Group items tagged

Three fired public school principals claim a state-run school district is "arbitrarily and capriciously convert(ing) an indefinite number of public schools to charter schools to be controlled by quasi-private boards without protecting the statutory employment rights of public school employees."      The complaint involves the Recovery School District, a special district administered by the Louisiana Department of Education. According to the district's website, "the RSD is designed to take underperforming schools and transform them into successful places for children to learn." It was created by legislation in 2003.

Rudy Crew has had an eventful career in education. He's run two of the four largest school districts in the United States-New York City in the 1990s and Miami-Dade County from 2004 to 2008-where he initiated ambitious policies and programs but left amid controversy. In New York, he took over and rejuvenated some of the city's poorest-performing schools, but was forced out in 1999 after clashing with then-Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. In Miami, Mr. Crew offered salary increases to teachers who would transfer to the worst schools and got more students to take Advanced Placement tests. But in 2008, the same year he was named National Superintendent of the Year by the American Association of School Administrators, he was fired after a long, escalating spat with the school board. Since then, he's worked as an education consultant with Global Partnership Schools, which he co-founded, and is teaching at the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California. Last month, Mr. Crew, 61, was named president of Revolution K12, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based provider of adaptive-learning software in math and English. Education Week Staff Writer Jason Tomassini spoke with Mr. Crew last week in a telephone interview about his move into the educational technology marketplace, the differences between the public and private sectors, and the changing role of teachers in the classroom.

Nearly six decades after Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that ushered in an era of efforts to integrate public schools, charter school advocates and researchers are shining a light on a number of those independent public schools that are integrated by design. Two new reports-one from the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools, another from the Century Foundation and the Poverty & Race Research Action Council-examine charter schools that have racially and socioeconomically diverse enrollments as part of their school missions. Researchers and advocates say that there is increasing demand for such schools, but that national educational priorities and policies are not necessarily stacked in their favor.

We sorely need a smarter, more coherent vision of the federal role in K-12 education. Yet both parties find themselves hemmed in. Republicans are stuck debating whether, rather than how, the federal government ought to be involved in education, while Democrats are squeezed between superintendents, school boards and teachers' unions that want money with no strings, and activists with little patience for concerns about federal overreach. When it comes to education policy, the two of us represent different schools of thought. One of us, Linda Darling-Hammond, is an education school professor who advised the Obama administration's transition team; the other, Rick Hess, has been a critic of school districts and schools of education. We disagree on much, including big issues like merit pay for teachers and the best strategies for school choice. We agree, though, on what the federal government can do well. It should not micromanage schools, but should focus on the four functions it alone can perform.

In the last year there has been quite a bit of media and policy attention put on urban education reform. Feel-good stories about the success of certain charter school models like the Harlem Children's Zone's Promise Academy, The Uncommon Schools network, and the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) abound. These schools, the media narrative goes, are poor, black and brown kids' great hope - promoting higher test scores, increasing high school graduation rates and advocating for higher levels of college attendance. They are certainly newsworthy, but a closer look reveals that the story of their success is more complex than portrayed. According to research available on the KIPP website, though almost 85 percent of the students graduating from their schools go to college, only 30 percent actually graduate. Of course, high school graduation is a worthy goal, and some college-level work is better than none. But according to the 2011 College Board report, in order to impact poverty rates, increase the qualified workforce for American businesses and ensure economic growth nationwide, college graduation is key.

Over a third of the city's public schools are failing their students, according to new state standards that paint a much bleaker picture than the one offered by the city. The New York State Education Department added some 350 city schools on Thursday to its annual bulletin of "schools in need of improvement" - but 180 of those schools earned A's or B's on their latest progress reports from the city. State Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch said the state's new list of troubled schools offers more proof of the city school system's dismal performance.

State education officials ripped Mayor Bloomberg's reforms of the city's school system Tuesday, calling failed public schools "warehouses" for thousands of unlucky students. Merryl Tisch, chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents, blasted the mayor's long-standing policy of closing troubled schools and replacing them with new ones at a meeting with the editorial board of the Daily News.

Emily Sirota, candidate for Denver Public School Board District 1, appeared on MSNBC's Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell to discuss the unprecedented amounts of corporate cash flowing into the school board race to try to defeat her. Emily supports reinvesting in our neighborhood schools and opposes vouchers - and that's why Huge Money is trying to defeat her.

That sense of immediacy, what the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. called "the fierce urgency of now," gave rise to the charter school movement. Charter schools are public schools that operate under separate management, giving them the freedom to innovate, to refine, and to tailor approaches to specific groups of students. Many charters have longer school days, weeks, and years. We have seen urban charter schools that perform better than their traditional public school counterparts, making up ground that students have lost in traditional schools. They are a right-now education solution for children who need a high-quality education.

Six charter applicants seeking to open schools in Baltimore city in school years 2012 and 2013 were all denied Tuesday, after the city school board voted to affirm city schools CEO Andres Alonso's decision that the plans for the new schools were insufficient or failed to present a compelling reason to obtain charter status.

As New Jersey's battles over charter schools have increasingly gone suburban, one charter school is fighting back in a legal counteroffensive that could have statewide implications. Related Links PIACS et al v. Princeton Regional Schools Board of Education et al School Districts' Response The Princeton International Academy Charter School (PIACS) has filed suit against three districts that have openly fought its existence, contending that they have unlawfully used public funds in their two-year campaign against the school.

As originally envisioned, charter schools were supposed to be a way of empowering communities to have a stronger voice in decision-making at their local schools - with community leaders, parents, and teachers on the boards and decisions being made in ways that gave stakeholders direct access rather than layers of bureaucracy. In New York, however, the expansion and oversight of the state's charter sector seems to be moving in the opposite direction. As evidence, I encourage a review of yesterday's decision by one of the state's charter authorizers to allow the Success Charter Network to merge at least five of its schools (and soon eleven, and likely eventually all forty of their schools) under a single board - essentially creating a new school district run by non-profit corporate leadership rather than public officials or local leaders.

A prominent academic has resigned from the State University of New York Board of Trustees, one of two groups with the power to approve charter schools, saying the university is approving charters that increase inequality and needlessly divide the community. The resignation of Pedro Noguera, a professor at New York University, comes as the debate about the role of charter schools heats up in suburbs and wealthier neighborhoods in the New York City area. In an interview, Noguera said he sees a lack of political leadership about the role of charters and the deep divisions that occur when charter schools move into the same buildings as traditional public schools, a controversial policy known as co-location.

Teachers in Louisiana have found themselves on the frontlines of austerity. First, in an unprecedented vote, the Jefferson Parish School Board voted 8-1 to close seven campuses, four of them traditional elementary schools and the rest alternative programs for students struggling academically. The board issued more bad news when it announced it was dropping plans to add an art instruction wing at Lincoln Elementary School for the Arts due to cost concerns. Construction of the wing is a hot-button issue in the area because the proposal to convert Lincoln into a magnet school that would draw students from across the parish was a result of the deliberations leading up to the system's settling a forty-seven-year-old desegregation lawsuit last year.

We compare the spending of charters to that of district schools of similar size, serving the same grade levels and similar student populations. Overall, charter spending variation is large as is the spending of traditional public schools. Comparative spending between the two sectors is mixed, with many high profile charter network schools outspending similar district schools in New York City and Texas, but other charter network schools spending less than similar district schools, particularly in Ohio. We find that in New York City, KIPP, Achievement First and Uncommon Schools charter schools spend substantially more ($2,000 to $4,300 per pupil) than similar district schools. Given that the average spending per pupil was around $12,000 to $14,000 citywide, a nearly $4,000 difference in spending amounts to an increase of some 30%. In Ohio, charters across the board spend less than district schools in the same city. And in Texas, some charter chains such as KIPP spend substantially more per pupil than district schools in the same city and serving similar populations, around 30 to 50% more in some cities (and at the middle school level) based on state reported current expenditures, and 50 to 100% more based on IRS filings. Even in New York where we have the highest degree of confidence in the match between our IRS data and Annual Financial Report Data, we remain unconvinced that we are accounting fully for all charter school expenditures.

Our guest author today is Dr. Clifford B. Janey, former superintendent for the Newark Public Schools, District of Columbia Public Schools, and Rochester City School District. He is currently a Senior Weismann Fellow at the Bankstreet College of Education in New York City, and a Shanker Institute board member. For too many students, families, and communities, the high school diploma represents either a dream deferred or a broken contract between citizens and the stewards of America's modern democracy. With the reform movement's unrelenting focus on testing and its win/lose consequences for students and staff, the high school diploma, which should signify college and work readiness, has lost its value. Not including the over seven thousand students who drop out of high school daily, the gap between the percentage of those who graduate and their readiness for college success will continue to worsen the social and income inequalities in life.

The School Reform Act ("SRA") grants the D.C. Public Charter School Board authority to hold D.C. public charter schools accountable for fulfilling their duties and obligations under the Act.  The PCSB has developed these Guidelines to outline the process by which it will evaluate the performance of the charter schools, including how the PCSB will ensure that each school complies with its charter agreement and applicable law and how the PCSB will track the progress of each school in meeting its student academic achievement expectations. 

Just at a time when the future of charter schools in Louisiana looks brightest, more and more charter school operations are self-destructing. A few months ago, numerous violations of child protection laws and alleged cheating and other improprieties caused the cancellation of the charter for Abramson Science and Technology Charter in New Orleans. A State Department investigation continues of its sister charter, Kennilworth Science and Technology in Baton Rouge. Now we learn (click for the Advocate story) that all 5 schools managed by the Advance Baton Rouge charter management organization will gradually be taken over or turned over to other managers by the State Recovery District. (There is apparently no consideration of returning these schools to their former parish school boards)

Only a month before nearly 120 Louisiana schools are set to welcome their first voucher students, the state has finally released a slate of standards that approved schools must meet in order to receive both students and concurrent state dollars. And while the standards, created by Superintendent John White and approved by the state's Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) this week, are widely considered a step in the right direction, voucher opponents say the standards fall far short from the accountability they sought. Where every public school in Louisiana is subjected to a standardized slate of testing, the voucher students - who will bring an average of $8,000 in tuition from "failing" public schools to many that are affiliated with religious denominations - will only need to face testing if their new school has taken an average of 10 students per grade, or if the schools have accepted at least 40 voucher students into the grades testing.

The Board of Regents of the Rhode Island Department of Education voted 5-4 last night in favor of a proposal to allow Achievement First, a nonprofit that has established charter schools throughout New England, to continue plans to bring two corporate charter schools to Providence. City Councilman Bryan Principe hosted a press conference yesterday morning urging the Board of the Regents to postpone the vote. Principe has been a leader in the movement against Achievement First and spoke to the board at last night's meeting. "There is widespread community opposition to this plan," he said. Principe presented a long list of those opposed to Achievement First, including 22 members of the General Assembly, seven members of the Providence City Council and 33 various community, parent and labor organizations.