Charter Schools - Are they the wave of the future? Obama may like to think so.

Charter schools are on the rise and the Race To The Top may ensure their proliferation. Read the article we recently posted about the "RTTT Winners". Recently, representatives from the U.S. Department of Education made a visit to DeKalb and held a discussion about identifying turnaround schools, closing them and then reopening them possibly as charters. Go to Community Radar to download the Powerpoint used at the meeting to learn about Tier 1, 2 and 3 schools and how they are identified. For further explanation, and videos describing turnaround examples, visit this link at the U.S. DOE.

This is a new era - if you think No Child Left Behind was intense, stand-by for this initiative by Obama and Duncan - part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. They have no tolerance for severely under-performing schools and fully intend to shutter them and start them anew in one way or another. One way ensure your school system meets with Obama's approval is to allow flexibility in charter school creation. (Another is to tie teacher pay to student performance.)

If you're interested in charters, you will want to attend the Emory Lavista Parent Council meeting next Wednesday.

Emory Lavista Parent Council

Join us at 9:15 am

(refreshments begin at 8:45 am)

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Fernbank Elementary School

157 Heaton Park Drive, NE, Atlanta, Georgia 30307

Charter Schools

Everything you Want and Need to Know

Guest Speakers

Phil Andrews, former executive director of the Georgia Charter School Association, moderator

Gigi Connor, co-founder of Neighborhood Charter School and Atlanta Charter Middle School

Nina Gilbert, founder of Ivy Prep Academy, a GA Commission Charter School

Nicole Knighten, DeKalb County Schools legislative affairs

Final Meeting: April 21^st at Coralwood Elementary: State of the System Revisited

U.S. schools chief stops in Atlanta on 'listening and learning' tour

As reported in today's AJC, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan stopped here as part of his “listening and learning” tour undertaken in anticipation of an effort next year to reauthorize the nation's education law.

Duncan repeatedly stressed Monday the "competitive" spirit he wanted to see in schools moving forward. He noted the administration's new "Race to the Top" program, in which roughly $5 billion in competitively awarded grants will be available to schools willing to raise their academic standards, improve teacher quality and allow more innovation. He said he supported ongoing work to develop common national academic standards in English, language arts and mathematics for grades k-12. Georgia is among 48 states that have signed on to the Common Core State Standards Initiative. Drafts of those standards are expected to be made public sometime next year.

Duncan also spoke encouragingly about some school choice efforts, particularly charter schools. His first stop Monday was at Tech High School, an independent charter high school in Atlanta that has a 97 percent graduation rate. The city system's average rate is 69 percent. He also toured the city's Grady High School in Midtown and attended a discussion about a White House initiative to prevent youth violence.

Is NCLB About to Be Replaced?

As reported in the AJC education blog, "Education Secretary Arne Duncan said the No Child Left Behind Act failed to produce the radical changes necessary to improve the nation’s lowest-performing schools. He intends to change that with an aggressive $3.5 billion school improvement aid plan that demands striking changes."

Duncan said the federal government was determined to raise the “bottom on the bottom,” the 5,000 lowest performing schools in the nation, half of which were urban, 30 percent were rural and 20 percent were suburban.

“In those schools, tinkering around the edges is not sufficient,” Duncan said. “Those children are being poorly served in chronically underachieving schools and marginal incremental change is not the answer.”

The AJC posting continues, "Under his plan, systems must discard scalpels and take chainsaws to failing schools. Systems can close them, restaff them and reopen them under new leadership or as charters. They can shutter the schools and transfer students elsewhere. Or they can make deep, “transformative” changes, including replacing the leadership, adopting comprehensive reforms including performance pay for teachers and extending learning time."

Duncan says, “If we are to put an end to stubborn cycles of poverty and social failure, and put our country on track for long-term economic prosperity, we must address the needs of children who have long been ignored and marginalized in chronically low-achieving schools,” said Duncan, who made the announcement with U.S. Sen. Harry Reid at Harley Harmon Elementary School in Las Vegas. “States and school districts have an opportunity to put unprecedented resources toward reforms that would increase graduation rates, reduce dropout rates and improve teacher quality for all students, and particularly for children who most need good teaching in order to catch up.”

“The large investment in school improvement funds made possible by the Recovery Act presents a historic opportunity to attack education's most intractable challenge -- turning around or closing down chronically low-achieving schools,” Duncan said. “Our goal is to turn around the 5,000 lowest-performing schools over the next five years, as part of our overall strategy for dramatically reducing the drop-out rate, improving high school graduation rates and increasing the number of students who graduate prepared for success in college and the workplace.”

The secretary would require states to identify three tiers of schools:

Tier I - The lowest-achieving five percent of Title I schools in improvement, corrective action, or restructuring in a state, or the five lowest-performing Title I schools, whichever number is greater.

Tier II – Equally low-achieving secondary schools that are eligible for, but do not receive, Title I funds. The secretary proposes targeting some of these extremely low-achieving high schools and their feeder middle schools. There are close to 2,000 high schools in this country in which graduation is at best a 50/50 proposition. U.S. Department of Education data indicates that fewer than half of these schools currently receive Title I Part A funds. If the provisions proposed become final, school districts would not be required to include Tier II schools in proposals. However, including Tier II schools would enhance a school district's likelihood for funding because states would be required to give priority to districts that commit to serve both Tier I and Tier II schools.

Tier III – The remaining Title I schools in improvement, corrective action or restructuring that are not Tier I schools in the state. "


To read about Duncan's entire plan, check it out at the US DOE website.