Travel Blogs

I had the opportunity to visit and observe 2 elementary charter schools in Miami-Dade County for approximately 3 hours each. One charter school was located in Downtown Miami, an inner-city setting and the other was located in rural Homestead out by the fields and farm land.

It is amazing as some things simply tend to stay the same.

Charter schools are suppose to be the envy of all public schools due to their boastful leeway for innovation and academic freedom. Students are suppose to be flocking from traditional public schools to these high achieving, creme de la creme schools of high caliber. Yet, here in Florida we are not seeing what other successful and effective/efficient charter schools in Chicago, New York, or Washington, D.C. are experiencing. Stoies of how urban learners are now obtaining high quality academic programs.

The only difference between the rural and the inner-city charter school was sheer size overall as a student body and in class size. The rural school was smaller and set up in an old building. The inner city school was lucky to have an older school building from many years ago.

Yet, I still see the same issues I have seen over the past five years with other charter schools across our state. It seems to more an epidemic than a cure. Teachers were not teaching; they were assigning work and dittos to the whole class and then sitting back down at their desks. Students were working individually never cooperatively. Misconduct and classroom behavior was rampid throughout the building. Classrooms were dirty, furniture old and broken, tattered textbooks were stacked. There was no sight of a comprehensive core reading program, of student work celebrated on the walls, no library nook in the corner, and certainly no work stations or centers. Administrators rarely made themselves seen throught the time I was there. When I asked teachers why they chose teaching at a charter school many shared that they needed the job and could not get on with the district, or that they thought this would be easier so a cut in pay would be worth it.

I know not every charter school is like this. However... I bet you can find many public schools that fit this same description.

It simply is not right! Children deserve to be taught not assigned work. With all of President Obama's plans to increase and ramp up funding for more charter schools something has to give and make teachers and administrators more accountable!