LWVeducation
In a survey of parent choice, parents would be willing to transport their children to schools farther away if 50% (rather than 40%) of the students in a school were similar to their own. While schools close to home are ranked first, other factors enter into decisions according to a Mathematica review. Districts respond but solutions are elusive. The tale of Minneapolis is one such example.
Sometimes it helps to hold on to hope! Yesterday, the value of public education was affirmed in at least four states.
Which states get it right? Not Florida. It was one of eight states that received an overall grade of ‘F’ when its grades were averaged across the categories studied. The Network for Public Education rated states based on six criteria.
For each category, I combined the percentages of A, B and C grades received across states. I was surprised at the results. Relatively few states (11) use test scores to punish students and teachers, but Florida is one of those that do. You can see the combined percentages (think of them as passing scores) at the end of each of the criteria.
The Fact Sheet on federal plans to reform the over emphasis on testing was released yesterday. The approach to school and teacher accountability has shifted from a strong emphasis on annual state assessments to one that uses multiple measures in ‘innovative’ ways. The principles for testing are those one would expect: tests should be worth taking, high quality, time limited, fair, transparent, one of multiple measures, and tied to improvement of learning.
Reading closely, it is apparent that annual testing remains for reading, writing, science and math. The use of test scores to evaluate the achievement of students in diverse groups and to determine which schools need additional support remains. There are, however, cracks in the system.
Many educational problems come down to money issues–how much is there, how much is needed, who has it? Which states are fair; which are not?
What does ‘fairness’ mean? School Funding Fairness shows how policies differ in a state by state report.
Florida gets it ‘half right’. How does your state rank?
You may not have watched the Senate Appropriations Committee hearing this week. It was about charter school management reform. Or was it? The speakers were from the charter sector and from school districts.
It was not until the last minute of a two hour session that you found out what really was at stake. A major battle is forming.
by Pat Drago and Sue Legg
This is not an easy walk into the woods, but you need to know where the funding for charter schools comes from and where it goes. It is your money.
There is a lot money to be made and lost with charter schools, and it is public tax dollars. As usual, independent schools tend to lose it, and large charter management chains come out on top. This is not always to the children’s benefit. How does this happen? We looked at the audits and found huge disparities in facility and fee expenditures. This meant that instructional parts of the budgets were reduced accordingly.
We wanted to know how these facilities were financed. If State funds were creating opportunities to make real estate venture capitalists wealthy, we wanted to know how this worked. Unfortunately, public dollars that go to private companies are hard to see. The lack of transparency for their financial records provides only vague outlines. We did find some clues by looking at how facilities are financed.
We wondered what other states were doing to ensure that state money was allocated for instruction and not for profit making ventures. We found some answers. As always, different approaches have their share of unintended consequences. As we groped in the darkness, there was a glimmer of light. The brave among you are invited to go down this path with us.