Choice Is King: The Case for Charter Churches
Choice is king. Choice is how we must address the decline in the number of individuals identifying as Christian. (Pew Research Center's Religion and Public Life Project). We need charter churches. We need more church choice. Those lazy Sunday school teachers are not good enough to teach our children. If parents had more church choice, there would be better children’s ministries. Choice in cars, choice in video games, choice in jobs, choice in sports, choice in products. Choice is always the answer. That is why choice is the answer for our churches.
Children’s ministries are failing. It is so bad our local representatives should get involved and form partnerships. Yes, our politicians must work behind the scenes with entrepreneurs to get charter churches opened. We must donate money to politicians to build churches too. That competition will make children’s ministries better.
One exception. No choice for Sunday school teachers. If staff members of churches desire to work at churches in other areas, then those Sunday school teachers must start at the bottom of the seniority list and start at the bottom of that church’s salary scale. Also, if Sunday school teachers leave the profession, they must forfeit their pensions. (California State Teachers’ Retirement System)
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Stop. Do not dare think anything negative or ask questions about these policies. Nor about parenting styles, family trauma, mass social changes, or anything else. The decline of Christianity is the fault of Sunday school teachers and nothing else. These puppet-loving, sing-along, oddballs that enjoy learning and working with children do not work a full year, are responsible for the decline of Christianity, and are indoctrinating our children.
Church staff should not have a choice in employment. Keep the Sunday school teachers locked up in their classrooms with bulletin boards, sticky floors, and only the materials they purchase with their own money. Do not let them switch churches or careers. It is the punishment they deserve.
Charter children’s ministries will improve traditional children’s ministries, because charter Sunday school teachers have secret magical tricks that other Sunday school teachers do not know about. It is also easier to fire charter Sunday school teachers, especially if they make negative observations about our children and our parenting habits. Or point out corruption and misdeeds within the charter church. (Ravitch)
The religious landscape is changing. We must follow the lead of the Orange County Board of Education whose majority approved new charter public schools. (Ocregister.com) Let us follow the lead of former United States vice-president Joseph Biden’s brother, Frank Biden. Find someone with a famous last name. Then, have him or her connect a charter company with politicians in the state to open a series of charter churches. (abcnews.go.com)
Do not worry, no fly-by-night children’s ministries will be opened, none will have high turnover rate of staff, none will exclude children with any form of disability or behavioral issues, none will be investment opportunities, none will be corrupt, none will lack transparency, none will cause other churches to be drained of resources. The choices given to us by Big Business-Big Government partnerships will halt the secularization of our society, boost the learning of Bible passages, and increase the number of Christians in our communities. (Ravitch)
The parody above clarifies what is thought and stated about our modern public school communities. This pervasive ethos arises from uber individualism, uber sovereignty of the self, and hubris that is easily manipulated by political and commercial interests. The sales pitch is one that is easily digested. The fault, difficulty, or struggle of learning and being a good citizen in the local public school classroom is the fault of the “other”. The bogeyman. The teacher. In the end, liberty unchecked, liberty unguarded, becomes tyranny of the customer. Neighborhood schools, local shops, and markets become bound to the demands, emotions, and dysfunctions of thousands of little kings.
The amalgamation of uber individualism, lack of personal responsibility, and misplaced blame is not freedom. Modern school choice is phony, fake, fraudulent. The abundance of choice simply leads to confusion, disappointment perfection does not exist, realization none of us is unique in our educational needs, and that happiness is not a result of brash, rude individualism. The little kingdoms, the thousands of charter schools across the country, are a land of corruption that do not solve the issues of neighborhoods.
For example, “the California Superior Court for the County of San Diego indicted 11 people on charges that they helped defraud California taxpayers out of $50 million via an elaborate scheme to create phony attendance records to increase revenue to an online charter chain known as A3.” (Ravitch, https://dianeravitch.net/2020/01/28/carol-burris-the-five-biggest-charter-scandals-of-2019/)
As Lawrence R. Samuel, Ph.D. explained, “Today, expressions of individualism are everywhere you look, making the me-ness of the ‘Me Generation’ look comparatively mild. Living alone is no longer seen as odd or peculiar, for example, and usage of the words ‘I’ or ‘me in both verbal and written communication is significantly higher than in the past. (It is the ‘selfie,’ however, which serves as the poster child for contemporary individualism.)”. (Psychology Today)
School choice, charter schools, independent schools, private schools, and home schools can and do provide some wonderful environments for students and families to learn and grow. As Vanderbilt University researcher Joseph Murphy discovered, “Homeschool students are successful and they don’t perform worse than other students or seem to be disadvantaged in any way…If you have one teacher dedicated to one or two children, it’s a success equation, and so it doesn’t surprise me [homeschooling] works.” (Wetzel and Wetzel).
Unfortunately, elites within our school districts, counties, state, and federal government work with the elites in corporations. The policies born from that political, bureaucratic, and commercial collaboration often do not make for great places or learning nor do they improve our local schools. Think Race to the Top, Common Core, and Big Testing. Common Core State Standards (CCSS) accelerated money out of the classroom to consultants and testing companies and undermines professionalism in education. (Simpson) Some parents and guardians then seek schools that they think are better for their children.
School choice is not new. The options, the charters, the independents, the private schools, have their problems, challenges, and imperfections as with any public school. All of which make certain people rich and powerful. None of which actually promotes the beautiful, simple, yet complex nature of acquiring wisdom and skills. If choice was king, then communities, states, and the country would have settled the issues of learning, safety, and student satisfaction in schools decades ago.
Glen Sacks, teacher, explained the root of higher test scores and higher college admission rates, “The pursuit of a school of choice is evidence of a student’s and a family’s commitment to education. Parents understand how important this is. A recent study of New York City’s public high-school system found parents were more concerned about the quality of a school’s students than the quality of the school itself.” (Sacks)
Overall, parental aspirations for their children has a larger impact on student learning than feedback from teachers, study skills, homework, testing, and teacher education. Other important factors in school: instructional quality has an impact of 1.00, testing 0.30, teacher education 0.11. Student characteristics: prior cognitive ability 1.04 and disposition to learn 0.6. Home influences: parental aspirations for children’s educational achievement .80, home factors .67, home environment (socio-psychological) .57, parent involvement .46, transiency/mobility -0.34 (that is a negative). Social influences: peer .38 and television -.12 (that is a negative). (Hattie and Anderman, n.d.) Thus, educational achievement is complex, layered, and much more intricate than simply providing more “choice”.
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Credits
ABC News. How Frank Biden Leveraged His Famous Name for Business Gain. [online] ABC News. Available at: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/frank-biden-leveraged-famous-business-gain/story?id=68202529.
California State Teachers’ Retirement System. (2014) Available at: https://www.calstrs.com/sites/main/files/file-attachments/6-30-14_financial_statement_final.pdf
Hattie, J. and Anderman, E. (n.d.). Visible Learning Guide to Student Achievement.
Ocregister.com. Winning a Spot on Orange County education Board Becomes Flash Point for 2020 Elections – Orange County Register. [online] Available at: https://www.ocregister.com/2019/12/23/winning-a-spot-on-orange-county-education-board-becomes-flash-point-for-2020-elections.
Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project. In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace. [online] Available at: https://www.pewforum.org/2019/10/17/in-u-s-decline-of-christianity-continues-at-rapid-pace/.
https://www.pexels.com
Psychology Today. The Rise of "Me" Culture. [online] Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/future-trends/201808/the-rise-me-culture.
Ravitch, D. [Blog] Available at: https://dianeravitch.net/category/charter-schools
Sacks, G. Opinion | Charter Schools’ Success Is an Illusion. [online] WSJ. Available at: https://www.wsj.com/articles/charter-schools-success-is-an-illusion-11566859572.
Simpson, M. (2020). Daily Kos: Faux Education Reform or Improved Education. [online] Bigeducationape.blogspot.com. Available at: https://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2012/10/daily-kos-faux-education-reform-or.html.
Wetzel, J. and Wetzel, J. Homeschooling Goes Under the Microscope in new Peabody Research. [online] Vanderbilt University. Available at: https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2012/11/12/homeschooling.
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