Friday, February 11, 2011

'Ridiculous' and Unfruitful Polarizing (By Dr. Cindy Petersen)

(Repost of Blog entry By Dr. Cindy Petersen of Gateway Community Charters, a fellow PUBLIC school choice advocate!  Great post and an accurate assessment of what is going on today.)

On Thursday of this week while attending the ACSA Leadership Summit in San Diego, I had the opportunity to listen to research professor and writer Diane Ravitch. While I can admire her intellect and her willingness to stand up for what she believes, I must say it was a difficult listen. Speakers, researchers and writers are often theorists and observers, not practitioners. They have a motivation to be sensational and to over dramatize in order to create overboard generalizations and to accentuate their point. I was disappointed that Dr. Ravitch fit into this category. Tallying up her over emphasized use of the words ‘this is ridiculous’ kept me busy though not entertained. When will we learn that polarization will not provide answers? When have ‘us’ vs. ‘they’ helped create anything valuable? As a charter school operator I agree that Waiting for Superman is entertaining and mostly one-sided, but I think that was their stated intent – to show a view of the parents and students wanting the best possible chance at success through a quality education program – and the fact that in some areas not all children have that choice. (Note: they had tried to include at least one high achieving traditional public school but were denied access). Is it then any less one-sided for Dr. Ravitch to then badmouth all charters as being the downfall of the public school system? To have her suggest that all charter schools ‘skim or cream’ students? To use extreme cases such as a story of a charter school where the education cost per child is $35,000 annually? To speak only in terms of privatization - the destruction of the public school system and corporations taking over school systems? These examples don’t in any way speak to the breadth of what is happening in charter schools across the United States.

Parents in communities like Harlem can’t wait for the traditional public school system to find a way to create quality school choice. Their children’s time to be educated is now and their chance to gain the academic outcomes that predicate life success is slowly passing by - one public school school day at a time. Parents everywhere, Harlem or Sacramento, want better schools for their children, better opportunities. Charter schools can be part of the answer and help create a portfolio of options that ensure that all students have access to a quality education. Charter schools are not the demise of the public school system. But they are and continue to be a leveraging point to create dialogue, reform, choice, impetus to initiate change and the ability to provide a quality education for many.

My opinion and I welcome yours as well is that regardless whether a school is labeled a charter school or a traditional district school, I suggest that we focus on creating solutions rather than polarizing speeches. Each moment that goes by more and more children are losing their time/their chance to have a quality education while adults create arguments and dissent.

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