wow

[mum2maddox]

DP and i were talking today about our future plans, it is looking like he will be working in teh USA from next yr hopefully in a full time tenured position (possible in detroit)  nothing cement yet (far from it)  anyway i was askig about where i could work there ect and he basically said if he is gett the salary he thinks hell get in that job then hed rather me stay hom with maddox (and any future bundles)... and he has been talking to people whlst i ntexas at a conference,  about how tey homechooled their kids ect and its made him think more and more that it might be best (in the past DP has said it would be nice but dismissed it as impossible)>...

well he has done his research and even spoke to people who have their kids in a charter school that they facilitated in getting up and running themselves...

anyway imn interested in them, ive googled a bit and it sounds fantastic... but was wondering what you gals think... are there many are they worth while...

hopefully we will be able to make some decision in the future about which way we are going to go so we can really brush up on it all...

depends big time on where we live ect i guess...

mainly just interested in hearing about charter schools and we dont seem to have anything like that out here..

TIA

sarah

[jnezmama02]

Charter schools can be really good or really bad. If they are managed well and such, than yea they can be a really awesome education for kids. Unfortunately, a lot of charter schools are mismanaged, very "political", and the kids can end up learning less than in a traditional public school. My sister used to teach at a charter school in North Carolina. She said the first year was great. All the teachers pitched in to get things up and running, etc. But, then the second and third years she worked there, the principal got really strange and there wasn't a school board to over see him.  My DH used attended a lot of private religious schools growing up.  They were also like charter schools...just a step up above homeschooling, really, as they used packets and such like more rigid homeschool programs do. Anyway, he also said that the "politics" of the school would get out of hand after a while as certain parents tried to take leadership of the school and direct it a certain way. On the other hand, he loved having the freedom to learn at his own pace and felt that he learned "how to learn" more than anything and thinks that's such a valuable lesson.

Ok, this probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense as I'm saying they can be good and bad.

[kokonutmama]

I went to a charter school (magnet school, technically, I'm not sure what the dif is) high school and it was AWESOME!!! It's gotten not as awesome lately (politics came into play a bit) but it's still one of the best schools in the state.

[heathernkids]

I have heard the same that some are successful and others fail- I currently have 3 friends who ditched the regular public school for a charter and they love it. The parents are very involved and it's well organized, so that's what you want!
Magnets are the same, pros and cons. I taught at a magnet- the I.B. program for 5 yrs. (International Baccalaureate) which can be great if you're going to come and go from the US, they're all over the world. Our school could've been a huge success if only we had a supportive, compassionate principal which we did NOT. The teachers had to keep everything together and make sure we were running the way an IB program should be. Anyway, I ended up quitting b/c our system was making me sick literally.

As a child I went to public, private Catholic, and Montessori and IMHO- Montessori was the best.