David Ellison: Education secretary may be giving up on school reform - San Jose Mercury News:
"TO CHARTER OR not to charter? That is the question.
Hamlet pondered whether to battle 'the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' or to just give up. My fear is that, in pushing for more charter schools, Education Secretary Arne Duncan has given up.
Charters never really became laboratories for innovation.
They simply adopted the 'new ideas' all public schools would if they had the freedom and the funds: longer school days and years, smaller schools and class sizes, careful selection of motivated, gifted teachers, strict accountability for both students and their parents, site-based management. '..."
They simply adopted the "new ideas" all public schools would if they had the freedom and the funds: longer school days and years, smaller schools and class sizes, careful selection of motivated, gifted teachers, strict accountability for both students and their parents, site-based management. "...
Charters have such freedom. But their claims to operate with less state funds than most public schools are spurious.
For one, charters usually receive substantial outside support. Even more significant, since salaries account for more than 90 percent of most schools' budgets, charters typically employ younger, far-less expensive faculty, and turn them over after only four years, thus keeping expenses artificially low.
In other words, charters attract our best new teachers but quickly burn them out.
This is reform?
"TO CHARTER OR not to charter? That is the question.
Hamlet pondered whether to battle 'the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' or to just give up. My fear is that, in pushing for more charter schools, Education Secretary Arne Duncan has given up.
Charters never really became laboratories for innovation.
They simply adopted the 'new ideas' all public schools would if they had the freedom and the funds: longer school days and years, smaller schools and class sizes, careful selection of motivated, gifted teachers, strict accountability for both students and their parents, site-based management. '..."
They simply adopted the "new ideas" all public schools would if they had the freedom and the funds: longer school days and years, smaller schools and class sizes, careful selection of motivated, gifted teachers, strict accountability for both students and their parents, site-based management. "...
Charters have such freedom. But their claims to operate with less state funds than most public schools are spurious.
For one, charters usually receive substantial outside support. Even more significant, since salaries account for more than 90 percent of most schools' budgets, charters typically employ younger, far-less expensive faculty, and turn them over after only four years, thus keeping expenses artificially low.
In other words, charters attract our best new teachers but quickly burn them out.
This is reform?