For three years now, I have been a charter school employee. In all three years, I have been happy to have a job. I got my start in this profession, in a time when obtaining a teaching job straight out of college is virtually impossible unless you have a relative in a school district who can put in a good word for you. There are thousands of applicants for some positions, and trying to separate yourself from that mass is a difficult task indeed. So, let me say that I am happily employed.
Yet, teaching in a charter school setting creates a massive internal conflict for me. I have known about the charter school concept since No Child Left Behind was passed, when I read that public schools with bad test scores had three years to turn around the school or the public school could become a charter school. After a few years, I did a research project in college, and found that many charter schools are started by billionaires. I thought it was odd for these people to get in on public education. A few years past this revelation, I came to the realization that the entire charter school institution was meant to be run like a business, with the profit-line being the ultimate indicator of success in education, and that charter schools could accept or reject whatever students they choose. This creates a need for charter schools to get the best test scores by any means possible, and often denying people based solely on the potential dip the student may have on the overall test score grade for the school. This goes against the foundation of public education: all students are accepted into the school. In a public school, it doesn’t matter who the student is or what that student’s background is; all students are brought into the school, with the expectation that they will learn.
Charter education is a way for business people to tap into a public entity that has “stolen” a potential money flow from profiteers since the inception of the public school system. Teaching at one of these schools is like taking a crowbar to my heart. Not to mention, I get about $4,000 less per year than a district employee, work an hour longer school day and three week longer school year. The students watch their neighborhood friends play during the summer as they have to head back into school and suffer heat exhaustion while trying to learn about constructing a sentence with both a subject and a predicate. The charter system is awful for all parties except the profiteers.
Brian Jones is a man whom I have read about many times in the past few months. He has illuminated many issues in education, but this speech that he has on charter schools being a racist institution completely opened my eyes to the trend in U.S. education of setting up a charter school to promote segregation. This is a long speech, but if you have time, I would suggest watching it.
http://wearemany.org/v/still-separate-still-unequal-racism-class-and-attack-on-public-education
Human Beings and Fish 