Reply to WaPo opinion piece on charters

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Well, you should know that "charters do more with less" is a contested opinion.  DCPS funding is different in a lot of ways, and DCPS has the responsibility of taking kids who arrive mid-year, so their budgets are built for that-- charters can just turn them away.  And DCPS has the responsibility of maintaining an adequate education system for all kids for all time so has to be forward-looking and may make financial decisions around future capacity needs.  Also, even charters that serve low-income and at-risk kids as a primary demographic are still serving the easier of those kids and have various ways of pushing out the more difficult ones.  The "at-risk" category is large-- almost 50% of DC students-- and there is a lot of variation within it that isn't being captured by the study that Jay Mathews cites.  I'm no defender of DCPS, and I'm a charter parent myself, but I don't find this article very persuasive.  It's the same old Jay Mathews blah blah blah.

Our charter (ITS) has not offered my kids any more than DCPS friends are getting.  And they aren't offering anything like CARES for people who really need it.  So I would not say ITS is performing any better than DCPS.  Maybe the "resources and technology" are the same, but the kids served by the schools are not the same, and that matters a great deal.  [/quote]

OP here. Obviously you don’t have to answer, but given the above, why did you choose a charter?

We specifically chose to stay at our low-performing IB because we wanted to invest in our neighborhood school and contribute to making it better. But it feels like an uphill battle and in the meantime I worry constantly about my kids’ education. This year has been the cherry on the shit sundae.[/quote]

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