Some of the Villa allegations already discredited

The Herald reports:

The school under fire for bribing its kids with takeaways says it never served fried chicken – only pizza.

Villa Education Trust, which runs Middle School West Auckland, is yet to respond to questions from the New Zealand Herald, but told the Ministry of Education today they don’t use food as part of any rewards or behaviour programme at the school.

“The school had a shared lunch just before the end of term where pizza was brought in.

They have told us Kentucky Fried Chicken hasn’t been served to students,” the ministry said.

“This was not part of any behaviour programme. It is common for schools to have shared lunches.”

There may be some substance to the other allegations, but I’m sceptical.

One has to put in context that there is a vigorous campaign to discredit and destroy charter schools. No other schools in New Zealand face such a well funded and ongoing campaign. Everything possible to undermine them has been attempted from boycotts, to press campaigns.

This doesn’t mean that allegations should be ignored. But it does mean that allegations without any proof should not be treated as authoritative, even if the media does.

We have a robust system of checks of schools, and even ore on charter schools than most schools. They have targets agreed with with the Ministry, which they can be held against. The ERO can and does review them. And most of all as they have no zones which force people to attend the local school, not students are forced to attend them. If they do not provide good educational outcomes, then parents won’t enrol in them.

Russel Brown at Public Address said that I won’t report negatively on any charter schools. This is false. Not only did I blog earlier today on the allegations, I also have blogged on the Whangaruru charter school that is having considerable problems.

I’d turn about the false claim by Russel, and ask him when has he (or maybe any left blogger) ever published a positive article on a charter school? And what would it take for him to do so? Are the academic results achieved at Vanguard not sufficient?