May 29, 2013
Minority children excluded from charter schools
One of the signatories of an open letter urging a rethink on charter schools says the publicly-funded private schools could end up excluding some Māori from education altogether.
Russell Bishop, who developed the professional development programme, Te Kotahitanga, to show teachers how to relate to Māori pupils, says charter schools are a costly experiment which has not been proven to improve outcomes for minority students.
He was recently in the United States where educators warned him of the consequences of charter schools picking who they teach.
"Black Americans in South Chicago are saying that up to 40 percent of their male children are being excluded from these charter schools and as the charter schools get developed in these areas, the public schools don't have enough children and close down. When the Black American boys – and I'm thinking Māori boys here – get excluded from the school, there is nowhere for them to go," Professor Bishop says.
He says problems with under-achievement can be fixed in mainstream schools with programmes such as Te Kotahitanga that have been developed over the past decade.
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