Reply to Are charters keeping you in DC - or are they holding back your neighborhood DCPS?

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[quote=Anonymous]I'm a PP who's only been here for "10 minutes" so what do I know, but it seems the answers are more nuanced than the either/or question posed would suggest at this point in time.  The existence of charters may have had different effects in different areas of the city at different times, and it may depend on the charter.  I said up-thread that the immersion and Montessori charters do not seem to compete directly with our neighborhood school, which has neither focus.  However, I remember hearing about a new STEM-focused charter that's setting up right across the street from a DCPS school with the same STEM focus--that would definitely seem to have the effect of undermining enrollment in the DCPS school, even if not intended.

I think people are right in stating that the advent of charters made it necessary for DCPS to step up its game in order to compete for students--so in that sense, charters have helped DCPS over the past decade.  As a result, many DCPS schools now have higher test scores, more attractive programs/curricula, and increasing IB attendance.  It would be interesting to know what would happen if charters were now phased out--would DCPS continue to improve and would buy-in from higher SES families continue to increase, or would that just lead to renewed flight to the suburbs?  Not sure if anyone knows the answer to that.

In any case, I sort of agree with the education official who said in a WaPo article last year that the charter/DCPS balance is just about right.  I do think that better charter-DCPS coordination is needed in the future so that the relationship is more symbiotic vs. competitive (although there will always be some competition inherent in the relationship).
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