Jeff Bryant Reports: Are ‘Nonprofit’ Charter Schools A Distinction Without A Difference?

Are ‘Nonprofit’ Charter Schools A Distinction Without A Difference?:

Are ‘Nonprofit’ Charter Schools A Distinction Without A Difference?

Are ‘Nonprofit’ Charter Schools A Distinction Without A Difference?

By Jeff Bryant

“The ‘Trump-DeVos team’ has ‘split the bipartisan alliance that has helped vouchers and charters’ … What this means to the average citizen is that she should expect to hear lots more rhetoric about the ‘good kind’ of charter school versus the ‘not so good’ kind of charter school … [A] popular tactic for separating ‘good’ charters from the pack of awfulness Trump and DeVos want to unleash is to hold a preference for ‘nonprofit’ charter schools over the profit-making variety … Does it make any difference what their tax status is?”
Read more …

NEWS AND VIEWS

A Powerful Pairing: Pre-K Boosts Future Incomes And Reduces Risk Of Jail, Especially When Schools Spend More

Chalkbeat

“Students benefit from both well-funded schools and access to early childhood education … Head Start had greater long-run benefits for students whose K-12 schools were better resourced … The whole of those two policies in tandem is greater than the sum of their parts … The effect of Head Start multiplies when students later attend relatively well funded schools: in that case, adult earnings increased 5.6% and risk of incarceration dropped 2.2 percentage points.”
Read more …

Data Dive: Devices And Software Flooding Into Classrooms – More Access Hasn’t Meant Better Use

Education Week

“Students report using computers in school most often for activities that involve rote practice … The percent of teachers who say they’ve received training on how to effectively use such technology has remained flat, with a persistent divide between high- and low-poverty schools … 4th graders report using classroom computers for rote activities … far more frequently than for activities that require critical thinking … The gap between active and passive use has grown … Just 61% of 4th grade reading teachers said that they had received training on how to integrate technology into their classroom instruction.”
Read more …

DeVos Is Questioned About Campaign To Influence Climate Change Education

Frontline

“Democratic senators are sharply criticizing a conservative think tank’s efforts to bring climate change skepticism into the nation’s public schools … and demanding to know whether federal education officials have been in contact with the group … The senators asked DeVos whether any Education Department officials have had contact with individuals associated with the Heartland Institute “on climate, science, or science education issues,” and whether any informational resources put out by the department have been created in collaboration with Heartland.”
Read more …

How Teachers’ Stress Affects Students: A Research Roundup

Education Week

“New research is helping to clarify how teachers become chronically stressed, and how it can affect their students’ well-being and achievement … Teachers who reported higher levels of burnout had students with higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol each morning, suggesting classroom tensions could be ‘contagious’… [Teachers] who showed higher levels of stress at the beginning of the year displayed fewer effective teaching strategies over the rest of the school year … So what makes a classroom normal for one teacher and stressful to another? … The answer depends on whether teachers feel they have the cognitive and other resources to meet their students’ needs.”
Read more …

A Long Overdue Civil Right To Literacy

The Baltimore Sun

“A class action lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court in Michigan claims that the state of Michigan is denying students in the Detroit public schools their constitutional right to learn to read … An allied legal attack has just been launched in Berkeley, CA … Disability rights lawyers brought suit in federal court alleging the school district’s failure to teach children with reading disorders, such as dyslexia, to learn to read violated a right guaranteed under the federal law governing students with disabilities … Future generations will look back and say, as was said about Brown v. Board of Education, ‘What took us so long?'”
Read more …

Are ‘Nonprofit’ Charter Schools A Distinction Without A Difference?: