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State report cards released
Ohio released school and district report cards for the 2023-2024 school year late last week. As ever, there is a mix of good news and bad news for almost everyone. Cleveland.com was first out of the gate with specific coverage of charter school performance, although this piece is mainly a chart of schools searchable by various report card component grades. Fordham’s Aaron Churchill published a comparison between charter and district performance in Ohio’s eight largest cities. He sees “promising signs of quality” for students in our urban areas, “particularly in the charter sector”. Nice!
Singled out
One of those high-performing urban charter schools is Toledo Preparatory and Fitness Academy, and it was lauded for its excellence—along with similarly-high-quality district schools—in a piece from The Blade’s Editorial Board earlier this week. However, the bulk of the piece is a call for more state support for those schools—way too many of them in northwest Ohio—that fall short of providing a great education for their students.
Research findings under the microscope
The latest edition of the podcast Education Exchange with Paul E. Peterson features researcher Sarah Cohodes discussing the fascinating findings from her recent Massachusetts study showing that urban charter schools raise student test scores (compared to districts) while non-urban charters do not provide such a boost. However, charter schools in both settings increase students’ college graduation rates.
Relief in Chicago
Chicago Public Schools officials this week unveiled their new five-year strategic plan. While they stayed true to their promise to improve education for city students, the plan appears to back off a previous board resolution to make changes that were said to favor district schools over charters. Charter school families were understandably concerned by the potential for harm to their schools, and CPS officials confirmed that strong parent response played a role in shaping their final decisions.
You’re invited to a Charter Chat
The National Charter Schools Institute is hosting a virtual event on Tuesday, September 24, at 3:00 pm ET. “From Belief to Achievement” will feature a panel of charter experts discussing how they cultivate an atmosphere and community-wide belief system that all students can succeed. You can learn more about the event and the participants, as well as register to attend, at this link.
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