Hmm... Wanna Check Out A Charter School ??? - Church v. State, Anyone ???

[WillyT]

So... My Dear 76 Year Old Mother, who posts here from time to time, and is an active officer of the Sacramento Chapter of AU (Americans United for the Separation of Church and State), as well as a card carrying member of the ACLU and People For The American way, has received a complaint from a concerned citizen about a Charter School here in the area known as Rocklin Academy. http://www.rocklinacademy.com/ Notice the ".com" at the end of their site. They share their campus with a public school known as Ruhkala Elementary School of Rocklin California (a few minutes outside of Sacramento) http://rues.rocklin.k12.ca.us/ notice the difference in the quality of the two school websites.

Anywho... while checking the sites out, my mom finds one of the sponsors of the charter school, William Jessup University http://www.jessup.edu/ , notice the ".edu" ending of this site. You can see the linkage between these two educational entities by going the the Rocklin Academy's site page entitled, "Dissemination Grant Overview", under the subheading, "Dissemination Grant Collaborators We Will Work With to Increase Our Impact" http://www.rocklinacademy.com/disseminationgrant.htm , as well as the goal to, "Create collaboration with University (WJU) for site and other Higher Education support", under the sub-heading "Training Center for Core Knowledge Teachers and Administrators" under the heading, "Grant Supported Dissemination Activities School Year 2005-06 (with 2006-07 activities noted)".

Now William Jessup University states that it has a teacher training program http://www.jessup.edu/academics/teachereducation and states (check out the entire page):

<snip>

The Education Department offers programs leading to careers in public, private, and charter school systems. It is the mission of the Department of Education to prepare teachers by encouraging character development and demanding ethical behavior to meet the needs of people, by teaching in schools throughout the world.

The Preliminary Multiple Subject Credentials With Character program is designed with a core of Christian values. The degree features the Bible and Theology major as well as the Teacher Education program. Preparation for teaching in the elementary classroom includes completion of the state-approved Teacher Education Program designed to meet subject matter competence. Students seeking a Single Subject Credential must major in an academic discipline and/or satisfy subject matter competence by passing the appropriate state examination(s). The University received approval for the Multiple Subject program in January 2005.

<snip>

And the mission statement of the university http://www.jessup.edu/about/missionandpurpose says the following:

<snip>

Mission Statement

In partnership with the Church, the purpose of William Jessup University is to prepare Christians for leadership and service in church and society, through Christian higher education, spiritual formation, and directed experiences.

Doctrinal Statement

We believe in the one God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as revealed in the Holy Bible and made known in Jesus Christ our Lord,

We believe that Jesus the divine Son became human, was born of a virgin, ministered in word and miracle, died for our sin, was raised bodily from the dead, ascended to God’s right hand and is coming again for his people,

We believe that the Holy Spirit is presently ministering through the Christian community, empowering lives of godliness and service,

We believe that the Holy Bible is completely God breathed, true in all its teaching, and the final authority for all matters of faith and practice,

We believe that Jesus Christ established his church on earth to carry out his saving mission among all ethnic groups and formed her to be one holy people,

We believe in God’s saving grace that calls forth from all people: faith, repentance, confession, baptism, and new life and ministry through the Spirit,

We commit ourselves to the teaching, practice and defense of these truths until the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

<snip>

Now is it me, or does this seem to have crossed the line of separation of Church and State?

And...

When ya go to another academy grant supporter, Core Knowledge http://coreknowledge.org/CK/index.htm and then go to their bookstore http://www.coreknowledge.org/bookstore/index.php and look at their "best sellers list" you will find in their top 10, a book called "Realms of Gold I, II, & III". You will also get a graphic that shows the book, with title:



With this description:

All the shorter literary works — poems, stories, essays, speeches and autobiographical excerpts — specified in the Core Knowledge Sequence for Grades 6–8 are conveniently anthologized in three grade-level volumes. Each includes additional classic works in each genre, offering students handy supplemental texts from the world's greatest writers. Key speeches from the 20th century make volumes 2 and 3 useful for history teachers.

But when you go to Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1592443400/qid=1152487816/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/104-2403187-9638367?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

you get this title: Realms of Gold: The Classics in Christian Perspective

Am I just being paranoid, or is this (and other) charter schools doing exactly what we feared they'd do. Namely, take public dollars to promote Christianity.

Because as the Academy's own site reminds us... on its home page... with the picture of the shared campus...



In bold... ... under "Rocklin Academy offers"... near the bottom right...

"No Tuition – This is a PUBLIC School"

:wtf:

Finally... my mom will be sending what she's found, and what I've found, and if you'd like go further, what you've found, to her friends at the above mentioned defenders of the 1st Amendment. Please feel free to add what ya can, and Thank You!

:hi:

[goclark]

1. I can't speak for all Charters just the three I have visited

They were nothing compared to the Public schools in the area.

I heard GW speak the other day about "Charter Schools Are Good Schools."


A waste IMO.

[Dinger]

24. Most Of Them Don't Have The Accountability That Public Schools Do

If I'd ever send a kid of mine to a charter school, they'd better be able to REALLY prove it.

[proud2BlibKansan]

31. They are accountable under NCLB where I teach

and their test scores are in the gutter.

[Dinger]

35. Well, I'm Glad They're Being Held Accountacle, But

have you any idea why their scores are in the gutter?

[proud2BlibKansan]

40. Not all of them have scores in the gutter

One of the charters in my area has good scores. As for the others, I would imagine their scores are low because many of their teachers are not certified, they don't pay their teachers well, the working conditions are less than ideal, their curriculum is substandard, they have a transient enrollment and a high drop out rate. Other than that, I couldn't tell ya. :)

[CornField]

39. On the Federal level, results are cherry-picked

I ran an article here several months ago about how the the Federal government didn't like the reports coming in on charter schools as a whole, so they elected to change the process to only include a sampling of the schools to represent all. (The Bush administration's favorite trick -- call the report the same name, but change the method of data collection.)

[proud2BlibKansan]

41. Gee what a surprise - not

As if this administration actually cared about education and kids.

[LeftyMom]

2. Have your Mom pass this along to PLANS

They've been fighting the waldorf charter in Sacramento for years (on a much shakier connection to religious institutions than this,) they may be of some use in getting something done about this even if they only point her in the direction of who to talk to, relevant court cases and media contacts. Picking one of thier brains on the issue would save a lot of duplicated work.

[bobbieinok]

30. I thought Waldorf Schools had a very good reputation, like Montessori ones

[LeftyMom]

34. They do,

but there's some concern that thier relationship to Anthrosophy makes them unsuitably tied to religion for a public program.

[mzteris]

3. don't lump all charters in this boat

there are VERY GOOD CHARTER SCHOOLS - that have absolutely NOTHING to do with religion.

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater!

[WillyT]

6. Right Now I'm Just Dealing With This One, And Any Others Like It...

But I sincerely hope what you say is true. If you have some examples (2 or 3), I'd love to see them.

Thanks.

:hi:

[mzteris]

8. my son attended

a charter school for the past two years. (I'll pm you a link to the school if you like.)

It's a Montessori dual-language school. It was designed specifically as a multi-cultural school to

1) address the educational needs of native Hispanic speaking children; AND

2) teach native English speaking children, a second language in either an immersion or enrichment setting.

It is most decidedly NON-religious. It very much a color/race/religion/$$ blind school. We've been very happy there.

There are other charters in the area that have excellent reputations as well. There is *one*, though, that - while not "religious" - seems to have a preponderance of fundamentalist-types who attend there. I think this is in large part due to their reputation as being very rote-learning, back-to-basic, no-nonsense, strict authoritarian-type environment.


Unfortunately, we are moving to another state - and hopefully my son will be entering another spanish language immersion charter school. So we'll see how that one works out.

[Momgonepostal]

9. I would have LOVED to send my kids to a school like yours! nt

[Dinger]

25. Sounds Great

I teach at a public school. This school sounds excellent.

[goclark]

29. Montessouri Schools have been around way before GW stole Education

My beef is with the new GW Charters that are a gift to his buddies and a Rip Off to Public Education.

They have broken the backs of the Teacher's Unions and that is what they were designed to do IMO.

[Momgonepostal]

7. One of my children attends a public charter school...

and it has no religious bent whatsoever. Most of the texts she used this past year were of the same series used by her former, traditional public school.

[Peregrine]

19. I teach at a charter

and there is no problem here-separation wise. Charters have the same problems as publics, and a few special to charters. I'm sure that some charters have become too entagled with religion, but so have several public schools.

[Dinger]

26. How Does The Pay Compare To Public Schools?

More? Less? I'm just curious.

[proud2BlibKansan]

42. Lots less in my area

[nosmokes]

4. OFFS

why can't they leave the kids out of the damn argument?

[Momgonepostal]

5. A couple of thoughts...

Is it unethical for a private entity to sponsor a public school? Is that the issue with Jessup University? As a sponsor, are they dictating curriculum?

The Core Knowledge books used at the school, are these the same Christian books you see at the publisher's website or is the school using a secular version? I'd want to see the actual editions used by the school before getting too upset about separation of church and state here.

It certainly seems worth looking into. If they really are pushing religion, that is completely inappropriate for a public school.

[mzteris]

10. Realms of Gold. . .

they're NOT the same book......

if you look at Core Knowledge's website - here's the TOC:

http://www.coreknowledge.org/CK/bkstr/Realms1_TOC.pdf


Amazon's website/TOC:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1592443400/ref=sib_dp_top_toc/103-1139823-6074217?ie=UTF8&p=S002#reader-link




Totally different works.


Core Knowledge has a good reputation. It's not for me nor mine - my older son does NOT learn "this way" - but for others it works well.

[WillyT]

12. I'm Getting A 403 Forbidden Code (Server) From Your First Link !!!

And there were 3 version of Realms of Gold listed.

:shrug:

[mzteris]

13. ooops - sorry

go here:

http://www.coreknowledge.org/bookstore/

Then look on the right hand side under BEST SELLERS - click on #5 Realms of Gold = after that page pulls up, click on Table of Contents.....

[WillyT]

14. Thanks mzteris !!! - HEY EVERYBODY... NOT THE SAME BOOK !!!

Although I wonder why they would allow two textbooks, surveying literature, to have such close titles???

:shrug:

Anyway, thanks for the info mzteris. Appreciate it. Too late to edit my OP though. Shoot...

:hi:

[eppur_se_muova]

36. Book titles can not be copyrighted, IIRC.

It's the content of the book that is protected.

[alittlelark]

11. My kids are in a charter school.

That is not a charter school. It is a religious propaganda academy sponsored by the state. That is sooo wrong. It would not be allowed into this district.

Our charter has been in existance for 2 years and is doing brilliantly (teachers are paid more $$, students are testing off the charts.... Drama, Art, PE, Philosophy.... are an integral part of the program - the tests are secondary).

http://www.latc.com/2001/10/24/schools/schools3.html

I HATE IT when all charter schools are lumped together. Ours arose after Los Altos closed all Los Altos Hills schools. We were upset, and set up our own charter.

[Solo_in_MD]

15. Technical Point

High School, charter or otherwise are not supposed to have .edu domains, though some do, including Barack Obama's alma mater (www.punahou.edu). As a charter school, it could have been start of the k12.$STATE.us hierarchy. Note that they also have the http://www.rocklinacademy.org as well which redirects to the .com domain. Reasonable under the circumstances, though I would have set up the .org as the primary. This is a long way of saying the concern about it not being a .edu is bogus.

[WillyT]

17. But Why Use ".com" ???

:shrug:

[Solo_in_MD]

20. Because most people do and it is what they would remember

As I stated, it makes sense to register both (I might have gotten a couple of other TLDs (.net & .us) as well) and directed them all to the .org

[Igel]

16. You don't clinch your argument.

Coreknowledge.org does more than just Christian stuff; I also looked an an excerpt from the Realms of Gold thing (one of the niftier features Amazon.com offers), and while I'm not sure that I'd use it for my kid, it's innocuous and accurate enough. But there's no indication that the book is used at the Rocklin Academy. (One wit asked, when he had identified essentially the same courses in a Linguistics dept. and a Slavic linguistics dept., what the difference was. "We use Slavic examples." 'Nuff said.)

The university is religious in nature, but also, no doubt, trains teachers to get certification; otherwise the state would shut them down. Again, no doubt, they use Christian examples or models. What they bring into the classroom is between them and the school they teach at. But it makes sense that Core Knowledge would fit into a conservative religious philosophy.

But all you've done is nail, in one case, and possibly nail, in the other, two collaborators, associates if you will. The guilt inherited by these associations is questionable; there are non-guilty collaborators, as well, but innocence never seems to spread by association.

But it all gets back to Hirsch, which may be an actual substantive objection: CoreKnowledge.org, the grant program that entrains Jessup, the focus of the school. I'm not sure that I disagree with Hirsch's cultural literacy claims; they account for the data in a fairly principled and straightforward way. However, I haven't examined the counter-arguments, so I have no valid opinion. I note that he has a new tome out, so maybe he proffers counter-counter-arguments, and I should wait for the counter-counter-counter-arguments to appear.

[WillyT]

18. I Wasn't Really Trying To Clinch Anything, As Much As I Was Suspicious...

and wondering if the close link between Jessup's University and the Academy were legal\ethical\problematic, etc.

IOW - What's legit, and what's a backdoor for public funding for religious indoctrination?

:shrug:

[Igel]

37. It depends on what's taught.

I knew church groups that were really active in Head Start. It was a secular program, and they didn't indoctrinate, at least not significantly. Hard to keep them from teaching their values, whatever the terminology.

[conflictgirl]

21. Charter schools vary widely, and many of them are very religious

We looked into a local charter school before my oldest started kindergarten. It looked like a really good school, with high academic standards. With a kid who was already reading before kindergarten, we figured there was less likelihood that he would be bored there. We actually signed him up for the school, but on the day when we were supposed to take him there to get his classroom assignment and orientation, we overheard some other parents who were discussing the satanic aspect of Yu-gi-oh very loudly and pointedly. My son just happened to be wearing a Yu-gi-oh shirt. I got a little worried about that and when I came home my husband and I looked through the student handbook we had been given. Needless to say, there were a lot of things about the school that suggested a very thinly-veiled religious undertone. The school was very big on promoting their "character education", which I've since come to find out is often code for religion. I have no problem with character education in general, but not when it's combined with religion in a public school setting. (Perhaps quite obviously, we're not religious.)

There are indeed many very good charter schools that have nothing to do with religion at all. But I ended up writing an article about charter schools, and in the course of my research I discovered that charter schools being thinly-veiled religious schools receiving tax dollars is not that unusual of a phenomenon. In fact, even knowing how many people are helped by the option of charter schools and how much I wish we had something like a Waldorf or Montessori charter school around here, I have become pretty convinced that the charter school movement is a very big step toward school vouchers and taxpayer money funding religious education.

[Dinger]

22. O.K. I'm Waiting To See How Certain Posters Will Reply To This

So far, I don't see them. I'll wait . . . . . . .

[Kerrytravelers]

23. Charter schools aren't always religious.

However, as far as I know (and please, correct me where I'm wrong) Charter schools are tax-payer funded, and are therefore bound by the same policies and laws as traditional public schools- and this includes not favoring one religion over another.

As I am a resident of the state of California (and a teacher in a public school, as well) I don't want my tax dollars paying for this.

Keep us updated.

[conflictgirl]

27. Actually, that's not true

As I mentioned in my other post in this thread, I researched the subject of charter schools pretty thorougly for an article I wrote, and considered sending my kid to one until I discovered that it was indeed thinly veiled religious education.

However, not all charter schools are religious. Some are; many are not. The concept of charter schools has some advantages. The more successful ones have been able to use innovations to produce better outcomes than local public schools, particularly with regard to at-risk kids. School districts are pretty notoriously resistant to change, so the charter school represents an opportunity to make improvements.

I do believe that the charter school movement is a way of testing the idea of school vouchers, though, and that worries me. I am neither pro-charter nor anti-charter. There are some implications that concern me about them. But I think the best of all possible worlds would be if public school districts would be a little more open-minded about new ideas and allowed teachers more autonomy. As I'm sure you know, there are a lot of very gifted teachers out there whose hands are tied by school-district bureaucracy (and NCLB has only made it worse).

[Kerrytravelers]

28. Ooops! It was a typo! I corrected it.

:blush: I am very glad you caught my error. I would have forever been in Internet history as an idiot!

Thanks!

kt :hi:

[conflictgirl]

32. No problem!

You wouldn't be known as an idiot, but I certainly understand wanting to avoid giving the wrong impression due to a typo!

:hi:

[proud2BlibKansan]

33. That is how charters work where I teach

[XemaSab]

38. Self delete

Thought about it a little more. :P