“Does Harvard make the man or does the
man make Harvard?”
There exists a popular myth regarding
Oklahoma’s charter schools. This myth states that charter schools take the most
motivated parents away from traditional schools, and that these parents are the
cause for the success of Oklahoma’s proliferate charter schools. This idea also
implies that this action, if true, is detrimental to traditional schools.
Children with motivated parents, charter school opponents say, will succeed no
matter what school they attend. To follow this line of thought, if all of the
motivated parents from three local schools moved to a single charter school,
the community would be left with one successful charter school and three
failing traditional schools. This myth states that rather than the school
making the student, the parent makes the student, which in turn makes the
school. This is fairly illogical.
