Letters: Charter schools not the same

Chas Roemer is paraphrased, in The Advocate, as saying, charter schools should be given flexibility, and then be held accountable. How are charter schools held accountable? There are no consequences to the failing schools. If public schools fail: Boards are not voted back in; superintendents are fired; voters don’t renew taxes; and the state takes over the school.

When a charter school fails: Do they pay back the millions of dollars they took from the state? Does anyone go to jail if a student is found hanging from school bleachers? Is someone required to put in community service hours to help students because they are now further behind than before?

When a charter school fails, the state simply takes the school away with no consequences.

If a construction company is hired to build a road and fails, they face fines. The state doesn’t take the contract away and say, “OK, you didn’t build the road so we will let someone else do it.” There are consequences.

Roemer calls it “flexibility” to try new things; it should be called permission to feed at the public trough at our children’s expense. Corrective action with consistent and conscientious oversight of all charter schools should be required. An oversight clause in every charter school contract is needed so that removal of the contract can occur at any time if warranted by consistent evaluations of failure. Make the charter schools pay consequences for their failure and hold them truly accountable. Children should not be experimented on without careful oversight.

In addition Roemer is purported to have said some who even lack an undergraduate degree could do a good job in the classroom.

Many people could try to do a good job being a doctor. However, only a moron would want a doctor who had no experience or education. If such a person exists, then let the charter school pay for this person to get the credentials and certification before experimenting with our children.

One may compare certification in teaching to licensing in other professions. Would Roemer want someone repairing the plumbing in his home without certification/license?

Why do we allow our children to receive less respect than what we insist on when we have our hair cut?

Roemer insults the training, dedication and teachers who have put in years of college and more years of ongoing training by the suggestion that they can be replaced with anyone off the street.

Roemer owes all certified teachers an apology and needs to take another look at controlling these charter schools before we find many more students hanging from bleachers.

Brent Beatty

teacher

Baton Rouge

Comments

1) Comment by vicwill - 27/06/2012

MBW, Lee High was closed by EBR due to poor performance in an effort to prevent it from being taken over by the state. A school that continues to perform poorly is usually taken over by the state or a charter agency. These groups come in and pretty much clear everything out. Looking at the performance of charter schools in BR(the ones with open admissions), it didn't seem like those schools really improved much under the control of the state or a charter group. And several schools in BR were taken over by the state.

2) Comment by MBW - 26/06/2012

According to Brent Beatty, a school losing its charter and being forced to shut down is not "holding it accountable"? Name a single traditional school that has EVER been shut down due to poor performance...I dare you. The typical response in traditional schools is to make 1-2 symbolic firings, change a few titles, and then keep going. The state rarely takes over a school...and even then, there's little evidence that it helps when they do.

3) Comment by ByGeorge - 26/06/2012

Several points: 1) I live in Tangi. The quality of Tangi’s schools is in no way correlated with the individuals elected to sit on Tangi’s school board and the statement that elections serve as a check on failing public schools is absurd. In almost all parishes in this state, who sits on the school board in that parish is all about politics and that parish’s failing schools are all about the status-quo. 2) When traditional public schools fail do they pay back the millions of dollars they took from the state? Does anyone go to jail when students are found hanging from the bleachers? Charter schools are public schools. This will not be the last time I make this statement. 3) God help us…. the construction worker and doctor analogies again. Are these required teacher talking points? Have these been focus grouped? With parents? I can’t believe it! 4) “Corrective action with consistent and conscientious oversight of all charter schools should be required.” Yes, of course. What boogey-man is saying otherwise? No one! No one has the position that charter schools – which are public schools should be inconsistently and unconscientiously overseen. Yet this letter claims someone is out there with this position. Why? Clearly, it is because if it didn’t, there would be no justification for the letter. 5) In the last 75 years, an entire “profession” has built itself up around a self-proclaimed mandate allowing it to experiment with our children. The members of this profession are armed with nothing but a piece of paper from the La Dept of Education indicating that they have passed some laughably simple tests and/or an education degree from somwhere online or from equivalent institutions of higher learning like Nichols State and SLU. Consistent with the analogies you insist we use, we may agree that good construction workers are effective construction workers. Good doctors are effective doctors. Good teachers are effective teachers. But this is where the analogy ends. Because unlike with the creation of roads and hospitals, there is just no secret about what it takes to produce a high performing high achieving school. When educators insist there is some secret and the people who keep it are only employed in traditional public schools, parents know that this has everything to do with teachers maintaining the continued existence of their profession and nothing to do with the creation of high performing, high achieving schools.

4) Comment by conglo - 26/06/2012

It is all about the money! Chas Roemer, whose sister, Caroline Roemer Shirley) is making money off of charter schools and BESE member James Garvey stated a charter school. http://thelensnola.org/2012/06/14/besekiraojandtfa/

5) Comment by bourbon-soda - 25/06/2012

It should then be apparent within a few years that the charter schools are inferior. At least we can proceed with that information.

6) Comment by timesright - 25/06/2012

RedHead was definitely not telling a joke. There are reports in numerous places that are describing the idiotic approval of vouchers to Louisiana schools that would be teaching children from the textbooks they use from Abeka or ACE. This may be the article RedHead is referring to----->http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/education/how-american-fundamentalist-schools-are-using-nessie-to-disprove-evolution.17918511 Better yet, read this article by a fellow who calls himself a "survivor" of the ACE curriculum. http://leavingfundamentalism.wordpress.com/2012/06/15/guest-post-a-reverence-for-received-knowledge-2/ Everybody should be taking this ridiculous ed reform seriously. "Due diligence". Indeed it is necessary!

7) Comment by redstickhornet - 25/06/2012

RedHead, you are cracking me up! I know you weren't telling jokes. The serious topic of taxpayer money funding educational nonsense is real and tangible here. Why should even one school teaching a shaky curriculum ever get approved? This is the real issue raised by your comment and this letter. Lax ethics, arrogance, voter apathy, and irresponsible government. The foundation is laid when one org. headed by Beegle is regulated by a state board on which Seegle sits. Beegle and Seegle are brother and sister. Their daddy is Creegle, a former governor and presidential candidate? Their grandfather, Meegle, was a powerful La. politician...

8) Comment by RedHead - 25/06/2012

Did you know your taxes are funding private/voucher schools that teach that the Loch Ness Monster ("Nessie") is real? Just type this url into your browser for proof: http://ow.ly/bOaeo This is an article in the online version of a major Scotland newspaper. It states: "THOUSANDS of American school pupils are to be taught that the Loch Ness monster is real – in an attempt by religious teachers to disprove Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Pupils attending privately-run Christian schools in the southern state of Louisiana will learn from textbooks next year, which claim Scotland’s most famous mythological beast is a living creature. Thousands of children are to receive publicly-funded vouchers enabling them to attend the schools – which follow a strict fundamentalist curriculum. The Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) programme teaches controversial religious beliefs, aimed at disproving evolution and proving creationism. Youngsters will be told that if it can be proved that dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time as man, then Darwinism is fatally flawed. Private religious schools, including the Eternity Christian Academy in Westlake, Louisiana, which follows the ACE curriculum, have already been cleared to receive the state voucher money transferred from public school funding, thanks to a bill pushed through by Republican state governor Bobby Jindal, a Hindu convert to Catholicism." Ye gads, even Scotland is laughing at Louisiana. And our tax monies are supporting these medieval teachings? Not even Jindal believes this crapola, he's just willing to sacrifice our children to Dark Ages teaching to be a hero to the extreme right-wing, and to hold national office. I hope he, and others like him, pay for their contempt for our children in their after-lives. Ahem.

9) Comment by cbelse1 - 25/06/2012

@Bourbon Soda: Yes, certification makes a difference. Google "Does teaching certification matter?" and you'll find numerous studies that indicate that traditional certification produces better results than non-certification. (On a side note, there were also several studies that indicated that traditional certification [i.e. a degree] produces better results than alternative certification [i.e. Teach for America or other "crash courses"]). I understand your concern, though. There are people who have the natural ability to teach without a degree and others who have a degree and are terrible at teaching. There are personal characteristics that the person must be in possession of, but just think how much BETTER of a teacher the first person would be if he/she was provided with information about pedagogy, content instruction, and classroom management.

10) Comment by redstickhornet - 25/06/2012

Ok Bourbon, I hear you. Doctors and teachers are not the same. Each profession is different, no problem. Yes, licensing in almost all professions serves as a barrier to entry for those who do not intend to honor the standards of excellence for the profession, for one thing. The basic argument that the writer makes here still leads to a VALID question that requires an answer from Louisiana men and women of integrity. It cannot be ignored or dismissed by pointing out the differences between teaching and other professions. Someone check me on this, but I think Louisiana requires florists to go get a license before they can call themselves one. My point is not to equate teaching and the wonderful job done by florists. Why is is teaching all of a sudden singled out? Political expediency perhaps? Anti-union sentiment (which I can understand)? Another question raised by this letter is still on the table also. What happens to those charter schools who mismanage public funds and perhaps leave students worse off than before? Do they just set up in another state or parish? What independent body exists? We elect BESE, but do they really represent an independent body? I'll toss out still another question. Does the La. State Dept. of Ed. hold too much power right now? With good and noble intentions, have we (voters) created an agency whose job has gotten too large (meaning reaching down into every part of the school day from start to finish in way too many schools)? Where are all the conflicts of interest/ ethical dilemmas and what are we doing about them? State Dept. of Ed now writes the tests, hires the companies that grade the tests, decides what a passing score looks like, evaluates the teachers (VAM), grades the schools, takes the schools over when they don't get a high enough grade, hands out all manner of contracts, hires all kinds of consultants and appoints czars, runs its own school district (the RSD), makes the rules for that district and all others, gives out vouchers, approves charter operators...

11) Comment by DMJ - 25/06/2012

Here, here, Brent. Well said, sir.

12) Comment by tradewinns - 25/06/2012

i disagree with vouchers, but only because it doesn't fix the problem with public schools. it is the same as putting iodine on cancer and covering it with a bandade. if the school board would act more as custodians of the system instead of the politicians that they are, the problem with public schools COULD BE reversed and corrected. because they are politicians this will never happen. so what do you do?

13) Comment by spqr - 25/06/2012

Good letter. But keep in mind Chas Roemer grew up in privilege, attended private schools, never really worked for anything in a world political advantage could offer him in his soft life. His resume is that of a business man, but no one can define it. His sister makes a great deal of money running a charter school and his business buddies are running them. The guys at the country club will be upset with Chase if he does not keep them in the charter school bonanza in their desire for additional profits. Keep this in mind when it all makes no sense.

14) Comment by bourbon-soda - 25/06/2012

Medical licensing is so tightly enforced it would probably be impossible to find out. This is irrelevant to the question whether teacher licensing and certification is analogous to medical, and whether teacher licensing and certification enhance results.

15) Comment by lovemykids - 25/06/2012

Does licensing doctors produce superior results?

16) Comment by bourbon-soda - 25/06/2012

One may compare licensing in teaching to that in other professions, but what is the outcome of that comparison? Does teacher licencing and certification produce superior results, or not? If not, how is it justified other than as a barrier to entry?

17) Comment by Bighug - 25/06/2012

I'm not a teacher, but I agree with the writer. The school voucher law will put ailing Louisiana schools even further down.