Innovations

 

 

 

 

 

 

Green Dot charter school "success" formula explicitly requires to work with those who want to learn and accept to be subjected to their rules. The "success" is just for some members of the commuity; the rest is not their business. Could public schools do that? Yes they could. Are they allowed to do it? No, they are not.

The only real innovation in DC public schools so far: spending on publicity. Is this a good use of tax money?

How do this school achieve success? Embarrasing students is optional. The short answer is that American Indian attracts academically motivated students, relentlessly (and unapologetically) teaches to the test, wrings more seat time out of every school day, hires smart young teachers, demands near-perfect attendance, piles on the homework, refuses to promote struggling students to the next grade and keeps discipline so tight that there are no distractions or disruptions. Summer school is required.

 

Teach for America is a program that prepares college graduates and send them to schools as teachers. Compare it with the credential program that every qualified teacher has to go through.  

 

 

Bribing or rewarding? Originally charters were supposed to be laboratories for experimentation, guided with a spirit of excellence in education. Those were the old ones; these new charter schools don't resemble that ideal. It seems they are a businesses first and foremost.

 

 

In this charter school, Bernal Smith tell parents that corporal punishment is a practice to keep a safe environment in the school. What do you think now about the freedom from constraint that charter shcool enjoy?

 

An interesting innovation from charter school in Ohio is their inaccurate reporting of results."Overall, for 18 schools for which Ohio reported a specific number of graduates, the report claimed 1,610 more graduates in 2004-05 than what the state reported," Dorn writes. "This documented exaggeration represents approximately half of the total graduates that the report claims for the 23 schools." The Buckeye report doesn't explain the source of its graduation data or discuss the discrepancy between its counts and those reported by the state.

 

Another innovation from Ohio's charter schools is their consistency in reporting. Invariably, it makes them look better than they really are or elicit sympathy. A recent report from the Buckeye Institute purports to show that charter schools in Ohio are unfairly underfunded relative to traditional public schools. A new review of the report, however, declares it misleading and, in some instances, false and deceitful.