Charter schools were originally intended to be community-run — created and maintained by parents, teachers, etc. But it’s really hard to operate a school, so organizations such as KIPP, Envision, Edison, Aspire, etc. seem to wind up running most of them. They function as unelected school boards, answerable to no one and entirely undemocratic. And that’s without even getting into the grand plans of the Billionaire Boys’ Club for imposing their own plans on our public education system.

The original vision behind the charter school concept has been corrupted by these interests.

Like this chart for instance:

http://www.hoover.org/publications/ednext/18845034.html

Then you must take into consideration how diverse California is as compared to other states, we teach a lot more EL students than any other state, and so on.

Are we perfect? NO, definately not, but these teachers are doing a very good job, while getting trashed in the media every day(this has resulted in a false public perception).If you repeat a lie enough times, it is treated as if it is the truth, and that can never be allowed to happen in the best country in the world.

You are so right! That is exactly why the traditional schools do badly. I agree with you 100%.

aviation is struggling, as are many others. i will admit that i don’t like pointing the finger at struggling charters because with our public schools having a difficult time keeping up, it seems unfair to call the kettle black.

the charter schools that seem to do the best with their kids- and in ways beyond test scores- are the ones that are linked to established families of schools. aspire, kipp, and leadership schools (not related to the leadership high at castlemont) come to mind as having created successful frameworks that support the whole child and are also generally accepting of most children- special ed, english language learners, all colors.

CHARTER (9-12) VS. DISTRICT

PERCENT ENROLLMENT BY ETHNICITY 2008-09
African American: 28.6 vs. 34.8.
Asian: 6.9 vs. 13.4
Latino: 56.6 vs. 37.3
White: 2.5 vs. 6.5
Multiple or no response: 3.6 vs. 5.8

PERCENT ENROLLMENT FOR OTHER SUBGROUPS 2008-09
Socioeconomic disadvantage: 68.5 vs. 64.0
English Learners: 21.8 vs. 30.0
Students w/disabilities: 2.6 vs. 10.0

The district-wide API for students w/disabilities is 470. The district-wide API for all students is 674. If regular OUSD schools have approximately 3.8 times the number of students w/disabilities that charters do, take a wild guess at how their API’s will be affected.

The charter schools which have a total of 2247 students in grades 9-12 for this school year (12710 total in district) are American Indian Public HS, Arise HS, Bay Tech, East Oakland Leadership Academy, Lighthouse Comm. Charter HS, LPS College Park, Millsmont Academy Secondary, Oakland Aviation HS, Oakland Charter Academy High, Oakland Military Institute College Prep, Oakland School for the Arts, Oakland Unity High, Oasis High, and Wilson College Prep. I didn’t include Civicorp Academy, an ungraded, high school recovery program for ages 18-24.

American Indian Public HS, Arise HS, Oakland Charter Academy High, and Oasis High had zero students w/disabilities according to DataQuest’s most recent STAR reporting.

Thanks to all for being in attendance that evening. We had over 80 people in the audience and I believe some important issues were raised. We are planning to have a follow-up debate/discussion sometime in May. In terms of Dr. Chavis, he apologized (and I announced that evening) that since he was friends with two of the officers, he attended their memorial instead. He will definitely be at the next debate in May.

i absolutely will not deny that the quality of the education at the charter schools is awesome.

Despite all that creaming, the bountiful checks from the Billionaire Boys’ Club, the support of the well-funded charter establishment in other ways, and the puffy press they so often get (present company excepted, Katy), many charters are very unsuccessful academically, and their test scores show it.

It’s not really amusing, for example, but my attention was caught a few years ago by a gushing piece in the San Francisco Chronicle on that aviation charter school in Oakland. The school hadn’t opened yet, but the reporter predicted that it would be an academic success, and quoted a future student who said he expected to do very well there in the future. (The possibilities this opens up to news reporting on events that haven’t happened yet are intriguing…) The outrageousness of that news reporting struck me so forcefully that I haevn’t forgotten it, so I did look up the school, and to stick with the aviation metaphor, its test scores have crashed and burned. (Hmm, I wonder if the former reporter now works for the wealthier-than-God charter school industry, a route other education reporters have taken.)

anyway, just need to dispel the notion that charter schools are doing so great. Overall, they do no better than traditional public schools.