Charter schools have been part of the educational reform landscape for a generation now. As with all things educational, there are many mixed feelings about them.
Locally, the big story is the Philadelphia Academy Charter School and the shenanigans perpetrated by the people who have run it. Simply put, they gamed the system in every way they could think of, as outlined in the story. It leads one to wonder if there wasn’t even more fraud – like identifying kids as special education students, writing an IEP, and demanding the higher per-pupil spending that comes with identified students. Let's hope that angle gets investigated.
Taxpayers have taken a hit from PACS.
But so have other charter schools.
What happened at PACS will be used by critics of the charter school movement to cast aspersions on any charter school. And it would be hard to argue that the same types of things couldn’t be happening at other schools in the city and across the nation. Many charter schools are providing students with great opportunities to be successful, but incidents like this one provide people who wish to paint with a broad brush the tools to do so.
Nice job by the Philadelphia Daily News in their opinion piece today.
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