On average, the funding gap between charter schools and traditional schools is 22 percent, or $1,800 per pupil. The average charter school ends up with a total funding shortfall of nearly half a million dollars.
Source: Charter School Funding: Inequity’s Next Frontier
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Note: Please be aware that online publishers often change URLs or no longer provide access to articles after 7 days. If any of the below links no longer work, access the publishing newspaper and search the archives for the keywords in the subject matter. Good luck.
Eighteen Public Charter Schools Among the Country's Top 100 High Schools
Despite constituting only five percent of schools nationwide, 18 public charter schools are among the country’s top 100 high schools, according to a new report from U.S. News and World Report. "Charter schools are given the freedom to innovate and held accountable for results, and the over-representation of charter schools on this list of the 100 top high schools in America clearly shows that these principles are producing results and making a difference in students’ lives,” said National Alliance for Public Charter Schools President and CEO Nelson Smith. We congratulate them all for this outstanding recognition." The schools are located in Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Texas.
Source: U.S. News and World Report, (12/08/2008)
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Bill Gates Calls Public Charters "An Important Long-Term Strategy"
Last week, Bill Gates, Founder of Microsoft and the world's leading philanthropist, came to Washington, D.C. to share his ideas about education reform, poverty, and the economy. In a conversation with CNN's Wolf Blitzer and at a presentation at George Washington University, Gates stressed the need for more public chartering. "It's fair to say that the charter structure has been fantastic to allow for new models to be tried. And, so these high-results high schools are, a very high percentage of them are charter schools," he said. "There's really two things that the charter movement can do for schools in general. One is that we can increase the number of great charter schools, and that requires an investment. And the second is we can take the lessons from these charter schools and start to move them into the schools at large."
Source: National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, (12/07/2008)
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Report Recommends New Measures to Recruit and Prepare the Next Generation of Charter School Leadership
With the number of public charter schools predicted to increase in the coming 10 years, a new report by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools recommends a series of measures to recruit and prepare the next generation of leadership in two approaches. The report, "Charter School Executives: Toward a New Generation of Leadership," recommends expanding current ways for schools and networks to “grow their own” and establishing a national credential for executive management. “Based on the historic and dramatic growth trend of public charter schools, the next 5 to 10 years is likely to produce an acute shortage of well-prepared leaders for these schools,” said National Alliance for Public Charter Schools President and CEO Nelson Smith. “This fact, combined with anticipated retirements of current leadership, means that we must take action now to develop the thousands of new leaders that will be needed for the decade ahead.”
Source: National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, (12/06/2008)
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Ruling Threatens Public Charter School Approvals in Florida
Last week, a three-judge panel of the First District Court of Appeal in Florida struck down a 2006 law that allows public charter school developers to sidestep the state's county school boards by getting their charters approved by a state commission. The law creating the Schools of Excellence Commission is in “total and fatal conflict” with the Florida Constitution, which gives the local boards, not the state, authority over public schools, Judge Edward T. Barfield wrote in the unanimous opinion. "This statute permits and encourages the creation of a parallel system of free public education escaping the operation and control of local elected school boards," Barfield wrote. The ruling came in an appeal by the Duval County School District, one of 14 that challenged the law after the State Board of Education denied their requests to retain exclusive jurisdiction over public charter schools. The law allowed such exceptions, but the state board denied a total of 28 requests while granting only three to local boards in Orange, Polk and Sarasota counties. Bill Jones, who heads the 1,150-student Manatee School for the Arts, said many public charter schools are in favor of the idea of a separate governing body because of the challenges in getting approval from the local school boards. "What it (the ruling) does, is it does away with the competition issue," Jones said. "Under the current system, it’s like McDonald's getting to decide where Burger King gets to open."
Source: The Bradenton Herald, (12/05/2008)
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Public Charter Schools' Test Results May Aid Urban Districts in Connecticut
A new pilot program, approved by Connecticut's legislature in 2007, allows Hartford, Bridgeport and New Haven to combine their own schools' test results with those of public charter schools in the cities. How much the program, implemented this school year, will help districts that continually fail to make adequate yearly progress under the federal No Child Left Behind Act remains to be seen. "I believe it will help close the gap," said Nancy Benben, a Hartford schools spokeswoman. "The way we're going to get to those levels is through all the facets of the reform strategy," she said. "It looks pretty positive at this time," said Michael Sharpe, the CEO of Jumoke Academy in Hartford, a public charter school for grades K-8. "I think it's kind of a win-win situation. The majority of our kids are Hartford children anyway, so it's logical that Hartford can claim their scores."
Source: Hartford Courant (free registration required), (12/05/2008)
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Applications for New Public Charter Schools in New Orleans Approved
Last week, eight new public charter applications for New Orleans were approved. Four of the schools will be "transformation" charters. They will take over the lower grades of four lower-performing schools now operated by the state-run Recovery School District for the 2009-2010 school year. The state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education also approved three new charters to open in 2010 and another charter for a high school.
Source: The Times-Picayune, (12/05/2008)
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Group of Detroit Public School Teachers Want to Open Own Public Charter School
A group of Detroit teachers, calling themselves "Detroit Children First," want to open their own public charter school modeled after the Los Angeles Green Dot Schools, a nonprofit network of public charter high schools that is proving poor, urban and minority students can reach the same academic heights as their white and suburban peers do. Ann Crowley and Ann Turner, two of the teachers, are leading a pro-charter school reform slate in the Detroit Federation of Teachers' election. The Children First primary goal is two-fold: first, to begin a reform conversation among teachers and second, to create its own public charter school on the Green Dot Schools model.
Source: The Examiner, (12/04/2008)
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Principal Resigns at Union-Run Public Charter School
Drew Goodman, principal at New York's union-run United Federation of Teachers Secondary Charter School, has resigned. Goodman, who led the school since its opening in 2006, had struggled between the roles of administrator and teacher. In designing the public charter school, the union defined his position as “first and foremost an educator” whose authority “will stem not from title or rank." This fall, when he tried to revise the school charter to cut the number of students in each grade and increase collaboration between the elementary and secondary charter schools, he angered union leaders who thought he had overstepped his authority. In a letter to the school’s trustees, Randi Weingarten, the teacher’s union president, described Goodman’s departure as a mutual decision. In an interview, Weingarten said the school was simply working through the kinks facing any new institution, noting: “It’s tough to be the founding school leader of a school that may be one of the few that really believes in teacher collaboration.” A teacher at the school said many of the students had viewed Goodman as a role model. “I think the kids are in complete shock,” he said.
Source: New York Times (free registration required), (12/04/2008)
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New Report Calls for Improved Training for Public Charter School Leaders and Teachers
As the number of students attending public charter schools continues to rise, state leaders have a growing interest in ensuring that the public charter school sector is well-equipped to meet the goals of improving student achievement. A new report says governors and states should support university-based leadership-training programs and nontraditional organizations that focus on developing public charter school leaders. The report from the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices with the Center for School Change at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities examines the recruitment and training of public charter school leaders and board members, as well as the issues they face in getting the skills needed to run public charters.
Source: Education Week (subscription required), (12/03/2008)
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