One parent at a time

I found the most recent comments about the quality of Washington school, but then the need for charter schools despite the acknowledgment that the schools actually do provide a stellar education very puzzling.   On one hand several posters have said that the type of schooling received in West End schools are equal to that of those received by East End kids, a point I have been trying to make over and over again.    But then those posters that have been saying that the West End schools do provide a good education are insistent that there is a need for charter schools, as though the charter will somehow provide a panacea for all that supposedly ails the school district or schools in general.  

The same poster asks previously why do we need such bureaucracy in the district level, asking why do we need a full time communications and public relations type person for the school district, but then laments that the school district and the schools have not done enough to talk about how great the schools, like Washington, really are.   As a parent of a not yet school aged child yet but having gotten involved enough in my neighborhood to know that similar conversations are being had about private schools, worrying about test scores, etc… about Ruby Bridges, I feel the frustration of the parents who see their neighbors opting for private schools rather than doing their due diligence about their neighborhood school.

In the case of our neighborhood, sometimes it takes just one person; one person with the passion and dedication for the neighborhood school to make a difference.  In our neighborhood, there is one mother who, even though she has a job and children to raise, has made it her mission to educate other parents on what makes Ruby Bridges so special.  For the most part she has done it on her own and has coordinated informational nights for prospective parents to meet the principal and other district level staff, one of the most helpful presentations – particularly for the parents concerned with the test scores – was that done by the district assessment person.   She also has coordinated the effort to get a better accounting of our neighborhood’s five year projection of possible students and has made several attempts to get the most thorough accounting from our neighborhood as well.   Last weekend, she organized a cadre of parents to go door-to-door to hit those houses that had yet to turn in a survey.

For some parents, private school is the only option they are considering.   Either for religious or cultural reasons, there will always be a certain segment of the population that will send their children to private schools.   But there are always a number of families on the fence.   Personally, I have talked to many parents on the playground about Ruby Bridges and have tried to address their concerns about test scores, etc…  Until there is a better way to measure the quality of a school, folks will cling on to test scores as though it is the only indicator of success.   I haven’t seen the charter schools like ACLC point to any other innovative measurement tools to show that its program is superior other than the same test scores that all other traditional schools use.

The information cited by Mark I. is, in my opinion, a whole hell of a lot more credible that citing formula answers by a group whose sole purpose is to lobby and provide spin for charter schools, and even boasts of how many media impressions they made in their annual report and being featured on such venerable news organizations like The O’Reilly Factor.   A report released by EdSource has measured charter school performance and the results are not all negative for charter schools, in fact it reports that for middle school level children, charter schools have performed better than traditional middle schools.   But this is also the report that says that for elementary school, the regular elementaries outperformed charter schools despite having more children identified as disadvanataged.  

So what does it take to build a successful community around your local school: parent support.   It is not enough for us to expect the school district and schools to do it all.  In fact one of the main points of the UCLA study on Charter Schools pointed to the high level of parental involvement at many charter schools to make it truly sucessful.  This was under the finding that spoke to the claim of efficiency by the charter schools as opposed to the school districts, pointing out that charter schools relied not only on parental involvement but also a large influx of private funds in order to provide services to kids.