti-teacher propaganda of the past generation.

– according to the Times, the after-school program includes Alvin Ailey Dance, Hip-Hop
dance, African drumming, Violin, voice and academic tutoring. Why is it that charters
get preference for such funding? Aren’t these services that all children could benefit from?

– the school offers evening workshops for parents, a good thing. How about providing it
to everyone who needs it?

– the school provides customized transportation. Nice, if you can get it: unfortunately,
most kids don’t.

No one is contesting the fact that there are good charter schools run by dedicated people (although there are also charters run by incompetents, sociopaths and scammers). That has never been the point, which is that they are at best a diversion from the necessary hard work and expense of educating all children. Instead, they provide life vests for the lucky few.

At their best, charter schools are an unacknowledged form of social and educational triage; at their worst, they are a wedge to privatize the public sphere, destroy the labor standards and professional autonomy that teachers have struggled to achieve over decades, and marketize every last nook and cranny of American life.

KS,

Well, apropos other comments, since you couldn’t figure out what teachers “tithing themselves” meant, it’s to be expected that you don’t know, or more likely refuse to understand, the meaning of “triage.”

Try a dictionary; it’s a useful thing.

Charter schools work, and those that don’t, get closed by the DOE much faster than failing public schools do. With that being said, what is the problem and why negative attitudes about charter schools? Parents need options, and WANT options. Options that they don’t need to pay $15,000 + a year for (private schools).

I will correct my previous comment and state that while the DOE hasn’t closed any schools yet, the reason being most of them work, those that don’t are at risk of being closed much quicker than district schools.
ENY Prep has only been open for four years and is most likely going to be closed for things that have been going on in certain public schools for many years. At least with district schools, other attempts such as changing the management are tried first. And as for NO charter schools in all of NY being closed. THAT statement is not factual. John A. Reisenbach Charter School in Harlem and ReadNet Charter School in the Bronx are just two examples of many charter schools that have been closed. Charters have other entities to answer to on top of the DOE.