Read an Excerpt
Why Are So Many People Upset with the Public Schools?
Are You the Alternative?
Let me be candid. Traditional public schools are in deep trouble. Deserved or not, parents are turning from their neighborhood schools like never before. The widespread disenchantment has fueled what I believe will become a major accountability revolution in American education. Charter schools are the first significant movement of that revolution. The concept has spread through the nation and with it a debate that, along with vouchers, has become national, reaching even to the presidential level. Because of the perceived failure of the public school system and because of its lack of accountability, education is perhaps the hottest political issue in America. Make no mistake about it, the charter school movement and its legislation are about ACADEMIC ACCOUNTABILITY. Everything said in this book is about reaching that goal, for if charter schools do not improve the results of publicly funded schools, there is no point in them.
In order to understand why so many people are turning to alternative education for their children, you, the potential creator of a charter school, first need to understand what went wrong with the public schools which in turn will equip you to avoid their mistakes and aspire to replace them.
To be sure, some charter schools were not established from angry disenchantment with the public schools but rather from a creative desire to establish an alternative school, exploring the ideas of new methodologies, curricula, and governance. But the vast majority of charter schools are the result of the profound parental disenchantment and anger over the schools they find their children obliged to attend.
As a lifelong public school advocate, I find this profoundly sad, for the public school system was and still is the great backbone of American democracy. The transformation of the American public school from the postwar era to the new millennium in a sense reflects the dramatic changes in all of the other aspects of our lives. But, unlike the miraculous changes for the better in such areas as medicine, technology, standard of living, and human rights, the changes we have witnessed in K-12 education, in all but the best of schools, have, in all candor, been abysmal. What in the name of God has happened? Why are so many people willing, indeed anxious, to leave our public schools for private and charter schools, and what is there in the story that can help you avoid the same mistakes?
The dramatic decline of our educational system really caught even those of us most committed to it totally by surprise. Our most ardent supporters, the parents who happily attended public schools themselves, began sensing a decade ago that there was something profoundly wrong with their children's public schools, yet, now reflecting back, I realize that for years they resisted believing that this--their most treasured American institution--was failing. It's strangely like the discovery that the baseball hero they all idolized had suddenly become an over-the-hill has-been. It was painful to watch their idol's stumbles, so they pretended not to notice, for it signaled the beginning of the end of the very special unspoken bond they had formed with him. Almost a covenant.
