It's not the oldest libel against charter schools. The oldest may be the one
about how charter schools are just the latest version of seg academies -
that they siphon away white kids from public schools. (Never mind that
charter schools are pubic schools, too, just differently organized.)
Charter schools as some kind of racist plot? That's not true across the
country: Many charter schools turn out to have large numbers of black or
Hispanic kids whose families want to free them from failing public schools
so they'll become all they can be.
Many charter schools are all-black or close to it. See the KIPP school at
Helena, Ark., now officially Helena-West Helena. Nor does this accusation
against charter schools hold up here in Little Rock. The majority of the
students attending its three public charter schools here aren't white. (Last
time I checked, white kids make up 47 percent of those schools' students.)
Perhaps the second oldest charge against charter schools was echoed the
other day by a lawyer for the Little Rock School District before the state's
Board of Education, which was considering granting three additional charters
for new schools in Little Rock.
According to the lawyer, Khayyam Eddings, these charter schools - which
would offer an advanced curriculum in a number of disciplines, from math to
Latin - would just "cherry-pick" the highest-achieving students, leaving the
other public schools bereft of their best students.
How selfish of these students to want to learn as much as they can in the
academic environment best suited for them, rather than raise the average
test scores back in their regular schools! Have they no social conscience?
Kids who apply to charter schools don't seem to realize it's their solemn
duty to hold themselves back for the sake of the common good, or the school
district, or the collective welfare of all, or some such glittering
generality or other.
It's never been clear what good purpose is served by holding onto these kids
in the regular public schools. The educantists/social engineers have
produced various justifications for the practice, which always wind up
sounding like only rationalizations for this crime against young intellect,
talent, or just true grit.
Who knows whether the students who would apply for this latest charter
school are high, low or medium achieving? It's clear only that they're ready
to better themselves - much like the nine black kids who had the gumption to
apply for entrance to once white-only Central High School in Little Rock
back in 1957 - and found themselves in the middle of a national crisis.