The Goldwater Institute has filed a lawsuit to protect charter school autonomy. The first two paragraphs in their press release appears to identify one of the reasons why public schools are doing so poorly:
"Phoenix--Today five charter schools announced they filed suit to prevent being forced to change the curricula that has helped them rank among the top public schools in the country. The lawsuit is the first filed by the new Goldwater Institute Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation.
"The Arizona Department of Education (ADE) has mandated that the schools align their curricula to an ADE-determined grade-by-grade curriculum sequence. “These rules would have the perverse effect of dumbing-down some of the most successful schools in the entire United States,” said Clint Bolick, the litigation center’s director."
The ADE does not seem to be upset that students at these charter schools are receiving a poor education. It doesn't appear that the ADE is going after public schools. No the ADE is worried that the charter schools are drawing outside the lines, outside the lines the ADE created. Maybe at some point there ought to be a law that charter schools can do pretty much anything they want if the students are receiving a better education than the public schools provide.
Later in the press release we find that the ADE is upset that United States history isn't being taught in the 7th and 8th grades. Great Hearts Academies, one of the charter schools, teaches ancient history in 7th grade, medieval history in 8th grade, and then United States history in 9th grade. Once the students have a historical context they understand US history much better.
Goldwater Institute's stance is that the ADE doesn't have the authority to mandate a prescribed curriculum. If the law in Arizona was that the ADE got to force charter schools to follow some curriculum, then maybe this would be some what reasonable. As it is, it just seems arbitrary.
The ADE's action seems like a typical bureaucratic move. They aren't concern with is the job being done, but is all the paperwork filled out correctly. There is a time and place for filling out paperwork, but this seems way over the top.
For more information check this out.
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Technorati tags: education, public, school, charter, Arizona, ADE
2 comments:
Good grief. This really almost beggars belief, eh? I read stuff like this and find myself quietly muttering, "This is why I homeschool. This is why I homeschool." Heh.
Before my kids were old enough to go to school, I kept a file folder labeled "Why my kids will never go to public school." I would cut out articles from the newspaper like this and add them to my collection.
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