We Are Not Getting the Job Done
By “we” this time I mean the nation’s education reporters, pundits, bloggers, commentators, policy analysts, etc. The latest evidence is a Gallup poll that shows 64% of U.S. adults support charter schools. The results are mitigated by the fact that more than half of the respondents didn’t know charters are public schools, 57 percent thought they charge tuition, and 71 percent didn’t know charters are barred from cherry-picking students.
We’ve seen similar survey results in the past regarding NCLB, teacher pay and education spending. It’s either a reflection of the mounting ignorance and apathy of the American public about education policy, or a bad case of insularity in the education policy community. Neither answer speaks well of how we’re doing our work. Until we reach and inform the majority of Americans who do not – or no longer – have children in the public schools, we will continue to have a public education system designed primarily for “stakeholders” (and I don’t mean parents).
Ignorance may be bliss, but it’s also very expensive.
August 26th, 2009 at 08:44
Yes, the press falls down on the job – not for failing to explicitly lay out Charters 101, but because they take story lines from the public schools unfiltered, never challenging premises. How many different stories about “our public school won’t play sports against that charter school, because they’re taking our money away from us”? Or other stories about how charters drain funds from the local district?
If the press would frame these properly, the public would catch on soon enough – but it would cause displeasure with their district/union sources, so it’s not going to happen.
August 29th, 2009 at 10:03
The FBI raided a charter school in Philadelphia this week investigating misappropriation of funds. This got good press in Philly, but I have not seen much press about it from the Edu-Changers on the net.