Is there a need and a place for charter schools in our public school system?

Of course there is.

By paying close attention to the ever changing needs of our children, we have discovered somewhat belatedly that they all can learn and that we maximize their learning by giving them pedagogical choices and schoolhouse settings that accommodate their respective interest and ways of learning.

The acclaimed success we have had with our venture into magnet schools and career academies is a testament to what our children can do when we adapt our methods and places of learning to their needs.

Charter schools are public schools by the way; each is sanctioned by the district presumably not to duplicate the work of the district but to offer a unique “point of difference” that is an adaptive response to the evolving needs of our children.

Con: Chris Guerrieri is a teacher who often blogs on public education issues.

With charter schools we get an adaption of longer school days and longer school years for children who need it, support-based reform methods to complement the standards-based focus of the public school system, metrics that are inculcated into the culture of learning as well as the culture of instruction and evaluation, and a schoolhouse characterized by order, efficiency and technological advancement.

The paradigm for learning has already shifted.

The onus is on us as benefactors to our children to provide them with the skills and knowledge needed to persist in this 21st century economy.

Our charge is to “find, fix and finish” the threat to their success by equipping them with the appropriate tools to take their rightful places in front of a long line of global competitors.

Regrettably, we allow our children to suffer while we waste time in selfish debate about place and methods, old school vs. new school, public school vs. charter school.

The fact is no one can lay claim to an absolute place or method that is or can be a sole-source provider of our children’s learning needs.

What we can be certain of, however, is that if we fail to adapt our methods and places of instruction to meet the rapidly evolving intellectual demands of the society they will inherit, they will fail and fail miserably in their stewardship of it.

Charter schools are but one form of effective adaptation to the evolving need for our children to intellectually prepare (now!) for the competition they face (now!) in the global economy ... “the driving force to evolution is adaptation.”