Washington state voters are getting ready to go the polls over an issue they\u2019ve voted down twice in recent years: the issue of charter schools.<\/p>\n
The legislature, in their infinite wisdom \u2013 and entirely against the will of the people \u2013 voted in a bill last session that would authorize charter schools (ESSHB 2295).<\/p>\n
Alarmed at this sneaky circumvention, charter school foes circulated petitions collecting over 150,000 signatures and were able to get Initiative 55 certified and on the ballot. Now Washington voters have what will hopefully be the final time to reject charter schools.<\/p>\n
So why are charter schools bad?<\/p>\n
Because basically, they don\u2019t work. Recent studies by the US Department of Education found charter school students lagging in reading and math scores.<\/p>\n
Another example is that in 1999-2000, 80% of the children in Texas public schools passed the Texas academic achievement tests while only 37% of charter school students passed the same test. In a 2002 study by the Texas Education Agency, it also found the dropout rate for charter schools was significantly higher \u2013 17.7% compared to 6.2% for all other public schools.<\/p>\n
Then in another study recently released by Duke University, they found that students in North Carolina\u2019s charter schools would have been better off if they had stayed in their traditional public school. http:\/\/www.dukenews.duke.edu\/news\/charter_0804.html<\/p>\n
There\u2019s been a lot of speculation over the causes of the charter school\u2019s poor performance.<\/p>\n
Many attribute the lower test scores to the fact that charter schools operate with less oversight and supervision than traditional public schools \u2013 they\u2019re not held accountable like public schools. And then financial problems and mismanagement have been big issues for charter schools and may well have probably played a part in the poor performance.<\/p>\n
As far as I\u2019m concerned, that\u2019s more than enough evidence to turn me off from charter schools.<\/p>\n
But even so, there are several other provisions in the proposed Washington law that give me different, more pressing problems.<\/p>\n
The first is that from the way the proposed law is set up, it strongly appears that the hidden agenda for charter schools is to circumvent unions.<\/p>\n
One provision makes it illegal for a charter school bargaining unit to be part of a local school district bargaining unit for five years \u2013 even if the employees were to vote unanimously in favor of that representation.<\/p>\n
Another provision states that in \u201cconversion\u201d charter schools \u2013 a former public school that is proposed to be converted to a charter school \u2013 the new charter school board may request \u201cvariances\u201d from the old school district collective bargaining agreement to address \u201cneeds that are specific to the charter school.\u201d<\/p>\n
Combine that with the fact that there\u2019s a provision that would allow the charter schools to use non-certificated teachers \u2013 as long as they\u2019re generally supervised by a certificated person.<\/p>\n
So what\u2019s this all add up to?<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know about you, but this tells me that the plan is for schools that use lower-paid, non-union, and quite possibly unqualified teachers \u2013 probably as a means to cut costs and \u201cmore effectively use your tax dollars.\u201d I find this very disturbing.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard enough to find qualified teachers right now \u2013 the starting salary in Washington state for teachers fresh out of college is only a little over $30,000 a year. Spend that same four years in college studying for a computer science degree, and your average starting pay jumps up to $49,000. Or for a chemical engineering degree, $52,000. Or accounting $42,000 a year. Or for another example, with nursing it jumps to $38,000 a year.<\/p>\n
Teacher\u2019s pay is already at the bottom.<\/p>\n
If you cut their pay more \u2013 which would almost certainly happen as a result of limiting the charter teachers bargaining rights \u2013 then the situation would become almost impossible.<\/p>\n
What kind of \u201ccut-rate\u201d teachers would work for less money than they\u2019re already getting? Perhaps the charters figure to hire illegal aliens as aides, janitors and secretaries to save even more dollars? Hey, it works for Wal-Mart. Maybe they\u2019ll trim a few dollars out of the school lunch budgets, too?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s no wonder the test scores are down!<\/p>\n
Clearly, charter schools are a very bad idea.<\/p>\n
Our children are our future. Let\u2019s not cut corners on their education.<\/p>\n
I hope everyone votes to reject referendum 55.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington state voters are getting ready to go the polls over an issue they\u2019ve voted down twice in recent years: the issue of charter schools. The legislature, in their infinite wisdom \u2013 and entirely against the will of the people \u2013 voted in a bill last session that would authorize charter schools (ESSHB 2295). Alarmed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}