From today’s Dispatch…
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s Chester E. Finn Jr. acknowledged grave shortcomings of charter schools in Ohio (”How to boost Ohio’s charter schools,” Forum, Dec. 11). But these schools are not just “mediocre,” as Finn concedes; 60 percent of the charter schools in the state’s largest urban districts are in academic emergency or academic watch.
Students in CCS are now safer on their buses, thanks to a new checks performed on school-bus drivers.
“Whoa!” says the Dispatch editorial board in response to Dr. Harris’ district restructuring plan.
More column space is being spent examining the feasibility of Dr. Harris’ proposed plan; there is even a graph, too.
More on the potential elimination of middle schools in this article.
Middle schools and their potential elimination are the focus of yet another article.
The Board of Education bids farewell to a now-former member.
A CCS year-round recap here.
More about the photos appearing on this blog here.
A recent study (PDF) of Detroit’s charter school locations and competition techniques by for-profit charter school operators provides chilling insight into the potential marginalization of African-American students who live in high-poverty areas. Released in October and written by Christopher Lubienski of the University of Illinois and Charisse Gulosino of Brown University, the paper outlines the tactics of educational management organizations (EMOs) that operate for-profit charter schools using a geo-spatial and temporal analysis of EMO charter openings.
Read more here.
The Columbus Education Association Board of Governors unanimously passed a resolution at their most recent meeting, expressing strong support of the struggle of members of the South Western Education Association (SWEA) members to obtain a fair contract from their Board of Education for their members.
Click on the jump below to see the full text of the resolution.
K12, a for-profit Virginia-based operator of virtual charter schools in 10 different states held an initial public offering of its stock last week; the company did not do quite as well as they had hoped.
Only 63% of its hoped for $172.5 million was raised, but the Washington Post reported K12’s share price raised 36%. The company has operated the Ohio Virtual Academy since the 2002-2003 school year and currently enrolls 3,408 students in Ohio and over 27,000 in its combined operation.
Both the Ohio Virtual Academy and Columbus City Schools earned a Continuous Improvement rating for the 2006-2007 school year, but that is where the similarities end.
When backers legislated into existence the option to create charter schools, they argued that these choices for parents would allow them to escape their failing schools and school districts. Today, no urban district has been given an “F” rating; only three earned a “D” rating. This begs the question:
Now that big urban districts and individual schools are improving across the board, what alternatives are charters actually providing?
Read more about it from the Akron-Beacon Journal.
(Hat-tip to Jill Miller Zimon at Writes Like She Talks.)
In early September of this year, The CEA Voice reported that the Columbus Education Association Foundation had become certified by the Ohio Department of Education to provide Supplemental Education Services (SES) to Columbus City Schools students under the No Child Left Behind Legislation (NCLB). The CEA Foundation will be completely responsible for managing the hiring, curriculum and federal money that comes with the program. This is the only SES program in the state of Ohio to be run through a local teacher’s union.
The Ohio Department of Education recently released the first annual report on students’ progress using value-added data for Ohio’s 610 school districts. The students of Columbus City Schools earned the district the highest rating possible from the state, achieving over a year’s worth of academic progress in a single school year. CCS joins other local suburban school districts, such as Bexley, Dublin, Hilliard, New Albany-Plain and Upper Arlington that are ranked in the top category. This rating puts CCS in the top half of all school districts across the state, surpassing Grandview Heights and Worthington City Schools, the only district in Franklin County given the “A” rating by the state of Ohio.
This data shows the enormous gains that Columbus Public School teachers make with their students. “Our students are growing more academically than anywhere in Central Ohio,” responded Columbus Education Association President Rhonda Johnson. “With the implementation of value-added, the high performance of our students and teachers have truly been documented in a way that has not yet accurately been shown on state report cards.”
Click on the jump below to continue reading.
