Last week’s State Board of Education (SBE) decision to penalize charter schools whose staffs lack the sufficient number of certified teachers is more evidence of the education establishment’s war on charter schools. New penalties for schools that fail to meet requirements could include withholding state dollars from charter school directors as well as the highest and second highest non-certified teachers (Does this seem heavy-handed only to me?). If noncompliance persists, schools may be recommended for closure. SBE seems committed to making sure any charter school that strays too far from the officially prescribed beliefs about who should be able to teach in our schools will certainly pay.
SBE has successfully managed to ignore an ever-growing body of research that only confirms what we’ve suspected for a long time: There is NO LINK between teacher certification and student achievement. Undeterred by the facts, the education establishment presses on. I only wish SBE’s zealous quest for “accountability” and desire to close low performing charter schools applied to the other 96 percent of public schools in North Carolina.
Can we withhold state funds from the two least effective public schools?
Oh, I forgot: The DPI’s solution for poorly performing public schools is to cry out that they need MORE money.
I know that this is not a news flash, but the DPI definitely appears to have a vendetta against any sort of private action undertaken to educate children, either in home schools or charters.
As a charter school teacher and administrator for the past 9 years I applaud the school board’s decisions last week. I wholehartedly believe in the charter school program, however, only if they truly are serving our children in the best possible way. Unfortunately, many of these low performing charter schools are hurting our kids due to lack of educational experience/know how. It is these schools that give charter schools in general a bad name – if we can improve them or get rid of the ones that don’t serve their kids needs – we can prove that effectively run charter schools are a benefit therfore keeping charter schools in NC.