Elizabeth Warren honors black women in speech disrupted by pro-charter school protestors

[mopinko]

9. i'm not against charter schools, just charter school rip-offs.

we do charters mostly right in illinois, and in chicago.
no big chains allowed, no for profits. increasingly union.
many of the charters are held by universities, including u of c, the home of education theory and practice. the teacher's union holds a charter, there is an arts high, there is namaste elementary school. one of gullen's schools is around the corner from me. it is a true shining gem, recently on the u.s. news list.

the school system in chi is a slow moving rube goldberg that has seriously not only failed but damaged children for generations.
i completely support the public schools. they should be first in line for tax dollars, and never need a bake sale.

it is slowly becoming less of a one-size-fits-all system, but it is still short on both money and staff to properly serve kids as individuals.
there are about 5 times as many gifted kids as there are seats for them even after decades of expanding selective enrollment.
creative kids are neglected even more.

charters fill a lot of these niches well.

the system hasnt kept up w population shifts, and when they did the first big alignment in a century, the mayor lost his job.
charters are sort of the difference between buying and renting. they just got burned for sinking assets for too long. charters are more nimble.

it isnt the public schools that have been emptied out by the charters.
it's the catholic schools. for decades the ONLY choice for a kid who doesnt fit into the monopoly schools. for those who could afford it, of course.
and because of that, i am happy for the alternatives.
charters here, for the most part, are either first come/first served or lottery, and some are even neighborhood schools that take all comers. there is little to no cherry picking.
if you want to get into special needs kids, i can go there, too. i raised 5 crazy kids in this town, and i have been in every part of the system.

you can support public schools, and also understand their failings.
i would really like to take a deep dive into the numbers, if i had the knowledge to do so. i suspect that the test score comparisons are missing a lot of things. and aint it funny that teachers who dont want to be judged by their kid's test score want to judge charter performance that way.
testing that is not correlated to curriculum is worthless.

maybe i should toss her a few bucks so she can call me and get some nuance.