Public schools have served as America's true melting pot, where educators, support professionals, and students from every background learned and grew together. They didn't just study subjects; they learned about each other and how to live with people different from themselves.
Of course, public schools had problems and still do, just as any human institution does. So what do the reformers propose? They say we should break up the public schools' "monopoly" and have more "competition." Students should get vouchers or tax credits for private and religious schools, or we should set up more charter schools - the definition of which varies, and the effectiveness of which has been shown to be no greater on average than that of traditional public schools.
Charter schools can be a piece of the school improvement process, but they are by no means the panacea many would have you believe. One has only to read through the many recent reports on the problems of Philadelphia's charter schools to know that calling a school a charter doesn't create success.
The Obama administration's "Race to the Top" envisions the growth of charter schools as a central pillar of school reform. It also suggests tying teacher pay to student test scores, as if test scores were the only thing that really mattered, and as if teachers were the only factor in test scores.
Tests can and should be used to help identify and support students' learning needs, but tests alone do not create success, nor do they create well-rounded students. The narrowing of the curriculum as a result of the last 10 years of "school reform" does not serve our students or our country well.
