Educational Blogging: the Value of Multiple Perspectives

White table with laptop, camera, photos, 
and coffee mug as someone types on the laptop.

  Educational blogging is an online platform used by teachers, students, and even sometimes parents as a means to share ideas a create community around a common interest, in this case some topic related to a desired or required education. Blogs allow communities to create social networks that facilitate the spreading of news, ideas, and work. Blogs geared more towards education provide teachers with platforms to share teaching strategies, methods, and also very valuable support or validation for struggling teachers. Educational blogs really are a community where teachers share their kindness, things that they have learned, and materials that can be helpful. With educational blogs that are high functioning and prolific, they can have an abundance of materials and valuable seasoned experience in them. 

In this class I have had the privilege of looking at a number of blogs from my classmates in different educational disciplines. However, one thing we all had in common is that we were using this platform to share our thoughts and experiences on different topics in education. There were many articles like Jake Lee’s on the ways poverty and class-sizes effect student learning. His blogs specifically reinforced many ideas I was aware of; however they provided some really key informative qualities. Some blogs, like Sarah Carmichael’s, shared the same interests as I do with a focus on ESL students, but brought in new perspectives on phenomenons like assimilation that are not mentioned enough in educational discourse. Another amazing thing about these blogs is that I will not agree with all of them just like many will not agree with mine. I wrote all three of my first posts on charters schools and was excited to see someone take up that topic as well. Although Peyton King’s feelings on charter schools varied from mine it was interesting to see how they felt that charter schools might be a good thing in ways that I had not. The blogs from my peers have been an invaluable resource into understanding and seeing the incoming teaching force.

Although I have not been blogging for long, I can see the value and benefits in it. I think that blogs are a great outlet for veteran teachers to share the knowledge that they have gained on their journeys in the school system. I do not really see myself blogging my experience as a starting teacher until I think I have a better grasp on the best practices in the classroom and more helpful tips I feel like I could share. I think a blog geared more towards my classroom could be fun as a way to create a strong classroom community, but that would be something I would need to test out more. 

The Epidemic of Charter Schools: A Saga, Business and Politics

Man in black suit holding a white 
piggy bank between his two hands. 

One of the foremost shortcomings of charter schools in America, despite having valuable roots, is the intrinsic political and financial gain they promote. Touted originally as a bridge toward bipartisanship, charter schools seemed to be the only thing Democrats and Republicans could share sides on: yes, they all voted, lets work to revamp American public education. However, in the present divisive political climate, charter schools have fallen into yet another sticky and tricky topic for parents and politicians to argue about. Additionally, although many are run by non-profit organizations, there are a number created by for-profits and even wealthy businesses. Charter schools run for profit exacerbate many of the same issues outlined in previous blog posts. They excessively underserve low-income and black and brown students, many of their students do not qualify for free-or-reduced lunch and their demographics are predominantly white. Additionally although it is not explicit, they serve special needs and disability populations at a lower rate per capita. Charters run for profit benefit from indirectly excluding these groups through the extra public funding they are eligible to receive based on biased reports of higher state test scores from their tilted student populations. In tandem with school choice policies, these charter schools are able to appeal to under educated parents by hiding the profits they make outside of public funding.

As unbiased as I would like to be, it is more than evident that I am not a fan of charter schools. Despite the advantages some have for teachers: more freedom in curriculum, higher pay at some institutions, newer facilities and resources; it is not enough for me to overlook the damage they do to the general population of students. Charter schools have only further politicized education. Rather than creating a space that is safer for students and more conducive to their success, many elected officials vote for charter schools under the influence of the money lined pockets of corporations that run them. As mentioned in my last blog post, the most successful charters are those with strong support and regulatory systems. Although public schools should share the freedom in curriculum and spending that charters have, they require a strong foundation for a successful student body. Unbiased regulation systems that are not politically charged against “inappropriate content” and too focused on “uniform policies” based in rape-culture. Making schools a safe space is not difficult, it is only make difficult by the political and financial implications and ramifications tied to public education by policymakers. 

The Epidemic of Charter Schools: A Saga, the Danger of School Choice

Set of beads which read “EDUCATION” in 
the foreground with stacks of books in a 
classroom in the background, blurred.

As easy as it is to dismiss charter schools in their entirety, it is valuable to mention that they come from humble, and even wholesome, beginnings. In the 90s charter schools were touted as the next revolutionary idea to “finally fix public education.” Although their method of fixing was never quite sensible, an attempt was made. Invented to serve as labs and think-tanks for how education can be renovated for maximum student success, charter schools—and the discourse surrounding them—have become so much more. Much of the treacherous discourse around charter schools is also tied up with the issues of school choice. The ability for parents to chose which public institution their child attends rather than being required to attend the defaulted school in their district. School choice by its own nature is not evil; every student should have access to quality education. However, the answer to students lacking quality education is not to just abandon low-quality schools. Additionally, in today’s politically and socially volatile climate, many school choice supporters link their desire to change schools to the racial and socio-economic demographic of their current public school. Again, desiring to change schools because your school does not adequately support students from diverse racial and socio-economic backgrounds is really only putting a bandaid on a ever-persisting gun shot wound in the public school system’s gut. Of course, it would be a different story if charter schools had found a way to benefit all students and reconstruct under-performing public schools. But they didn’t, charter schools hardly perform better than public schools and are often on-par or below their average performance levels. 

I think what it all comes down to is autonomy. An interesting aspect, and one of the really great ideas, of charter schools is that they have almost complete autonomy in how they dictate funding, schedules, curriculum, and so much more. The autonomy charter schools have helps and hurts them considering they can be run by people with little to no experience and often go unchecked. I think that implementing a kind of autonomy within the existing public school system could be almost entirely beneficial. With the current foundations of public schools in place, I think that their are people within these schools that are more qualified, more invested in these schools and their students’ success, and more understanding of the beings at play than many of the individuals and corporations that dictate the policies of public education. This gives people with a vested interest the ability to strengthen and promote schools that parents and politicians would rather abandon. There is much hope to be had for the future of both public schools and charter schools so long as we hold them at the standard intended: that they promote and improve the education provided for all students. 

The Epidemic of Charter Schools: A Saga

A diverse classroom of public
school students work in groups
to identify parts of the skeleton.  

At the turn of the century, it was thought that the long-criticized American public school system had finally found its savior in altruistic charter schools that began to pop up across the nation. As time came to reveal, these charter schools did more to drain the life out of public schools while continuing to disproportionately underserve populations of students with disabilities, students from low income backgrounds, and student of color in more harmful ways than before. Charter schools, on the surface, appear to be elevated “non-profit” forms of public institutions. When a parent googles “what is a charter school?” as they weigh their options for their child’s future, they will find adverts designed to convince them that charter schools provide a private-quality education at a public cost: free. The proliferation of charter schools, specifically in urban and diverse regions, has also encouraged this euphemistic idea of “school choice”—yet another pseudonym for modern school segregation. Charter schools, despite being labeled as public institutions which allows them to have public funds allocated to their schools take financial compensations and donations from politicians and corporations under a guise of philanthropy. These additional funding would make it seem that charter schools provide a higher caliber or education for their student body and would thereby be a benefit to their communities, especially considering that their student bodies are not required to pay tuition. Upon closer observation, we can see how the selective nature of charter schools—they receive applications and cap student enrollment unlike standard public institutions—falsely represents this facade of high performing students and elevated instruction. Charter schools actively refrain from enrolling students with disabilities, students from low income backgrounds, students of color, and students who are second language learners as they have been shown through research to lower average institution test scores. If charter schools actively avoid these groups of students, why are they cropping up all over urban areas where these populations are largest? This brings us back to the financial and political gain of charter schools as well as this idea of school choice. If charter schools can appear in regions where these populations are large, they can prey on parents that want elevated opportunities for their students, especially parents of students who do not fall into any of the aforementioned categories. The more students admitted, albeit at a selective rate, means more public funding through school choice. This also means a decrease in funding for standard public schools which do not have the privilege of an admittance cap. Less funding for schools of higher and more disadvantaged populations is one of the major affects of the epidemic of charter schools. 

As you can likely tell from that lengthy introduction into the malign follies of charter schools, I am very passionate about their effects on public education and student well-being. This is because I attended a high school that was deeply affected by the excess of charter schools in America, namely the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions. My high school was close off of the Walt Whitman and Ben Franklin Bridges leading from Philadelphia out into the suburbs and nearby farmland of New Jersey, the country’s most densely populated state. For reference, the state of Tennessee at a size of more than 40,000 square miles has a measly population of 7.2 million. This is opposed to New Jersey which, despite being less than 9,000 square miles, has a total population of 9.22 million. These areas are intensely more populated and therefore consist of poorer infrastructure and low income areas which are usually targeted by these types of schools. In my experience with charter schools, my public high school was snubbed on necessary funding despite having a much larger class size so that the district could accommodate the charter schools which had fewer students but brought in “better test scores.” Again, these rest scores were not a reflection of the students living in the area, rather they were a hand selected and exclusive group under the guise of equality and not equity.