Download Free Understanding And Assessing The Charter School Movement Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Understanding And Assessing The Charter School Movement and write the review.

Shows how charter schools have changed in the years since their development, looks at their role in educational reform, and provides background information and details for the future of chartering.
The expert contributors to this volume tell how state laws and policies have stacked the deck against charter schools by limiting the number of charter schools allowed in a state, forbidding for-profit firms from holding charters, forcing them to pay rent out of operating funds, and other ways. They explain how these policies can be amended to level the playing field and give charter schools—and the children they serve—a fairer chance to succeed.
The charter school movement is not only an experiment that identifies the best educational methods but also as a tool to achieve change within the educ. systems. California has more than 100 charter schools, and there is tension between their critics and proponents. The authors visited 26 charter schools, including the first, the largest and a mix of urban and rural sites. While the academic results are not clear, charter schools can be judged at least a partial success on the basis of test scores, parental satisfaction, academic innovation, enhanced opportunities for teachers, and increased focus on low-achieving students.
When charter schools first arrived on the American educational scene, few observers suspected that within two decades thousands of these schools would be established, serving almost a million and a half children across forty states. The widespread popularity of these schools, and of the charter movement itself, speaks to the unique and chronic desire for substantive change in American education. As an innovation in governance, the ultimate goal of the charter movement is to improve learning opportunities for all students—not only those who attend charter schools but also students in public schools that are affected by competition from charters. In The Charter School Experiment, a select group of leading scholars traces the development of one of the most dynamic and powerful areas of education reform. Contributors with varying perspectives on the charter movement carefully evaluate how well charter schools are fulfilling the goals originally set out for them: introducing competition to the school sector, promoting more equitable access to quality schools, and encouraging innovation to improve educational outcomes. They explore the unintended effects of the charter school experiment over the past two decades, and conclude that charter schools are entering a new phase of their development, beginning to serve purposes significantly different from those originally set out for them.
This book begins with the claims of policymakers and explores charter schools at each stage of the policymaking process, from legislation to implementation. Powers carefully and thoroughly examines how features of schools' policy contexts shape the ways that charter school reform unfolds at schools, providing a nuanced portrait of the schools participating in this much discussed and little understood reform movement. While policymakers are often prone to making sweeping claims about the efficacy of charter schools, in practice charter school reform is much more complex. By drawing on an extensive and compelling range of data, Powers assesses the validity of policymakers claims.
As charter schools enter their third decade, research in this key sector remains overwhelmingly contradictory and confused. Many studies are narrowly focused; some do not meet the standards for high-quality academic research. In this definitive work, Wohlstetter and her colleagues isolate and distill the high-quality research on charter schools to identify the contextual and operational factors that influence these schools’ performances. The authors examine the track record of the charter sector in light of the wide range of goals set for these schools in state authorizing legislation—at the classroom level, the level of the school community, and system-wide. In particular, they show how the evolution of the charter movement has shaped research questions and findings. By highlighting what we know about the conditions for success in charter schools, the authors make a significant contribution to current debates in policy and practice, both within the charter sector and in the larger landscape of public education.
This book breaks new ground on how policymakers and journalists can fairly assess charter school performance. The editors and authors show how good approaches to charter school assessment would also work for regular public schools, which is important because of the requirements of No Child Left Behind.
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.
This book examines reform in American education over the past fifty years and against this backdrop presents a compelling analysis of why contemporary voucher plans and charter schools have yet to fulfill the expectations of their advocates. It is the only book to date to attempt a comprehensive synthesis and analysis of the emerging research base on vouchers and charter schools. Suitable for courses in school policy, school reform, school leadership, or educational issues, it will also be of interest to anyone (parents, teachers, policymakers) directly involved with the charter school movement. Key features of this timely new book include the following: * A Historical Perspective--The early chapters look at American educational reform over the past fifty years and analyze why these efforts have fallen short of their goals. * Student Achievement--Chapter 3 provides an insightful assessment of American students' school achievement from 1970 to the present and, in the process, counters the widely held myth that, overall, student achievement has deteriorated. * Voucher Plans and Charter Schools--Chapter 4 looks specifically at choice and vouchers in American education while chapters 5-7 provide a comprehensive and balanced examination of the charter school movement. * Policy Recommendations--The book concludes with explicit policy suggestions that attempt to balance the educational needs of children and youth against the rights of schools to experiment. Suggestions for developing broader coalitions to support public education, particularly in the inner cities, are also offered.
From one of the foremost authorities on education in the United States, former U.S. assistant secretary of education, an incisive, comprehensive look at today’s American school system that argues against those who claim it is broken and beyond repair; an impassioned but reasoned call to stop the privatization movement that is draining students and funding from our public schools. In a chapter-by-chapter breakdown she puts forth a plan for what can be done to preserve and improve our public schools. She makes clear what is right about U.S. education, how policy makers are failing to address the root causes of educational failure, and how we can fix it.