Charter Schools

[mayorbrotherdan]

I just attended a conference on corporate social responsibility (CSR) at the University of Michigan, and I was really frustrated by the people that they got to fill out the last panel of speakers.  There was a guy from IBM that basically presented a list of the corporate green-washing programs that IBM is donating to, which are a bunch of non-

Comments

[littlemarph]

I love this informative post, my brother. What do you think the solution is? How do we stop the negative affects of charter schools while trying to maintain the benefits of them? Besides an entire revamping of the public school institution, which seems unlikely at best.

[mayorbrotherdan]

I certainly don't have the solutions. Jack Lessenberry argued in a recent radio essay that the Detroit school district should be broken up into smaller districts. I'm not sure how exactly this would solve the problem of fleeing students, shrinking budgets and unmet standards, but it sounds like a better solution than charter schools. I would intuitively think that there are certain inherent advantages to large school districts though. The cost of certain goods and services, like operating buses, heating, electricity, insurance, food preparation and purchasing school supplies should be lower when they are purchased in bulk. The economies of scale should make it cheaper on a per student basis to operate a large school district, rather than a charter school, or a relatively small school district. But in practice we see just the opposite. The per pupil spending of many large, inner city school districts is often astronomical in comparison to smaller, less urban school districts. And yet the educational outcomes seem to often be