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News > National News
Harvard University Press Release
December 14, 2004
According to a new nationwide study by Caroline Hoxby of Harvard University, ten percent more of the students in charter schools are proficient on state exams than those in neighboring public schools when a charter school has been in operation nine years or longer.
Hoxby also finds that students in charter schools that receive at least forty percent of local public school funding do particularly well on the state exams. Additionally, charter schools in areas with a high percentage of poor or Hispanic students appear to provide a special advantage for their students, as compared to the neighboring public school.
"Charter schools tend to arise in areas where students are disadvantaged and families have had little ability to exit underperforming schools," Hoxby said. "Sure enough, charter schools make the most difference with such students."
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Oregon Live.com
December 12, 2004
Charter schools are cropping up throughout Indian Country, in states like Oregon, California, Arizona, and New Mexico. Tribal officials have pinned their hopes on the start-up schools as their best chance to reach a generation of Indian students who've dropped out or drifted through traditional public schools.
In Oregon, Nixyaawii Charter School on the Umatilla Indian Reservation is a good example. In its first year, it serves students like Eddie Simpson, an 18-year-old born on the Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, reservation who bounced from school to school before landing at Nixyaawii. Simpson is determined to get his remaining high school credits and graduate, and then plans to train to be an EMT. "If I don't do this, what's there for me?" Simpson asked.
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American School Board Journal
November 2004
A changing economy and an influx of aid are spurring the radical transformation of a faltering American icon.
Fifty years ago, the American high school was doing fine. Most students weren't headed for college. If they earned a high school diploma, they could land a well-paying job. If they didn't graduate, they could still find good work. "But today it's a disaster," says Tom Vander Ark, director of education for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. "A third of American students drop out, half of Hispanic and African Americans drop out. That's a civic, social, and economic disaster."
While different in philosophy and approach, reform models all seek to change the basic building blocks of high schools: their size and how and what they offer. The Gates Foundation and other private groups, as well as the U.S. Department of Education, are pouring millions of dollars in research and technical assistance into districts willing to change how they run high schools. This influx of cash and aid is propelling school districts around the country to radically transform one of the most firmly entrenched icons in American education.
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Newsday
November 4, 2004
Connecticut's largest teachers' union is criticizing a plan by state Education Commissioner Betty Sternberg to offer bonuses and an exchange program to keep quality teachers from fleeing city schools.
Under the plan, 1,000 teachers who are successful in reducing dropout rates and raising student achievement would be eligible for a $3,000 bonus and a two-year contract that protects them from layoffs. Urban and suburban teachers would also be offered similar bonuses to trade districts for two years.
The union is balking because it says teachers should be paid based on experience, not merit. Union officials say the plan is illegal because it would conflict with collective bargaining and fair dismissal laws.
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The Arizona Republic
November 1, 2004
Are males on the verge of becoming an endangered species on college campuses? It's hard to say, but educator William Draves of the Wisconsin-based Learning Resources Network thinks so. He estimates that only 35 percent of today's U.S. undergraduate college students are men.
The problem, Draves says, begins in elementary school with the refusal to acknowledge that boys and girls learn differently. Boys are, in many ways, better suited than girls for work in the information age but are saddled with an educational model based on an agrarian society.
Draves says the system encourages girls to stay in school, much more than it does boys. "Boys do want to go to college," he says. "Schools (need to) gear education to meet the needs of both sexes."
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Seattle Post-Intelligencer
October 27, 2004
SEI Academy is a public charter school and an outgrowth of Self Enhancement Inc., a non-profit that has pushed since 1981 to broaden opportunities for children, with a focus on Portland's African American population.
The SEI Academy enjoys advantages many fledgling charter schools do not. It's housed in the organization's Center for Self Enhancement, which boasts a gymnasium, a dance studio, a computer lab with a full-time instructor, a library with a full-time librarian, and a cafeteria.
SEI Academy’s goal is to prepare the students to succeed in high school, with an emphasis on character building. "With charter schools, there's this big push to be creative and innovative," said Natasha Butler, the academy's educational director, or principal. "Our focus point is to be effective."
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Seattle Post-Intelligencer
October 27, 2004
The M.I.T.C.H. Charter School in the Tigard-Tualatin school district is the creation of Debi Lorence, a former public and private school teacher who serves as the school's director. The acronym stands for Multi-sensory Instruction Teaching Children Hands-on.
M.I.T.C.H. students generally outdo their district peers on standardized state assessments. In both reading and math, every single M.I.T.C.H. third-grader met or exceeded standards in 03-04, a record unmatched by any of the district's nine other, bigger elementary schools. The charter school's fourth-graders registered a similar result in reading, while their 95 percent success rate in math trailed only one regular district school.
Asked why M.I.T.C.H. students fare so well, Lorence answered: "It's the curriculum. The curriculum is good because the teachers are passionate about it.”
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Buffalo News
October 26, 2004
Charter schools in New York are providing the "seeds of change" for traditional schools, and state
officials should not cap their future growth but provide them with more funding, a recent report by a Washington think tank concludes.
Though opposed by some school districts and teachers unions across New York, charter schools have shown early
achievement results and offer alternatives that should be embraced by the state's education community, according to the
Progressive Policy Institute. The institute is tied to the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, a group whose members have
included former President Bill Clinton.
The report notes that the rate of improvement of fourth-grade reading scores in New York City charter
schools has exceeded those in traditional schools. And by being able to operate without the usual constraints, charter schools
have been able to make achievements in other ways. It says, for example, that they often have become "models" for
labor agreements. It cites one New York charter school with a six-page agreement, instead of the typical 200 pages or so, and with
features such as teacher salaries based on "improvement in practice" as well as seniority.
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The Detroit News
October 22, 2004
Michigan’s charter high schools are making faster progress toward meeting state standards than other
public high schools. Charters’ performance in reading, writing, math, and science increased faster than the state average,
and are higher than in the state’s inner-city district-run schools.
“What this shows is that charters both outperformed urban schools and improved faster than urban
schools,&rduo; said David Plank, director of Michigan State Universityís Education Policy Center. “It looks like charters
are proving they can be more effective in reaching a population thatís been underserved.&rduo;
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The New Yorker
October 18, 2004
More than three thousand charter schools have sprung up in the United States since 1991, when Minnesota became the first
of forty-one states to establish alternative institutions as competition for the nation's troubled public schools. Of those institutions,
Pacific Rim is one of the oddest. It was the inspiration of a Chinese-American dentist and father of three named Robert Guen, who
believed that Boston's black-and-white politics were leaving Asian kids underserved by public schools. After Guen was appointed to
the Boston school board, in the early nineteen-nineties, he and another public-schools activist, Robert Consalvo, began to think not
just about different school policies but also about a different sort of school: small, marked by strict discipline, character education,
and compulsory Tai Chi and Mandarin Chinese classes. Its school day would be eight hours and its school year eleven months-time
in which students who had been overwhelmed by large, sometimes lawless public schools might peacefully prepare for college.
Guen and Consalvo applied for a charter, and in 1997, when the school they had envisioned opened, it proved more popular
than they had anticipated. In September of 2003, two of Guen's daughters were enrolled at Pacific Rim. They were among the few
Asian kids in the school. Given the grim educational options in neighborhoods like Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan, African-American
and Haitian-immigrant students had come en masse. And so Pacific Rim became an Asian-Creole-American stew-a place where kids
studying Mandarin and Tai Chi were mostly black and poor.
And it works. Every student in the school's inaugural graduating class of 2003 passed the state math and literacy competency
tests on the first try. At the city's public schools, only the famed "exam" schools, like Boston Latin, matched this feat. The entire
class of 2003 now attends a four-year college.
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Seattle Post Intelligencer
October 14, 2004
American high school students are no better prepared for college than they were 10 years ago, according to a new
study by ACT, one of the two big organizations that offer college entrance tests.
The report said that students who took a minimum core curriculum of four years of English and three years each
of mathematics, science, and social studies were more likely to be prepared for college-level work than those who did not. Students who
took advanced courses beyond that minimum core fared even better.
Not surprisingly, the report found that on average, preparation for college differed among racial and ethnic groups.
Fewer black, Hispanic, and American Indian students took a minimum set of core courses than non-Hispanic white students or Asian
Americans. And fewer boys took the minimum core than girls.
The report proposes that all students, not just those headed for college, be required to take chemistry, physics,
geometry, and trigonometry. ACT officials said that while they recognized that not all students wanted to go on to college, those
entering the work force needed the same skills and knowledge as those pursuing higher education.
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Forbes Magazine
October 11, 2004
High Tech High is doing wonders with disaffected high-schoolers in San Diego, the first step in a grand plan to
reverse America's failure at mass education. The nation's richest philanthropists are lining up behind it.
This new school's philosophy is that if you treat kids like adults, even the most bruised and battered will play up
to the role. High Tech High has enrolled 650 kids since 2000 and produced two graduating classes so far. All students go to college.
Fifty-six percent were the first in their families to attend college; in some cases, the first to finish high school. Students at High Tech
High also test better than peers statewide.
Most high schools are failing to do the two things they're supposed to do: help families move up the economic
ladder and provide skilled labor for businesses. But principal Larry Rosenstock is betting that schools like High Tech can work anywhere,
as long as they're kept small. Size, he says, is one of the things that doom city high schools: "These are factories, not places you
want to go to learn."
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The Times-Picayune
October 11, 2004
After years of issuing warnings and sending in outside help, the state of Louisiana in April moved to take over the
P. A. Capdau school, converting it to a charter school under the control of the University of New Orleans (UNO). It is the first time the
state has taken over a locally controlled school for academic failure. And the transformations began.
If the school proves successful, it will be a model for other failing schools. It will also provide proof to skeptics who
believe that public schools cannot work and to those who claim that they don't have enough money to succeed, said Leslie Jacobs, a
member of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. But most important, it is another option for hundreds of New
Orleans school children who are trapped in failing schools, she said.
State officials are looking for a success that can be replicated at the other 16 failing schools in the state, 15 of
which are in New Orleans.
More than 500 students applied for the 264 available spaces at the school. The response from parents and
community members surprised school officials. More than 200 people crowded into church pews to participate in each of three
public forums held to unveil plans for Capdau. Certainly there were skeptics, but they were far outweighed by voices of hope
and faith. "May the Lord bless you for what you're doing at that school," Loyce Sparrow, a grandmother of two
Capdau students, told state and university officials. At a crowded forum at New Genesis Baptist Church, Sparrow said the takeover
was the answer to her prayers for the school.
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The Quad-City Times
October 7, 2004
U.S. Senate candidates Alan Keyes and Barack Obama agreed Thursday that establishing more charter schools
was one way to improve the nation’s educational system, but they differed on the overall role that government should play
toward that goal.
Obama said the federal government should fully fund the federal No Child Left Behind law, investing more
money in early childhood education, teacher training, and charter schools, which get public money but operate free from many
state rules. “It is my strong belief that the more we can foster experimentation, the more we can foster a different set of
models that can be franchised across the system, the more successful we can be,” Obama said about charter schools.
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Carolina Journal
Volume 13, Number 10, October 2004
Two reports released in mid-September by the North Carolina Education Alliance provide compelling new
findings about the state’s diverse and growing charter school movement, suggesting that charter schools are meeting
a previously unmet need in the state for educational options.
Charter Schools in North Carolina: Innovation in Education describes the progress of the charter
school movement in North Carolina since 1996, and provides a thorough and relevant analysis of the issues and obstacles facing
these schools.
“While charter schools have experienced some of the struggles common to any new reform, this
report shows that they are excelling at providing choices for students and families, many of whom have been failed by traditional
public schools,” said Lindalyn Kakadelis, director of the N.C. Education Alliance (NCEA).
In addition to the policy report, NCEA simultaneously released a parents’ guide to charter
schools. A Choice for Children provides parents with facts and information explaining charter school basics, and shows
parents how to get involved in the movement to support charter schools.
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Carolina Journal
Volume 13, Number 10, October 2004
Gaston County’s unemployment rate is among the highest in North Carolina, the local schools are
ranked among the state’s lowest performing, and less than 9 percent of local residents hold four-year degrees. But
as student Victoria Bennett says, “KIPP: Gaston College Preparatory Academy (GCP) is a different story. It’s
the silver lining in Gaston’s dark and gloomy cloud.”
GCP is the sixth-highest performing school in North Carolina, and the only school among the top six that
works with an educationally underserved community. Blacks comprise 95 percent of GCP’s student body, and more
than 80 percent of students receive free or reduced lunch.
Principal Caleb Dolan attributes the school’s success to the flexibility allowed charter schools. In
his school, teachers are available nightly for advice via cell phones, parents commit to read to their children each evening, and
students spend almost 70 percent more time in class receiving instruction than the average public school student. “It
is important as a school leader to have the ability to control how money is spent, and to hire and fire,” he said.
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The Philanthropy Roundtable
October 2004
Many private funders put improving public education at the top of their agenda, but for many years donors have struggled
to have a real impact on sub-par schools. Too often, grants to support reform in existing schools have made little difference
in students' lives.
Enter charter schools. A new kind of public school-independently operated, typically started from scratch by impassioned
education entrepreneurs-charter schools strike many funders as an ideal way to invest in public education. Since they are
created anew, with freedom from many laws and regulations that constrict school districts, charter schools have the potential
to be dramatically more effective than the typical public school. Since they are schools of choice, they have to satisfy families
or go out of business. Since they are held accountable for results, they can be closed if they don't work. If they are successful,
they can serve as models for others starting charter schools or seeking to change existing ones. And if they reach a critical mass,
they can induce school districts to improve their conventional schools.
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Portland Oregonian
September 30, 2004
With a few years of strong test scores to their names, the Three Rivers Charter School in West Linn and Mitch charter school in Tualatin
have established themselves as serious places to learn.
The test scores come as affirmation to advocates of West Linn's and Tualatin's charter schools, who said their schools, once questioned
by skeptics, are gaining wider respect.
More than 50 charter schools have opened in Oregon since they were authorized by the state in 1999. Most originally were created by
parents or teachers who hoped to offer a type of schooling they thought was unavailable in their district. Today, many are started by
school districts.
Debi Lorence, Mitch school director, credits her school's scores to its focus on core knowledge and a carefully choreographed
curriculum that doesn't repeat itself as the curriculum does in many traditional public schools. Students start learning Spanish in
kindergarten. This year, they began wearing uniforms. Each is taught personal responsibility for his or her learning.
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San Diego Union-Tribune
September 26, 2004
The San Diego Unified School District is about to undertake dramatic overhauls at nine chronically underperforming campuses that could
result in outside organizations managing the campuses, starting next fall. Over the past six years, millions have been invested in teacher
training, instructional materials, and new leadership at these schools, which have large English-learner and low-income populations. The
investment has yielded some improvement, but the schools continue to be labeled as unsatisfactory.
District officials say they are seeking outside proposals because they need an infusion of new ideas. "We have invested a lot of work
in these schools. We have really tried to improve instruction, but we are still not where we need to be as required by the state and federal
government," said Ricardo Soto, the district's deputy general counsel.
King/Chavez Academy of Excellence, a well-regarded charter school in Barrio Logan, has confirmed that it's interested in submitting
a proposal to restructure King Elementary, if the Stockton community supports its vision. King/Chavez Academy and King Elementary
are different schools but both are located in South San Diego and face similar challenges of educating low-income students and those
learning English.
Dennis McKeown, head of King/Chavez Academy, believes the reason behind his school's dramatic improvement and others' failure is
its focus on school "spirit," cultivated through the enrichment of the mind, body, and soul of teachers and students. Its education philosophy
revolves around three "A's:" academics for the mind, athletics for the body, and arts for the soul. All too often, McKeown said, schools cut
out enrichment programs to make time for remedial instruction, resulting in education becoming more and more mechanistic and sterile.
"Before I came to Barrio Logan, they told me I would fail because the children are poor and don't speak English. That's not true. They are
rich in spirit," he said.
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Harvard University Gazette
September 23, 2004
When the American Federation of Teachers published a study that found students at charter schools performing worse than their peers at
traditional public schools, more than a few hopes were dashed. But to Harvard Professor of Economics Caroline Hoxby, something in the
study seemed amiss. Why would parents would keep their children in charter schools if their kids were performing poorly?
Hoxby quickly gathered data, and her study, A Straightforward Comparison of Charter Schools and Regular Public Schools in the United
States, is making news with findings showing that, on average, students in charter schools are 5 percent more likely to be proficient in
reading and 3 percent more likely to be proficient in math than students at the closest public schools with similar racial composition. In
states where charter schools are well established, the advantage is even more pronounced: up to 35 percent greater proficiency among
charter school students in the District of Columbia, for instance.
Hoxby maintains her large sample size makes her findings robust and, ultimately, more credible. She used standardized test results
from 99 percent of the nation's charter schools, while the AFT study that prompted hers surveyed similar results from only 3 percent of
charter schools.
While viewing parents as customers who are free to "shop" at the traditional school down the street may seem harsh, Hoxby says it
has forced charter schools to set up a different, and positive, model of parent interaction. "Parents can walk away at any time, and I think
this changes the whole nature of the relationship between parents and schools," says Hoxby. "A lot of parents who send their kids to charter
schools have never dealt with a school that cared about their opinions before. It's really wonderful how engaged they get when they see
that the school needs them. It's inspiring."
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The Washington Post
September 21, 2004
Most schools try to persuade students to get out of bed in the morning by lowering their grades or giving them detention when
they don't, but Maya Angelou Public Charter School is one of a small but growing number of schools that have a different approach to
the problem. They invite teenagers who need extra help to live in school quarters.
A generation ago, American boarding schools were generally of two kinds: private institutions for the college-bound children of the
wealthy, or state-supported facilities for children under court supervision. But now a few private schools and charter schools have set
themselves up as boarding schools for low-income students who want many of the advantages and the support given to bankers' and
lawyers' children at Groton and St. Mark's.
"Local philanthropists, educators, judges, clergy and others around the country are starting local residential schools rather than just
despair of the conditions so many youth live in, and fail in," said Heidi Goldsmith, founder and executive director of the Washington-based
Coalition for Residential Education. There are only about 30 such schools, public and private, in the country, but more are planned,
she said. Educators say many students thrive under 24-hour supervision.
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The Washington Times
September 18, 2004
The vast majority of children attending the nation's 1,146 charter schools with at least 10 fourth-grade students are more proficient in
reading and math than their nearest regular public school with a similar racial composition, a Harvard University study found.
"In states where charter schools are well-established, charter school as students' advantage in proficiency tends to be greater,
" economics researcher Caroline M. Hoxby concluded.
Dr. Hoxby, an expert on the economics of school choice with the National Bureau of Economic Research, said the AFT study was
"junk research" and "misleading." Because charter schools enroll only 1.5 percent of students in America, she said
a 3 percent sample amounted to only four fourth-graders in Connecticut charter schools, 14 in the District, 32 in New York, and 38 in New
Jersey.
"A state's charter school policy cannot be evaluated using the equivalent of one or two classrooms of students," she said.
"This study uses assessment data on 99 percent of fourth-graders enrolled in charter schools, except that fifth- or third-graders
are used in states that do not test fourth-graders . . .
"Although it is too early to draw sweeping conclusions, the initial indications are that the average student attending a charter
school has higher achievement than he or she otherwise would," Dr. Hoxby said.
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CNN.COM
September 16, 2004
A growing number of nations are doing a better job than the United States in getting young people through high school and college,
a study found. Among adults ages 25 to 34, for example, the United States is 10th among other industrialized nations in the share of its
population that has a high school diploma.
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Education Week
September 15, 2004
It is a question that affixes itself to countless debates in education: To what extent do poverty, instability at home, and other
socioeconomic factors undermine the ability of students and schools to prosper academically?
Now, a new study attempts to quantify the advantages and disadvantages students face outside of school—defined as
"teachability"—and to evaluate how successful states are in helping them learn, despite those hurdles.
The report shows that "student disadvantages are not destiny," its authors say. "Some schools do much
better than others at educating students with low levels of teachability."
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The Los Angeles Times
September 14, 2004
More than 2,600 students, who were displaced last month when California Charter Academy’s (CCA’s) 60 schools were
closed due to legal and financial turmoil, are now enrolled in other charter schools.
"After no longer tolerating this one bad apple, the charter school community rallied together to ensure that CCA’s
former students have a soft landing into high-quality programs," said Caprice Young, chief executive of California Charter Schools
Association.
Also, it turns out that CCA enrolled about 4,000 students fewer than the almost 10,000 it had claimed. Of its 5,495 students, 2,195,
were adults. Of the remaining 3,300 kindergarten through 12th-grade students, about 80% have enrolled in other charter schools.
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U.S. Department of Education
September 9, 2004
California has been awarded a $49.2 million grant over five years to support its efforts to provide more educational options to parents
through charter schools.
The Charter School Facilities Incentive Grants program encourages states to develop and expand per-pupil facilities aid programs,
which make payments to charter schools to provide them with financing that must be used for the funding of facilities. Unlike traditional
public schools, charter schools do not typically have access to facilities through bonding or taxing authority. Most charter schools must pay
for facilities out of their general revenue, which could be better targeted for educational purposes.
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New York Sun
September 8, 2004
Students at charter schools outperform their peers at geographically close and demographically similar public schools, a new report
that will be released this week finds.
The author of the report, Caroline Hoxby, a Harvard University economics professor who specializes in the economics of education,
said she analyzed the scores of fourth-graders at 99% of charter schools across America.
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The Denver Post
September 7, 2004
For more than a decade, charter schools have been an alternative for Colorado parents less than satisfied with traditional offerings.
The lure is often a focused curriculum, small classes, and parental involvement in the school's operation. Now two new charter schools are
looking beyond curriculum to target specific niche groups.
Districts, large ones in particular, are charged with serving the needs of a wide range of students. If they serve 85 percent of their
families well, they're doing a good job. Charter schools, by comparison, have more flexibility to design programs to serve specific
populations.
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The Honolulu Advertiser
September 3, 2004
In the first broad attempts to analyze the performance of Hawai'i's charter schools, the state Department of Education and the
Hawai'i Educational Policy Center have found that charter-school students are doing as well as or better than students at traditional
public schools on the state's proficiency tests.
"It's certainly a good indicator for us," said Steve Hirakami, principal of the Hawai'i Academy of Arts & Sciences
on the Big Island and interim executive director of the state's charter schools. "It shows that charter schools are ironing out some
of the kinks."
Also, a study last year paid for by the state Office of Hawaiian Affairs found that Native Hawaiian students in charter schools did
better than Native Hawaiian students in traditional schools.
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The Seattle Times
August 27, 2004
Democratic Presidential Nominee John Kerry supports charter public schools but opposes vouchers
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The Courier Journal
August 25, 2004
Amistad Academy is a Connecticut charter public school that receives $4,000 less per student from the state
than do New Haven’s regular public schools. Almost 85 percent of the children qualify for federal free lunches.
The student body, selected by a blind lottery, is evenly divided between boys and girls and is 64 percent
African American, 34 percent Latino and 2 percent white.
Its students, which the school says come from some of the worst neighborhoods in New Haven, arrive there
lagging two years behind their grade level.
They wind up scoring in the top percentiles in national tests in grades 5-8. Amistad students also regularly
outperform public school students throughout Connecticut in reading, math and writing.
How do they do it? It's not money.
So what is its secret? It would seem to be a big dose of inspiration, coupled with hard work and an emphasis
on attitude.
The school, founded in 1999 by a group of Yale University law students, says it holds students to standards of
behavior as demanding as its academic principles. It expects students to be responsible, respectful and to give it all they've got.
The school says it also teaches children how to treat others and manage their time. It stresses firm, confident handshakes, looking
people in the eye and speaking clearly.
It's obvious that whatever Amistad is doing it's working. The school may be helped by only having a student
body of 250 and a highly motivated teaching staff.
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The Kansas City Star
August 25, 2004
Mayor Bart Peterson released the 2004 accountability report on five mayor-sponsored charter schools
Wednesday. Each was evaluated in four areas: academic results, parent and teacher satisfaction, site visits by a team of experts,
and financial management.
The results show improvement over last year. Academically, 77 percent of students progressed at a faster
pace than their peers nationally. As for satisfaction, 88 percent of parents are happy with their charter school and 87 percent are
pleased with the quality of teaching their child receives.
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The Washington Post
August 24, 2004
When Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin met at a 1992 summer teacher training institute in Los Angeles, they were typical of
young people signing up for the Teach for America program: smart, idealistic, confident. Then they started to teach, and realized
they had no idea what they were doing.
Feinberg and Levin might have given up on teaching that first year, but they were so annoyed by their inability to make headway
in their classrooms that they began to devote every waking hour to turning themselves into at least passable teachers.
By 1999 Feinberg, with fifth- through eighth-graders in trailers on a school parking lot, and Levin, with the same grade levels
on the fourth floor of a public school surrounded by housing projects, had the best performing middle schools in Houston and the
Bronx, respectively.
KIPP combines several methods: up to 9 1/2-hour school days, required three-week summer school, regular Saturday sessions,
close teacher cooperation, regular parental contacts, consistent methods of punishment and reward, and keen attention to test results.
It is becoming the model that all other attempts to close the achievement gap between rich and poor students must measure
themselves against.
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California Charter School Association
August 18, 2004
A report released yesterday by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and prominently covered in yesterday's New York Times
actually showed that students in California's public charter schools are doing as well and even slightly better on student
achievement than those in California's broader public school system. The AFT study looked at reading and math scores from the
2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
"California's charter schools have shown that even despite significantly less funding and in the face of constant political
obstacles, teachers that are given freedom to implement real reforms can improve student achievement for their students," said
Caprice Young, CEO of the California Charter Schools Association. "Considering that California's charter schools are performing
as well or better while serving a higher percentage of lower-income students, imagine how well we could do with equal funding and
with less politics."
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The Los Angeles News
August 17, 2004
The first national comparison of test scores among children in charter schools and regular public
schools shows charter school students often doing worse than comparable students in regular public schools.
The data shows fourth-graders attending charter schools performing about half a year behind
students in other public schools in both reading and math. Put another way, only 25 percent of the fourth-graders attending charters
were proficient in reading and math, compared with 30 percent who were proficient in reading, and 32 percent in math, at traditional
public schools."
But in California, where one in 40 students is educated in charter schools -- including more than
a dozen campuses in the San Fernando Valley -- supporters said they've seen only success.
"Every study that has looked at student achievement in California has shown that despite less
funding, charter schools are keeping pace with -- and in many cases outperforming -- the broader school system," said Gary Larson,
a spokesman for the California Charter Schools Association, a membership organization for the state's 460 charter schools.
Student achievement comes even while California's charter schools are educating a higher
percentage of lower-income pupils and those with learning problems than public schools.
In fact, results from California's High School Exit Exam released Monday showed sophomores
from Granada Hills and Palisades charter high schools well outpacing their peers in the Los Angeles Unified School District and across
the state.
"Clearly we're onto something here in California," Larson said. "When
educators are given freedom to implement real reforms, and a little bit of time to serve their students ... positive results happen
and student achievement improves."
The state will see 70 new charter schools open this fall.
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The Buffalo News
July 29, 2004
More than 4,000 Buffalo students now attend publicly funded charter schools, and many of
them spend large portions of the traditional summer vacation in class.
"A lot of the charter schools are concentrated in urban neighborhoods and believe that a longer
school year or school day is just necessary for the student population they serve," said Peter Murphy, vice president of New York
Charter Schools Resource Center. "Hopefully, that will put pressure on the traditional school districts to look at the scheduling issue."
School days or school years have recently been extended in some traditional public school
districts. But those changes generally are measured by hours or days rather than weeks or months, and the traditional 10-week
summer break remains largely intact.
In contrast, charter schools, which are not bound by calendar restrictions contained in
conventional teacher contracts, are using large portions of the summer for instruction.
Many local charter school students are from lower-income backgrounds and are struggling
academically.
KIPP Sankofa combines three summer weeks with a 7:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. instructional
schedule during the regular school year. That exposes pupils to 60 percent more instructional time than they would receive in
a traditional public school.
At the Pinnacle Charter School, located at Genesee and Ash streets, classes were in session
most of July. Instead of a 10-week summer vacation, Pinnacle students have monthlong breaks during December, April and August.
"Research shows that students don't lose as much (knowledge) over four weeks as they do
over 10 weeks," said Heidi S. Rotella, the school's chief academic officer. "We've noticed a huge difference. They don't do what
we call the one-step forward, two-step backward dance."
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The New York Times
July 28, 2004
By 2010, Chicago will replace 60 failing public schools with 100 new ones, and in the process turn one in 10 of its
schools over to private managers, mostly operating without unions.
"It's time to start over with the schools that are nonperforming," Mr. Daley said in an interview July 19. "We need to
shake up the system."
Chicago has long struggled to raise achievement at schools that are among the country's most troubled. In 1995, the
Illinois legislature gave Mayor Daley control over the system, and in the years since, he has sought improvement through balancing
budgets, reducing waste, firing bad principals and founding charter schools. But the worst schools have resisted change.
"Chicago has a long history of tinkering with failed schools," said Tom Vander Ark, executive director for education
at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has committed some $25 million since 2001 to school reform efforts in Chicago. "They've
called it re-engineering, reconstitution, restructuring. They would change a few things, but not surprisingly, it's never worked very well.
Until now, the closest Chicago has come was the 2002 closing of three elementary schools for academic failure. One
was Williams Elementary. Cassie Sweeney taught there in the four years before its shutdown.
"It had a failed culture," Ms. Sweeney said. "There was always yelling, hostility from parents, students assaulting staff."
During its last year before closing, less than one in five students at Williams performed at grade level, she said, yet
many teachers appeared complacent.
"Teachers get burned out, but with the union contract they felt well-protected, and they just weren't putting everything
into their jobs," she said.
"The new teachers have a save-the-world attitude, and we needed that," Ms. Sweeney said. The proportion of students
performing at grade level rose to 36 percent from 16 percent in its first year, she said.
Success at Williams and at other new small schools that Mr. Duncan has started or strengthened, which include some
20 charter schools, emboldened him to draft Chicago's sweeping new plans for the 100 new schools, which are to open by 2010 and include
30 additional charters and another 30 new contract schools, created by private groups that sign five-year, renewable contracts with the district.
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The Daily News
July 21, 2004
Achievement First, an outfit founded by Yale Law School grads, has been invited to open five charter schools in New
York City by 2006. The proposal is part of Mayor Bloomberg's plan to open 50 charter schools in the city.
Achievement First will seek to duplicate the formula that bumped test scores at the middle school it runs in New Haven
above local and Connecticut averages. The organization hopes to put all the new schools in "high-need areas" and to teach students from
kindergarten through 12th grade.
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The Oregonian
July 13, 2004
Stanford Achievement Test results released Monday show that Arthur Academy students -- kindergarten through
second grade -- made dramatic strides in reading and math in one year.
Last fall, the 20-student 2003-04 kindergarten class, on average, scored in the 35th percentile in reading in the
national test; by spring they finished in the 88th percentile. Math scores jumped from the 46th percentile to the 77th percentile during
that same period.
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The Christian Science Monitor
July 6, 2004
Public school principals generally don't spend their summers recruiting students for their schools. Most often
they're appointed to schools where decisions about location and student enrollment have already been made and often even the hiring
and firing of faculty is beyond their purview.
But with the birth of the charter-school movement has come a new kind of administrator with a new set of duties
and concerns. Educated at top US schools, Zhumkhawala, at 28, is idealistic, ambitious, and eager to shake up the system. Before she
can run her new school, however, she has had to create it from scratch - sell the community on the idea, raise money to supplement state
funding, find a site, hire teachers, and, now, hardest of all, persuade parents to trust her with their children.
But if the charter-school movement means a sometimes staggering set of new responsibilities for principals like
Zhumkhawala, its intent is to create options for families like the Garcia-Bustamantes.
Delia's parents attended elementary school in Mexico. Her father works in a warehouse. Her mother, Alicia
Bustamante, makes and sells tamales.
"I don't want Delia to end up like us," says Delia's father, Geronimo Garcia. "She tells me she wants to be a
lawyer or a doctor. I want her to be something."
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California Department of Education Press Release
June 29, 2004
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell today joined U.S. Department of Education Secretary Rod
Paige as he awarded the California Department of Education (CDE) a $75 million grant from the federal Public Charter Schools
Grant Program.
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The New York Times Magazine
June 20, 2004
Experts have figured out how to educate one disadvantaged child or one classroom full of kids, but no one seems to have any idea how
to change a whole school system or a whole neighborhood. And that's what Geoffrey Canada is doing, with a mission both radically ambitious
and startlingly simple. He has chosen as his laboratory a 60-block area of central Harlem that he calls the Harlem Children's Zone.
Canada's program combines educational, social, and medical services, starting at birth and following children to college. It operates on
the principle that each child will do better if all the children around him are doing better. The objective is to create a safety net woven so tightly that children in the neighborhood just can't slip through.
As Canada's program develops, he is focusing more and more on education. He has been pouring huge amounts of money into Harlem's
public schools and scores have barely budged. He now sees it as a systemic problem, something that can't be solved by the kind of
supplementary services he has been offering. ''We've got to really do something radically different if we're going to save these kids,'' he said.
Canada's educational philosophy emphasizes accountability and testing, and includes starting new charter schools and converting
existing district-run schools to charters. His charter schools will use non-union teachers who will be paid more than district-run school
teachers, but will also work longer days and for 12 months a year. Canada also wants a free hand to fire teachers who aren't performing
up to his expectations, authority Canada says he feels sure the union will not give him. At his new school, he will have it.
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