Or magnet schools, or schools within schools.

But I am against private charter schools.

In my neck of the woods, many of the charter schools provide better environments than their counterpart district high schools.

For people like Sara, for example, a very oversized girl who people would call homely or ugly, one charter school saved her from the bullies at her traditional high school.

For Riley, to take another example, the bullies at a different school would have driven him to suicide. Riley is a special needs kid without an IEP, so can't get services.

I'm sure others who visit this forum will be able to help you, however.

She had never been bullied before. Her parents went to the teacher who didn't know what to do. They found out later she was a first year TFA with a degree in Art History and an understandable lack of knowledge of child psychology - in addition to her lack of experience. They then went to the principal who said he believed kids should be allowed to work out their differences with as little adult interference as possible.

When the bullies began using Facebook (the school page) to continue their bullying, my friend withdrew her daughter and enrolled her in her neighborhood traditional public school.

In the most populous state, California, a public school classroom can similarly be staffed by a newbie with no more than a CBEST, or even less if the public school has a waiver.

So the TFA factor isn't really relevant.

And public traditional versus public charter isn't really at issue for teacher qualification, not in my state.

BTW, I've never met a TFA teacher so no dog in that race.

But crap happens everywhere and wherever it happens it needs to stop.

The article addresses underrepresentation, not expulsion.

Show me where expulsion is mentioned.

And no, the press has never covered it so I don't have a link. Just personal experience.

I'll dump on them all I want.

What is it - exactly - that you teach? Subject? Grade level? It would help me understand your perspective.

Those are not-so-useful stats.

I know charter schools that are great for kids' education. I also know charter schools where the kids are warehoused. They learn nothing.

Far more of the latter than the former.

But while they carefully matched students for income, etc., that's probably not all the relevant criteria. A lot of kids are put in charter schools because they are singularly unmotivated to do squat. Those who are doing reasonably well are more likely to be left in public schools. So the data are skewed and the overt sincerity of the attempt to show that the data *aren't* skewed distracts you from seeing the relevant criterion.

There's a craft, a science, and an art to establishing default hypotheses and figuring out what characteristics to control for. Many ed faculty come to a problem already knowing what's important. That keeps them from examining the data and seeing what's actually going on. (Yet they're all over the idea that teacher candidates must chuck any preconceptions that they know what it means to be a good teacher. Look only at the data, as interpreted by the pundits and their little altars.)

Yet that doesn't even do justice to what's going on, as far as I've seen it. I've seen kids put in charter school mid-year, in time to salvage their fall grades. They are given passing grades in a charter school instead of failing pubic school. Then they transfer back in the spring and bring with them a good average that we have to accept. They fail every test, their average goes down from the minute they appear in the public school classroom again, and they squeak by with a barely passing grade.

The public school's graduation rate's saved from another ding, another kid graduates with a degree that really means little once it's gained. Of course, those students who can't pull this trick off are left to fail in the charter school until the following fall, when they often repeat the year or drop out.

enough.