{"id":1539,"date":"2011-09-06T13:18:34","date_gmt":"2011-09-06T17:18:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/09\/copy-charter-schools-or-something-else-that-works.html"},"modified":"2011-09-06T13:18:34","modified_gmt":"2011-09-06T17:18:34","slug":"copy-charter-schools-or-something-else-that-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/09\/copy-charter-schools-or-something-else-that-works.html","title":{"rendered":"Copy charter schools or something else that works?"},"content":{"rendered":"Instead of copying \nfailed experiments like Hamilton County, Tennessee<\/a>,\nhow about copying some of the charter schools that do work?\nOr some other model that actually does work to improve education?\n

\nSam Dillon wrote for the NYTimes today,\n\nTroubled Schools Try Mimicking the Charters<\/a>\n

\nClassrooms are festooned with college pennants. Hallway placards proclaim:\n\u201cNo Excuses!\u201d Students win prizes for attendance. They start classes\nearlier and end later than their neighbors; some return to school on\nSaturdays. And they get to pore over math problems one-on-one with newly\nhired tutors, many of them former accountants and engineers.\n

\nIf these new mores at Lee High School, long one of Houston\u2019s most\ntroubled campuses, make it seem like one of those intense charter schools,\nthat is no accident.\n

\nIn the first experiment of its kind in the country, the Houston\npublic schools are testing whether techniques proven successful in\nhigh-performing urban charters can also help raise achievement in regular\npublic schools. Working with Roland G. Fryer, a researcher at Harvard who\nstudies the racial achievement gap, Houston officials last year embraced\nfive key tenets of such charters at nine district secondary schools;\nthis fall, they are expanding the program to 11 elementary schools. A\nsimilar effort is beginning in Denver.\n<\/blockquote>\nCharter schools were supposed to be pilot projects, so why not\nadopt what works there in public schools?\n

\nHowever, this still seems to be all about test scores.\nMaybe some public schools could look farther afield,\n\n\n\n<\/a>\nto places that successfully encourage students to think\nand be creative (you know, the skills needed for the\nknowledge-based jobs we say we need around here).\nAs far afield as\n\nShanghai<\/a>\nand\nFinland<\/a>.\nOne key in both places seems to be putting educators in charge\nand giving them pay and social status like doctors and lawyers.\n

\nAfter all, the Lowndes County Board of Education\n\njust recommended<\/a>\nhaving at least one kind of educational change be:\n

\ninitiated with the efforts of the educators and parents\n<\/blockquote>\nAnd the Valdosta Board of Education just said\n\n\nin its statement<\/a> that:\n
\nOur board will continue to support our students, leadership, teachers,\nand staff in improving the education for the children in our community.\n<\/blockquote>\nWhat if all that money CUEE is wasting trying to do something\nneither Board of Education wants, and that\n\neven the VDT has repudiated<\/a>;\nwhat if all that money and effort were spent instead\nhelping the Valdosta schools emulate Shanghai and the Lowndes County\nschools emulate Finland?\n

\nMaybe those aren’t perfect models for our local school systems;\nI don’t know; I’m not an educator.\nBut I do think at least investigating models that are actually working,\ninstead of copying \nfailed experiments<\/a>,\nwould be a good idea.\nAnd instead of businessmen with no experience in education,\ninstead putting educators in charge, that makes sense to me.\n

\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Instead of copying failed experiments like Hamilton County, Tennessee, how about copying some of the charter schools that do work? Or some other model that actually does work to improve education? Sam Dillon wrote for the NYTimes today, Troubled Schools Try Mimicking the Charters Classrooms are festooned with college pennants. Hallway placards proclaim: \u201cNo Excuses!\u201d […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,40,1376,15,3305,1105,1106,133],"tags":[1485,1860,8829,8705,904,8869,8701,2106,8815,7,3842,776,1858,3840,3841,6,8816],"class_list":["post-1539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-community","category-cuee","category-education","category-fvcs","category-lcboe","category-vboe","category-vdt","tag-charter-school","tag-creativity","tag-cuee","tag-education","tag-finland","tag-fvcs","tag-georgia","tag-houston","tag-lcboe","tag-lowndes-county","tag-shanghai","tag-status","tag-teachers","tag-test","tag-thinking","tag-valdosta","tag-vboe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-oP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}