Seventy percent of black charter school students have few white classmates, estimates a study by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA. From the Washington Post: To the authors of the study, the findings point to a civil rights issue: “As the country continues moving steadily toward greater segregation and inequality of education for students of color in schools with lower achievement ...

Federal support for magnet programs has increased dramatically over the past decade. Since the inception of the Magnet Schools Assistance Program in 1985, over $739 million in MSAP grants has been awarded to a total of 117 school districts (half of all districts having magnet schools). MSAP funding has been effective in encouraging and enabling districts to establish or expand magnet ...

Magnet schools in comparison with nonmagnet specialty schools and programs of choice Taking both magnet and nonmagnet programs into account, 43% of the students in multischool public school systems are in districts with specialty schools or school choice programs. Among the 6,400 multischool districts nationwide, over one in six (18%) offered nonmagnet specialty programs (i.e., programs with a distinctive curriculum or ...

The promise charter schools hold for public school innovation and reform lies in an unprecedented combination of freedom and accountability. Underwritten with public funds but run independently, charter schools are free from a range of state laws and district policies stipulating what and how they teach, where they can spend their money, and who they can hire and fire. In return, ...

Thoughtful community members, concerned parents, dedicated teachers, university educators, and political and business people are among those who have come together to create charter schools. KIPP Academy Houston was started by two former Teach For America teachers using two classrooms within a pre-existing public school. The BASIS School in Tucson was started by a husband and wife team of college educators. ...

Parents choose to enroll their children in charter schools, usually entering a lottery for selection when schools are oversubscribed. The schools are free to determine their own governing structures, which include parents and teachers as active members. In all these configurations, autonomy gives charter schools the flexibility to allocate their budgets; hire staff; and create educational programs with curriculum, pedagogy, organizational ...

At the heart of each charter school is a well-conceived and powerful mission, a shared educational philosophy that guides decision-making at every level. The spirit of the mission appears in slogans on hall placards, banners, and T-shirts and resounds in chants, assemblies, and informal conversations. In some schools, the mission is to prepare low-income, urban students for higher education, students, for ...

At each of these schools, the culture forged around a shared educational vision creates a strong sense of community. Parents choose to send their children, and students know why they are there. The schools tend to be small, which itself allows an intimacy and face-to-face recognition not possible in larger schools. The fact that students are never assigned to a charter ...

In most charter schools, the whole accountability process, from end-of-term comprehensive exams, to weekly teacher sessions sharing student work, is used to steadily improve teaching and learning. Yearly analysis of progress, taking a hard look at what's working well and what isn't, becomes the basis for a schoolwide improvement plan with new goals for the coming year. Schools give constant attention ...

The freedom to innovate with governance models is a signal feature of charter schools. Each has a governing board of directors that is responsible for school policy-making and oversight. Those serving on governing boards are stakeholders in the truest sense of the word, people not only attuned to the school's mission, but also highly familiar with its daily operations. Including teachers ...

Charter schools are public schools that operate with freedom from many of the local and state regulations that apply to traditional public schools. Charter schools allow parents, community leaders, educational entrepreneurs, and others the flexibility to innovate and provide students with increased educational options within the public school system. Charter schools are sponsored by local, state, or other organizations that monitor ...

"There is no way you can say teachers are underpaid. At first I believed it, then I looked at the numbers. Teachers get paid for just 1,500 hours a year, not the 2,000 hours I have to work. And they CHOOSE to defer a third of their compensation for when they retire, getting a pension I never get. If anything, teachers ...

Back in 2007, Northwestern neuroscientist Nina Kraus led a team of researchers that showed that training in music as a youngster helps boost speech and reading abilities—since the same pathways used for mastering music are used for language. This past weekend, at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in San Diego, she presented her own work, along with ...

Women outnumber men on college campuses by a ratio of 57 to 43. As a result, some colleges are giving preferential treatment to males during the admission process, trying to ensure they get a decent mix of men to women. That practice, in turn, has groups, such as the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, up in arms about gender bias in ...

If we put the Obama Administration’s Race to the Top grant in running terms, is it the 100-yard dash of education reform – a quick shot of cash in exchange for surface level reforms—or a 400-yard relay requiring team effort, strategic thinking and genuine long-term change? With stipulations that teachers unions, local school boards and state officials have to work together ...

Under a pilot program starting in the 2011-2012 school year, 10 to 20 high schools in each of eight states (Connecticut, Kentucky, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont) will allow sophomores ready to take college courses to graduate and move onto local community colleges. The idea comes from the National Center on Education and the Economy, which ...

Education Week released, "Quality Counts 2010," its annual report card on the state of public education in the U.S. today, praising some states and taking others to task on their stewardship of molding the next generation. What I find most interesting about the report is that states that score high marks on the metrics bundled under the heading "The Teaching Profession" ...

Anyone who thinks that the traditional public school, any private school, any charter school or home-school can and will be THE mode of education for everyone doesn’t know much about education. Every child is different. Every child learns differently and is motivated differently. It is imperative that alternative forms of education exist to meet the needs of all children, for not ...

If businesses operated like schools, we would first need to break the United States into geographic areas. It would be the responsibility of the businesses in that area to hire every adult in the area between the ages of 18 and 65. The businesses would have to hire everyone: the medically fragile (and provide nursing care), the developmentally delayed, those with ...

Demand for charter school places surged by 21 percent last year, reports the Center for Education Reform’s Annual Survey of America’s Charter Schools 2010. Wait lists have grown to an average of 239 children per charter school. "In fact, 65 percent of U.S. charter schools have waiting lists, up from 59 percent in 2008, and some schools’ waiting lists are more ...