Sunday, May 09, 2010

Valerie's Answer Sheet

While Jay Mathews is busy reassuring his readers that his totally useless high school rankings list is safe despite the potential sale of Newsweek, or writing about a DI/Edison school reform attempts (without mentioning even a hint of criticism about either camp), Valerie Strauss is actually reporting on education news of significance. Today, Valerie posted a bit about the Imagine Schools situation in Florida and some of the other ongoing troubles. Jay spilled some ink about Imagine a few years back, but - surprise, surprise - it was a glowing review of Dennis and his crew of cronies, and he even managed to fit in a bit about KIPP. C'mon - don't act like you're surprised. From Valerie's WaPo page:

Charter schools: Is this the way it was supposed to work?

With Education Secretary Arne Duncan promoting the expansion of publicly funded charter schools as if they had been proven to be the silver bullet for school reform (they haven’t), it seems reasonable to look at what can happen when schools are opened without enough regulation.

The St. Petersburg Times has an instructive story about a fight that the Pinellas County School District is having with Virginia-based Imagine Schools, the nation’s largest commercial charter operator, with 71 schools in 11 states (including Maryland) and Washington, D.C.

[Continued]

Do read the rest. It's too bad Jay wont copy off of Valerie's "Answer Sheet."

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