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Covering competitive effects
Some important media coverage via Spectrum News 1 this week for Fordham Ohio’s recent paper on charter school competition in the state. Report author Stéphane Lavertu and Fordham research guru Aaron Churchill are both quoted in the piece talking about the positive effects of charter expansion on traditional districts. The full report is here in case you missed it.
Careful what you wish for
School choice is one of the culprits cited for transportation troubles in various northeast Ohio school districts. Specifically, districts needing to provide bus service to growing numbers of resident students opting for charter, private, and STEM schools. Traci Hostetler, Superintendent of the ESC of Eastern Ohio, has a solution. She told Vindy.com this week that, “Every school receiving public funds should be transporting their own students and that would help tremendously with public school busing.” What she’s advocating for is “private and charter schools to provide their own transportation and for public schools to transport their own students.” Don’t know who she’s talking to, but I sure hope they listen! I also hope there’s enough truck drivers available to start shipping all that per-student bus money to the schools where kids actually attend.
Award-winning book
Win-Win: W. Edwards Deming, the System of Profound Knowledge, and the Science of Improving Schools, a book written by John A. Dues, Chief Learning Officer of the United Schools Network in Columbus, was recently awarded the 2024 Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award. Awardees are books that “assist readers in understanding the relationship between education and the social complexities in which schools are contextualized and in fostering inquiry into the history, current status, and future alternatives of teaching, learning, and education.” Kudos on a well-deserved honor.
West Virginia charters go national
The growth of the charter school sector in West Virginia—from no schools less than two years ago to a burgeoning roster of brick-and-mortar and virtual schools serving thousands of students across the state—is nothing short of astounding. Another big step forward this week as the U.S. Department of Education gave the green light for the West Virginia Professional Charter School Board to begin accepting Charter School Program (CSP) grant applications from Mountain State schools. Hopefully this means additional funding will soon be on hand to help start new schools in underserved areas and to expand existing schools already in danger of bursting at the seams.
Court battle in Missouri
Genesis School is a charter school for at-risk students in Kansas City, Missouri, since 2010. It has been threatened with closure by the State Board of Education and the Missouri Charter Public School Commission due to poor academic performance. School leaders chose to fight and this week won a second victory in court when an appeals court judge ruled that charters have the right to judicial review if the state attempts to shut them down. The school has remained open throughout the battle but will end the school year without knowing whether the results of the review will allow it reopen in the fall.
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