September 10, 2002
Boulder Daily Camera
CHARTER SCHOOLS
by Barbry Hogue
Board Member, Summit Middle School
The front page story (Sept. 3) reporting a Brookings Institution Brown Center on Education Policy study that finds charter school students "scoring significantly lower" than students in conventional public schools gives a false impression to Camera readers and ignores the significant achievements of charter schools in the Boulder Valley School District.
Summit Middle School and Horizons K-8 Alternative School, well-established BVSD charter schools, are consistently the highest-scoring schools in BVSD and are always among the highest-scoring schools in Colorado in every CSAP category.
What's more, Summit, Horizons, and other BVSD charter schools stand ready to share with other schools what makes their educational successes possible.
Charter schools represent a significant frontier of public education. While some of these innovative programs across the country no doubt have troubles, revolutionary actions are not perfect, and results aren't always immediate. When charter schools run well, as we can see every day in BVSD, they challenge students, teachers, and — much as they resist — entire school districts to take public education to new heights of achievement. Parents in our district recognize this already, and several BVSD charter schools have long waiting lists of students eager to attend.
Had you done some thoughtful reporting instead of just "ripping and running" the Associated Press story, Camera readers might have seen this compelling statement in the final line of the Brown Center study: "Identifying the characteristics of excellent charter schools and encouraging their adoption should be the main objectives of the next wave of charter school research and policy."
I couldn't agree more.