This is an interesting perspective and the numbers are impressive but this issue isn’t as clearcut as it seems. I should note, at the outset, that I did send my children to a charter school. That was a good experience and if we still lived in the RCSD I would do the same thing again. RCSD is a mess with huge problems. Many of those same problems are shared by other big city school districts but RCSD seems to be especially troubled. It’s arguable however that in some ways charter schools make those problems worse. Charter school students typically come from households that value education enough to take a non-traditional approach to their children’s schooling; those students are there by choice. Charter schools are siphoning off many of the best students and leaving the RCSD with the challenges and added cost related to addressing the needs of a more troubled difficult student population. It’s also worth noting that the looser regulation related to charter schools is both a blessing and a curse. Rochester has had many successes and some failed charter schools.
This is a tremendously difficult issue for which there are no clearcut answers. Ultimately the solution, if there is one, would have to lie in remedying the issues related to public schools and supporting alternative models. In any case we don’t serve anyone well if we don’t look at both sides of the issue.
