Monthly Archive - January 2008

Louisiana looks for expertise in turning around failing schools

Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s gotta pay, judge says.

PA Court kills a cap but opens a more fundamental question

Big win yesterday for PA charter advocates: The Commonwealth Court struck down Chester-Upland’s attempt to cap enrollment in its charter schools — which get only 75% of district funding but are surging ahead in academic performance. Kudos to the feisty group of C-U charters that pursued the suit.

Alliance board member Andy Rotherham (whose rap sheet also includes Eduwonk, Ed Sector, and the Va Board of Ed) has written yet another provocative paper, picked up today in a thoughtful column by Jay Mathews of the Washington Post.

$23 million for 17 new campuses and charter facilities

Single-sex education is growing in metro Atlanta and across the nation as parents continue to try to find quality choices in public k-12 education.

Atlanta Public Schools opened two single-gender middle schools (one for boys and one for girls) this past August.
 
Now, Georgia’s first single-sex public charter school will open later this school year.
 

I’ve been saying since 1993 or so that “chartering is the way to deliver public education” -- a comment usually greeted with polite condescension because, you see, we must have a System that provides all those services these little charter schools can’t possibly handle on their own.

We often hear concern among charter school leaders about regulatory creep, with each year seeming to bring a new law with which to comply or yet another report to complete and send to the state. In addition to imposing such a “death by a thousand cuts” strategy, charter opponents are also increasingly pulling out the regulatory clubs to beat back the charter school movement, with the most recent examples found in Ohio and New York.

In December, the National Alliance co-hosted a panel in Massachusetts on Democratic support for public charter schools. Check it out, here.