Clara Hempill on Charter Schools

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com Senior Editor at the Center for NYC Affairs at the New School Do Charter Schools Help or Hurt? When officials at P.S. 123, an ordinary neighborhood school in Harlem, were forced to call the police this month to keep a charter school from taking over its classrooms, I was reminded how charter schools make it harder for neighborhood schools to succeed. In poor neighborhoods with terrible local schools, charters may serve as an escape for some children whose parents can navigate the admissions process, much as "gifted and talented" programs serve middle class parents who want to escape what they consider inadequate local schools. But what we need is a strategy to improve schools for all children - not an escape for a few. a charter school that shares the P.S. 123 building, hired movers to remove furniture from several P.S. 123 classrooms so the charter school could expand, teachers occupied the classrooms and halted the takeover,

Chater School Teacher Turnover

From The National Center for Study in Privatizing Education - run by Prof. Henry Levin, Columbia University.

Interesting results - yet the support for charters and the disparagment of unions continues...

clipped from www.ncspe.org Teacher Turnover in Charter Schools. 2009. study examines how teacher turnover differs between charter and traditional public schools and seeks to identify factors that explain these differences Using data from the National Center for Education Statistics’ Fourteen percent of charter school teachers left the profession outright and 11% moved to a different school 7% of traditional public school teachers left the profession and 7% moved schools odds of a charter school teacher leaving the profession versus staying in the same school are 132% greater than those of a traditional public school teacher odds of a charter school teacher moving schools are 76% greater. The data lend minimal support to the claim that turnover is higher in charter schools because they are leveraging their flexibility in personnel policies to get rid of underperforming teachers. Rather, we found most of the turnover in charter schools is voluntary and dysfunctional as compared to that of traditional public schools

Michigan Races to the Top...

Oh how the mighty have fallen...(just kiddin')

clipped from www.mlive.com Michigan lawmakers agree to more charter schools, allowing 'cyber schools' to qualify for federal Race to the Top funding Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm says compromises are leading lawmakers to the goal of more school funding. to qualify for as much as $400 million in federal education aid. The statutory cap on the number of university-authorized charter schools has been set at 150 since the mid-90s. Efforts to lift that cap have been successfully blocked by local districts and the Michigan Education Association. would allow for the conversion of 20 high-performing charter schools into so-called "turnaround" schools. That would free up space for 20 more schools under the existing cap would allow two operators of online "cyber" schools to set up shop in Michigan unclear Friday whether the measures would allow local public school districts to charter schools outside the confines of collective bargaining

Is it ok to be a tech illiterate teacher?

I love this post and it is a "recommended reading" on my wiki ithsnyclibrary.wikispaces.com.

clipped from thefischbowl.blogspot.com How can we teach this to kids, how can we model it, if we aren’t literate ourselves? If a teacher today is not technologically literate - and is unwilling to make the effort to learn more - it's equivalent to a teacher 30 years ago who didn't know how to read and write. Extreme? Maybe. Your thoughts? 80% of the parent conferences I had with students who were struggling, at least one of the parents would say "I was never any good at math either I can't imagine a parent saying "Oh, yeah, I never learned how to read" not knowing math was socially acceptable, not knowing how to read was very unacceptable I sort of get the same feeling today about technology. It's acceptable to say "I don't really get computers" I'm not saying that technology is the end all and be all it's just a tool to help us teach and learn Technology is the underpinning of just about everything we do today - and especially so in relation to how we communicate with each other

All you want to know about school privatization

It kinda makes me think , why should we even bother? Let's just link up to this and call it as day...

clipped from www.ncspe.org RECENT INITIATIVES FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS PRIVATIZATION: THE BASICS CHARTER SCHOOLS PRIVATE SCHOOLS FOR-PROFIT SCHOOLS VOUCHERS TUITION TAX CREDITS SCHOOL CHOICE POLITICS OF PRIVATIZATION HIGHER EDUCATION INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH