as they have tried to do to public schools.
The philosophy and famous saying has been that throwing money at public schools just wasn't going to work. But now they are going to throw money at struggling charter schools.
Yeh, that'll work.
SUNY officials are mulling a new move that would try to turn around failing charter schools rather than just shuttering themSUNY officials are mulling a new move that would try to turn around failing charter schools rather than just shuttering them -- an initiative that could get its first trial at a struggling Harlem center.
While officials wouldn't name the troubled facility under consideration for the less punitive measure, sources identified it as Harlem Day Charter School, which has a five-year charter up for renewal this winter.
.."SUNY board members indicated that rather than simply close down the school, they might consider overhauling the administration and staff so that the kids could have continuity by remaining in the same school.
Did you read that?
They want the kids to have continuity by remaining in the same school. Strange no one ever considered that idea of continuity when they were wanting to close down public schools so easily.
And how long will they keep overhauling the staff, firing teachers, firing administrators without ever addressing underlying problems of poverty and need.
Here are the turnaround strategies from the Obama administration. How odd to see that now they are not only applying them to public schools but now one state is applying them to failing charter schools.
These are the school turnaround options for districts that were outlined in Obama’s “Blueprint for Reform,” the administration’s plan for reauthorizing No Child Left Behind (formally called the Elementary and Secondary Education Act) and that are being tested through the School Improvement Grants program (SIG) :
*Turnaround: The school’s principal and all of its teachers are fired. A new principal may rehire up to 50 percent of the former teachers and must then implement Department-outlined strategies to improve student academic and graduation rates.
*
Restart: The district must either convert the school to a charter, or close it and reopen it under outside management--a charter operator, charter management organization or education management organization.
*School Closure: Schools may be closed, with students being transferred to “other, higher achieving schools.”
*Transformation: This model requires that the school principal be replaced (if s/he has been at the school longer than two years) and that schools must choose from an department-determined set of strategies. But under the SIG program, school districts with more than nine targeted schools can only use this model for no more than half.
Analysis of Obama's School Turnaround policySeems to me that if the same options applied to public schools are already being applied to charter schools then we are on a very bumpy road to fixing education...or as Diane Ravitch put it The Race to Nowhere. Yet they keep barreling ahead with the same stuff that isn't working.
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