Providing needed services
While they are still very new, charter schools are already finding supporters in West Virginia. Specifically, editors at the Dominion Post recently catalogued a series of woes—reported in its pages—for parents of students with dyslexia who attend district schools in Monongalia County. The editors also pointed out that a brand new charter school in the county is already providing more and more appropriate services to their dyslexic students and urged the districts to do better.
Providing needed supports
Speaking of parents and families, here’s a new piece from UnidosUS and the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, which gathers a plethora of data and analysis to make the case that charter schools have uplifted Latino communities across the country through the pandemic and beyond.
Mobility and choice
A recent research report looking at data from Michigan illustrates the fact that school choice is not just about educational quality or fit. Family mobility plays a vital part as well—both aiding choice and serving to hinder it depending on the situation—and we would do well to acknowledge and work to incorporate intersecting family needs within the infrastructure of choice.
More important research
A new report by Seth Gershenson and released by the Fordham Institute this week, finds that high teacher expectations have a positive effect on long-run outcomes for students such as college completion, teen childbearing, and receipt of public assistance. Additionally, teachers in charter and private high schools are generally more likely to have higher expectations for their students—such as completing a four-year college degree—than their traditional district peers. You can check out the full report here.
Digging into the data
Tressa Pankovits, co-director of the Reinventing America’s Schools Project at the Progressive Policy Institute, published her analysis of the recent GAO report on nearly 15 years of grants provided by the federal Charter School Program (CSP). The bottom line, she writes, is that data show “public charter schools are one-and-a-half times more likely to gain their footing and remain in the business of educating poorer, mostly Black and Brown children,” and that CSP grants are vital to this important outcome. The report, she concludes, “should be all of the evidence Congress and anti-reformers need to retire the CSP as a political football once and for all.”
A new and better system
Seven charter school networks in Newark, New Jersey, announced that they will not be participating in the city’s central application process for the upcoming school year. Their leaders cite longstanding onerous requirements on families and badly-needed modernization for the decision. They will join a new central application system created by the New Jersey Children’s Foundation which promises to be a simple, streamlined, and parent-friendly process. The hope is that other schools, including the district, will join them in the effort.
*****
Did you know you can have every edition of the Ohio Charter News Weekly sent directly to your Inbox? Subscribe by clicking here.
