Chris Collins shared a parable in his Oct. 7 column from WHAI’s Nick Danjer about two parallel publicly-funded roads representing the current charter school debate. The parable describes that a large number of roads (schools) in Massachusetts are in terrible shape. Creating a new public road (charter schools) next to it that not everyone can drive on it does not help alleviate the situation.
I’d like to join onto this analogy, with a different implication. You’re on one of these roads that is in terrible shape. You’ve been driving this same road for some years now, and it just doesn’t seem to be much improved from the way it was 20 or even 50 years ago. Folks have been talking about doing something to change conditions for years; there has even been increased spending and attention to improve the road, but things don’t seem much different.
Why hasn’t this road been fixed yet?
By the way, unfilled potholes and bad drainage should not necessarily be blamed on the road crews; most of them (teachers, too) work hard and want things to be better.
It might be that the system — the State Department of Transportation or local Department of Public Works superintendents — contributes to the quality of the roads. You glance into your rear mirror and see your 14-year-old daughter and your 12-year-old son looking out the window. You’re sitting in traffic, inching forward, but still miles from your destination. It looks like you’re not going to get where you wanted to go.
What are you supposed to do? Just sit in traffic on this same road and wait for something to change? There are many families across Massachusetts who feel stuck on roads that do not get children where they need to go.
I actually agree completely with part of the parable, with Collins (if my interpretation is correct), and with Lukas Martin in his “My Turn” on Oct. 1: we should all be striving to create excellent schools for all students. If the roads are terrible, we should do everything we can to make them all better.
Still, I believe that families deserve to have options — publicly funded, so choice is not just for those with money — if they’re stuck on inadequate roads.
Charter schools as laboratories of innovation should benefit all schools through sharing best practices. Martin says charter schools in Massachusetts do not serve their intended purpose if successful practices are not shared with and replicated by traditional public schools.
Again, I agree completely, though I think we can take action right now, right here, to begin sharing and collaborating for the sake of all our students. You might remain ambivalent — or perhaps opposed — on ballot question 2. Once this political season is behind us, I’d like to see public school educators in Franklin County choose to take up the opportunities of collaboration and innovation and fix some of these darn roads.
One correction to Mr. Martin’s statement about our demographics at Four Rivers: While he compares our English Language Learners and economically disadvantaged numbers to Greenfield, the state looks at a comparative index that reflects all of our sending districts. By that measure, Four Rivers serves higher percentages of economically-disadvantaged students than our sending districts.
Furthermore, high needs students in our school have shown both high growth and high achievement through standardized testing for several years running (contact me if you’d like the specifics).
Peter Garbus in the principal and head of school at Principal and Head of School, Four Rivers Charter Public School in Greenfield