The students are top-notch, the staff a joy to work with, the teachers are all high-quality, and we have super IT people on staff. I get so tired of hearing how charter schools are put down....yes there may be some bad ones. but public schools can also have rotten apples...and it is why public schools are crying for teachers. Many public school teachers are leaving because 85% of their jobs are fighting with obnoxious, disrespectful. foul-mouthed. smart-ass kids....thank goodness not where I teach.

As are some other charters.

My argument is that public school money is being taken and given to charters that are mostly run by private companies.

Look up White Hat schools in Ohio. They are claiming the public schools and all that goes with them as their own property.

Our nation is supposed to educate everyone even the "obnoxious, disrespectful. foul-mouthed. smart-ass kids." as you call them.

Sorry you are tired of hearing about it, but many teachers and parents and students are living the pain of charter rejection all because of the need for high test scores.

If there are no publicly funded "public" schools left, where will the charter schools send their rejects???

where we are required by law to teach everyone, I'm horrified by your characterization of grade school students. I wonder where your 85% statistic came from? All charter schools have the luxury of picking and choosing their students. That is why you have no "obnoxious, disrespectful. foul-mouthed. smart-ass kids." Your attitude is one of the many reasons why we need to halt the advance of the for-profit charter system.

They yanked their charter. They hid behind another....and got caught again.
just bleeding public dollars to privatize our school system.

....the rest are left in underfunded and forgotten public schools? Sounds like a recipe for societal disaster.

....how anyone can think the whole charter school paradigm is a good plan, I have no idea. Except for those making a buck off of it I guess.

Because this is supposed to be a place where "liberty and justice" are "for all."

Wait until you're too expensive to keep, and your lack of tenure, seniority, and job protection land you in an even lower paying catholic school, or in the unemployment line.

You are short-sighted, and these politicians are counting on it.

Democracy depends on an educated, informed electorate. Public schools are our only hope.

smart ass kids live in poverty and come from homes with alcoholic abusive parents. My husband was one of them. Sending him to public alternative school was the best thing they could have done with him because they cared about him. They gave him the attention he needed. They believed in him. They helped him when no one else would, and he graduated when even the principal at the regular school told him he would amount to nothing. It is our public school systems that fail those kids, not the kids. And the public school systems would be able to do better by them if they had the resources to have smaller classes, higher paid teachers, and allowed teachers more control over the curriculum.

You and your for-profit schools cherrypick the best kids from the public schools and call the rest of the taxpayers' children names. I question your professionalism. And I question your CEO's integrity. Charter schools are no different than Enron and your comment about the kids who attend public schools remind me of the way Enron employees made fun of Grandma Mildred while they ripped off the ratepayers in California.

Shame on you!

a comment like this on a "progressive" website, written by a "progressive" member. I find it repulsive, especially coming from a teacher.

Thanks!

there may be a problem.

....the administration as they find positions post-Obama.

Not sure about Bernie's stance yet, not even sure he has one. But Hillary and the Republicans most likely will continue the privatization of public schools.

....some are good, some are bad. Public schools are not all good - some are good, some are bad.

There's good and bad in all aspects of life.

There is good and bad in every school and school system.

However the biggest difference is that when a kid goes to charter school, the money goes with him. No, it doesn't mean the public school has one less student...it means they are losing money.

The public schools teach everyone, even the terrible kids described in a post above.

The charter schools don't have to keep anyone they don't think meets their standards. They send them back to public school often humiliated, BUT I have not heard of any public schools getting their money back when the kid comes back.

They are giving PUBLIC resources to PRIVATE companies.

Like has happened here in DE several times. The school is shut down (usually because of fiscal mismanagement or gross malfeasance on the part of staff, and those kids are sent back to public schools which have to take them, but they get no money for those students.

It's like throwing up our hands and giving up on true public education. What it does do is use the taxpayers dime to perpetuate the system of haves and have nots while enriching a few insiders.

If they're so great, then they should be funded independently and should be required to provide and maintain their own facilities, equipment, materials, staff, and faculty.

When a charter school tried to latch onto my own small town's already low-income public school, the would-be parasite disclosed that it would be using the buses, the nurse, and some of the grounds and equipment belonging to the public school.

If public schools have one problem, it sure as hell ain't an overabundance of funds. Anything that takes even more money away from public schools is a terrible idea.

As noted above, the charter schools take the best students, refuse the rest, and then point at the public schools and say, "look, those teachers suck." The end game is to completely do away with public schools, and make sure that the billionaires take 20% or more of the entire national education budget. At the end we'll have the most expensive, and worst quality, education in the world, just like our healthcare.

State Education Codes. A state has almost no control over the learning process and facilities. How long before the FBI is stretched too thin with way to many business to investigate? Mean while there is no State over sight on the student's education process.

Conservative state legislatures and therefore, legislators are going to privatize education big time if a corporatist is elected to the highest office in 2016. IMO, the Secretary of Education appointee will move to assign a voucher to every child, so that the property of the public school district will be legally given over to or confiscated by the charter business.

Vouchers will be forced on Texans in the 2017 Texas Legislature even though the public is against the privatization by the state conservative government. The 4 year term of the GOP elected state official Dan Patrick will not end until 2018 after he runs herd over Texans. Well Texans voted for him in 2014 knowing that vouchers were turned down before in the 2011 and 2013 state legislatures. If the 2016 election completely removes all democrats, Vouchers will destroy public education in Texas by the 2017 legislature. What a shock to all those Red voters who do not pay attention.

Give parents the money from the public coffers to send their little ones to religious private schools. Ultimate destruction of public education.

He spent more time working on his jump shot for NBA All Star games than as Secretary of Education

under his watch more charter school and failed schools

If a corporation wants to run private schools, have at it! Go for it, you know, free market, yadda, yadda. I don't understand how these so called free market freaks feel they have a right to taxpayer money for their businesses. If they can educate kids better, they should convince parents of that, charge tuition and do it. Many private schools do a fine job, taking very little if any taxpayer money. Corporate influence in public school systems around the country is not, and in my opinion, never will be a good thing.
For profit education is like for profit prisons and for profit health care; a disaster waiting to happen.

Money that is taken from out public schools and given to private corporations or churches.