Remember all the stories about long waiting lists for charter schools? Well, it is not the case at Tennessee’s all-charter Achievement School District. The ASD has taken over low-performing public schools, turned them over to privately managed charter schools, and promises that the schools would be high-performing within five years. Unfortunately, the parents in Memphis and Nashville are not happy about losing their neighborhood public school.
Chalkbeat reports that Republican legislators in Tennessee are proposing to allow the ASD to enroll children from outside their zoned residential district, in order to find more students. It turns out that the schools do not have waiting lists and have low enrollments. One charter operator–Rocketship–won’t open unless the bill passes.
Nashville school board member Amy Frogge warned that the bill would siphon off students and funding from public schools:
“The need for such a bill indicates that the ASD is unable to meet its goal of turning around low-performing schools without a change in student population, and it also indicates that parents are not ‘voting with their feet’ to attend these charter schools,” said Amy Frogge, a board member for Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools and a vocal critic of charter schools and the ASD.
Frogge voiced concern that schools in the ASD will recruit the highest-achieving students from nearby neighborhoods, which could “burden traditional schools with larger populations of more challenging and costly-to-educate students,” she responded in an email to Chalkbeat.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Off-topic, but it looks like there are 16 more to add to your honor roll: http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2015/01/ohio-superintendents-step-up.html#comment-form
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It’s a shame that public school employees have to do the work that we’re paying a huge group of people in Columbus to do.
The state people we’re paying released their priorities yesterday. Public schools aren’t even mentioned. Expanding “high quality” charter schools is on there, but the schools that 90% of the kids in this state attend were completely ignored.
I’m not clear why everyone in this state is paying the ed reform crowd in Columbus when they’re only working on behalf of the 10% of schools in this state that are charter schools.
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Once again, we see a proposal that benefits ONLY charter schools, with absolutely no concern for the effects on existing public schools, or the children who attend those schools.
The “safety net” public schools apparently only exist to serve the needs and wants of the “schools of choice”. They would not have even been mentioned without that school board member acting as an advocate. Where are the rest of the people public school parents are paying to work on behalf of their schools? Where’s the state ed agency and state lawmakers? Why is there this singular focus on the needs of charters, without any consideration for the public schools?
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