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I used to teach at a charter school in DC (http://seeforever.org http://seeforever.org) Our student body was made up solely of court-involved truants. These we
by jaxn 16y ago
I used to teach at a charter school in DC (http://seeforever.org http://seeforever.org)
Our student body was made up solely of court-involved truants. These were kids who refused to go to school. They attended from 8am until 8pm and worked on regular course work as well as vocational training (I worked in the tech vocational program teaching design / web development / and Cisco networking).
The school had a graduation rate over 90% and over 75% went on to college.
Charter schools do tend to be thematic and some may seem frivolous, but the good ones are designed to help a poorly served segment to excel. It doesn't always work, but when it does it is remarkable.
Charter schools cannot fix the entire system, but I do feel they are an important cog.
- ktsmith 16y agoI really like the idea of thematic schools. Locally we have a charter school that is college prep with a focus on science (http://coralacademy.org/ http://coralacademy.org/) and it's a great school. We also have two charter schools that focus on bilingual instruction that have produced really good results as the students receive each lesson twice. Once in their native language and once in english. Unfortunately it turns out that one of those schools is being investigated for test score manipulation so the results may be misleading. If you have students that aren't willing or able to perform in a standard school having alternatives available for them is a great thing. There's no reason that students that have no desire to go to college or what not should not have the option of a school that also offers vocational programs.