Charter news & views
1. I’m attending the Charter School Growth Fund’s Education Entrepreneurs Showcase. The best charter operators in the country will be presenting their best innovations and competing for prizes. It will be fun to watch Kevin Hall take what John Lock started to the next level. More on this tomorrow.
2. A great article on charters in Albany in EdNext highlights Tom Carroll’s Brighter Choices Foundation. It’s a great case study of how a regionally focused CMO and transform the education landscape in a city.
3. I read a proposal for a charter defense fund—a critical step to achieving scale by creating funding parity. While there’s more than an average underfunding of $1800 difference nationally, a group of six slacker states underfund by 30-40%.
4. GA was a slacker state until the legislature fixed the problem but the Gwinnett school district has filed a law suit contesting parity—doesn’t stand a chance. The local paper called them out on it:
Gwinnett school officials have falsely asserted that the state is reallocating local funds to Ivy Preparatory Academy, an ethnically and racially diverse, all-girls charter middle school in Norcross, and that this threatens the overall quality of public education in the county. Both are incorrect.
5. EdWeek quotes a NACSA reported on a slowdown in authorizing, “the nation’s 50 largest charter authorizers appear to be approving new charter schools more selectively. Between 2005 and 2008, the 34% of applicants were approved. In 2005, the approval rate was 50%; before 2003, it was 68%.” It’s great that they’re being more selective but it also reflects caps, application processes that are far more bureaucratic, and misplaced state budget concerns (which wouldn’t exist if money followed kids everywhere).
6. An LA Times points out the ridiculous inequities of spectacular new public schools and charters in church basements. We need facilities and funding parity!
Posted: September 16th, 2009 | Author: Tom Vander Ark | Filed under: Charter Schools | 2 Comments »
Hello Tom, I like your thought-through ideas, even when mine are different. You don’t offer pre-chewed thinking. Appreciated!
About the charter school authorization bottleneck. Predictable, no? When old-school practitioners try to authorize new-school practitioners, the molasses will set in of course. If the oldies had the goodies they would have played the tune themselves. Why not ask ourselves, Who, in the field of education would be the ideal authorizer of charter schools? Betcha ’school boards’ would not spring to mind. A more fruitful direction, I think, lies in university schools of education. They already train the teachers and, I presume, have on hand the latest doodads on how young human minds learn best. By being given the right to authorize charter schools, schools of education around the country would intersect with the cutting edge of grass roots initiative. Eventually this marriage between schools of education and schools could result in a bona fide learning community culture for U.S. education. Schools of education would connect to schools sort of like schools of medicine connect to hospitals – with interning and mentoring and feeback loops between classroom and research and teacher training. What do you think? Is there such an example someplace already?
Keep up the fun!
Joan
Tom – I was about to ask why charter schools bear the responsibility for R&D and innovation, then I saw Joan’s post.
Joan – I think teacher colleges and universities are an untapped resource. I don’t see the same forces moving education forward in a continuously improving fashion like other fields including medicine. Following Joan’s thread, what if educational R&D took place at embedded K-12 schools at education colleges and universities analogous to embedded hospitals? Isn’t that the intellectually rich environment to develop and demonstrate new ideas? Don’t colleges and universities have far more resources than charter schools to actively engage in R&D? I’m not against charter schools, but let’s optimize the education model. Maybe we need to look outside the box.