In class we have been discussing charter schools extensively and today we got into the topic of charter schools closing. In theory charter schools are great, they will help a community, give better education to students, increase test scores, all the good things we hear about. Well what happens when a school can't do succeed in doing all these things and can't live up to state standards? They close, easier said than done though. What happens to the hundreds even thousands of kids that are going to school there? They get put back in their district schools which are sometimes performing even worse. These kids end up getting tossed back and forth which does not help their learning at all. While we wish that all charter schools will be like the one in Harlem, it just isn't that way. Harlem is a one of a kind charter school, although it would be great to see them all like this it's just not possible.
http://hechingerreport.org/content/when-charter-schools-fail-what-happens-to-the-kids_7504/
The article that I found was about the closing of a charter school in the Akron City Schools area. One of the reasons I found it to be so interesting is because it is in a district that many of us have heard of and even some came from. The main parent in the article is Terri Griffin she has put six children through the Akron school system and did not like the way that they just pushed through the system to graduation, so with her youngest child she tried the Lighthouse Academy charter school. Without knowing it she put her daughter into this school and it was already considered failing by state standards. The Lighthouse Academy has been failing every year that it has been open with this year being the last that it is open. So now Terri has to figure where she wants to place her daughter for third grade and she refuses for it to be in the Akron school system.This happens to parents all around the country when the schools that they were excited for don't live up to standards, but this one, for me at least, hits home since it is where a lot of us Ohio State students have grown up and called home.
I have mixed feelings when a school is closed. I am mixed because on one end if a school is not doing their part in helping children achieve what they need to achieve then they should be shut down because they aren't doing their job. On the other hand, when a school is closed there are so many people affected. People lose jobs and children lose an education. I think, to an extent, that a maybe not so good education is a lot better than not one at all.
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