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"Would I send my child to this school?" This is a question I asked myself every day while working at Achievement First and helping to build their first high school in Brooklyn, NY in 2009 and 2010. I served as the Director of Student Life at Achievement First Crown Heights High School (now called AF Brooklyn High School), which entailed developing and managing all after-school and summer enrichment programs, building the advisory system for both college skills and character development, counseling students, and organizing and leading community events each week to contribute to school culture. As a member of the founding team, I was involved in almost every aspect of the school, from hiring, to behavior management, to building systems for school culture and discipline, to working with others in the Achievement First network to find and implement best practices for our new school.

The number of students in virtual schools run by educational management organizations rose sharply last year, according to a new report being published Friday, and far fewer of them are proving proficient on standardized tests compared with their peers in other privately managed charter schools and in traditional public schools.

In Ed Schools housed within research universities, and in programs in educational leadership which are primarily charged with the training of school and district level leaders, we are constantly confronted with deliberations over how to balance teaching the "practical stuff" and "how to" information on running a school or school district, managing personnel, managing budgets, etc. etc. etc., and the "research stuff" like understanding how to interpret rigorous research in education and related social sciences (increasingly economic research).  Finding the right balance between theory, research and practice is an ongoing struggle and often the subject of bitter debate in professional programs housed in research universities.

Candidates interested in becoming Match teachers were given Match's training booklet on classroom management.  Match's founder, Michael Goldstein, told me that the booklet is still in draft form; nevertheless, it has been distributed. Below is a description as well as excerpts from "Book 1: Classroom management," obtained from a prospective Match student to whom it was given.

Although much has been written about the importance of leadership in the determination of organizational success, there is little quantitative evidence due to the difficulty of separating the impact of leaders from other organizational components - particularly in the public sector. Schools provide an especially rich environment for studying the impact of public sector management, not only because of the hypothesized importance of leadership but also because of the plentiful achievement data that provide information on institutional outcomes. Outcome-based estimates of principal value-added to student achievement reveal significant variation in principal quality that appears to be larger for high-poverty schools. Alternate lower-bound estimates based on direct estimation of the variance yield smaller estimates of the variation in principal productivity but ones that are still important, particularly for high poverty schools. Patterns of teacher exits by principal quality validate the notion that a primary channel for principal influence is the management of the teacher force. Finally, looking at principal transitions by quality reveals little systematic evidence that more effective leaders have a higher probability of exiting high poverty schools.

Performance ratings for 217 New York City charter school teachers were made public on Tuesday but city officials cautioned that because of missing information, the reports cannot be used to objectively compare the quality of a public school versus charter school education. The controversial ratings cover math and English teachers of grades four to eight at 32 charter schools. These schools receive public funding, but are privately managed, and unlike traditional public schools, they voluntarily participated in the city's teacher data initiative, believing that the information would remain confidential. Some of the schools that volunteered for the assessment are part of established charter management organizations like KIPP or Uncommon, while others are independent schools, commonly called mom-and-pops.

Stray Dogs, Saints, and Saviors: Fighting for the Soul of America's Toughest High School By Alexander Russo Jossey-Bass, 2011, $24.95; 232 pages. Reviewed by Nathan Glazer Neither "stray dogs" nor "saints" play any role in Alexander Russo's account of how Green Dot, a nonprofit organization that creates new charter high schools, managed to take over Locke High School in the Watts area of Los Angeles, and what it achieved in its first year managing it.

"Neoliberal education reform is plagued by a contradiction in its commitments - schools need autonomy to be responsive to communities, yet most charters are run by non-educators with no stake in these communities. Insulated from public, democratic bodies, charters are operated by "charter management organizations." These organizations often manage multiple schools and are governed by unelected boards in which philanthropists vastly outnumber teachers or parents. Few charter schools are unionized, so educators have little say in the governance of the school. As the public school system is slowly dismantled, school-by-school, charters open in their place. Naturally, this has caused tension between neoliberal reformers and teachers."

Most say the hardest job in Michigan doesn't belong to the governor, not even Detroit's mayor, but the new emergency manager for Detroit Public Schools. So far, Roy Roberts has asked teachers, students and parents to share in some deep cuts, but tonight Action News Investigator Ross Jones has details on a costly new perk that's raising eyebrows

Stray Dogs, Saints, and Saviors, a new book about a Los Angeles school turnaround by education journalist Alexander Russo, is refreshingly void of any mythical figures. The book tracks the events leading up to, and a couple of years following, the takeover of troubled Locke High School by start-up charter management organization Green Dot Schools. Because of the history of violence and failure in and around Locke (located in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles), a majority of Locke teachers and administrators petitioned in 2007 to be released from the Los Angeles Unified School District and placed under Green Dot's management.

New Orleans is one of the best examples of what national experts increasingly describe as a school "portfolio management model": a structure where schools that do not meet standards get closed or new management, much like an investor might drop or sell underperforming stocks.

Taxpayers might soon be able to see how private management companies spend the millions they receive from the public to operate public charter schools and how much they profit. A Franklin County judge ruled that White Hat management Co.-the for-profit firm of Akron businessman and GOP donor David L. Brennan-is a public official when acting as an authorized representative of a public charter school.

"Smarick sees two conversations going on today about charter schools. To one side are those like himself who are trying to figure out the new paradigm of schooling, in which privately-managed charter schools are a permanent part of the landscape. This conversation deals with finance, governance, how to get it right. It assumes that charter schools are a permanent part of the landscape and the question to be solved is one of tinkering. On the other side are people who worry about whether charter schools are a blight that damages public education and should be closely scrutinized for their finances, their boasts, and their policies governing admissions and suspensions. This side refers to hedge fund managers, privateers, and exorbitant executive salaries, and makes big headlines out of what Smarick considers the extraordinary miscreant."

Academica has become Florida's largest and richest charter-school management company, running more than 60 schools just in Miami-Dade and Broward counties.

The National Study of CMO Effectiveness is a longitudinal research effort designed to measure how nonprofit charter school management organizations (CMOs) affect student achievement and to examine the internal structures, practices, and policy contexts that may influence these outcomes. The study began in May 2008 and will conclude in 2012.   This report presents findings on CMO students, resources, and  practices  as well as CMO impacts on student  achievement in middle school. It also examines the relationships  between CMO  practices and impacts. A subsequent version of this report will include findings on CMO impacts on high school graduation and postsecondary enrollment.   The study is being conducted by Mathematica Policy Research and the University of Washington's Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE). It was commissioned by NewSchools Venture Fund, with the generous support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation. 

"I consider the Gates report to be another step in reducing teachers to labor under the heel of principals who function as management. If reform is ever to be successful, teachers and principals must work as partners. An adversarial system may work in the courtroom, but it has no place in the classroom."

"Gov. Chris Christie proposed Thursday that private companies play an unprecedented role in public education, managing some schools and creating others from the ashes of dysfunctional ones."

The Department of Justice and four states on Monday filed a multibillion-dollar fraud suit against the Education Management Corporation, the nation's second-largest for-profit college company, charging that it was not eligible for the $11 billion in state and federal financial aid it had received from July 2003 through June 2011.

Whether charter schools will increase segregation in schools and, ultimately, in society is an important and hotly contested question. Charter proponents point to the high enrollments of minority and economically disadvantaged pupils in charter schools, compare them with overall state enrollment percentages, and contend that charter schools are integrative. Opponents explain these enrollment levels by noting the high minority and poverty concentrations in the urban areas where charter schools are centered. They quote other research suggesting that the schools exacerbate existing segregation. Gary Miron, Jessica Urschel, William Mathis, and Elana Tornquist examine this issue using a national data base of schools operated by Education Management Organizations (EMOs), 95% of which are charter schools. The study explores whether these EMO-operated charter schools integrate or segregate students by four key demographic characteristics: ethnic/minority classification, socioeconomic status, disabling condition and English language facility.

The charter school movement has received plenty of advice on policy and practice issues in recent years. Policy analysts have debated the best way to promote chartering at the state and federal levels, while education consultants and support organizations have focused on advising schools on operating more effectively. But considerably less work has been done on bringing the disparate pieces of charter school management together into a coherent strategic framework.