Opinions wanted: charter school vs. traditional high school

[hipteacher]

I have 24 hours to decide... which job do I take?:cool:

1)traditional high school
-must follow strict curriculum, very little creativity
-Slightly better benefits
-Unionized
-What I am used to
-Closer, easier to get to the school

2) charter high school
- I design my own curriculum, lots of creativity, I am the expert
- This school has one of the highest test scores in the state
- Teachers and students have a dress code
- No union, one year contract with heavy evaluations each year
-All students have laptops, school has wireless internet in and out of the building
-Less days off but more professional development opporunities



Both schools are comparible in: the same amount of pay, retirement funding, resources for teaching, brand new buildings, subject matter that I would be teaching, block schedules, calendar year and bell schedule.

All opinions and advice accepted!

[Chocolate_New_Orleans]

"Every kid has a laptop" concerns me. That is a selling poing for parents. For teachers, it's one more thing you have to babysit (IM'ing, surfing the internet instead of working and nevermind the possibility of innapropriate material that inet savy kids can get past that some parent will hold you responsible for)

another issue I have with the 1 charter school around my town (which, if I worked there, could be seen as a good thing I suppose). During the schoolyear, our charter school will steal all the good kids from existing schools, leaving the public schools with the lower end of students to educate and test (and people often use the stats that charter schools do better - well no shat, you take the upper 10%, you BETTER test out better) But when NCLB testing is about to happen, the students who could possibly hurt their testing results, get 'kicked out' then having to return to their home school. But miracuously, the charter school shows it's heart about a week after testing and they 'allow' that expelled student to return under probation or some garbage. That way, they get the FTE monies for # of students enrolled, but the low testers are sent to other schools to bring down their NCLB test results, then allowed to return afterwards.