[Local-Maine-Schools] Public charter schools and local taxpayers

[Dick Atlee]

I love it! Gail at her best! Perhaps it is asking too much, but when 
something like this is published on the website, it would be wonderful 
if someone would drop a note to this list, so that some of us who are 
not accessing the site on a daily basis could be aware of it.

I hope Gail submits (or has already submitted it) to the Islander and 
the American as an op-ed.

I especially like these insightful paragraphs (among many):

"You and others have sometimes dismissed MDI schools as a "special" 
case, perhaps exemplary but not representative of Maine's schools, and 
whose experience and opinions therefore are not relevant in regards to 
the difficulties that Maine faces for school improvement. But, since the 
model the Commissioner proposes is for Maine to learn from special 
practices that have proven locally successful, rather than building new 
institutions that will undermine our ability to do this work, perhaps 
the Legislature should charge the DOE with digging into the more 
difficult and less glamorous work of advancing all Maine's schools along 
the same continuum.

"We are told that schools are too bureaucratic and not flexible enough. 
There is one and only one reason for this. Schools must respond to the 
requirements placed upon them by larger governmental entities: state and 
federal governments. It is blaming the victim to attack schools for 
being too rigid, and it is unnecessary and unfair to create a parallel 
system with fewer constraints in response. It is not a sufficient reply 
to create individual "innovative" schools. That will only create a few 
more pockets of flexibility, leaving the majority of Maine students 
stuck in the same allegedly bureaucratically hamstrung environments. It 
will exacerbate inequality rather than ameliorate it."

That first paragraph is reminiscent of the medical profession treating 
"miracle" recoveries as just that, to be ignored as outliers, rather 
than investigating what it is about those individuals and their 
situations that might be instructive and useful for the broader public.

Thanks for pointing out the letter, Brian!

Dick

Brian Hubbell wrote, On 5/24/11 11:45 AM:
> Dick,
> 
> There's more to it than that.  Despite the Governor's frequent campaign 
> assertion and statement during his budget address that he wanted less 
> money spent on school administration and more money spent "in the 
> classroom," the charter bill allows the state charter commission to 
> retain 3% of the total per-pupil allocation transferred out of the 
> public schools into the charter schools that they authorize.
> 
> Make sure to read Gail Marshall's open letter to Senator Langley posted 
> on MDIschools.net:
> http://forum.mdischools.net/state/20110522/charters-open-letter-to-Langley