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Dec 15th, 2009 by Taylor Armerding

Here’s another piece of evidence that, among public schools, charters are better than “regular” or district schools.
The state’s Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester is calling for revocation of the charter of the Robert M. Hughes charter school in Springfield for “pervasive, systemic cheating at the behest of adults on MCAS exams, reports the State House News Service.
If that is true, then the school’s charter indeed ought to be revoked. Chester is absolutely right when he says, “We expect a charter school that has been in operation for 10 years to have a stable and competent governance structure supporting a school with high standards and high academic performance.”
But, that only points out an ironic, and expensive, disparity. When charter schools mess up, they get put out of business. When district schools mess up, they get more money.

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  • MikeLaBonte

    The charter school difference is that they are accountable to state officials, and not so much to the local community. For 10 years the Robert M. Hughes academy has had troubles including corrupt management, extraordinary teacher turnover rate, and poor academic performance. The parents in a local public school district with that kind of record would have elected several school committees and probably would have raked superintendents over the coals during the same period. But Springfield had little power over the charter school, while the state had the power but found it couldn't do much from far away in Boston.

    So a poor chain of accountability leads to possibly closing a school after 10 years of trouble and that's an improvement? Isn't that more like a failure of the charter school system of oversight? If the charter is revoked the Robert M. Hughes Academy will be closed at the end of this year, and 180 students' educations will be entirely disrupted. Yeah, that will teach those charter school administrators a thing or two.

    http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/12/...

  • VoiceofHaverhill

    So what? We had MCAS cheating in Haverhill and the reclusive police chief took a walk on the case.

  • jacrlsn

    The liberals can dress as sheep. but they are still wolves. Are theses “friends of charter schools really “friends” or are they wolves in waiting?

  • Coolfusion

    Who will go down as 2009's biggest idiot:

    Al Gore?
    Tiger Woods?
    Deval Pactric?

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