Monday, February 10, 2014

Summit High School: The skinny on the Gates-backed charter school set for Seattle, Brad Bernatek (remember him?) and a host of others | Seattle Education

Summit High School: The skinny on the Gates-backed charter school set for Seattle, Brad Bernatek (remember him?) and a host of others | Seattle Education:



Summit High School: The skinny on the Gates-backed charter school set for Seattle, Brad Bernatek (remember him?) and a host of others

bill-gates-thinking
Bill Gates will be bringing yet another grand (failed) experiment onto public school children to Seattle soon.
The Common Core Standards? On the brink of a major fail.
Merit pay? Bad idea from the beginning.
Charter schools? Every time we hear the trumpets blow about a charter school that is successful, we find out that there was a lot of behind the scenes shenanigans going on…students being counseled out or expelled if they can’t make the grade, a demand of cash or an inordinate amount of volunteer time required of the parents (see below re: Summit), long application forms that weed out those parents who might not know English, ELL students need not apply, and other parents who don’t have the bandwidth, for whatever reason, to fill out the form.
So let’s look at Summit.
What caught my attention about Summit initially was an article in the Philanthropy News Digest that was sent to me. Here’s an excerpt:
The foundation also awarded $4 million to Summit Public Schools and $4.2