The next step in privatization is happening in Detroit. "What he's trying to do is create an all-charter district," she said. "Where is the evidence that charter schools have provided a better academic product?""He's supposed to fix the finances but he's destroying the district," said Dr. Margaret Betts, a DPS board member.
How not to love charter schools (the last beacon of hope) when Marsha Sutton, Education Writer?, from San Diego writes: Today, under the leadership of charismatic Gompers principal Vince Riveroll and an enthusiastic staff, achievement has improved, detentions and suspensions have declined, and belief in future success has replaced hopelessness and apathy. A crumbling educational environment has been converted into a middle school that offers promising outcomes at last.
Now, Steve Barr. from Green Dot, and Eli Broad, billionaire, are doing what CTA and NEA (AFT) should have done long ago: investing in reaching and organizing the community. They are awsomely smart and powerful! Is it too late for us? Do we care? Mary Najera is the lead organizer for the “Parent Revolution,” a program created by the Parent’s Union of Los Angeles at Green Dot charter schools. At the end of this month, Najera says she and other parents will launch an all-out battle against the LAUSD. “Parents are sick and tired of being sick and tired, they really are,” Najera told EGP as she banged her fist on the table. She says parents have to take control of their children’s education and question what the teachers’ union is saying. Not every teacher deserves to have their job saved, some of the teachers losing their jobs are the best teachers at the school, she said, referring to seniority rules.
The billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad visited a Harlem charter school on Thursday to announce that he would give $2.5 million to help the growth of two charter school networks in the city. In his remarks, Mr. Broad, who has given $30 million to New York school-reform efforts, called on leaders in urban school districts to make it easier for charter schools to use space normally reserved for traditional schools. He also urged New York to consider opening more charter schools in the Bronx, where he attended elementary school, to match the number in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
CTA MEMBERS, EITHER WE FIGHT THIS FIGHT BY INFROMING OURSELVES AND THE PUBLIC, OR WE BY DEFAULT SURRENDER PUBLIC SCHOOLS! Risk-taking charter school operator Steve Barr is launching an effort through which parents would wrest political control of the L.A. school system from unions, school bureaucrats and other entrenched interests. The plan is for parents to form chapters all over town and improve schools, one by one, using the growing leverage of the charter school movement. The goal is to unite a city of overworked and isolated parents with a brash promise:
If more than half of the parents at a school sign up, Barr's organizers say they will guarantee an excellent campus within three years. They call it the Parent Revolution.
The three-year pledge was conceived by Marco Petruzzi, a business consultant who was a Green Dot board member and now is Barr's chief executive. "What was really missing was a value proposition for parents," Petruzzi said. "If you do this, you get this."
The initiative is directed by attorney Ben Austin, a longtime political consultant who has reshaped the Parents Union, which has a mailing list of thousands but a much smaller active core. So far, the Parents Union has been a useful but limited political vehicle for causes Barr supported, such as Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's unsuccessful attempt to win control of the school district.
This is one more article, this time from David Brooks inthe NY Times, providing insight as to how to solve problems like poverty and education: forget about public funded program, charter schools are the way. The fight against poverty produces great programs but disappointing results. You go visit an inner-city school, job-training program or community youth center and you meet incredible people doing wonderful things. Then you look at the results from the serious evaluations and you find that these inspiring places are only producing incremental gains.
What you can expect from a film about education made by Bowdon? Bowdon delves into several issues, including school funding, teacher tenure, vouchers and charter schools. Bowdon's view is "public education serves its employees, not its children." The movie points out that schools nationwide are struggling.
This is a clear example of spinning research with propagandistic purposes. I read the report and wrote a comment. No response. Students enrolled in Riverside County's dozen charter schools are generally performing on an academic level equal to or better than students in the county's traditional public schools, according to a USC study released today. The USC Center on Educational Governance's 2009 "Charter School Indicators'' report examined the academic progress, financial health and teacher quality standards of nearly all the state's 678 charter schools.
The author points out some important but little known detailsabout Green Dot charter schools and makes some interesting questions. The Green Dot charter school chain has grown in L.A. Unified and nearby districts to around 11 school sites – it’s a bit hard to count because there are multiple small schools in some sites. Green Dot has won attention for working with unions instead of around and against them, though it doesn’t offer seniority rights or job protection, so many union activists would view that as a bit hollow.
Parents and community members in northwest Denver implored school district officials Tuesday to fix their neighborhood schools and were skeptical about a plan to add more charter schools. "Thirty-six percent of the schools are not neighborhood schools now," said Loralie Cole, whose daughter will enter Denver Public Schools next fall. "We have a lot of choice already." District officials have been holding neighborhood meetings across the city to gauge community feelings about 16 prospective charter and district-run performance schools being proposed for 2010.
“It’s clear what they want,” he said. “Their game plan is to privatize the school system.”
“The charter school push is very strong,” he said. Charter schools get the same public funding as regular public schools but they also get substantial private money, many of them from churches. While unions have begun working with some charter school operators, and some teachers at charter schools have won union contracts, the bulk are nonunion.
In New York, charter schools are proliferating — there are going to be around 100 of them by September, and “there are unions maybe at six of them.” The charters are beginning to take over parts or all of public school buildings, he said.
Read this and think about the explanation. Do you believe it? Green Dot Charter Schools in Los Angeles provide an interesting example for Rockford to consider. The highly successful Green Dot Schools do not seek to expand charters. According to Green Dot founder Steve Barr, their goal is to exert pressure on the Los Angeles system to reform itself. They are demonstrating how this can be done with the same students and teachers who have inhabited the lowest-performing schools in the city.
In Boston, State Representative Eugene O'Flaherty has co-sponsored a bill that would lift that cap on school district spending from 9 percent to 20 percent.
O'Flaherty says, "Charter schools are another opportunity for children of working class parents who may not be able to afford it... to send their kids to schools they're comfortable with."
If the bill is passed, more money would go to charter schools and more could open.
We have to do something with this rethoric that implies that public schools are the problem and charter schools the solution. Addressing the "elephant in the room," Educator Donna Stevens said during Monday night¹s public hearing that the proposed Joliet Academy Charter School is needed in order to help the minority students who are not graduating from Joliet Township High School District. "It's an opportunity to level the playing field for those who truly need it," Stevens said. "This place is big enough for a charter school and a school district.
After seventeen years with charter schools, Minnesota is still dealing with the basic problems. Fueled by those reports, several high-profile school closings and the state's growing budget deficit, lawmakers are discussing more than a dozen possible changes to charter school laws. Several should be top priorities. During this session, legislators should clarify sponsorship criteria, strengthen financial auditing and enforce data practices rules. And there should be clear consequences or penalties for failure to comply.
This is an one more article from the Wall Street Journal advocating for charter schools. President Barack Obama and Arne Duncan, his new education secretary, are trying to entice states into opening more of the alternative schools. But despite brisk enrollment growth and long waiting lines for many existing charter schools, states appear to be in no hurry to oblige. With 1.4 million students in 4,600 schools, charters are by far the most significant achievement of the "choice" movement that strives to promote educational gains through school competition. Enrollment in charter schools has more than doubled in the last six years.
Iris Salters, the president of the Michigan Education Association, writes a most concise explanation about what charter schools are supposed to be and what they actually are. People who seriously want to improve education have to acknowledge the validity Iris's arguments. I just hope that this is not only another piece of information in an underground debate, and that action follow reason.
This is how charter schools start in NY state. So far the charter supporters have been denied three times, however the spokeswoman says that's standard.
They’re hoping to be approved in their fourth attempt. The next application deadline is May fourth. |
Read this article from the US News. It shows a text book example of how the right use their think tanks and members to make the case for vouchers and charter schools look legit. Despite giving lip service to education reform, the Obama administration has decided to put an end to the very successful D.C. school voucher program. This despite a United States Department of Education report that found students in the nation's capital that were provided with vouchers allowing them to attend private school through the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program had made statistically significant gains in reading achievement.
Good News, Bad News: A courageous stance by the teacher union that unanimously voted to boicot the SAT scores. This union is the National Union of Teachers in the United Kingdom. Hazel Danson of the NUT's executive said league tables are "rigged" because they force schools to focus on borderline pupils who can push up their overall score.She said: "It's tantamount to government-funded cheating, and we can't be complicit in that any more. When the game is rigged, you can't lose if you don't play. It's time we stopped playing." The resolution to boycott the tests was passed to cheers and chants of "no more Sats" from delegates.
If teacher unions do not effectively counter the narrative, there is no hope for public education. The union is scared to death of charter schools—those private-public partnerships that are offering New York City parents new flexibility and options—because they put more pressure on all schools to perform. The hearings were being held to discuss whether the city’s Department of Education ought to be required to give more advance notice before slotting a charter school to share space with a public school.
For those who don't believe that public education is under a systematic attack, read this recent article from Detroit. It exemplifies the blueprint used to blaming public schools for the bad results, judging them undeserving of consideration, and then advancing their agenda with charter schools under a cloak of fairness and good intention. First, it must lift the cap on charters and allow more students to escape this academic disaster. And it should demand accountability, particularly for the spending of tax dollars. Regular, independent audits must be part of the long-term expectation.There ought to be some consequences for the abuse of tax dollars and the dismal classroom performance of the Detroit Public Schools. If lawmakers let the district off the hook this time, they can expect much more failure in the future.
In L.A., the billionaire donor has contributed tens of millions of dollars to arts endeavors. But except for backing local charter schools, which are not directly managed by the Los Angeles Unified School District, Broad has directed his education philanthropy outside the district because he lacks confidence in it, he said. Some civic leaders, including Broad, have called on district officials to turn over the arts school to a nonprofit organization with a track record of successfully managing local charter schools. So far, the officials have resisted.
The study states something but the writer interprets cavalierly. An evaluation of D.C.'s school voucher program suggests it has helped students. But more study is needed.
I wonder what management of the charter schools will do. After a year of meetings, teachers at three campuses of Civatas Schools' Chicago International Charter Schools filed notice Friday with state and local officials that they had voted to form a union.
What does motive Al Sharpton to support Joel Klein? This week brought their latest display of strange bedfellows, as the couple, Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein and the Rev. Al Sharpton, co-sponsored a conference of the Education Equality Project,
Alan Sharpton, sad, sad, sad! Democracy Now! co-host Juan Gonzalez has revealed that Reverend Al Sharpton received a half-million-dollar private donation last year at the same time as he launched a campaign to support charter schools.
Defending public schools in NYC. The opening panel highlighted the fact that New York City has become the "poster child for corporate-style education reform," and that this attack is part of a global attack on teachers unions and public institutions in general.
Who and when will defend public education against privatization? Anybody? Most bizarre is when the mayor and chancellor show up at charter school rallies and tell the parents that their local public schools are no good and that they are lucky to be in a charter
Mr. Gates's solution for poverty? support for charter schools and better teachers! Never mind the social factors. That so many children in this country cannot live up to their potential because they are born in poverty and attend terrible schools is one of the nation's greatest scandals, as Gates pointed out
The WT editorial says that unions and democrats don't want to help poor children
In a March 2 editorial, The Washington Post, not a conservative newspaper, says the debate about this vanishing opportunity for poor children "isn't about facts. It's about politics and the stranglehold the teachers unions have on the Democratic Party
Are charter schools a better option than public schools because they have the power to fire and hire teachers at will? In San Diego, teachers in charter schools fearful of unfair treatment and dismissals think about unionizing. With a non-educator as a CEO, new administrators, young teachers, and little support, is this a serious attempt to provide education.
Jay Mathews, praising charter KIPP schools while bashing public school. Mathews attributes KIPP’s success to a combination of such factors—its instituting “high expectations for all students, a longer school day, a principal totally in charge, an emphasis on finding the best teachers, rewards for student success, close contact with parents, a focus on results, and a commitment to preparing every child for a great high school, and, most important, college.
These KIPP school supporters want to keep it open. If public schools had that support.Fresno Unified SD has nothing to do with this KIPP school problem, yet the press insinuates FUSD does benefit from this charter’s closing. Parents and supporters are organized and act effectively.
More Jay Mathews praising KIPP. Look at the formula for success: instant teaching stars, or else. At both KIPP Fresno and KIPP AMP, all sides appear to support what KIPP has been doing to raise student achievement to rare heights. Yet keeping standards that high in urban schools is not easy. KIPP school leaders, for instance, are quick to fire teachers who do not perform well in their classes even after months of training and assistance.
Will public schools suffer under vouchers? YES: Rich kids will leave and poor ignored.Vouchers have not worked as a factor to solve the problem for minorities or students living in poverty. This was predictable. Indeed it was predicted.
The Women International Perspective on charter schools. Can anyone explain clearly what “escaping the bureaucracy and red tape” means? They may not be for everyone, but the charter school is a great alternative to the traditional public school. By escaping the bureaucracy and red tape of the current system and running more on merit and innovation than on seniority and age-old practices, these new schools are surprising parents, children and legislators by showing a new possible path toward closing California’s educational achievement gap.
Are charter schools the solution to this problem? These innovative “virtual charter schools,” such as the Oregon Connections Academy and the Oregon Virtual Academy, serve about 4,000 students in Oregon for an average cost per student just barely more than half of what the other public schools in Oregon spend.
An argument for vouchers in DC from Michael Medved. Michelle Rhee, Chancellor of the District of Columbia favors vouchers. Michael Medved praises her and bashes public schools.
Teachers put to an unfair test. ACROSS THE country, the neoliberal educational model continues to be pushed. Privately managed and publicly funded charter schools are multiplying. In public schools, teachers are being forced to teach narrowly to standardized tests, and there's a push to deny union rights like seniority and tenure in favor of standardized test-driven evaluation and merit pay.
Read the arguments. Could public education supporters get away with the same arguments? No matter the motives, I suggest the considerable energy being expended "against New Roots" be put to constructive use in serving the students in our community directly.
Transcript: Eli Broad. Look, 25 years ago a great paper was written called, "The Nation at Risk." In those 25 years, nothing has really improved in public education. I think we're starting to see improvement. In the last 15 years, we've gone from one charter school to 4,200 in America. Eli Broad.
One more charter in San Diego, and CTA remains unaltered I'm a realist," Johnson says. "If we don't do it, it would open the way for the MEA (the rival Michigan Education Association) to organize charters when our membership is shrinking."
Group grows its political voice. Call 'Em Out formed in the late-1990s when it split from the group "Keep the Vote, No Takeover Coalition" that opposed Gov. John Engler's intervention in the Detroit Public Schools. Since then, the group's agenda has grown to include access to public transit, opposition to privatization and selling off assets and public accountability.
SmallTalk: Another day, another study on charters I suppose, as long as Bill & Melinda Gates keep fronting the money, Rand will keep doing studies comparing charter schools to traditional public schools. This latest one compares charters to TPS in eight states and guess what? The results come out essentially the same as all their previous studies: charters don't outperform the very neighborhood schools they are supposed to replace.
Why is Detroit Teachers Association changing its position? Fear! In Detroit, Call 'Em Out has partnered with labor unions and other grassroots movements to fight charter schools and reduce water rate increases.
Chicago Teachers Organize Against Privatization. Charters don't outperform the very neighborhood schools they are supposed to replace.
The battle to save our schools in Chicago. BUSLOADS OF angry teachers and parents will descend on a Chicago Board of Education meeting January 28 to protest a plan to close or consolidate 16 schools and implement a "turnaround" plan in six others that would fire teachers and staff, and force them to reapply for their jobs.
Are Charters better in Chicago? Students at two elementary campuses in the controversial Chicago Public Schools turnaround program aren’t performing appreciably better than kids in nearby neighborhood schools
Charter For Controversy: Religion, State And The Constitution At School | The Wall of Separation. In the final days of his administration, former President George W. Bush issued a report on why our country needs more charter schools. The document even suggested ways that schools might circumvent the constitutional ban of school-sponsored religion.
L.A. charter staff reaches out to teachers union. The teachers at Accelerated have questioned, among other things, hiring and evaluation decisions, which they say have become opaque and inconsistent, contrary to the school's tradition of openness and collaboration among parents, teachers and administrators.
Cortines holding firm on need for teacher layoffs . Holding up signs that said "Save Our Schools," "Save Our Teachers" and even warned "Change or We Go to Charter," the group of demonstrators grew to 150 people.
Seniority, not quality, counts most at United Teachers Los Angeles - Los Angeles Times
Steve Barr, Green Dot founder, is no fan of UTLA. He says the union has two primary purposes that have nothing to do with educating children: preserving prohibitively expensive lifetime benefits for teachers and their families, and allowing more senior teachers to work where they want rather than where they're needed, with tenure making even the burnouts untouchable.
The Perimeter Primate: The Battle Begins. Next Wednesday, you will receive petitions and proposals for two new charter schools. One is for Oakland Collegiate, a middle school, and the other is for Aspire Public Schools’ ERES Academy a K-8. I strongly, strongly urge you to decline both proposals
Education Notes Online: A Parent Vents At Teach for America. Teach for America only has one program, which is for recent college graduates from prestigious universities with no or little educational experience and training.
Did charter schools have helped Harlem students? What about their communit. Harlem is divided because charters schools have failed as a solution to the “problems of public education.” People in Harlem know that the problems are more complicated and larger than what the charter supporters want them to believe.
Ball Charter teachers paid based on merit in Springfield, IL.Some high-profile experiments with merit pay for teachers have hit roadblocks. A past attempt at putting together a performance-based plan at Ball Charter failed and led to the teachers there unionizing years ago. This year, however, union leaders were the ones who brought up the idea during contract negotiations.
Charter school is Kentucky is not exactly legal, but nobody says it openly. How legal is this charter school in Kentucky? And how much good does it do?
The study, released last month, under the title Failed Promises: Assessing Charter School Performance, reveals that black students enrolled in the Twin Cities’ charter schools perform at much lower levels than black students in the cities’ traditional public schools. This is attributed, in part at least, to the fact that urban charter schools tend to have disproportionately high rates of minority enrollment. The study goes on to state that charter schools are “deepening the problems of black students.”