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Are charter schools good for our children?
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Charter schools have changed the face of education in Michigan and across the nation.
These schools are for students or families who would like a government funded option to the traditional public schools.
Are charter schools good or bad? There are many different opinions on this topic.
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Many of the 93,892 Michigan students who attend charter schools love the option, as do many educators.
“Charter schools are an experiment that has been phenomenally successful,” Tom Horne, the Arizona Department of Education Schools Superintendent, said in an article on Charter Schools Monthly.
Yet many powerful people in the public school systems have done everything they can do to stop charter schools from opening, and to convince others that they lack quality or accountability.
Of course charter schools have accountability. While many charter schools are great, some have been closed for not performing. Doesn’t the closing of non-performing schools demonstrate the accountability of the system?
Have you ever seen a public school closed for non-performance?
In fact, effective performance is the most important factor in the future success of the charter school movement.
“With financing growing tighter and state funds shrinking, access to money will increasingly hinge on charter schools’ ability to demonstrate quality in academic achievement, leadership, and management.” says JanKrygier of Charter School Monthly.
Effective charter schools in failing districts such as Detroit offer options and hope for many children.
A few years ago, retired suburban philanthropist Bob Thompson offered $200 million to build 15 charter high schools in Detroit. These schools would guarantee to graduate 90 percent of their students.
Yet the community turned Thompson down, as they felt that he was “a white meddler out to steal their children,” according to Nolan Finley of the Detroit News.
“They were joined in their absurdity by Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who threw their lot in with the teacher union.”
A few years later, Detroit is officially the worst big city school district in the nation, and its finances will be taken over by the state of Michigan. Yet the governor and Democratic lawmakers are still refusing to life the cap on charter schools, and the state House just passed a law protecting DPS from competition.
Even a group of Detroit teachers are pleading for the chance to remake a school under the successful Green Dot model.
Thompson hasn’t given up.
He had already opened University Prep Academy, and he's working on a math and science school as well as an art school.
The Henry Ford Academy: School for Creative Studies stands to become a model for education as an engine of urban economic development and minority outreach.
This combination middle school and high school “gives hope for parents desperate to find alternatives instead of despair over the broken Detroit Public Schools,” according to Daniel Howes of the Detroit News.
Thompson told Howe in an interview: "The biggest challenge I can think of is inner city kids in Detroit and an education for those kids. We think we're making a difference, a measurable difference, and to me that's very important."
For more information, see: Detroit blew chance for school rescue and New school gives hope for the future
The Henry Ford Academy: School for Creative Studies
The Henry Ford Academy: School for Creative Studies
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