Saturday, December 09, 2006

School ordered out of voucher program

A small school in its first year in Milwaukee's private school voucher program was ordered out of the program Friday by state officials as a result of an accident in which a school bus hit a firetruck Nov. 29.The bus was carrying students of Elijah's Brook God's Nation Children School, 7429 W. Bradley Road, when it struck the truck, which was backing into a fire station at 8025 W. Bradley Road. The driver of the bus was not licensed and the school has not provided evidence that it had insurance in force, said Tony Evers, deputy state superintendent of public instruction. State regulations require schools in the voucher program to have insurance and allow the state to remove a school from the program on grounds that it is not operating in a safe fashion. "Clearly, it's not a safe place for kids," Evers said. "They demonstrated it on Nov. 29, and we have no reason to believe it is any safer now."The school had 52 students from kindergarten through 12th grade as of the official attendance date in September.

These are the majority of charter schools that are stealing money from the state, the tax payer, and MPS.
Choice and charter schools SOUND like a good idea, and they CAN be, but the majority are not.
There needs to be much more oversight.
There are tens of thousands of kids going to crappy schools like this, learning EVEN LESS than they were in there MPS school, they are not safe, they are not taught by licensed teachers, and apparently not driven be people with a license.

So I guess when Michael McGee gets voted out, he can be a bus driver for a charter school.

10 comments:

jhbowden said...

Do you have any data backing up the claim that the majority of kids in charter schools are underperforming?

The Game said...

they don't have to take standardized tests...
I have proof when I get kids from these schools and they are behind even the MPS kids and tell me they had no books or book that another school threw out, or that they watched movies all the time, or that I knew teachers that taught at those schools and were ALWAYS either the only one who had a teaching licence or one of two...

blamin said...

I’d like to see the data myself, anecdotal evidence aside, the data I saw in the past suggest the charter indoctrination centers do much better on average than the public indoctrination centers. This was awhile back, so there may not have been many to pull a sample from.

blamin said...

Also, it was my understanding that charter schools have to adhere to the same standards as public (i.e. teacher qualifications, testing, etc.). I’m not sure about MPS, but I’m fairly certain in most places that’s the case. If not, it certainly needs to be changed.

Anonymous said...

Blamin: Re: your last comment, you're right, I believe, they do. My dad is on the board for his local charter school (near Mke) and has helped teach some programs. He's always amazed at the apathy of the students.

ME

The Game said...

well, flat our you two are wrong...simple as that

Anonymous said...

Scorpion says---
What? Charter"Schools"use books? Take legitimite "tests"?When will this become a regular occurrence?

Jay Bullock said...

blamin, you are, in fact, half wrong.

Charter schools in the state of Wisconsin are required to meet the requirements of the public schools: licensed teachers, NCLB testing, and so on. You're right about that.

What you're wrong about is that charters don't do better than public schools: several studies recently have concluded that public schools generally do better than both private and charter schools when you control for variables such as socioeconomic status and race.

blamin said...

Jay

The link to the study doesn’t work.

I find your claim hard to believe, but I’d like to see the data. The research I saw suggests not only do charter schools (and especially private schools) provide a superior education, through the power of forced competition, they have actually raised the bar in public schools.

The bottom line is parents should have the right of choice, nobody should be forced to send their child to an inferior school. If your job and economic status is such that you can’t move to a better district or afford a private school, it amounts to force.

This fear of competition and choice makes no since to me. The public school advocates main argument seems to revolve around the fear of loss of funding. My answer is to improve the public schools. If democrats and political correctness won’t allow for change to take place, if they won’t allow for the removal of disrupting forces, then that’s all the more reason people should have choice.

I’ll be damned if my child is going to a school where the inmates are running the asylum. I’ll fight with all my power to improve the public schools, but if a bunch of politically correct libweenies stand in the way of what needs to be done, then I’ll do whatever it takes to insure my child receives a proper education, weather it be charter, private, or home schooling.

The Game said...

charter and choice schools are not usually "private" schools...
yes, private schools, like Pius, Catholic Memorial, Thomas More...these schools do MUCH better than MPS, because they have much better kids and are not tied down to stupid school board policy...
And if these charter and choice schools are supposed to have ALL certified teachers, than 70% of them better close tomorrow...