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Re: “The pull of charter schools,” Dec. 6 Dick Hilker column.
Dick Hilker summarizes many positive attributes of charter schools. Unfortunately, he omits several complicating factors.
• Many parents lack the ability and time off of work to transport their children to and from charter schools.
• Many parents don’t understand how our school system works in general and the benefits that charter schools might offer their children.
• Many parents doubt their ability to communicate effectively with school officials.
• Many parents struggle to raise their children while tackling poverty, homelessness, and the transiency that often accompanies the search for employment.
Charter schools offer advantages for families able to access them, but operate unencumbered by many societal issues that plague “traditional” neighborhood schools. These issues are complex, pervasive and defy simple, quick-fix solutions.
Americans need to tackle our collective problems honestly and collaboratively. Vilifying one group or another hasn’t solved anything so far.
Richard Argys, Westminster
This letter was published in the Dec. 13 edition.There certainly is no general agreement that teachers are more important than parents in the education of a child. This fallacy perpetuated by educational reformists, the media and politicians is at the core of a coordinated effort to destroy public education, in part by scapegoating teachers and unions.
Charter schools are driven by a combination of parents who are involved in their child’s education in a far greater way than a lot of other parents, coupled with a desire to separate their children from the children of uninvolved parents as well as children who disrupt the learning environment of a school in a variety of ways. Add into this mix the fear and anxiety of gun violence in the greater society, including in schools, and you have the perfect formula for the rise of charter schools.
If this is to be the future of public education, then so be it, but if in turn we create an educational system consisting of haves and have-nots — where the students of involved parents congregate in one environment, and the throw-away children occupy whatap left of urban public schools — then be prepared for the inevitable social consequences of this new form of segregation in the not-too-distant future.
Gerry Camilli, Englewood
This letter was published in the Dec. 13 edition.
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