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Scooped by
Roxana Marachi, PhD
February 18, 2014 11:54 AM
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"Profit-seeking in the banking and health care industries has victimized Americans. Now it's beginning to happen in education, with our children as the products.
There are good reasons - powerful reasons - to stop the privatization efforts before the winner-take-all free market creates a new vehicle for inequality. At the very least we need the good sense to slow it down while we examine the evidence about charters and vouchers."
For full post, click on title above or here: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/02/17
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Scooped by
Roxana Marachi, PhD
April 20, 2014 4:08 PM
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Picture caption: "In the center of the room, a software program delivers lessons tailored to the individual skill levels of a second group of Mateo Sheedy students. An hourly-rate aide oversees the students." by Rahim Rahimian of EdWeek Article by Benjamin Herold of EdWeek Selected quote: "...Although test scores have steadily declined as the network has added schools and students, Rocketship has maintained its voracious appetite for growth. Rather than resolve that tension, the new flexible classrooms have, by Rocketship’s own admission, further strained the organization and exposed underlying problems glossed over during the group’s ascent. Some Rocketship leaders, for example, now acknowledge that their original blended learning model—which powered the organization’s initial growth, to nine schools and 5,200 students, before its impact could be rigorously studied—may be more effective at teaching students to follow directions than to think for themselves."... For full story, click on title above or here: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/01/21/19el-rotation.h33.html?tkn=RRYF1gcvzhe8L6wfH%2F0k64DTHTNJY48UkPQP&cmp=clp-edweek
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Scooped by
Roxana Marachi, PhD
August 19, 2014 3:52 PM
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"BOULDER, CO (August 19, 2014) – A recent report from the University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform (DER) on charter school productivity asserts charter schools are more effective in producing achievement on standardized tests and are also less costly per pupil than traditional public schools. A new review released today finds the report’s claims suffer from multiple sources of invalidity, rendering the report useless.
Gene V Glass, Regents' Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University, reviewed The Productivity of Public Charter Schools for the Think Twice think tank review project of the National Education Policy Center (NEPC).
The report uses findings from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and “revenues received” to support its claim that charter schools spend less per pupil than traditional public schools and produce achievement as good as or superior to that of traditional public schools.
In his review, however, Glass points out that the report inaccurately employs NAEP test results, and that its calculation of expenditures in charter and traditional public schools relies on questionable data. The report, meanwhile, also discounts the fact that demographic differences between the two sectors are highly correlated with NAEP performance. In short, Glass says, “The sector with the higher percentage of poor pupils scores lower on the NAEP test.”
Taken together, the report’s flaws leave readers with little evidence on which to base any valid conclusions, Glass concludes. He predicts, however, that despite its many shortcomings, charter school supporters will attempt to use the findings to advocate expanded funding for charter schools. In that respect, he writes, “The report continues a program of advocacy research that will be cited by supporters of the charter school movement.”...
For full post, click on title above or here: http://nepc.colorado.edu/newsletter/2014/08/review-productivity-public-charter
For Gene V Glass’s review on the NEPC website, please visit:
http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-productivity-public-charter
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Scooped by
Roxana Marachi, PhD
December 15, 2013 1:37 AM
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"California-based Rocketship Education's first school in Milwaukee fell short of its enrollment projection of 485 students on the third Friday of September, which will likely lead to a $1.4 million shortfall for the school, according to new documents."
Click on title above for full post.
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Scooped by
Roxana Marachi, PhD
July 27, 2014 12:12 AM
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By Beth Sondel & Joseph L. Boselovic
"It’s been a decade since New Orleans’ post-Katrina charter school experiment began. The results have been devastating."
"This is the first installment in our two-part series looking at charter schools in New Orleans and Detroit. The juxtaposition is no accident — these two cities have the highest percentage of charters in the country.
In New Orleans, charters have almost entirely replaced traditional public schools; in Detroit, about half the schools are charters. Both cases show the perils of privatization and the way in which elites manipulate crises to transform social goods."...
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/07/no-excuses-in-new-orleans/
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Scooped by
Roxana Marachi, PhD
April 11, 2014 1:33 AM
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"Jim Sinclair agreed to talk with a reporter on the telephone, but he made it clear he was not going to reveal any information about his school, Lorain Preparatory Academy of Excellence. The self-described leader of the publicly funded charter school wanted some proof that the young voice on the phone was indeed a reporter. “The first thing you need to do before I can even handle this discussion is to send me a fax with the letterhead stating who you are before I give out any information to anybody,” Sinclair said. The fax was sent, but there was no response. That was not out of the ordinary in calls to nearly 300 Ohio charter schools — funded with state and local tax dollars and, by law, subject to the same transparency rules as traditional schools. The calls were made as part of a school-choice project by the Akron Beacon Journal and the NewsOutlet, a consortium of journalism programs at Youngstown State University, the University of Akron and Cuyahoga Community College."... For full post, please click on title above or here: http://www.ohio.com/news/local/more-than-100-publicly-funded-charter-schools-fail-to-disclose-who-is-in-charge-part-1-of-3-1.476978
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Scooped by
Roxana Marachi, PhD
May 20, 2014 5:54 PM
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"Now under investigation by two state agencies, the United Neighborhood Organization is also facing tough questions on Wall Street from the investors who lent tens of millions of dollars to help pay for the rapid expansion of UNO’s charter-school network. The questions were prompted by Chicago Sun-Times reports on state grant money paid to companies owned by two brothers of Miguel d’Escoto, a top executive of the politically well-connected group."... For full post, click on title above or here: http://www.suntimes.com/news/watchdogs/19982926-452/uno-charter-school-scandal-has-wall-street-worried.html#.U3vHtVgbC2U
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Scooped by
Roxana Marachi, PhD
April 30, 2014 1:20 AM
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"Motoko Rich’s recent blockbuster article in the NY Times explores the vast reach of the Walton Foundation to promote and support the privatization of public education. What has happened in Washington, D.C., writes Rich, is a microcosm of Walton’s investments in the promotion of an education revolution across the country: “In effect, Walton has subsidized an entire charter school system in the nation’s capital, helping to fuel enrollment growth so that close to half of all public school students in the city now attend charters, which receive taxpayer dollars but are privately operated… The foundation has awarded more than $1 billion in grants nationally to educational efforts since 2000, making it one of the largest private contributors to education in the country.”
Rich describes grants of over $1.2 million from the Walton Foundation to DC Prep, a Washington, D.C. network of four charter schools. Walton also supports Teach for America, the alternative, five-week, Peace Corps-like certification program that has become a primary supplier of teachers for charter schools not only in the nation’s capital but across the country. Not only does the Walton Foundation support particular privatized charter networks and programs to certify teachers outside the colleges of education, but it also funds the think tanks that have created and promoted the theoretical basis for today’s wave of school privatization including the American Enterprise Institute and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. It even “bankrolls an academic department at the University of Arkansas in which faculty, several of whom were recruited from conservative think tanks, conduct research on charter schools, voucher programs and other policies the foundation supports.” Recently, according to Rich, Walton hired a staff person from the American Legislative Exchange Council as an education program officer."... For full post, click on link above or here: http://janresseger.wordpress.com/2014/04/29/walmart-has-ruined-our-towns-will-we-let-the-walton-foundation-destroy-our-schools/
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Scooped by
Roxana Marachi, PhD
January 20, 2014 4:51 PM
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Photo by Frances Micklow/The Star Ledger
Article by Peggy McGlone (Dec. 20th, 2013)
"NEWARK — Newark mayoral candidate and South Ward Councilman Ras Baraka blasted the school reorganization plan released by State Superintendent Cami Anderson earlier this week, calling it "radical" and "disruptive" and predicting it will damage the city’s school system.
"They say this is about choice, but it is about anything but choice. They are saying we’re going to get rid of your neighborhood schools," Baraka said today. "This is a dismantling of public education..." For full article, click on title above or here: http://www.nj.com/education/2013/12/newark_mayoral_candidate_ras_b.html
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Scooped by
Roxana Marachi, PhD
March 31, 2014 6:20 PM
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Scooped by
Roxana Marachi, PhD
January 14, 2014 6:15 PM
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"New York, October 15, 2013 -- The dramatic rise in charter school enrollments over the past decade is likely to create negative credit pressure on school districts in economically weak urban areas, says Moody's Investors Service in a new report. Charter schools tend to proliferate in areas where school districts already show a degree of underlying economic and demographic stress, says Moody's in the report "Charter Schools Pose Growing Risks for Urban Public Schools."
"While the vast majority of traditional public districts are managing through the rise of charter schools without a negative credit impact, a small but growing number face financial stress due to the movement of students to charters," says Michael D'Arcy, one of two authors of the report. Charter schools can pull students and revenues away from districts faster than the districts can reduce their costs, says Moody's. As some of these districts trim costs to balance out declining revenues, cuts in programs and services will further drive students to seek alternative institutions including charter schools.
Many older, urban areas that have experienced population and tax base losses, creating stress for their local school districts, have also been areas where charter schools have proliferated, says Moody's. Among the cities where over a fifth of the students are enrolled in charter schools are Cleveland, Detroit, Kansas City, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C. Nationwide about one in 20 students is in a charter school. One of the four risk factors Moody's identifies as making a school district vulnerable to charter school growth is that the school district is already financially pressured and grappling with weak demographics. A second factor is having a limited ability to adjust operations in response to a loss of enrolment to charter schools. https://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-Charter-schools-pose-greatest-credit-challenge-to-school-districts--PR_284505?WT.mc_id=NLTITLE_YYYYMMDD_PR_284505%3C%2fp%3E
By Diane Ravitch - Scientific American - July 31st, 2013
"Technology is transforming American education, for good and for ill. The good comes from the ingenious ways that teachers encourage their students to engage in science projects, learn about history by seeing the events for themselves and explore their own ideas on the Internet. There are literally thousands of Internet-savvy teachers who regularly exchange ideas about enlivening classrooms to heighten student engagement in learning.
The ill comes in many insidious forms.
One of the malign manifestations of the new technology is for-profit online charter schools, sometimes called virtual academies. These K–12 schools recruit heavily and spend many millions of taxpayer dollars on advertising. They typically collect state tuition for each student, which is removed from the local public schools' budget. They claim to offer customized, personalized education, but that's just rhetoric. They have high dropout rates, low test scores and low graduation rates. Some have annual attrition rates of 50 percent. But so long as the virtual schools keep luring new students, they are very profitable for their owners and investors."...
Full post at: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=diane-ravitch-3-dubious-uses-technology-in-schools#!
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Scooped by
Roxana Marachi, PhD
April 20, 2014 5:27 PM
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By Jon Swedian - Albuquerque Journal:
"ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A Farmington-based virtual charter school has broken state law by giving a for-profit company, an online curriculum provider, too much authority over the school’s operations, according to Attorney General Gary King. King issued an opinion April 1 stating that New Mexico Virtual Academy’s contract with K12 Inc. violates New Mexico’s charter school law by allowing the Delaware-based company to have input on budget, insurance and facility decisions. “K12′s administrative and managerial responsibilities under the agreement are significant …,” King wrote, noting the state’s charter school law doesn’t allow for-profit companies to manage charter schools...." For full post, click on title above or here:
http://www.abqjournal.com/381667/news/ag-charter-schools-contract-with-firm-illegal.html
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Scooped by
Roxana Marachi, PhD
March 12, 2014 3:17 AM
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Scooped by
Roxana Marachi, PhD
December 2, 2013 11:33 AM
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By Julian Vasquez Heilig, Ph.D - March 1st, 2013 "Politicians and others often frame a narrative that charters are on par or better than traditional public schools. I have discussed how charters stack up traditional public schools extensively in posts here on CI on charters. Are there charters that are islands of excellence? Of course, there are some and I discussed this in my invited testimony last week at the Texas Senate. But we must hold charters accountable to data— not just achievement data— because it is becoming clearer and clearer that many charters have high attrition."
For full post: http://cloakinginequity.com/2013/03/01/exiting-a-sample-of-charter-chains-vs-public-districts-student-attrition/
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Scooped by
Roxana Marachi, PhD
April 1, 2014 12:25 AM
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..."Contrary to popular myth, the charter schools are more racially segregated than public schools and have performed no better than the public schools on the most recent state tests. But what they have behind them is vast resources, and de Blasio capitulated. The underlying question remains: How did a privately managed school franchise that serves a tiny portion of New York’s students manage to hijack the education reforms of a new mayor with a huge popular mandate?"...
For full post, click on title above or here: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/mar/27/new-york-charters-against-deblasio/
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Scooped by
Roxana Marachi, PhD
March 12, 2014 1:09 AM
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Scooped by
Roxana Marachi, PhD
March 10, 2014 3:19 AM
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ABSTRACT from Journal of Education Policy - "In this paper, we illustrate the relationships between Teach For America (TFA) and federal charter school reform to interrogate how policy decisions are shaped by networks of individuals, organizations, and private corporations. We use policy network analysis to create a visual representation of TFA’s key role in developing and connecting personnel, political support, and financial backing for charter reform. Next we examine how the networks unfold at a local level by zooming in on a case study of New Orleans. By mapping out these connections, we hope to provide a foundation for further investigation of how this network affects policies."... For main journal publication page, click on title or image above. For pdf of article, email authors of the manuscript or curator of this collection. For subset of TFA-related articles in the Charters & Choice: A Closer Look collection, click here: http://www.scoop.it/t/charter-choice-closer-look?q=TFA 
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Scooped by
Roxana Marachi, PhD
March 26, 2014 6:50 PM
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By Jan Resseger - "In his introduction to the 1995, Multicultural Education: A Generation of Advocacy, Jose A Cardenas describes the plight of children at school when they are not part of the culture that dominates the school: “Instructional programs designed for the cultural mainstream provided little compatibility between the educational system and the unique characteristics of different segments of the population.” According to Katy Reckdahl, reporting for this week’s Hechinger Report, a news service of Teachers College, Columbia University, lack of cultural awareness and appropriate services remains a serious problem today in the amalgam of charter schools that now serve 80 percent of school children in New Orleans. Reckdahl explains here: New Orleans Charter Schools Scramble to Teach Non-English Speakers: http://hechingerreport.org/content/new-orleans-charter-schools-scramble-teach-non-english-speakers_15203/ . In the massive charter school experiment launched in 2005 following the ravages of Hurricane Katrina—an experiment paid for with huge grants from the U.S. Department of Education and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—all of New Orleans public school teachers were permanently laid off in late fall of 2005, and a large number of so-called “failing” schools were taken over by the state and subsequently turned over to charters. Charters have too often failed to provide appropriate services for students with disabilities and for English language learners..."
For full post, click on title above or here: http://janresseger.wordpress.com/2014/03/26/new-orleans-charters-still-fail-to-provide-required-services-for-english-learners/ For original Hechinger Report article by Reckdahl, click here: http://hechingerreport.org/content/new-orleans-charter-schools-scramble-teach-non-english-speakers_15203/
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Scooped by
Roxana Marachi, PhD
March 5, 2014 7:34 PM
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"The legacy of the Civil Rights Movement is so great, that it come as no surprise that many groups would try and use the movement to bolster their own cause. Utilizing the lessons learned from the Civil Rights Movement to continue to fight against all forms of oppression is imperative as we continue to eradicate injustices. But lately we have seen the language of the Civil Rights movement co-opted by groups that push an agenda that contradicts the values of the fight for civil rights."...
For full post, click on title above or here: http://www.empowermagazine.com/beware-education-reformers-co-opt-language-civil-rights-movement/
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Scooped by
Roxana Marachi, PhD
March 5, 2014 12:32 AM
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"Finding a usable building for a charter school can be a challenge. Rent a building? Buy an existing building? Finance a new building? However, rather than meet that challenge in a way that makes sense for taxpayers and students, some operators turn the challenge into an opportunity to increase profits. One such operator is Imagine Schools, which sets up real estate deals that enable the company to expand while burdening individual schools – and therefore taxpayers – with high rental costs. The company profits from facilities in two ways. First, Imagine controls some of the buildings through the company’s real estate arm and charges individual schools to use the facilities."... For full post, click on title above or here: http://cashinginonkids.com/key-issues/finance-and-facilities/imagine-schools-surreal-estate-deals/
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Scooped by
Roxana Marachi, PhD
March 23, 2014 12:53 PM
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Scooped by
Roxana Marachi, PhD
January 15, 2014 3:11 PM
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By Diane Ravitch - Jan. 14th, 2014:
"If schools were like shoe stores, they would open wherever there was a good location and close if they didn’t make a profit. Public schools, on the other hand, are community institutions, like parks and beaches. They should not be closed if they have low scores; they should get help.
In Columbus, Ohio, charter schools are indeed like shoe stores. This year alone, 17 charter schools in that city closed their doors. 'Nine of the 17 schools that closed in 2013 lasted only a few months this past fall. When they closed, more than 250 students had to find new schools. The state spent more than $1.6 million in taxpayer money to keep the nine schools open only from August through October or November.'"
For full post, please click title above or link to: http://dianeravitch.net/2014/01/14/columbus-ohio-17-more-charters-close/
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Scooped by
Roxana Marachi, PhD
November 30, 2013 2:39 AM
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Selection from original post: "Charter Schools Nationwide Not Better, Maybe Worse, than Public Schools * Research on charter schools paints a mixed picture. A number of recent national studies have reached the same conclusion: charter schools do not, on average, show greater levels of student achievement, typically measured by standardized test scores, than public schools, and may even perform worse.
The Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University found in a 2009 report that 17% of charter schools outperformed their public school equivalents, while 37% of charter schools performed worse than regular local schools, and the rest were about the same. A 2010 study by Mathematica Policy Research found that, on average, charter middle schools that held lotteries were neither more nor less successful than regular middle schools in improving student achievement, behavior, or school progress. Among the charter schools considered in the study, more had statistically significant negative effects on student achievement than statistically significant positive effects. These findings are echoed in a number of other studies."...
Full article at: http://www.educationjustice.org/newsletters/nlej_iss21_art5_detail_CharterSchoolAchievement.htm
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Scooped by
Roxana Marachi, PhD
January 3, 2014 3:20 PM
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By Sarah Butrymowicz, The Hechinger Report - 1/3/2014 - San Carlos, Calif. "In cities across the country, charter schools have become known for anxiety-fueled lotteries, bitter disputes over sharing buildings with traditional schools, and teaching methods that are sometimes unorthodox. But in California, as well as some other states, charter schools have increasingly become associated with something more basic yet elusive: money. In a state besieged by budget cuts and where per-pupil spending is among the lowest in the nation, dozens of schools converted to charters in the 1990s and 2000s in search..."
Full article at: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/01/03/15thr_califcharters.h33.html
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