"'Teach them all.' A little-known California law allows a public school to become a privately operated, publicly funded charter school if more than 50 percent of the tenured teachers vote in favor of the switch. Convincing Minix and scores of other skeptical teachers that such a radical change was a good idea, in 2008 Barr took control of Locke and its millions of dollars in federal Title I funding, which goes to schools with high percentages of low-income children. What was once a poorly run school for thousands of students with a graduation rate of just 5 percent is now the Locke Family of Schools, made up of eight small college-prep academies and one technical school. In the brief time since the Green Dot takeover, graduation rates and state test scores have already improved, and student suspensions and expulsions are down. 'We didn't get rid of the knuckleheads and the gangbangers—we figured out a way to teach them all,' says Minix, who now serves as the Locke Family of Schools' athletic director."
A Look Back: The Elephant In The Room In The Talent vs. Practice Debate
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(I’m republishing posts on my My All-Time Favorite Posts list. This one
appeared in 2016. You can see them all here) An article in last week’s
New Yorker...
3 hours ago