The Charter School Experience
Title | The Charter School Experience PDF eBook |
Author | Michael Bitz |
Publisher | Springer |
Pages | 143 |
Release | 2016-10-26 |
Genre | Education |
ISBN | 9463006907 |
The Charter School Experience: Voices from the Field is a unique book that presents readers with balanced perspectives from teachers, students, parents, and school leaders at charter schools across the United States. Through first-person narratives, the book highlights the delicate intricacies of what makes a school charter succeed or fail. Unlike a book written by academics far removed from the practice of education, this book gives voice to the people most impacted by charters: the families and educators who have embraced these schools for better or worse, and who now have enriching stories to tell. These experiences—embodied in introspective and moving chapters—go well beyond the news headlines and politicized studies that have spotlighted charters in the past. In this book, teachers highlight their successes and failures in charter school classrooms, parents explore decisions to enroll in charters, school leaders discuss the social missions of charters, and students write about how charter schools have impacted their lives. The result is an engaging collection of ideas for a wide audience, including people researching, attending, and making policy on charter schools in the United States and around the world.
Scripting the Moves
Title | Scripting the Moves PDF eBook |
Author | Joanne W. Golann |
Publisher | Princeton University Press |
Pages | 244 |
Release | 2021-06-08 |
Genre | Education |
ISBN | 0691200017 |
An inside look at a "no-excuses" charter school that reveals this educational model’s strengths and weaknesses, and how its approach shapes students Silent, single-file lines. Detention for putting a head on a desk. Rules for how to dress, how to applaud, how to complete homework. Walk into some of the most acclaimed urban schools today and you will find similar recipes of behavior, designed to support student achievement. But what do these “scripts” accomplish? Immersing readers inside a “no-excuses” charter school, Scripting the Moves offers a telling window into an expanding model of urban education reform. Through interviews with students, teachers, administrators, and parents, and analysis of documents and data, Joanne Golann reveals that such schools actually dictate too rigid a level of social control for both teachers and their predominantly low-income Black and Latino students. Despite good intentions, scripts constrain the development of important interactional skills and reproduce some of the very inequities they mean to disrupt. Golann presents a fascinating, sometimes painful, account of how no-excuses schools use scripts to regulate students and teachers. She shows why scripts were adopted, what purposes they serve, and where they fall short. What emerges is a complicated story of the benefits of scripts, but also their limitations, in cultivating the tools students need to navigate college and other complex social institutions—tools such as flexibility, initiative, and ease with adults. Contrasting scripts with tools, Golann raises essential questions about what constitutes cultural capital—and how this capital might be effectively taught. Illuminating and accessible, Scripting the Moves delves into the troubling realities behind current education reform and reenvisions what it takes to prepare students for long-term success.
Keeping the Promise
Title | Keeping the Promise PDF eBook |
Author | Samuel Yigzaw |
Publisher | iUniverse |
Pages | 252 |
Release | 2008-02 |
Genre | Education |
ISBN | 059545139X |
For parents, teachers, administrators, and policy makers, this is an insider's look at how charter schools successfully challenge the assumption that there is only one model of public education. Yigzaw documents the turbulent start-up years of Higher Ground Academy, the school's continued day-to-day struggles to stay true to its mission, and the accomplishments and rewards they've already achieved as the school continues to grow and evolve. Yigzaw offers a brief history of the charter school movement, an in-depth discussion of what sets charter schools apart from traditional public schools, and a thorough examination of No Child Left Behind, the Standards movement, and what he sees as the four greatest concerns for modern charter schools.
Charter School City
Title | Charter School City PDF eBook |
Author | Douglas N. Harris |
Publisher | University of Chicago Press |
Pages | 320 |
Release | 2020-07-15 |
Genre | Education |
ISBN | 022669478X |
In the wake of the tragedy and destruction that came with Hurricane Katrina in 2005, public schools in New Orleans became part of an almost unthinkable experiment—eliminating the traditional public education system and completely replacing it with charter schools and school choice. Fifteen years later, the results have been remarkable, and the complex lessons learned should alter the way we think about American education. New Orleans became the first US city ever to adopt a school system based on the principles of markets and economics. When the state took over all of the city’s public schools, it turned them over to non-profit charter school managers accountable under performance-based contracts. Students were no longer obligated to attend a specific school based upon their address, allowing families to act like consumers and choose schools in any neighborhood. The teacher union contract, tenure, and certification rules were eliminated, giving schools autonomy and control to hire and fire as they pleased. In Charter School City, Douglas N. Harris provides an inside look at how and why these reform decisions were made and offers many surprising findings from one of the most extensive and rigorous evaluations of a district school reform ever conducted. Through close examination of the results, Harris finds that this unprecedented experiment was a noteworthy success on almost every measurable student outcome. But, as Harris shows, New Orleans was uniquely situated for these reforms to work well and that this market-based reform still required some specific and active roles for government. Letting free markets rule on their own without government involvement will not generate the kinds of changes their advocates suggest. Combining the evidence from New Orleans with that from other cities, Harris draws out the broader lessons of this unprecedented reform effort. At a time when charter school debates are more based on ideology than data, this book is a powerful, evidence-based, and in-depth look at how we can rethink the roles for governments, markets, and nonprofit organizations in education to ensure that America’s schools fulfill their potential for all students.
Adventures of Charter School Creators
Title | Adventures of Charter School Creators PDF eBook |
Author | Terrence E. Deal |
Publisher | R&L Education |
Pages | 300 |
Release | 2004 |
Genre | Education |
ISBN | 9781578861668 |
Adventures of Charter School Creators takes the reader inside the world of individual educational entrepreneurs who have created charter schools from scratch and lived to tell about it. Drawn from examples across the country, individuals (and a few teams) tell their stories of the victories they enjoyed and the defeats they overcame to create their schools. They include an Episcopal priest working in the Pico-Union community of Los Angeles, a corporate attorney in Miami, a manpower training specialist in East Saint Louis, the chief financial officer of a major African American church in New York City, a retired military officer in North Carolina, as well as experienced school teachers and administrators. From these stories Deal and Hentschke extract and examine the issues of school leadership that are peculiar to those school leaders who have chosen to create schools from scratch. This book: Examines entrepreneurial leadership as a concrete manifestation of school leadership. Sheds light on the concrete differences between leadership in relatively autonomous start-up charters and the relatively dependent traditional schools. Anchors charter school leadership within the context of general (non-education) leadership and distinguishes it from what is typically associated with school leadership today. It describes: The general forces in society which are pushing public K-12 education into market-based initiatives. The general leadership issues of any break-away or start-up enterprise. Will be of interest to all educators.
A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door
Title | A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door PDF eBook |
Author | Jack Schneider |
Publisher | The New Press |
Pages | 153 |
Release | 2023-03-07 |
Genre | Education |
ISBN | 1620978121 |
A trenchant analysis of how public education is being destroyed in overt and deceptive ways—and how to fight back In the “vigorous, well-informed” (Kirkus Reviews) A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, the co-hosts of the popular education podcast Have You Heard expose the potent network of conservative elected officials, advocacy groups, funders, and think tanks that are pushing a radical vision to do away with public education. “Cut[ing] through the rhetorical fog surrounding a host of free-market reforms and innovations” (Mike Rose), Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire lay bare the dogma of privatization and reveal how it fits into the current context of right-wing political movements. A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door “goes above and beyond the typical explanations” (SchoolPolicy.org), giving readers an up-close look at the policies—school vouchers, the war on teachers’ unions, tax credit scholarships, virtual schools, and more—driving the movement’s agenda. Called “well-researched, carefully argued, and alarming” by Library Journal, this smart, essential book has already incited a public reckoning on behalf of the millions of families served by the American educational system—and many more who stand to suffer from its unmaking. “Just as with good sci-fi,” according to Jacobin, “the authors make a compelling case that, based on our current trajectory, a nightmare future is closer than we think.”
School Choice In The Real World
Title | School Choice In The Real World PDF eBook |
Author | Robert Maranto |
Publisher | Routledge |
Pages | 288 |
Release | 2018-04-27 |
Genre | Education |
ISBN | 0429965990 |
This book presents the first published accounts and evaluations of the first free market in education in the U.S., Arizona charter schools.. The charter school is fast becoming one of the most significant attempts at public education reform in this country. Over 1100 charter schools operate in twenty-seven states, with several hundred more to be added in the next two years. School Choice in the Real World looks at the charter school movement through a highly focused lens: it examines charter schools in Arizona, which currently account for nearly one-quarter of all charter schools. Using this state as a case study, the editors examine the experiences of actual charter school operators, social scientific analysis, policy discussions, and criticism and forecasting for the future. School choice is the most talked about reform of American public education, yet writings about choice remain highly speculative because no state has adopted a free market approach to education--until now. The charter school is fast becoming one of the most significant attempts at public education reform in this country. Over 1100 charter schools operate in twenty-seven states, with several hundred more to be added in the next two years. School Choice in the Real World looks at the charter school movement through a highly focused lens: it examines charter schools in Arizona, which currently account for nearly one-quarter of all charter schools.Since 1994, Arizona has implemented a charter school law with the lowest barriers to entry in the nation. As a result, Arizona has more than 200 charter school campuses. Some districts have even lost more than 10% of their students to charter schools. Using the state of Arizona as a case study, the editors examine the experiences of actual charter school operators, social scientific analysis, policy discussions, and criticism and forecasting for the future. The editors bring together academics, policy-makers, and practicioners, and they explain and evaluate how school choice works in the real world.