The CEA Blog

The blogosphere is awash with wonks, pundits and regular folks putting in their two cents about statements made in the State Of The Union (SOTU) about NCLB by President Bush.

Read just a few of them after the jump.

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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. 

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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.

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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.)

A solidarity hat tip goes out to:

PREA Prez for his recent post on the PREA Prez blog about Wal-Mart’s recent bounty offer to anyone interested in starting up a charter school in Cleveland or Columbus;

NYC Educator who takes it a step further with his post on the “Walmartization of Education” on the NYC Educator blog; and

Billionaires For Education Reform notes our “unmitigated audacity”.

In this edition: Wal-mart wants to create a Columbus charter school, old buildings become new again, increased administrative payroll costs are voted into the CCS budget, a CCS teacher makes math accessible to students and their families, fewer students taking art, technology and physical education at the high school level, and much more!

Click on the jump below to read what has been written about CCS recently.  

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At the most recent Columbus Board of Education meeting, Treasurer Michael Kinneer forecasted that the district would remain solvent through the 2008-2009 school year. This is the direct result of two factors working in the favor of CCS. First, an increased amount of tax money has begun to return to the district as TIF dollars from corporations start to enter the CCS treasury– those monies had previously gone toward local infrastructure. Second, the district had projected 3,000 students would leave for charter schools this year– only 800 have so far. Read the full story here.

This Washington Post article outlines how a federally-funded voucher program in the District of Columbia has become a compliance albatross hanging from the neck of the national government. The report was put together by the Government Accounting Office and outlines some serious problems with the private schools that are accepting the $7,500 federal vouchers. (Hat tip to NYC Educator.)

In a random sample of 18 schools reviewed by the GAO, two lacked occupancy permits, and four lacked permits needed for buildings used for educational purposes. At least seven of the 18 schools were certified as child development centers but not as private schools. In one case, a school was operating in a space designed for a retail store, the report says.