Blog Post # 4

The combination of my community service experience and my research paper topic has allowed me to see two opposing aspects of the charter school issue. I have been writing my research paper on a specific type of charter school (ones affiliated with EMOs and are generally considered ‘market oriented’) that are not accomplishing the intended goals of charter schools. At the same time, I am volunteering at the Next Step charter school, which is targeted towards helping a specific demographic and age group in the D.C. area. I would argue that while the EMO affiliated and ‘market oriented’ schools are an extremely negative presence in the DCPS and the more narrowly targeted schools such as Next Step are a positive one, neither of them promote competition with public schools. First of all, I do not believe that economic theory can be applied to a system like the DCPS that is so dysfunctional at this moment in time. If anything, I think that by recruiting so many students, charter schools are alleviating some of the pressure that traditional public schools are faced with. Right now, public schools seem to be incredibly over-crowded and overwhelmed by their numbers. The charter schools that do adapt progressive and innovative curricula and educational techniques do help small pockets of kids and that is a great thing, but in no way have they influenced their neighboring public schools. Even if the public schools wanted to ‘take a page from the charter school book,’ so to speak, they would not have the funding or administrative ability to do so. I believe that the specialized curricula that is used in smaller, more successful charter schools is very beneficial for those students, and preferable to the standardized curricula that many public schools use. However, in order to have specialized curricula, schools first need administration and teachers that are willing to devote the time and research to develop such things. Right now, many of the schools in the DCPS do not have the resources to even start a project like that. I think that specialized curricula for specific schools is very important and desirable, but there are more basic, pressing issues that need to be addressed first, before that can be put in place. In terms of parental influence on school choice, I don’t think one definite thing can be said about the matter. For the parents that do have the free time and education in their background that would enable them to make that sort of decision, yes, they should be allowed to choose where their children go to school. However, a large portion of the kids attending schools in the DCPS come from families with low incomes and it can be assumed that their parents are receiving low wages and working long hours and therefore do not have the time or ability to provide input on the matter. If we are to think in the best interests for all of the kids within the DCPS, I think that in addition to allowing parents who want to be involved have a say, we should also make sure that the people who are supervising the public schools are informed enough to help families plan and make these decisions.