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Abbey Machtig: “I do think that there is a fundamental misalignment in terms of how the school would fit into our more broad district plans and misunderstanding of services that we already provide,” board member Savion Castro said Wednesday. It’s a familiar approach, given the district has fought other proposed charter schools in the past. Documents show […]
Michael Bloomberg: As Democrats examine why Kamala Harris lost and how the party should change course, education policy should be a top issue. But few party leaders are talking about it. Many voters are still unhappy with Democratic support for excessive school closings during the pandemic. Too many elected officials, pandering to teachers unions, kept […]
joanne Jacobs summary: In the afternoon, students will attend virtual “life skills workshops” on topics such as “financial literacy, public speaking, resilience, and critical thinking led by what Unbound calls ‘community mentors,’ who range ‘from local entrepreneurs to civic leaders’,” she writes. “The AI system will analyze their responses, time spent on tasks, and even emotional […]
Abbey Machtig: During an initial conversation, some Madison School Board members said they wanted to avoid creating competition with the district’s technical education and youth apprenticeship opportunities. McKenzie told the Wisconsin State Journal via email he is still pursuing a charter agreement with the UW Office of Educational Opportunity. The final application to UW is […]
Stéphane Lavertu, Foreword by: Aaron Churchill Chad L. Aldis
Abbey Machtig: The school also would focus on building literacy and math skills through “boot camps” in the first year of enrollment. Beyond this bootcamp, students would get grade-level English instruction through the Odell High School Literacy Program, according to the proposal. ——- A majority of the taxpayer financed Madison school board aborted the proposed […]
Benjamin Yount: Wisconsin is getting millions of dollars from the federal government to grow charter schools in the state, but the haul for 2024 is tens-of-millions of dollars less than in the past. The Department of Public Instruction this week announced an $11.4 million grant to either open or expand charter schools across the state. […]
Sara Randazzo and Matt Barnum: Oklahoma’s highest court on Tuesday blocked the opening of what would have been the nation’s first religious charter school. The closely watched case is seen as the latest test of the boundary between church and state. The ruling is being lauded by national charter-school leaders and those who resist any […]
WILL The News: In an agenda posted last week, the Milwaukee Public School (MPS) Board indicated that they will delay their plans to evict two Carmen Charter Schools campuses from their buildings until October 2024. The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) and other education advocates have previously stated that evicting the charter school would be […]
Jay Greene, PhD, Ian Kingsbury and Jason Bedrick: School choice should empower parents to obtain an education for their own children that is consistent with their values. This is occurring well with private school choice, but with charter school choice it is falling short. Regulatory and philanthropic constraints need to be minimized for charter schools […]
Matt Barnum: A legal battle over a proposed charter school in Oklahoma could unlock a new avenue for religious education—and some of the fiercest opposition is coming from within the existing charter-school movement. State laws have long barred such schools. Supporters, including conservative lawyers and religious-education advocates, call those laws discriminatory and say they run […]
The Economist: A year ago New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, proposed to adjust a state cap on charter schools, the publicly funded but privately run schools that have become a locus of innovation and controversy in American education. Ms Hochul’s plan was not ambitious, but it would have allowed dozens of new charter […]
Wall Street Journal: This has been the year for school choice—from vouchers, to homeschooling, to pod schools with parents who use education savings accounts. The winners include charter schools, as union-run K-12 schools lost hundreds of thousands of students during Covid-19 who haven’t returned. Yes they do. The trend holds for states of all sizes […]
Amelia Ferrell Knisely: A new charter school in West Virginia gives students the opportunity to jump-start a degree in nursing before they graduate from high school, saving them thousands of dollars in college tuition costs. Win Academy, the state’s first charter school housed within a community college, is an accelerated degree program that allows juniors […]
Johnson, Alison H., McGee, Josh, B., Wolf, Patrick J., May, Jay F., Maloney, Larry, D. Based on CREDO’s findings, we estimate that charter school students across nine cities perform 2.4 points (0.06 standard deviations, or SD) higher on the eighth grade reading NAEP exam and 1.3 points higher (0.03 SD) on the math exam, compared […]
Wall Street Journal: More than 100,000 students attend Ohio’s charter schools, which are especially important for the state’s inner-city students. Out of 26 cities measured, Cleveland students posted the biggest drop in National Assessment of Educational Progress reading scores last year compared to 2019. Cleveland also has its own school voucher program, and one common-sense […]
Center for Research on Education Outcomes: Our third installment: This study examines the academic progress of students enrolled in charter schools compared with the progress of students enrolled in traditional public schools (TPS). How charter school students learned over time Fifteen years of student performance can provide insights into how schools, school operators, K–12 academic […]
Educate: Producer DJ Cashmere spent seven years teaching Black and brown students at a Noble Street charter high school in Chicago. At the time, Noble followed a popular model called “no excuses.” Its schools required strict discipline but promised low-income students a better shot at college. After DJ left the classroom to become a journalist, […]
Wall Street Journal: It’s no secret that Randi Weingarten opposes co-locating charter schools in buildings that have a district public school. But the president of the American Federation of Teachers sits on the board of University Prep Charter Schools—a charter run by the local teachers union. On Wednesday New York’s Department of Education approved University […]
Glenn Reynolds: Can graft and racial politics save public schools? Just maybe. Let me explain. Public schools face an exodus of students. Even before COVID, parents were pulling their kids out of failing (and often unsafe) public schools in favor of private schools that cost more money but offered better and safer educations. Other parents […]
Wall Street Journal: In her debate during last year’s race for Governor, Democrat Kathy Hochul answered “yes” when asked if she supported lifting New York’s cap on charter schools. Last week she followed through with a proposal that would allow more charters to open, mostly in New York City. But she’ll have to spend political […]
Kaleem Caire: Thank you CapTimes for printing my OpEd. Interestingly, in a conversation with the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction yesterday, state officials told us that we are legally obligated to count our students who are enrolled and present on the day of the pupil count (tomorrow, Friday). This is state law. They also told […]
Scott Girard: For the full 2022-23 school year, an independent charter school like One City receives $9,264 per student from the state that the student’s resident school district would otherwise receive. The state counts students twice each school year: the third Friday of September and the second Friday of January. If a student is enrolled […]
Jay Caspian Kang: There’s a thoroughly unsympathetic but deeply felt crisis that hits the grown children of upwardly mobile immigrants. These second-generation strivers—who are largely assimilated, educated in the U.S., and often ostensibly liberal—have children of their own, and, when faced with the more lax customs of their neighbors, start to wonder if their parents, […]
Sarah Karp: Urban Prep is the city’s only all-male charter school operator, once celebrated nationally for getting all its seniors, who are almost all Black, into college year after year. It currently has two CPS campuses, one in Englewood and one in Bronzeville, with about 380 students. CPS budgeted $8 million for Urban Prep this […]
Philip Hackney: Instead of the community controlling major educational decisions, charter management organizations control those decisions. Still, allowing parents to seek the form of education they deem right for their children may increase voice in part. Additionally, valid democratic authorities across the country have chosen to provide some education through charter vehicles. Given the strong […]
Chris Rickert: A state-authorized public charter school in Madison initially refused to work with police after a student found a gun in a school employee’s backpack, according to a recently released police report, and the employee refused to answer questions about the incident. Police ultimately closed their investigation of the June 1 incident involving Milestone Democratic […]
Tunku Varadarajan: If you’re looking for proof that teachers unions don’t care about the interests of schoolchildren, you can find it in the impoverished Bronx neighborhood of Soundview. A school building on Beach Avenue has been shuttered for almost a decade, and the United Federation of Teachers is suing to keep it closed. On Aug. […]
Pettier vs Charter Day School: The majority misses the whole purpose of the development of charter schools…. It is essentially dismissive of what charter schools might have to contribute, prejudging them as miscreants that must be brought to heel…. The very idea of a different model of schooling has drawn the ire of the public […]
Will Flanders: Last month, the Biden Administration announced new regulations on the federal Charter Schools Program (CSP). The CSP is designed to offer a funding source for charter schools to expand access for students to high-quality school options, as well as to help schools fund facilities. The regulations are ostensibly designed to create better oversight. […]
Chester Finn It’s no secret that Denver’s latest school board is wreaking havoc on the suite of bold education reforms that the Mile High City was known for over the past two decades. Parker Baxter and Alan Gottlieb recount the sorrowful saga at some length in the latest issue of Education Next. As they write: Denver Public Schools’ […]
Elizabeth Beyer: A contract, inked in February with the UW System, greenlit Caire’s 33-year dream of growing One City Schools from early childhood education and elementary to include students through grade 12, roughly a decade after the Madison School Board rejected a similar proposal for a charter school overseen by the Madison School District that […]
Wisconsin State Journal Commentary Two other seats on the board are mostly uncontested. Nichelle Nichols, a former Madison School District administrator whom we’ve endorsed in the past for School Board, will do a fine job filling Seat 5. For Seat 4, incumbent Ali Muldrow is the only name on the ballot, with conservative agitator David Blaska making a […]
Barry Adams: Almost all of the lessons at the Kickapoo Valley Forest School are held outdoors, even on days when the temperature plunges well below freezing. The nature-based curriculum is central for the 4K and kindergarten students and their teachers, who have had lunch outside all but four days since the first day of school […]
Michael Bloomberg: American public education is broken. Since the pandemic began, students have experienced severe learning loss because schools remained closed in 2020—and even in 2021 when vaccinations were available to teachers and it was clear schools could reopen safely. Many schools also failed to administer remote learning adequately. Before the pandemic, about two-thirds of […]
Erica Pandey: Charter schools picked off hundreds of thousands of public school students across the U.S. during the pandemic, according to a new analysis from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Why it matters: The pandemic has weakened America’s public education system, as Zoom classes, teacher fatigue and student disengagement take their toll. And that hobbled system […]
Katie Lobosco: A small provision tucked into a massive federal budget proposal put forth by the House Appropriations Committee would cut money for charter schools by $40 million and could potentially limit many charter schools from receiving federal funds altogether. The National Alliance for Public Charters Schools is calling the cut “particularly egregious” and said […]
Libby Sobic: Rocketship Public Schools in Milwaukee is a network of two campuses around the City of Milwaukee that are serving more than 700 K4-5th grade students. Rocketship embraces their students and families to ensure that they are supported in and beyond the classroom. For Ms. Oliver and her daughter, a six-year-old with special needs, […]
WUWM: Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) is set to lose 2,000 students and at least $4 million next year, as charter school network Milwaukee College Prep (MCP) cuts ties with the district. MPS has contracts with 15 independent charter schools, including the four MCP locations. The charter schools are independently-run but publicly-funded, and are accountable to […]
Daniel Willis: The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) will send $15.3 billion in assistance to California’s K-12 schools, the biggest of three relief pieces of legislation that Congress passed in less than a year to combat the pandemic and the recession. This latest bill will bring an estimated total funding of $26.4 billion […]
Greg Ashman: As yet, it remains to be seen exactly what President Biden has in store for America’s network of charter schools. Following the Democratic Party primaries, the Biden-Sanders Unity Taskforce called for accountability for charter schools and a ban on federal funding of for-profit charters—approximately 12 percent of the total. Increasing accountability does not […]
Jonathan Chait: In the dozen years since Barack Obama undertook the most dramatic education reform in half a century — prodding local governments to measure how they serve their poorest students and to create alternatives, especially charter schools, for those who lack decent neighborhood options — two unexpected things have happened. The first is that […]
Matthew Cash: A recent study completed by Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty shows school districts across the state saw a dramatic decline in fall enrollment as educators navigate the COVID-19 pandemic. Fall enrollment numbers collected in October shows districts saw an average of 2.67% decline in enrollment. For districts that started the school year […]
Alan Borsuk: As a second, less tangible factor, some of the charter schools get very good academic results. For example, Milwaukee Excellence Charter School, one of the schools receiving a reduced renewal Dec. 17, had the highest score of any Milwaukee school on the statewide school report card in 2018. In 2019, it had the second highest score in MPS. (This year, there were no report […]
Catherine Candisky: A new report found many Ohio students attending charter schools had larger gains on achievement tests, better attendance and fewer disciplinary incidents compared to their peers enrolled in traditional public schools. Black, low achieving, and urban students at the tax-funded, privately operated and tuition-free schools benefitted most, according to the analysis by Ohio State political […]
Scott Girard: The leadership of the Madison charter school signed the lease Aug. 28 after a search for new space, and D’Abell recalled the busy weekend of preparing the building while also communicating with parents about where the year would begin. “We didn’t know where we were going to be,” D’Abell said during a recent […]
Stephanie Shields: As the pandemic continues presenting changes and challenges for schools across the country, a charter school district in El Paso sees a jump in enrollment. Dr. Joe E. Gonzales, the superintendent of the Burnham Wood Charter School District, said a large portion of new enrollment at his schools is driven by families looking […]
Dan McGowan: When Mayor Jorge Elorza raised concerns last year about a charter school organization’s expansion plan in Providence, he had a very practical reason. He was in charge of a school system with 24,000 students, and he feared that the district would not be able to absorb the financial hit if too many students […]
David Griffith & Michael J. Petrilli: A decade ago, the charter-school movement was moving from strength to strength. As student enrollment surged and new schools opened in cities across the country, America’s first black president provided much-needed political cover from teachers’ union attacks. Yet today, with public support fading and enrollment stalling nationwide — and with Democratic […]
Paul E. Peterson and M. Danish Shakeel: Public charter schools were once viewed as a nonpartisan compromise between vouchers for private schools and no choice at all. Not now. In its 2020 national platform, the Democratic Party calls for “stringent guardrails to ensure charter schools are good stewards” and says federal funding for charters must […]
Paul E. Peterson and M. Danish Shakeel: Public charter schools were once viewed as a nonpartisan compromise between vouchers for private schools and no choice at all. Not now. In its 2020 national platform, the Democratic Party calls for “stringent guardrails to ensure charter schools are good stewards” and says federal funding for charters must […]
Mike Antonucci: Students of civics might think the California state budget is crafted by the elected representatives of the citizenry, who debate and amend proposals working their way through various committees, ultimately leading to a spending plan with majority support and the signature of the governor. All that happens, of course, but no budget makes […]
Thomas Sowell: For decades, there has been widespread anxiety over how, when or whether the educational test score gap between white and non-white youngsters could be closed. But that gap has already been closed by the Success Academy charter school network in New York City. Their predominantly black and Hispanic students already pass tests in […]
Libby Sobic: So what’s a charter school and what kind of options do parents have access to? Charter schools are public schools with significantly less red tape than their traditional public school peers. Wisconsin has several types with the most common type of charter school is a school authorized by the school district. “Instrumentality” charter […]
Holly Meyer: Meanwhile, earlier this month, Cooper said he asked Nashville school leaders to figure out how they could carve up to $100 million out of the district’s budget for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30. The school board’s denial of charter school applications is also in keeping with its overall trend in […]
Aaron Withe and Jeff Kropf: In a time of national emergency, when our leaders need to be thinking outside the box and giving struggling families more choices rather than fewer, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown instead decided to pay back political favors by shutting down online charter schools. On paper, online charter schools that allow students […]
Chris Stewart: Public schools in New Mexico aren’t funding students equitably, so says the U.S. Department Education who accuse the state’s leaders of “diverting [$63 million] in federal Impact Aid grants” intended to help school districts that are disadvantaged by their low tax bases. The feds found that New Mexico wasn’t passing the “equity test,” […]
Stephanie Wang: Faced with low academic results at online schools across the country, supporters often defend virtual education because it provides a haven for struggling students. But a new study in Indiana found that students fell further behind after transferring to virtual charter schools. The findings suggest that online schools post low outcomes not simply because the […]
Billy Binion: This isn’t the first time that AOC has inadvertently made the case for school choice. At an October rally for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.), she shared that her family left the Bronx for a house in Westchester county, so that she could attend a higher-quality school. “My family made a really […]
Jon Levine: Good for me, but not for thee. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez managed to get her goddaughter into a Bronx charter school, according to a Facebook Live video she recorded in 2017 — before she was a public figure. “This area’s like a lot of where my family is from,” AOC says as she strolls […]
Patrick Wall: Newark’s largest charter school networks give students a big bump in their test scores, while other charter schools are far less effective at boosting scores, a new study finds. Students who enrolled at schools run by the city’s two largest charter operators — KIPP and Uncommon Schools — saw large and lasting gains […]
Greg Richmond: Richmond: Madison is a university town. It is highly educated and pretty solidly middle class. Why does it need One City? Caire: Madison has been harboring an achievement gap, that they knew about, since they first learned about it in 1965. Back then, there was a 27-point difference between black and white students […]
William Flanders & Jim Bender: Recently, the Network for Public Education (NPE) released a report that attempts to put another arrow in the quiver of charter opponents. This study ostensibly investigates the extent to which federal funds have gone to charter schools that closed their doors, or never opened to begin with that had previously […]
Scott Girard: A team of reviewers for the school’s charter found it “fails to meet expectations” in seven criteria, “meets expectations” in 29 and “exceeds expectations” in two. The fails to meet expectations criteria include being below the enrollment required by the current contract, 120. This year the school has 97 students enrolled. In the […]
Erica L. Green and Eliza Shapiro The night before Democratic presidential candidates took to a debate stage here last week, black and Latino charter school parents and supporters gathered in a bland hotel conference room nearby to make signs they hoped would get the politicians’ attention. “Charter schools = self-determination,” one sign read. “Black Democrats want charters!” […]
David Osborne: When Sen. Elizabeth Warren released her education plan, she trotted out a familiar charge against charter schools: that they “strain the resources of school districts.” To fight this supposed scourge, she promised to end federal financial support for new charter schools. And she’s not an outlier among the Democratic presidential hopefuls. Her fellow […]
Joe Henderson: Charters and private schools are here to stay in Florida, and that’s just the way it is. That’s not a bad thing. But the rules that apply to public schools sometimes don’t apply to the other schools. State Sen. Linda Stewart, an Orlando Democrat, wants to change that. She filed SB 632 that […]
Cory Doctorow: Tomorrow, Toronto’s City Council will hold a key vote on Sidewalk Labs’s plan to privatize much of the city’s lakeshore in the name of creating a “smart city” owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet. Today, the Globe and Mail published a summary of Sidewalk Labs’s leaked “yellow book”, a 2016 document that lays […]
Wall Street Journal: Is the success of charter schools an illusion? Critics claim charters merely skim the best students, whose parents care enough to apply, while pushing out troublemakers. So it’s worth noting a new study showing that often test scores improve for all students when charters increase their market share. The Thomas B. Fordham […]
David Griffith: Plenty of studies have compared the progress of students in charter schools versus traditional public schools. And more than a dozen have examined the “competitive effects” of charters on neighboring district schools. Yet, to our knowledge, no prior study has directly addressed the trillion-dollar question—that is, whether overall achievement increases as the “market […]
Robert Pondisco: Collectively, charter schools educate 3.2 million children in 7,000 schools in 43 states and the District of Columbia. None are more polarizing than New York City’s network of about 50 Success Academy schools, which serve 17,000 students—94% of whom are from minority backgrounds—under their visionary and lightning-rod leader, Eva Moskowitz. Most are less […]
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction: The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction approved 11 awards totaling more than $7 million in federal funds to plan, open, or expand charter schools in the state. The department received 21 grant applications, requesting a total of $13.9 million. “Charter schools are one way for educators to innovate and engage […]
Wall Street Journal: The paper’s authors, three professors of economics or education policy, explain what happened after Massachusetts raised its charter cap in 2010. The state set rules encouraging successful charter schools—deemed “proven providers”—to seed new campuses. Most follow a “no excuses” framework, with high expectations and a low tolerance for misbehavior. After the cap […]
Center on Reinventing Public Education: Districts must no longer pay to educate students who transfer to publicly funded charter schools but they must still pay costs that can’t be adjusted immediately as school enrollment changes. Since 2017 critics in California and nationwide have claimed charter school growth undermines school district finances and forces cuts in […]
Wall Street Journal, via a kind reader: One critique of charter schools is that while a few energetic principals show success, it’s impossible to replicate. Not so, says a new study of Boston’s charters, which doubled from 16 schools to 32 in four years, even as they maintained their effectiveness. This is great news, especially […]
Mark Bucher: California teachers unions were the biggest donor to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s election campaign last year, giving him $1.2 million taken from teachers’ paychecks in the form of union dues. Now they’re looking for a return on investment with a legislative package that would cripple the growth of their charter school competitors. Assembly Bills […]
Robin Lake: Several months ago I critiqued a report by Dr. Gordon Lafer that was published by In the Public Interest (ITPI), a think tank that has long been critical of charter schools and recently helped rally supporters of a five-year moratorium on new charters. Unfortunately, the report continues to inform policy deliberations in California, […]
Tom Moran: The New Jersey Education Association just revived its call for a freeze on the growth of charter schools, a declaration of war from a muscular union that spends more on lobbying and campaigns than any other special interest group in the state, by far. So, this is a serious threat, especially in Newark, […]
Ashley Jochim and Lesley Lavery: For nearly two decades teachers unions and charter schools have formed an “us vs. them” narrative that pits one against the other. Unionization efforts by charter school teachers could scramble that narrative. With this report we set out to understand trends in charter school unionization, document teachers’ motivations for unionizing, […]
Molly Beck: He said in the Milwaukee program especially, enrollment freezes in private voucher schools would disproportionately affect children of color living in low-income households. “Most of our families don’t have the kind of income where they would have realistic choices,” he said at the time. Under Evers’ proposal, voucher schools also would be banned […]
Jay Matthews: I like much about United Teachers Los Angeles. The union had good reasons to strike for better working conditions in its district of 600,000-plus students. Teacher unions in general have benefited our country. Many of my favorite teachers were members, as was my mother.
Chris Rickert: According to emails released to the State Journal under the state’s open records law, Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham on Sept. 10 asked her chief of staff, Ricardo Jara, and other front-office officials whether Arbor was “worth trying to stop? Or change somehow? If so, how?” Cheatham expressed the district’s opposition to the school in […]
Patrick J. Wolf Larry D. Maloney Jay F. May Corey A. DeAngelis: One might assume that policymakers moved swiftly to remedy the injustice of charter school funding inequity revealed in the 2005 report. Sadly, that was not the case. We re-examined the charter school funding gap using data from 2006-07 and adding seven more states […]
Mike Antonucci: The Acero charter school network and the Chicago Teachers Union reached a tentative agreement on a four-year contract early Sunday, bringing to an end a four-day teacher strike. It was the first strike of charter school employees in U.S. history. This singular event garnered a great deal of press coverage. Several narratives were […]
Sophia Bollag: When former charter school executive Marshall Tuck called Assemblyman Tony Thurmond to concede over the weekend, it marked another defeat for charter-school advocates in California. Thurmond was elected California’s top education official in the wave that led more liberal-leaning voters to cast ballots. Although both are Democrats, Thurmond had the party’s endorsement. He […]
Rachel Cohen: The California charter school lobby is testing its influence in the race for Superintendent of Public Instruction, turning an election for a somewhat obscure statewide position into a notably expensive battle. More than $50 million has flown into the contest between two Democrats for a nonpartisan office with little statutory power. For perspective, […]
Bruce Vail: Public school teachers in Los Angeles voted overwhelmingly in late August to authorize a strike over stalled contract negotiations, but the issues really energizing the union membership go far beyond a new contract. Instead, say union leaders and rank-and-file members, the teachers are growing increasingly alarmed at a small clique of billionaires that […]
James Shuls: ow would you respond if you stumbled across a headline that asked, “How much do farmers markets cost Walmart?” It’s a ridiculous question. It presupposes that the customer belongs to Walmart; that any time the individual chooses to buy cucumbers from a local grower or salsa from an aspiring entrepreneur, he or she […]
Albert Cheng, Michael B. Henderson, Paul E. Peterson and Martin R. West: Education’s political landscape has shifted dramatically over the past year. To the consternation of most school-district officials, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos used the bully pulpit to promote charter schools, vouchers, and tax credits for private-school scholarships. To the distress of teachers unions, […]
Ildi Laczko-Kerr and Eileen Sigmund: Contrary to the common myth that charters skim the “cream of the crop” from school districts, the average student who transferred to a charter school over the summer in 2015 from a district school performed below the state average on AzMERIT in both math and English language arts. At the […]
Citizen Stewart: I mention that routine because last week I felt like a victim of Sandburg’s non-wrath when Twitter’s anti-school reform voices suggested school reformers were wearing facial egg because “King” LeBron James’ celebrated new school opened in Akron, Ohio as a “traditional” public school rather than a charter. Frankly, I didn’t get the joke. […]
Anne Chapman, Betsy Mueller and Rob Henken: Because enrollment is the primary driver of Wisconsin’s system of funding K-12 schools, a shrinking student population is one of the foremost financial challenges MPS faces. In a 2012 analysis of MPS’ fiscal condition,3 we noted that one of the strategies MPS had adopted to help stabilize its […]
Wilson Criscione: “I wasn’t challenged at all,” Thompson, 15, tells the Inlander. After hearing his friends rave about Innovation High School, a Spokane charter school connected to PRIDE Prep Middle School, he asked his mom, Crystal Benvenuti, if he could try to get in. After spending months on the waitlist, Thompson recently found out he’ll […]
Susan Pendergrass & Nora Kern: Improving the quality of public education in our nation’s cities is a top priority for civic leaders. Beyond its impact on property values, the availability of safe, high-quality schools can have a substantial effect on the quality of life in urban neighborhoods, much like grocery stores, parks, and jobs that […]
Lisa Snell: Los Angeles Unified School District has lost 245,000 students over the last 15 years. Officials frequently claim charter schools are taking students and causing LAUSD’s budget crisis in the process. But a new report shows the district’s spending, including its hiring of more administrators as enrollment drops, is to blame. A new Reason […]
Darrow Montgomery: That’s a D.C. charter school administrator’s assessment of TenSquare, one of the city’s most connected, lucrative, and controversial charter consulting companies. And true to his word, he was talking anonymously. Not many people feel comfortable discussing TenSquare publicly. Even in education circles, most people have never heard of TenSquare, a national for-profit consulting […]
: A new book on charter schools and segregation, whose senior editor, Iris Rotberg, I first worked with in 1970 on the War on Poverty, has reminded me how tribally divided the policy research field has become. The book is worth reading as a step toward a still-needed non-tribal discussion of schooling for democracy. Choosing […]
T Keung Hui and Ann Doss Helms: Raleigh, Durham and Charlotte are home to many charter schools, but a new national report says those three areas are filled with places where lower-income families don’t have access to these non-traditional public schools. A new report from the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute says there are hundreds […]
MDHR: Today, the Minnesota Department of Human Rights (MDHR) announced it has reached collaborative agreements with 10 Minnesota public school districts and charter schools to reduce the disparities in suspension and expulsion rates for students with disabilities and students of color and two school districts received charges of discrimination for educational discrimination. The school districts […]
Max Larkin: Keri Rodrigues is one of those people. She’s an education activist who supported Question 2 in 2016. Now, she runs Massachusetts Parents United — an advocacy group supported in part by the pro-charter Walton Foundation. She has two sons who have tried and failed to get seats in a charter school. “Watching your […]