Incubating a Plan for Success

It's no secret where we stand on the state's efforts to pull the wool over the eyes of the U.S. Department of Education in the form of "charter-like" legislation.  The bill eventually may help some low-performing schools, but its rushed passage through the General Assembly on May 27^th was misleading and unfortunate.

 

What's more unfortunate, however, is the real incubation process within North Carolina's educational system, where nearly one-third of students fail to earn a high school diploma in four years.  Let's be clear.  Traditional public schools are the incubators where public charters harvest their eggs, so to speak.  Not the other way around.

 

But it's not enough that charter schools, which often take on the challenge of educating the at-risk students they inherit from traditional schools, are held to higher standards.  They're supposed to lead the way by handing over their playbooks, too?

 

Well, fine.  But if that's the case, maybe the state's educational leaders should start visiting them. 

 

In front of the NC Senate Education Committee two weeks ago, Chairman of the State Board of Education, Bill Harrison said, "One of the things that I've noticed in most of the charter schools that I've visited is there's not a high level of innovation." 

 

Harrison also claimed that charters operate using the same type of instruction, calendar, and pedagogy as traditional public schools.

 

But there are gaping holes in those statements.  For starters, try convincing parents at Sugar Creek Charter School, which serves a student base that is 87% economically disadvantaged and 100% minority and out-performs traditional public schools in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg system, that their school is no different than any other public school.  Or parents at Carter Community School in Durham, or Rocky Mount Preparatory School, just to name a few.

 

Also, it turns out that Harrison hasn't visited many charter schools.  In fact, in a survey of more than one-third of the state's public charter schools, not a single charter school reported any visits by the State Board Chair. 

 

Narrowing the achievement gap and lowering North Carolina’s dropout rate will only come from the incubation of  innovation approaches, and right now those approaches are coming from North Carolina’s public charter schools.  Unfortunately, as The Winston-Salem Journal points out, it seems that many in this state are putting political games ahead of real educational reform.