Teaching Tuesday: Big Brother runs your charter school

Alert reader SusanHu (okay, she doesn't read my blog, but she reads, and seems alert) caught a disturbing story about a Florida charter school:

Charter Schools USA is threatening legal action against parents who use an Internet discussion board to air grievances about Gateway Charter.

Parent Angela Reigelman, who created the virtual forum, received a letter via FedEx on Thursday ordering her to remove the forum. The company also warned other Web contributors Thursday. [. . .]

"CSUSA has reviewed the Web site and has determined that your and other parents' and other Web site participants' published accusations, comments and statements are unlawful, defamatory and libelous against CSUSA, Gateway Charter School and Dr. Nauss," attorney Lisa MacClugage stated in the letter to Reigelman.

"Accordingly, CSUSA hereby demands that you immediately cease and desist your continuous published libel and defamatory accusations, comments and statements."

First of all, I'm glad my name isn't MacClugage--makes me think of fast-food travel bags. Second, this is quite disturbing: Perhaps the single greatest selling point the charter school movement uses with the public is their line about parental involvement. CSUSA itself says, "All CSUSA educational advantages exceed public school standards, including small class size, integrated technology, parental involvement contracts, [etc.]." The list goes on from there; what the parents discussed on that website of theirs included all those things on the list (follow the first link above for examples).

At what point does somebody stand up and say that it's time to stop the corporate mentality in our schools? It's enronomics all over again. Worse, this school is playing George W. Bush with its parents. There was even "a May 3 letter to parents signed by the PTO's executive board stating: 'In light of the fact that various individuals and groups are trying to politicize the PTO, we have decided to cancel all further PTO meetings for the duration of the 2004-05 school year.' " That's like canceling the annual terrorism report because it shows that we're losing.

As long as we keep pushing our schools in this direction--a push that comes with far too many tax dollars--we are inviting this kind of abuse and corruption.

(Via shari, via Joe.)