Charter schools in New Orleans have been hailed as the silver lining to Hurricane Katrina. The state of Louisiana used the hurricane as an opportunity to rebuild the entire New Orleans public school system, and launched the nation’s most extensive charter school experiment. This report evaluates how this experiment has fared in providing quality education to all students of the public school system regardless of race, socioeconomic class, or where they live in New Orleans metropolitan area.
The reorganization of the city’s schools has created a separate but unequal tiered system of schools that steers a minority of students, including virtually all of the city’s white students, into a set of selective, higher-performing schools and another group, including most of the city’s students of color, into a group of lower-performing schools. The extremely rapid growth of charter schools has not improved this pattern.
Segregation of students in the city and the metropolitan area is a cause for concern. Racial and economic segregation undermine the life chances and educational opportunities of low income students and students of color. School choice does not by itself empower students of color to escape this, especially when choice leads them to racially segregated, high-poverty schools.
The report argues that in order to guarantee equal educational opportunities to all of the region’s students, the school system should take a more balanced, regional approach, including a renewed commitment to the city’s traditional public schools and enhanced choices for students in the form of regional magnet schools and new inter-district programs.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
"The best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans"?
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Arne Duncan's Race Problem
The other glaring piece of Arne's hypocritical oath on race deals with teacher hiring, where practice is exactly opposite of the rhetoric he espouses, as Julie Woestehoff points out:
A recent report out of New Orleans claims that that Ed Secretary Arne Duncan wants more black teachers in our schools.
According to nola.com, it's become a "theme" for Duncan this year:
In February, Duncan told leaders of historically black colleges and universities that "we have far too few teachers of color. Only 2 percent, one in 50 teachers today are African-American males. Something is fundamentally wrong with that picture."
Although he didn't spell it out on Friday, Duncan's campaign to recruit more black teachers may be driven by research that found improved test scores for black students who spend at least a year with a black teacher. In past speeches he's mentioned that black teachers are more likely than their white peers to want to work in high-poverty, high-needs schools, the front line for closing what he calls the nation's "insidious achievement gap" between white and black students.
Perhaps Mr. Duncan should look in his own back yard. During his time as CEO of Chicago Public Schools, Duncan oversaw the loss of nearly 2500 African-American teachers, while the numbers of CPS teachers in all other racial groups increased. Take a look at this chart from 2009.
The situation Duncan created became so egregious that a local teacher caucus filed a federal discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which will decide any day now if they will send the case to the Justice Department for prosecution.
Early Warning!, Will Robinson. Early Warning!, Will Robinson
More than 25 years ago, A Nation at Risk raised the issue. High-level research summits on children’s achievement have flagged the problem for decades. Last year, even military leaders expressed their concern. We here at New America have tried to drive the point home too: It is beyond time to address the literacy problem in this country. More than two-thirds of fourth-graders are not reading at grade level.
Yesterday another voice arrived to amplify what is becoming a rallying cry. The Annie E. Casey Foundation announced the launch of a decade-long national campaign to get all children reading proficiently by the end of third grade.
By Gerald W. Bracey
Thursday, May 3, 2007
The world of education is a world of tests these days. But why should tests be only for students? Here's one for policymakers, politicians and adults in general. Bet you don't pass.
The National Assessment Governing Board defined the "proficient" rating on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the nation's report card, as the level that "all students should reach." (The other levels are "basic" and "advanced"; the proficient and advanced levels are often reported together as "proficient or better.") Given that, and given that Sweden was the top-ranked country among 35 in the most recent international reading study, answer the following:
1. If Swedish fourth-graders sat for our National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test, what proportion of them would be labeled "proficient or better"?
2. If Singaporean eighth-graders sat for our NAEP science test, what proportion would be labeled "proficient or better"?
3. In the Third International Mathematics and Science Study of 1995, where did American fourth-graders rank in science among the 26 participating nations?
4. What percentage of American fourth-graders were labeled "proficient or better" in the 1996 NAEP science assessment?
5. What indicators of achievement have been rejected by the Government Accountability Office; the National Academy of Sciences; the National Academy of Education; and the Center for Research on Evaluation, Student Standards and Testing?
6. What are the first words in set-off text that one encounters in the "Leaders and Laggards" report released in February by the Center for American Progress and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce?
Here are the answers:
1. Thirty-three percent.
2. Fifty-one percent.
3. Third.
4. Twenty-nine percent.
5. The NAEP achievement levels: basic, proficient and advanced.
6. "The measures of our educational shortcomings are stark indeed; most 4th and 8th graders are not proficient in either reading or mathematics."
By comparing the results of foreign students and American students on tests administered in both nations, and then examining the American students' scores on the U.S. NAEP, it is possible to reliably estimate how well foreign students would perform on the NAEP.
And it turns out that only one-third of those high-flying Swedish kids would be considered proficient readers; the NAEP figure for U.S. fourth-graders was 29 percent. The great majority of the remaining countries would have fewer proficient students than the United States. Using the NAEP standard, no country comes close to having a majority of proficient readers.
Under the NAEP standard, Singapore is the only nation in the world to have a majority of its students be proficient in science, and that by a scant 1 percent. Only a handful of countries would have a majority of students proficient in mathematics.
All those august organizations have rejected the NAEP achievement levels because the process is confusing to the people who try to set the levels and because the results are inconsistent: Children can't answer questions they should be able to and can answer questions they shouldn't be able to. The levels also give what the National Academy of Sciences called "unreasonable" results, including the fact that only 29 percent of U.S. fourth-graders were considered proficient or better by NAEP, yet America ranked third among 26 participating nations.
Other evidence is easy to come by. In 2000, 2.7 percent of American high school seniors scored 3 or better -- the score at which colleges begin to grant credit for the course -- on Advanced Placement calculus. Almost 8 percent of seniors (including those who did not take the test) scored above 600 on the math SAT; nearly a quarter (24 percent) of those who took it scored over 600. Yet NAEP said that only 1.5 percent of the nation's seniors reached its "advanced" level.
So why does the government continue to report such misleading information? The "Leaders and Laggards" report illustrates why: The numbers are useful as scare techniques. If you can batter people into believing the schools are in awful shape, you can make them anxious about their future -- and you can control them.
In the 1980s, the "schools suck" bloc used such numbers to make us fearful that Japan, now emerging from a 15-year period of recession and stagnation, was going to take our markets; today, India and China play the role of economic ogres.
Recently, Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in The Post that constant references to a "war on terror" "stimulated the emergence of a culture of fear. Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of policies they want to pursue." Happens all the time in education. The most recent phony alarm comes from Eli Broad and Bill Gates, who are putting up $60 million hoping to "wake up the American people." If the fear-mongers can scare you sufficiently (how many times have you heard the phrase "failing schools" in the past five years?), you might permit them to do to your public schools things you would otherwise never allow.
Gerald W. Bracey, an independent researcher and writer,iswas a fellow with policy groups at Arizona State University and the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation in Ypsilanti, Mich. He was director of research, evaluation and testing for the Virginia Department of Education from 1977 to 1986.
A warning about "Early Warning!"
Comment on: Analysis Ties 4th Grade Reading Failure to Poverty
S Krashen
The Annie Casey Foundation report, Early Warning! (View PDF), contains no new information, and recommends that we continue even more aggressively along the same path outlined by the Obama-Duncan administration, ignoring the most obvious solution to low reading achievement for children of poverty: Actual access to books and other reading material.
Standards and tests as a cure for poverty?
The report repeats previous descriptions of the impact of poverty but only briefly mentions that we must provide resources, focusing far more on the need to institute standardized measures, with "consistent, aligned expectations" for social, emotional and cognitive development from birth to grade three.
This is a call to vastly expand the Duncan standards and testing program, expanding it two ways: down to birth, and to cover just about everything in a child's life that can be measured and tested. It clearly states that the mission is to increase testing and tracking "from the cradle to college" and calls for an accelerated effort to "link K-12 standards to standards for early care and education from birth through kindergarten entry."
Ignoring the obvious
The report does not even mention of access to books. There is no mention of the consistent finding that children of poverty have very little access to reading material, that access to reading material means more reading and that more reading means better reading achievement.
There is no mention of the consistent finding that better school and public libraries and the presence of credentialed librarians result in higher reading test scores, and no mention of the current wave of studies showing that access to books can mitigate the effect of poverty on reading achievement.
The document repeats the finding that low reading achievement at lower grades correlates with low reading achievement later on, but does not mention the possibility of late intervention through improved access to books.
The document repeats the finding that there is summer loss among high poverty children, but does not mention research showing that access to books can mitigate this loss, recommending instead regular instruction during the summer.
Other than the briefest comment that "hands-on literacy-rich activities" are a good idea, it calls for even more testing and monitoring, and application of the failed principles of the National Reading Panel.
Suggestion
Forget all the new standards and tests. The research review in Early Warning! demonstrates that we know what the problem is: poverty. Instead of spending billions on new standards and tests of academics and now social and emotional development (!), let's use the money to move swiftly to protect children against the effect of poverty by supporting school-based nutrition and health programs and school libraries. By the time committees are formed, grants are developed, grant proposals written, standards written, and tests developed, millions more children will have suffered from the effects of poverty. We already have measures in place that will tell us what is working and what is not. Let's go to the cure, and not waste time with unnecessary measures of the problem.
Food, health care and books, not more standards and tests.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
More "Zero" Pushback?
Even charter school parents are offended by Duncan's "zero" opposition claims:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Leonie Haimson, 917-435-9329
Tuesday, May 18, 2010 Mona Davids, 917-340-8987
Khem Irby: 718-452-0146
Leslie-Ann Byfield: 917-783-5299
CHARTER SCHOOL PARENTS PROTEST DUNCAN’S VISIT TO NYC CHARTER SCHOOL
Before raising the cap, charter and district parents demand more transparency, accountability, equity and parent input at charter schools
NEW YORK, NY (May 18, 2010) Today, current and former charter school parents protested the appearance of Secretary Duncan’s visit to Kings Collegiate Charter School in Brooklyn, one of the chain of charter schools run by Uncommon Schools. They called attention to the fact that Duncan’s attempt to pressure the Legislature to raise the cap on charters ignores the many flaws in the current system, including the lack of sufficient financial oversight, excessive discipline at charter schools and the suppression of parent and student rights.
According to Leslie-Ann Byfield, a charter school parent who advocates for parents with children experiencing abusive practices at charter schools, “Increasing the number of charter schools without acknowledging the growing list of complaints and concerns, AND without providing remedies, is irresponsible at least, and even more so when supported by the Secretary of Education. Today, I waited in the rain until I could ask Secretary Duncan when he would talk to charter parents to hear their concerns. He politely responded that he does talk to parents and was willing to meet with us. But when I asked how we could arrange this, I immediately became invisible, as he turned his back, walked away and shut his car door. Now I understand how it is that Secretary Duncan says there is zero opposition to his charter school proposals. Today, Secretary Duncan deemed me a zero.”
According to Mona Davids, President of the NY Charter Parents Association, "Uncommon Schools does not allow Parent Associations of any kind. We have been helping a parent at the Kings Collegiate School for several months. We need far more transparency and a voice for parents at all charter schools, to stop their abusive practices. Secretary Duncan should explain what he is going to do to ensure that corporate chicanery, corruption and financial mismanagement does not happen at charter schools, and should have addressed the plight of the parents at Kings Collegiate when he visited that school. That would show he truly cares about our children!"
Samantha Jeffrey, a parent at Kings Collegiate Charter School, says, “I support the charter school system, however I believe they have not reached their potential so that my child can reach his potential as well. I would like to work with them on real solutions that focus on the child’s academic excellence, as opposed to the distractions of the current disciplinary code and policy. I have also been ignored when I asked for essential information that I deserve as a parent. Parents at our school as well as other charter schools need a voice.”
Data from the State Education Department for Kings Collegiate shows that while there are 90 fifth graders, this number shrinks to 53 students in the seventh grade.
Khem Irby, parent leader in District 13 and a former parent at Leadership Prep Charter School, one of the Uncommon Schools chain, said: “It was very disrespectful of Secretary Duncan not to visit K588 today, the public school co-located in the building with Kings Collegiate. He should be reminded that charter schools are NOT the cure-all. We were told by the attorney of Uncommon Schools to cease and desist our efforts to form a Parent Association at the school. The practices at Leadership Prep continue to degrade the self-esteem of children. Many of their students have been suspended for trivial reasons like “yawning too loud”, and they have had a mass exodus of students who have returned to neighborhood schools. They also have used ACS as a tool to suppress parent complaints.”
Lydia Temples, a former parent at Leadership Prep, said: “When I had concerns about the unfairness of the disciplinary procedures at the school, I used all the legal avenues of redress at my disposal. I filed grievances with the school, the board of trustees, the SUNY Charter School Institute, the Board of Regents, and finally, the State Education Commissioner, and none of them responded. Instead, the school called ACS to try to shut down my complaints and they took my daughter away from me for two days. I finally had to take my child out of the school.”
Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters, says: “We object to Duncan’s political pressure to force our state to raise the cap on charters, without any protections in place to prevent financial corruption and abuse of power. He has said that there is “zero” opposition to his policies, and yet more than two thousand people have signed our petition against raising the charter cap in the last two weeks. We also resent the way the charter lobby is spreading disinformation, including the false claim that the “Race to the Top” funding can be used to prevent layoffs at schools. As Kathleen Grimm pointed out at City Council hearings last week, the use of this federal grant program is very restrictive and cannot be used for these purposes.”
Lisa Donlan, President of the Community Education Council in District 1, where bitter battles have occurred over charter schools occupying space in existing public schools, concludes: “The US Dept of Education should be using its leadership to encourage states to adopt real solutions to the problems of our schools, including admissions plans that reduce racial and economic isolation; smaller class sizes; and greater opportunities for early childhood education. Arne Duncan has ignored all these issues in favor of a narrow political agenda to promote privatization.”
Class Size Matters and the NY Charter Parents Association have sponsored a petition to the State Legislature, urging them to adopt protections for parents and students and enhanced accountability for charter schools before lifting the cap. The petition has received more than 2,000 signatures in the last two weeks, and can be viewed at http://www.change.org/petitions/view/vote_no_to_raising_the_cap_on_charter_schools
The two groups have also formulated a framework of common principles for charter and district schools, demanding more accountability for the spending of taxpayer, including audits from the State Comptroller and barring profit-making charter operators from making money off our children. It also calls for more voice for parents, including the need for every charter school to have a Parents Association and a parent sitting on its board. The framework document can be accessed at: http://www.classsizematters.org/common_principles_v3.pdf
White Hat Management: "accountability chain is totally upside down"
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- A group of Cleveland and Akron charter schools is in open rebellion against the for-profit management firm that runs the schools.
An unusual lawsuit brought Monday by 10 governing boards of Hope Academies of Cleveland and Akron and Life Skills Centers of Cleveland and Akron alleges that a 2006 state law passed by majority-party Republicans is unconstitutional and gives the for-profit company unchecked authority.
At the center of the lawsuit is White Hat Management, the for-profit company whose five-year contract to run the 10 charter schools in Northeast Ohio expires on June 30. Charter schools are publicly funded but privately operated. In the case of White Hat Management, 96 percent of the state funding flows to the company.
The governing boards say that White Hat's interest in making a profit conflicts with the schools' goal to educate. The suit, filed in Franklin County Common Pleas Court, says that the boards are "virtually impotent to govern the schools."
They say that White Hat has refused to provide detailed financial information such as unaudited quarterly financial reports required under the management agreement with the schools. White Hat has also refused to provide details on grants received and also failed to spell out what funds were used to purchase school property and equipment since 2004, the suit charges.
White Hat Management said in a statement that the company has not been served with the complaint and could not comment directly on it.
"It is unfortunate that these entities have taken this action which potentially will disrupt the lives of thousands of students and jeopardize the future of these schools," the statement said. "White Hat will continue its efforts while this matter is resolved."
A representative from the Ohio Council of Community Schools -- the sponsor of the Hope Academies and Life Skills Centers that are part of the lawsuit -- did not return calls for comment.
The largest for-profit charter school operator in Ohio, White Hat Management was founded by wealthy Akron industrialist David Brennan. He and his wife, Ann, have been major political contributors as the legislature has dealt with charter school issues in recent years. In 2007, for example, they gave a combined $733,300 to state candidates and Republican organizations, including $400,000 to the Ohio Republican Party, according to state records.
The schools' governing boards say they are in a pickle because the state law allows White Hat to remove and replace the boards if they seek to end contracts with the company and negotiate with other potential management companies.
And any board that does manage to successfully petition to get a contract with White Hat ended is stripped of the school facilities, furniture and equipment -- even though it may have been initially purchased with tax dollars. That's because, under the state law, White Hat owns those assets.
"That's the untenable situation -- tax dollars are being used to purchase assets for public schools that are in turn owned by private corporations," said Carlo LoParo, a spokesman for the group of charter schools. "These boards are essentially being given the option of being fired or giving their schools away."
An Ohio charter school expert said the "accountability chain is totally upside down" in Ohio.
"The lines of authority have been blurred in Ohio," said Terry Ryan, vice president of Ohio programs and policy for the non-profit Thomas B. Fordham Institute. "Therefore, we see this confusion which makes it prime territory for a lawsuit."
Ryan said the Ohio law is "the kind of law that was crafted by a management organization to protect their interests."
The provisions that govern charter schools were rewritten as part of House Bill 79, a controversial remaking of Ohio charter school law sponsored by former Cincinnati-area Rep. Tom Raga, a Republican lawmaker who ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor in 2006. The legislation languished in conference committee before being moved on a 4-2 party line vote by Republicans over Democratic objections.
It was signed into law by Republican Gov. Bob Taft on Dec. 29, 2006 -- a little more than one week before Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland took office.. . . .
Monday, May 17, 2010
Lead and Learning: Detroit Public Schools
High lead levels hurt learning for DPS kids
More than half of students tested have poisoning historyBY TINA LAM and KRISTI TANNER-WHITE
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERSMore than half of the students tested in Detroit Public Schools have a history of lead poisoning, which affects brain function for life, according to data compiled by city health and education officials.
The data also show, for the first time in Detroit, a link between higher lead levels and poor academic performance. About 60% of DPS students who performed below their grade level on 2008 standardized tests had elevated lead levels.
The higher the lead levels, the lower the MEAP scores, though other factors also may play a role.
The research -- the result of an unusual collaboration between the city's Department of Health & Wellness Promotion and DPS -- also reveals that children receiving special education were more likely to have lead poisoning.
The data, involving tens of thousands of city children, underscore the persistent and troubling legacy of lead, even as the overall number of lead cases continues to fall in Detroit and across the nation.
...
Despite significant declines in Detroit, thousands of children continue to be diagnosed with lead poisoning each year, a by-product of older homes with lead-based paint, pervasive poverty and an often unhealthy diet.
Jay Mathews Gets Another Wrong Answer to His Own Question
Most people who know of Jay Mathews are accustomed to his unabashed cheerleading for KIPP, but his column today takes the cake, as they say down south. So here in its full frontal stupidity, Jay Mathews (with some comments interspersed):
Does denying dreams help kids learn?
A key lesson in the No Excuses variety of public schools, which use firm measures to raise achievement for impoverished students, is that behavior has consequences. The Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), a No Excuses-style charter network, does that by denying some students the traditional year-end trip to Orlando or Utah or New York or Washington or other places they desperately want to go.
Does it work? Here comes an unusually qualified expert. Kyrien Curtis arrives in Washington Monday night as a volunteer chaperone for 60 fifth graders from the KIPP STRIVE Academy in Atlanta. He is a short, lean freshman at Morehouse College. He grew up in Houston and attended the KIPP Academy Middle School there all four years, from fifth through eighth grade. Because of foul moods and other distractions, he missed the trip every time, so this will be his first.
Just two paragraphs in, Jay has already answered his question, obviously without noticing. If the ultimate isolating punishment of missing the annual "field lesson" for four years in a row did not work for Kyrien, that seems pretty conclusive evidence that KIPP's dream crushing did not work for Kyrien, does it not, Jay? Or perhaps Kyrien secretly longed more for some escape from the total compliance of the KIPP drill instructors' demands. For even away from school, the annual trips are called field lessons rather than field trips, as a way to convey the message that the larger world is an extension of the KIPP classroom, thus reinforcing the bubble effect that sustains the total control that the KIPP organization demands of its KIPPsters.
Denying children cherished prizes is a controversial part of the No Excuses model. The idea is to build self-restraint. It has had an impact. Former KIPP students, now adults, tell me that losing a year-end trip was the most dramatic moment of their middle school years. They are still trying to measure its influence a decade later.
Squashing a student’s dream is something that most schools, public and private, rarely do. Some educators think it is cruel and destructive of a learning environment. But KIPP achievement gains are large. The co-founders of KIPP, Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, were appalled at the lack of meaningful consequences for students who misbehaved when they were novice teachers in the Houston public schools. When they started KIPP in 1994 they devised a system of KIPP dollars for good behavior, and a loss of privileges (like being prohibited from talking to your friends) for bad behavior. Getting a good education and going to college, they said, was the consequence of good decisions. Bad decisions set you back. Some students did not believe that until they lost a trip.
Yes, Jay, denying "cherished prizes" is pretty awful, alright, but not nearly so awful as the ongoing psychological neutering that occurs on a daily basis at KIPP, with the application of Martin Seligman's learned helplessness and learned optimism techniques. Or the brutality of segregated, total compliance work camps, where the slightest infraction leads to solitary confinement or being shoved out. And let's not forget the horrors of KIPP Fresno (here, here, here, and here) or Fulton County, or the yet undiscovered atrocities being committed for the sake of containing, segregating, and indoctrinating minority children.
In middle school Curtis spent much time on the Porch, a KIPP word for the isolation imposed on students who miss homework, interrupt class, insult other students or talk back to teachers. “I never lied, cheated or stole,” he said, “but I also was not always nice.” A teacher would urge his class to have a clean week---no demerits. But by Thursday he would succumb to a destructive mood, miss an assignment and be back on the Porch. He had to sit separately from other students in class and at lunch, and speak only to teachers, not his friends. Good behavior freed him from the Porch, but that often took awhile.
Curtis credits KIPP’s nine-hour school days and heavy homework for teaching him how to manage his time. He does not think he would have a 3.2 grade point at Morehouse without that. But as he moved on to the KIPP Houston High School, becoming active in student government and eventually student body president, the lost trips stayed on his mind. He was struck by a high school teacher’s observation that so many of the middle school students who landed on the porch were African-American males raised by single parents, just like him.
Curtis talks like a business leader remembering rowdy days as a prep school student. He learned about rules, but had to break some. Each KIPP school has a different system. At STRIVE each student has a chance to get off its version of the Porch in two days and are only isolated at lunch.
But 25 STRIVE students will still miss this trip. Curtis is a computer science major, interested in robots. But he said he might also become a teacher and help kids like him who get left behind.
No doubt Curtis was impressed when he was introduced to a Washington Post "reporter" and told that he might get his name in the paper. No doubt the KIPP training kicked right in with Jay's desired result: another feel good story about the dark value of mistreating poor children into total submission as a way to get them to act like middle class kids, all the while ignoring the sociological and psychological effects of poverty that remain unaddressed.
One has to wonder, Jay, if Curtis's valuable lesson of "time management" did not have a cost that remains invisible to those like you who refuse to acknowledge the potential or real harm that is embedded in this kind of neo-eugenics penal pedagogy movement. It does not surprise me that Curtis is interested in robots: maybe he can learn to build one that does not have all the flaws and imperfections that he obviously was unable to extract from himself during those four years of repeated failure to make the school trip. Or maybe he will become a KIPP teacher, where he can have a career extracting those imperfections from other children, the ones he was never able to get out of himself.
Imagine Report from Policy Matters Ohio
Public Good vs. Private Profit:
Imagine Schools, Inc. in Ohio
Imagine Schools, Inc., is the nation’s largest for-profit charter school management company, with 71 schools nationwide and 11 in Ohio.
This report found that Imagine, Inc. has a poor record of performance in Ohio and a business model that includes elaborate school real estate transactions, high management and operations fees, overlapping business relationships with its main authorizer, low spending on classroom instruction, and tight control of school finances and board relationships. These problems have led to Academic Emergency ratings for five of the company's six rated Ohio schools for the 2008-09 school year (the sixth was in Academic Watch). Because of the management company’s poor academic record in Ohio, it was barred from opening new schools for the 2010-11 school year. Board members have resigned in frustration with Imagine practices, facility costs dramatically exceed recommended guidelines from charter experts, and teacher salaries are below those of other charters.
Ohio charters are granted only to non-profit organizations, but fully a third of the state’s more than 300 non-profit charter schools are run by for-profit management companies, many of them out-of-state operators like Imagine Schools, Inc. This report highlights the need to eliminate for-profit companies from the education picture in Ohio. Read this report to learn more.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Broad and Gist Rebuffed: Central Falls Teachers Keep Their Jobs
That was Eli Broad's perky plant as Rhode Island's Superintendent of Schools in February, shortly after the mass firings that oligarchs like Broad and Gates believed would usher in a new era of corporate rule in public schools. Looks like Deborah Gist (Broad Academy Class of '08) has crow to eat if the scoop by Valerie Strauss and the story at HuffPo have it right:
CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. — A school district that gained the support of President Barack Obama for promoting accountability after it fired all its teachers from a struggling school announced on Sunday it had reached an agreement with the union to return the current staffers to their jobs.
The two sides said a transformation plan for Central Falls High School for the coming school year would allow the roughly 87 teachers, guidance counselors, librarians and other staffers who were to lose their jobs at the end of this year to return without having to reapply. More than 700 people had already applied for the positions.
The agreement calls for a longer school day, more after-school tutoring and other changes.
"What this means is that they have come to an agreement about a reform effort and that will change the quality" of the education program at Central Falls, said Rhode Island Education Commissioner Deborah Gist, who applauded both sides for working together.
The board of trustees overseeing the school system in Central Falls, one of the poorest communities in the state, voted in February to fire the staff of one of the state's worst-performing schools. The school was under a mandate from the state to make improvements, and it opted for the mass firings after a breakdown in talks with teachers about other reforms that would have required more work, some without extra pay. . . .