In honor of the waning of summer, this week’s edition consists of vacation/beach reads for charter school leaders. News you can definitely use to fill those last long, lingering evenings.
History – of the short and opinionated variety
In the vein of Ron Chernow’s “Alexander Hamilton”, we have Checker Finn providing us with a three-part history of the federal Charter Schools Program (CSP). Part 1 describes the state of play in the early 1990s when charter schools were nascent and federal education priorities were poised to expand to include them. Part 2 is a detailed description of the early years of CSP, including the barriers faced in its establishment and acceptance. Part 3 is an up-to-the-minute look at CSP funds—and the strings attached to them—today.
Mystery/Fiction
A new and twisty piece from Huffington Post provides that most important of beach entertainment – the conspiracy-based thriller. In it, various internal factions of the NAACP are described as being at war with one another over the organization’s 2016 call for a moratorium on new charter schools. There are heroes, villains, clandestine discussions, secret communications, and money changing hands. It’s all a bit far-fetched, really, but a true edge-of-your-seat, what-will-they-think-of-next page-turner.
Non-fiction
A new Matt Barnum piece from Chalkbeat returns to the topic of “backfilling” in charter schools. That is, admitting new students mid-year to replace those who have left since the start of the school year. Barnum provides data from Washington, D.C., Oakland, New York City, and elsewhere. The pluses and minuses of the practice are discussed, as are the particular stances of charter operators across the country.
The blockbuster
Two new working papers by University of Rochester researchers examine the interplay among charter, traditional district, and private schools. You can read a summary of the two papers here. But why read the CliffsNotes when you can dig into the full reports? In the first paper, researchers use North Carolina data to examine the competitive effects of different charter models on nearby traditional district schools. The upshot: the more similar the charter is to a traditional education model, the more acutely the competitive effects are felt and the more traditional schools improve their academic outcomes. In the second paper, Florida data indicates that the charter funding model is leading charters to locate in suburban areas, thus supplanting private schools for middle and upper income families, rather than providing alternatives for lower income families. They suggest funding changes that would redress this imbalance.
The celebrity tell-all
Isabela Moner, young star of the new live-action movie “Dora and the Lost City of Gold” is a Cleveland native and a singer and performer from a very early age. She attended Ohio Virtual Academy in high school to facilitate her burgeoning career.
