I keep meaning to do a follow-up to this. Three years late! No excuse! But it still amazes me that we were warned about specific things that could happen in Delaware with charter schools and we still went ahead with it.
Charter schools. Two words that bring up a great deal of conversation in Delaware. For some they have become the savior of public education. For others they find that they continue segregation in Delaware, are not accountable in the way traditional schools are, and they are the root cause of the corporate education reform movement that has swept across America over the past decade. In the 1990s, charter schools were created in Minnesota and California. By 1995, Delaware wanted to take a stab at it.
In 1995, six companies wanted to sponsor a new type of school in Delaware, a charter school: AstraZenaca (then called Zenaca Inc.), Christiana Care Health (then called Medical Center of Delaware), Delmarva Power, DuPont, Hercules Incorporated and Verizon (then called Bell Atlantic). They infused a $600,000 commitment into the school launch. Red Clay Consolidated School District President of the Board William Manning, and St. Marks…
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The Season Of Myths 