“Charter school saved my life.”
This isn’t just an anecdote from a concerned constituent
that I have heard in passing. These are the words this very morning of my wife, an incredibly
bright, but also quite introverted woman who moved from rural Nevada to
Southern California in middle school, and felt lost – struggling to thrive in
enormous classes that teachers had challenges managing. Then she was given the
opportunity to attend high school at a charter
school in Apple Valley, CA and blossomed. She graduated at the top of her
class, while taking not only college-level courses in high school, but classes
at local area colleges as well.
She credits this to the idea that all students are not alike
and shouldn’t be educated as such. While charter schools like hers recognize
and foster individual differences in learning, public schools regress to a mean
established by whatever standard du jour is imposed upon them by the federal
government. These methods may or may not make for good test scores, but even
former New York state Teacher of the Year John Gatto doesn’t believe they lead
to a
well-educated mind that is capable of critical thinking.
