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Thursday, January 17, 2013

Charter School Growth In Michigan Brings Cautionary Tale On Quality

Charter School Growth In Michigan Brings Cautionary Tale On Quality:




Teachers With Poor Ratings Clustered In NYC, Charter School Quality: Ed Today

Cluster Suck? The New York Daily News takes another look at the StudentsFirstNY teacher distribution report and finds something stunning: 20 percent of teachers are "bad" teachers in each of 14 Brooklyn schools. To give you some perspective: only 3 percent of all city school teachers got these negative ratings. And two of those schools received "A" ratings from the Department of Education. (I should note here that these ratings are volatile, etc., but you already knew that.)

Mo Growth Mo Problems? In a story we posted this morning, we take a close look at charter school quality. While it's tough to make any definitive statements about relative charter school quality nationally, a case study of Michigan provides an illustrative example. "Are they living up to their promise?" asked Harrison Blackmond, 



Charter School Growth In Michigan Brings Cautionary Tale On Quality

Charter schools are the fastest-growing sector of public education, taking root in most U.S. states, thanks to a big push by the education reform lobby and the federal government's Race to the Top competition. And since the movement's inception in the early 1990s, its founders have learned a few things.

Across charter schools, there are similarities in what works to boost student achievement. A 2011 studyidentified five successes of charter schools: "frequent teacher feedback, the use of data to guide instruction, high-dosage tutoring, increased instructional time and high expectations."

But just because charter schools have the flexibility to become successful in these ways doesn't mean all of