Working Together

I think that increasing choice for parents regarding education can be good. I believe that parents should always have the choice to decide what is best for their child's education. Students should not be forced to stay in a terrible school system if instead they could be sent to a more successful charter school or given vouchers to attend another school. As we discussed in class some charter schools are better than others. I thought our reading on charter schools was interesting when it mentioned that charter schools are becoming increasingly segregated. Half of the charter schools have student populations that are more than 60 percent children of color (Mark F. Bernstein). The Washington-based Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies reported that blacks are 11 percent less likely than whites to be satisfied with their local public schools. I work at a charter where the student population is primarily African American. I think that charter schools are segregated because they are placed in areas where the population has a low socioeconomic status. Parents of children in these school systems want another option of where they can send their child other the public school in their district that is struggling.
I do think that it is a problem that charter schools are using funding from public schools. Charter schools are denying public schools the financial resources they require to address the needs of an increasingly disparate student population (Mark F. Berstein). I do think that it would would be a better idea to use the funding for charter schools to improve the public schools. The funding would help to improve programs such as special education. It also seems to me that because so many students are going to charter schools that there are less teacher openings in the public school system. The public school system will begin to struggle if charter schools continue tend to grow regarding the amount of students they serve. Today charter schools serve more than 1.2 million students.
In the end I think that charter schools are here to stay. I liked the article that I read from Richard Whitmire where New York City schools attracted a few of the most successful charter networks to work with them. "Instead of fighting each other for resources, we ended up trying to figure out how we can deepen the pool and work together to make resources available for all to grow" (John King). Charter schools and public schools do need to stop fighting each other, they need to work together in order to provide the best education possible for each student.