Stories featured in Ohio Charter News Weekly may require a paid subscription to read in full.
The biggest news in any week
U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon this week announced a $500 million influx of federal funding to boost charter schools across the country. She made the big announcement at an event in Columbus, and specifically touted $105 million coming to Ohio charter schools. Amazing! For more information, check out the USDOE press release here and the Ohio DEW press release here.
More? OK!
For some more good news, check out Fordham’s first look analysis of new Ohio charter school report card data. Aaron Churchill looks at performance index and progress ratings to find that, once again, brick-and-mortar charters in Ohio’s urban areas outperformed their local districts. Time to celebrate, he says, and to find additional ways that state and local leaders could propel charters to even higher levels of success.
A bridge too far, apparently
Last week, we discussed a march across the Brooklyn Bridge, with thousands of NYC parents, students, and educators taking to the streets to extoll charter excellence and to demand more equitable funding for their schools. The very next day, two New York state senators sent an open letter to the Education Commissioner calling the march “an egregious misuse of instructional time and state funds” and calling for an investigation of how the event was organized and funded. “Our state provides public dollars to charter schools to educate students,” they continued, “not for political activism or for influencing elections.” Success Academy founder Eva Moskowitz responded during a press conference, calling the letter and its claims “crazy talk.” In a statement, she went on to say that the letter was “another example of the discrimination and effort to silence Black and brown parents who only want equity and an excellent education.”
From NYC to FLA
Speaking of Success Academy, Florida governor Ron DeSantis announced (briefly) this week that the high-performing charter network would establish a school in Miami—its first outside of New York—in the fall of 2027. Huge! More details to come.
To ally or not to ally
The new Indianapolis Local Education Alliance (ILEA) is still trying to find the balance between its members: former competitors (district, charter, and private schools) trying to work together for the first time. For every positive story—like this one where the various school leaders are trying to come up with recommendations to improve yellow bus transportation for all—there seems to be a less-positive one. Like this one, where non-district school representatives are championing an appointed board to oversee all schools in the city while district leaders are adamant about retaining an elected board with even more power over charter and private schools than they currently have.
*****
Did you know you can have every edition of the Ohio Charter News Weekly sent directly to your Inbox? Subscribe by clicking here.
