Charter schools with failing grades still featured at quality schools fair
One-third of schools featured at New Schools Expo 6.0, mostly charters, are low achievers.
December 8, 2012
(WBEZ/Linda Lutton)
Teachers, principals and other staff plug charter schools at the New Schools Expo in 2010. This year, one-third of schools being featured at the expo have been rated "Performance Level 3" by the district, the lowest grade possible.
A high-profile Chicago schools fair today is supposed to show off quality new schools, many of them charters.
The New Schools Expo at Soldier Field is sponsored by the school district and run every year by New Schools for Chicago, formerly the Renaissance Schools Fund, a group that has raised more than $30 million from Chicago’s business and civic community to open new charter schools and improve education by “radically shaking up the public school system.”
Schools set up tables with photos and marketing materials to try to entice students to enroll. Principals and teachers offer freebies like candy or balloons to kids. Thousands of parents
Sam R. Hall: Let's not ignore side effects of charter schools
Suzanne McCommon is a former teacher in the Helena-West Helana School District, located just across the Mississippi River near Clarksdale and home to much talked-about KIPP charter schools.
McCommon is quite complimentary of the KIPP charter schools there. She says they are some of the best-run charter schools in the country, and she believes that the KIPP model for charter schools is second-to-none.
In June, 2011, McCommon returned to the district where she once taught this time to lead it. Sadly, it wasn’t under the best of circumstances.
The Arkansas Department of Education took over the Helena-West Helena School District, firing the superintendent and dissolving the school board. Arkansas State Superintendent of Education Dr. Tom Kimbrell tapped McCommon to act as chief executive officer of the district.
“The state took over because the district had gone into what we call fiscal distress,” McCommon said.