As we know, the phrase “charter school” conjures up a wide spectrum of opinions as to whether they are a good thing, or not so good. Theoretically charter schools are one way to explore innovative strategies to improve public school education. The idea is to experiment on a small scale with programs that step around institutional inertia and red tape and bureaucratic stasis, as well as allowing risks to be undertaken.
Necessarily, such experiments need to try out as many promising approaches as possible, so that we, as a nation, can determine changes that work in a disrupted and technologically challenged environment for quality education. Some will succeed amazingly, some will be meh, and some will fail ingloriously. That’s the way charter schools should work; as that’s the scientific method of gaining knowledge of the real world. New ideas must be put to the test in rigorous repeatable experimentation, from which we advance knowledge of how the world works.
With such a variety of form and functions, it’s not very useful to talk about “charter schools” as one homogenous entity; there’s tremendous variation that needs to be accounted for in discussion of the pros and cons of charter schools. Which charter schools are we talking about? They aren’t all the same, at all.
New America School is one of the charter schools locally that appears to be fulfilling it’s charter to provide a way back into the learning world for those who didn’t graduate from HS. Their programs are designed to fit the needs of young adults who are perhaps young mothers, or those with problems with ESL, or those working with little time to devote to studies, or those who are simply convinced school is not for them. PSA supports New America School as a model for educational reforms.
Below a story on what some of the students there were doing to celebrate MLK day here.
[gview file=”https://publicservicesalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/New-America-students-heed-MLKs-call-to-serve.pdf”]