Separate but equal... and with more money.

Even though I am currently a student in the what is technically the public school (university) system, I went to private school my whole life before college. So I had to do some research on Charter schools because I had no idea what they were.

I mean I had heard the word used a lot in the media and when talking about education reform. I knew they tended to be smaller, which sounds nice what with Florida's well documented over-crowding problems. I honestly just assumed they were like little magnet schools popping up all over the country.

Well, they're not.

"Charter" essentially means a school that is publicly-funded and privately-run.

OK. I came across this article on the Huffington Post. It discusses how California charter schools violate children's civil rights by over-catering to white students, and failing the latino, asian, and black community.

Ummm... YEAH. I couldn't understand, was this some kind of joke?
You're GIVING away money to start small clustered schools; someone, some group, some people are going to take advantage of this and basically ruin it for everyone else. It's the American way!

Something that bothers me about this article is the lack of real evidence. There are no quotes from actual students, parents, techers, janitors, anyone? Gary Orfield threw in a couple statistics but overall it was just what he had to say on the matter.

The whole charter school system seems a little like that style of writing. It's not monitored very well. We don't actually know what goes on in these schools.

According to the article, "Charter schools stratify students by race, class and possibly language, and are more racially isolated than traditional public schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan area in the country". Again... YEAH. You're giving people license to teach in whatever way they want. They're going to focus on the kids they see as having a chance, and because the small group of people running the school don't generally have to have the best record in education, those kids will probably be upper-class-english-speakers, and because we live in America most of those kids will be white.

What happened to focusing on public schools? Why not spend more money and effort on a system that says 'education for everyone'?