By a 4–3 vote that reversed its earlier decision, the North Carolina Charter Schools Advisory Board (CSAB) has rejected a proposal to create a charter school focused on growing “indigenous leader practitioners” in the state’s poorest and the nation’s most ethnically diverse rural county. NPQ has covered Robeson County before, when it was selected to serve […]
Charter Schools Raise Core Questions Regarding How We Educate Our Children
This month, the US Department of Education awarded eight states a total of $313.4 million over five years to grow the number and size of “high quality” public charter schools to serve “traditionally underserved students;” the money is estimated to benefit about 300 schools and is part of a larger five-year, $399-million initiative. Arkansas, one of the eight states […]
Waco Looks Inward to Turn Around Troubled Schools
It’s now a familiar story: low-performing schools, nearly 100 percent poor kids of color, are given a stark set of choices by the state education agency, first through No Child Left Behind and now through the Every Child Succeeds Act (ESSA)—close, reconstitute with new staff, or cede control to non-district charter operators. The affected communities […]
Political Kickbacks and Schools as Guinea Pigs
NPQ has frequently reported on the well-financed national strategy to privatize schools, on charter school proponents’ misplaced belief that changing schools and teachers rather than focusing on systemic poverty will remedy the racial achievement gap, on charter schools’ accountability, and on the increasingly unusual approach taken by the Waco school board to partner with a […]