[anatmob]

Could this be a solution to our school problems? Discuss.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/05/31/phi...iref=allsearch

Philadelphia (CNN) -- "Good afternoon," Megan Zor calls out over the din of the seventh-grade English class taking their seats inside Mastery Charter School's Shoemaker Campus.

"Good afternoon," the class repeats before reciting the school's code of conduct.

A hush comes over the room when Zor holds up three fingers, signaling a student to stop talking, her compact frame pacing across the front of the classroom.

"We're not speaking," she scolds, her face stern.

Zor's no-nonsense approach is the Mastery way, and motto: "Excellence. No Excuses."

And that teaching style is getting results: Better test scores, more college-bound students.

But in other Philadelphia communities, student walkouts and community unrest are raising questions about charter-based turnaround programs. Some said their public schools haven't been given a chance to succeed. Some don't trust charter school operators.

Similar debates are happening in school districts across the country, from Providence, Rhode Island, to Los Angeles.

Nationwide, more than 1.6 million public school students attend nearly 5,000 publicly funded, independently operated charter schools. Charters were first established in Pennsylvania in 1997, and there are now 135 charter schools with more than 50,000 students.

Success in Philly

In 2005, the School District of Philadelphia asked the Philly-based charter school operator Mastery Charter to take over some of the city's violent, low-performing schools, including Shoemaker.

Since then, Pennsylvania state test results show that Shoemaker's seventh-graders are scoring 80% proficient in math and 66% proficient in reading, up from 16% in math and 20% in reading.

It will graduate its first class this year.

Senior Leroy Hayes attended Shoemaker before Mastery took over, when it was a failing middle school on the city's north side.

"If the school stayed the same, I would not be going to college," said Hayes, who will attend the University of Vermont with a partial cycling scholarship in the fall.

[MasTaBlau]

I'll believe that charter schools are the answer when: (1) they accept discipline problems, and, more importantly, KEEP them; (2) they are held to the same academic standards and testing as public schools; (3) they are subject to the same national (NCLB) criteria as public schools; and (4) they require the same qualifications for their teachers as do the public schools, and still maintain their allegedly higher success rates.

Right now, it's apples and oranges.

[Xzmwskxn]

Right now, it's apples and oranges.

Your right, here in Colorado, Charter schools are better than the public schools, and the public schools are not that bad.