The success of charter schools

Re “Charter mania,” Opinion, April 19

I retired last June from teaching after 33 years, including five years at a converted charter school. Charters have been embraced largely to avoid the voucher controversy. There are two key points not mentioned here that merit discussion.

First, the law creating charter schools championed the idea of innovative education and creativity in curriculum development and instructional practice. But the later emphasis on standardized testing has severely crimped any movement along those lines.

Second, monetary savings at charter school sites are being paid back to employees through higher salaries and retirement incentives. In the teachers lounge, we openly joked among ourselves about how “creative” we were being in our teaching methods in order to justify this buyout. The real motivation for charter will become monetary reward, not educational reform.

GORDON PITTS

Yorba Linda

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There is a data-driven reason for “charter mania” in Los Angeles. The Accelerated School, whom the authors vilify for teaching yoga, is a case in point. African American students at the Accelerated School outscore African American students in the Los Angeles Unified School District by 88 points on the Academic Performance Index; Latino students score 40 points higher; and English-language learners score 40 points higher. Green Dot Public Schools replicate these scores at every school for every subgroup of disadvantaged children. Charter schools in Los Angeles are hardly unorthodox. They do a better job of teaching low-income and minority children to read and do math.

LISA SNELL

Los Angeles

The writer is education director of the Reason Foundation.