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While they may have lessons for public schools, they are not linked to economic success.

June 28, 2009

Ron Bancroft, in his June 9 column ("Charter schools could help close the nation's most harmful gap"), makes some serious leaps of blind faith when he claims that charter schools will lead to a decrease in achievement gaps and improvement in our economy.

He cherry-picks evidence to support his claims.

The growing body of data on existing charter schools throughout the country does not show any greater achievement in such schools.

The belief that school achievement is a primary variable in the health of a national economy is also unfounded, as can easily be seen by charting the rise and fall of world economies compared to test-score rankings.

To blame educators is equally baseless, even though it seems a popular pastime of journalists and government officials. It is obvious, for example, that our current economic collapse is more the doing of very well-educated businessmen than it is of school teachers and administrators, or students who struggle with standardized tests.

While there are indeed many good local charter schools that shine a light of possibility for public schools, the majority of charter schools are run by distant corporations interested in making profits with our tax dollars.

As Maine considers whether to open this door to privatization of our public schools, we need to investigate claims like the ones made by Bancroft.

An excellent resource is the short book "Keeping the Promise: The Debate Over Charter Schools" (www.rethinkingschools.org/publication/promise/promise.shtml).