On Sat, Mar 22, 2008 at 12:42:51AM -0400, Vitaliy wrote:
> James Newton wrote:
> > If you realize that your children's education is YOUR responsibility, you
> > will do what you can to make up for the time they waste in public school,
> > even if you do not have the ability to use that time. Take the time you DO
> > have and put it to use teaching them to love learning about the subjects
> > they have an interest in.
> 
> Thanks for the personal story James, it's always easier when you know that
> somebody has done it before. :)
> 
> I understand and agree with what you're saying, it's just that I've always
> been frustrated with things that are wasteful and inefficient. I think about
> how much better things could be if school time was actually used for
> learning. This trait has gotten me in trouble more than once, and I'm slowly
> starting to learn to "accept that which I cannot change", instead of trying
> to fight it. The problem is, sometimes it's difficult to know what that
> "that" is. :-)

Now Vitaliy, don't get frustrated and give up on the process. I have always
agreed with you that the public school system needs to change. Our point of
disagreement is how to change it so that the most efficient and effective
solutions for educating the vast majority of the populus emerges.

Here in Georgia, laws have been passed where entire school systems can be
chartered, effictively removing them from state and local school system
control, yet still receiving federal, state, and local funding. The City of
Decatur school system in the Metro Atlanta area is considering such a
change. Here's an excerpt from a quickly Gargoyled post that I found on the
subject:

http://www.city-data.com/forum/atlanta/175227-what-exactly-charter-school.html
-----------------------------------------------
Decatur would be relieved of many of the regulations imposed by the state
of Georgia in exchange for greater accountability standards. Decatur is a
really small system with a lot of innovative programs, and some of the
regulations that come down from the state don't work well in a small school
system environment. Decatur shouldn't have a problem with the increased
accountability b/c they are high performing. Unfortunately, Decatur would
still be subject to NCLB and other federal laws.

For example, at the high school level, Decatur is looking at implementing a
credit recovery program that it has been using successfully in conjunction
with Ben Franklin Academy. They also want to look at some high school
programs whereby students can demonstrate proficiency in a class and be
able to move on to the next class instead of being stuck in the classroom
doing "seat time." We have a lot of gifted ID'd kids and a lot of kids with
extensive foreign language experience (Decatur kids take foreign language
every day beginning in K) who could easily exempt out of certain classes
and move on were it not for state regs.

There are many other things that they may or may not look at, such as
allowing 5th grade teachers to loop to middle school with their kids to
ease that transition. You cannot do this without a waiver or charter status
b/c of certification issues.

Each school in the charter system would be a charter school, but the
schools would all be linked by commonalities in operations, pedagogy, etc.
Each school would have greater autonomy but still would have to operate
within the charter system.

The charter system law is quite different from the charter school law,
particularly with regard to finances. A charter system is funded in the
same way that a regular system is so a charter system is in a much more
stable situation financially than is a charter school. The only difference
is that a charter system can also get additional grant money that is not
available to regular systems.
----------------------------------------------

This is a move in the right direction, except I'm not sure how such a
system will handle unproductive and problem children that are living within
the charter district.

But that movement is in political danger. I found the article I read last
week here:

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/dekalb/stories/2008/03/11/charter_0311.html

The squabble is over which level of government, local or state, has the
right to allocate funds to charter schools within a district.

If you feel like some legalese, the actual bill can be found here:

http://www.legis.state.ga.us/legis/2007_08/fulltext/hb881.htm

Should charter schools be authorized by the state of which the local school
board does not approve? Especially when that charter school will receive
funds from the local tax base?

I'm not sure.

Point is that there is some movement relative to the traditional public
school system model. However even after reading that bill it's unclear to
me what responsibilities charter schools have to weak or unruly students.

BAJ
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