Choices and Challenges

Choices and Challenges PDF Author: Priscilla Wohlstetter
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781612505411
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
As charter schools enter their third decade, research in this key sector remains overwhelmingly contradictory and confused. This examines the track record of the charter sector in light of the wide range of goals set for these schools in state authorising legislation - at the classroom level, the level of the school community, and system-wide. In particular, it shows how the evolution of the charter movement has shaped research questions and findings.

Choices and Challenges

Choices and Challenges PDF Author: Priscilla Wohlstetter
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781612505411
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
As charter schools enter their third decade, research in this key sector remains overwhelmingly contradictory and confused. This examines the track record of the charter sector in light of the wide range of goals set for these schools in state authorising legislation - at the classroom level, the level of the school community, and system-wide. In particular, it shows how the evolution of the charter movement has shaped research questions and findings.

Choices and Challenges

Choices and Challenges PDF Author: Priscilla Wohlstetter
Publisher: Harvard Education Press
ISBN: 1612505430
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book Here

Book Description
As charter schools enter their third decade, research in this key sector remains overwhelmingly contradictory and confused. Many studies are narrowly focused; some do not meet the standards for high-quality academic research. In this definitive work, Wohlstetter and her colleagues isolate and distill the high-quality research on charter schools to identify the contextual and operational factors that influence these schools’ performances. The authors examine the track record of the charter sector in light of the wide range of goals set for these schools in state authorizing legislation—at the classroom level, the level of the school community, and system-wide. In particular, they show how the evolution of the charter movement has shaped research questions and findings. By highlighting what we know about the conditions for success in charter schools, the authors make a significant contribution to current debates in policy and practice, both within the charter sector and in the larger landscape of public education.

The Charter School Challenge

The Charter School Challenge PDF Author: Bryan C. Hassel
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 9780815719939
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Get Book Here

Book Description
Charter schools have become a national phenomenon, garnering praise from both Democrats and Republicans. Because they appear to sidestep both political stalemate and the practical difficulty of implementing widespread change--the traditional barriers to improvement in American public education--charter schools hold great promise as an educational reform. Now, with charter laws on the books in more than thirty states, Bryan Hassel investigates whether charter schools have been able to avoid the pitfalls that have tripped up so many other "revolutionary" school reforms. After a broad overview of how charter laws have been adopted nationwide, this book focuses in depth on charter schools in Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, and Michigan. Hassel reviews the four states' implementation of charter laws and whether their programs are providing sufficient autonomy, resources, and potential to influence the broader education system--all essential components for charter schools' success. He concludes that if states want to give charter schools a full test, they should empower nonlocal entities to approve charter schools, establish the schools as distinct local entities, allow full per-pupil funding to go with students to the charter schools, and impose minimal constraints on the source and number of charter schools. The schools themselves will need to improve their infrastructure, and charter-granting agencies will have to rebuild the systems for monitoring schools' academic results and compliance with regulations. These policies are vital if charter schools are to realize their potential as a significant educational reform.

Challenges and Charter Schools

Challenges and Charter Schools PDF Author: Tracey O'Brien ((Director, data processing))
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Charter schools
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description


Our School

Our School PDF Author: Sam Chaltain
Publisher: Teachers College Press
ISBN: 0807772887
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Get Book Here

Book Description
Almost every major American city is experimenting with school choice—a deeply controversial idea that is dramatically reshaping public education. Will the wider array of school options help parents and educators identify better strategies for helping all children learn? Or will the high stakes of the marketplace end up privatizing this most public of institutions? Education activist Sam Chaltain believes that before we can answer these questions, we must put a human face on the modern landscape of teaching and learning. Our School documents a year in the life of two schools in the nation’s capital—one a new charter school just opening its doors, the other a neighborhood school that first opened in 1924. Chaltain weaves together the observations and emotions of the people whose lives intersect there, and the triumphs and the challenges they experience. The result is an unsettling, complex portrayal of American public education. Our School is important reading for educational policymakers, administrators, parents, the media, and anyone who aspires to be a teacher. Book Features: Specific recommendations for creating a healthy, high-functioning school. A detailed account of what school choice actually looks and feels like to the people who experience it. A vivid description of the modern classroom and what it’s really like to teach in public school. An important focus on the humanity of teachers (their personal histories, their reasons for entering the profession, their day-to-day challenges). An intimate look at the inner lives of children (their biggest fears and needs, their moments of triumph and understanding). Sam Chaltain is a national educator and organizational change consultant based in Washington, DC. He was the National Director of the Forum for Education and Democracy and the founding director of the Five Freedoms Project. Visit his blog at samchaltain.com. “What Our School shows with passion and precision is that education is about real people leading real lives in real places. If school doesn’t engage them, it doesn’t work, no matter what the accountants and policymakers may say. That’s what this book is really about and why it’s so important for anyone who genuinely cares about schools, communities, and their children.” —From the Foreword by Sir Ken Robinson, world-renowned author and educator “This is an important book. Our School is vibrant and alive. Sam Chaltain’s keen insights and warm, readable prose invite readers to experience the complex, challenging, often frustrating, and occasionally triumphant lives of four caring teachers and their students. I urge you to accept the invitation.” —John Merrow, education correspondent, PBS NewsHour, and president and executive producer, Learning Matters , Inc. “Sam Chaltain is one of the most important voices in public education today, and he writes wonderfully well. In Our School, Sam puts a human face on urban education, showing us what it’s like to be a teacher, student, or parent in the Brave New World of school choice. Parents, educators, and policymakers should read this book. The result will be a more informed and creative conversation about what public education ought to be, and how to make it that way.” —Parker J. Palmer, author of Healing the Heart of Democracy, The Courage to Teach, and Let Your Life Speak

Charter Schools

Charter Schools PDF Author: DIANE Publishing Company
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 0788120646
Category : Charter schools
Languages : en
Pages : 58

Get Book Here

Book Description


Charter Schools

Charter Schools PDF Author: Liane Brouillette
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135653186
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 450

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book takes the reader inside the charter school movement, answering such questions as: *What is a charter school? *How are charter schools different from other public schools? *What does it take to create a charter school? *What motivates the people who initiate such schools? *What lessons can be learned from the experiences of those who have founded charter schools? *What does the growth of the charter school movement mean for society at large? Using detailed case studies of seven schools in three states, this book explores the challenges faced by the founders of these schools and develops guidelines for creating a successful school. Seymour Sarason's work on the creation of settings is used as a basis for examining the complex human interactions that contributed to formation of a unique culture at each school, as well as to establish guidelines for setting up a successful school. Introductory and concluding chapters place the charter school movement within a broader social and historical context. Tensions between the American tradition of local control of schools and the centralized tradition of schooling imported from Europe in the late 19th century are discussed. The gradual bureaucratization of U.S. public schools during the 20th century is described, along with problems that have been associated with the increasingly hierarchical and impersonal nature of educational institutions.

Ghosts in the Schoolyard

Ghosts in the Schoolyard PDF Author: Eve L. Ewing
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022652616X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 237

Get Book Here

Book Description
“Failing schools. Underprivileged schools. Just plain bad schools.” That’s how Eve L. Ewing opens Ghosts in the Schoolyard: describing Chicago Public Schools from the outside. The way politicians and pundits and parents of kids who attend other schools talk about them, with a mix of pity and contempt. But Ewing knows Chicago Public Schools from the inside: as a student, then a teacher, and now a scholar who studies them. And that perspective has shown her that public schools are not buildings full of failures—they’re an integral part of their neighborhoods, at the heart of their communities, storehouses of history and memory that bring people together. Never was that role more apparent than in 2013 when Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced an unprecedented wave of school closings. Pitched simultaneously as a solution to a budget problem, a response to declining enrollments, and a chance to purge bad schools that were dragging down the whole system, the plan was met with a roar of protest from parents, students, and teachers. But if these schools were so bad, why did people care so much about keeping them open, to the point that some would even go on a hunger strike? Ewing’s answer begins with a story of systemic racism, inequality, bad faith, and distrust that stretches deep into Chicago history. Rooting her exploration in the historic African American neighborhood of Bronzeville, Ewing reveals that this issue is about much more than just schools. Black communities see the closing of their schools—schools that are certainly less than perfect but that are theirs—as one more in a long line of racist policies. The fight to keep them open is yet another front in the ongoing struggle of black people in America to build successful lives and achieve true self-determination.

Governing for Greatness

Governing for Greatness PDF Author: Brian Carpenter
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781948625999
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description


School’s Choice

School’s Choice PDF Author: Wagma Mommandi
Publisher: Teachers College Press
ISBN: 0807779806
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Get Book Here

Book Description
Access issues are pivotal to almost all charter school tensions and debates. How well are these schools performing? Are they segregating and stratifying? Are they public and democratic? Are they fairly funded? Can apparent successes be scaled up? Answers to all these core questions hinge on how access to charter schools is shaped. This book describes the incentives and pressures on charter schools to restrict access and examines how charters navigate those pressures, explaining access-restricting practices in relation to the ecosystem within which charter schools are created. It also explains how charters have sometimes responded by resisting the pressures and sometimes by surrendering to them. The text presents analyses of 13 different types of practices around access, each of which shapes the school’s enrollment. The authors conclude by offering recommendations for how states and authorizers can address access-related inequities that arise in the charter sector. School’s Choice provides timely information on critical academic and policy issues that will come into play as charter school policy continues to evolve. Book Features: Examines how charter schools control who gains and retains access.Explores policies and practices that undermine equitable admission and encourage opportunity hoarding.Offers a set of policy recommendations at the state and federal level to address access-related issues.