Soon Tennessee's legislature will decide whether to extend the life of charter schools. They would do well to put this experiment to rest and allow the law to expire.
Charter schools began as early as 1991 and were an attempt to let for-profit businesses take a crack at running schools. The movement really began to take off about 10 years ago and today, there is no clear indication that charter schools are any more successful than public schools. What has happened is that about $1.4 billion in public money has been put into private hands, meaning fewer funds were available to publicly-financed schools.
Charter schools are a bad idea for no other reason than the people running them have profit as their primary motivation rather than the successful education of students. If the results are no better than public schools, they argue that they need more time to get the formula right. That's nonsense.
We've been educating children for hundreds of years. While society and the amount of knowledge has changed, we have a good idea about how to go about the process. Education is not in trouble because we don't know how to teach children. It's in trouble because of what happens outside the classroom and those issues are beyond the responsibility of public or private schools.
In neighborhoods were people are affluent and free of concerns about job security, health care and other issues affecting basic family stability, children show up at school ready to learn. Public schools are quite successful there.
But in areas where poverty rates are high, bringing with them more crime, poor housing and other social ills, schools struggle to have an impact. It's not that the teachers are worse, it's that the children face so many more distractions.
Charter schools are not the solution and bleeding money away from public schools, especially at a time when state budgets are tight makes no sense.
Investing money in a higher quality of life will pay off in higher grades, higher graduation rates and a stronger Nashville. Charter schools are only a distraction from the real work that is needed.
-- Jim Grinstead
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