Collaboration vs. Competition

I’m all for competition…it’s human nature, but Charter Schools can be a source of resentment and frustration for some communities – why share the resources?  Why not collaborate?  

Urban Activists: School Closures Hurt Our Communities, Ed Week, March 31, 2011, discusses such struggles in urban communities.

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/03/31/27pnbk_schoolclosures.h30.html

Charters and Public Schools Team Up in Texas, is an article that highlights the promises of collaboration between charter schools and districts.  There is a need for solutions to our educational crisis and charters schools can offer academic improvements and creativity, but I’m much more of a supporter of collaboration over competition.  

http://hechingerreport.org/content/charters-and-public-schools-team-up-in-texas_4809/

“Nationally, charter schools and traditional school districts battle for students and money, and trade claims about their relative success.
But here in the Valley, less than an hour from the Texas-Mexico border, the charter network and the district are working together. With IDEA in the lead, they are creating a training center for teachers and principals that will serve both charter schools and traditional ones. By doing so, the area is helping to write a new chapter in charter-district relations, one that replaces competition with collaboration to better serve the needs of students, regardless of which school they attend. Urban districts like New York, Philadelphia and New Orleans have already developed such partnerships.”