Reply to Abbott elementary takes on the Charter School Movement

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]In a lot of places, charter schools are a tool used to undermine, defund, discredit, and in many ways, destroy public education.

In DC, this is NOT the case. If you're posting here, on a DC parents forum, and are posting a non-nuanced, complete rejection of charter schools, you better have a kid who is currently at or has already graduated from, an EOTP DCPS middle school. Or you have no idea what actual parents who live in the majority of DC are actually dealing with. Send your kid to Cardozo Middle School, then we'll talk.

Charter schools, and in particular, the DC Public Charters, are not a panacea, neither all they all together bad. For parents, for integration, for equity, for students, and for the district as a whole. DC schools face an enormous numbers of challenges, and to respond to the current system with "Charters = Bad" is woefully narrow-minded, and given the demographics of DCUM comes with HUGE privilege. [/quote]

Why are charters in DC immune from what you describe in your first sentence? What’s different about DC?[/quote]

PP here. Excellent question! I don't believe we are immune, certainly it's something to watch out for. And I'm not an expert, I'll be the first to point out. But here's my take on why this is a bit different:

1) Charter schools were not a scheme to defund DCPS, and they were not born out of an unwillingness to fully fund DC public education. When charter schools were first introduced in DC, DCPS spent more per pupil than just about any other school system in the country and still had absolutely abysmal results. This was not a case where people said "we don't want to give them money, what else can we do?" This was, "we have money and it's still awful"
2) Geographically, DC is in a tough spot, because it's relatively easy for parents to move out of the school system. Arlington is a lot closer to downtown than a lot of DC! MD and VA are right there. So essentially, the population of school age children was dramatically lower than you would expect, and lower than it was in a lot of cities. 
3) Irrelevant of motivations, the actual result of the introduction of charter schools has been to turn around the trend of plummeting enrollment in DC public schools. Having public charter school options for later grades, combined with free PK3 and 4 (which also keeps parents from moving to MD and VA, and I would say actually has had an even bigger impact on DC schools turning around) makes more parents likely to give their neighborhood elementary schools a try. Lots of neighborhood elementaries have actually seen big improvements in performance and enrollment as more families with resources have stayed in the district.

Like I said, this is very nuanced. I'm probably getting some details wrong, too. But if all charters in DC are bad and should be shutdown - that would have devastating negative effects on public education in DC, and so those of us who do live EOTP, like me, can get defensive when other people who have only heard stories from other places, come in with their CHARTER = EVIL narrative.[/quote]

This is a good analysis, especially for W6. As far as I understand the history, charters like Latin, Yu Ying, and TR started keeping families on the Hill starting in the early 2000s. As more families stayed on the Hill, neighborhood DCPS enrollment increased too. [/quote]

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