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Reports on ana evaluation of the legislativelu mandated process of evaluation of California's nonclassroom-based charter school. ... Read more

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The Brown Center on Education Policy conducts research on topics in American education, with a special focus on efforts to improve academic achievement in elementary and secondary schools. The Center seeks to inform policymakers at all levels of government, to influence the course of future educational research and to produce a body of work valuable not only to policymakers and scholars, but also to parents, teachers, administrators, taxpayers, school board members and the general public. The 2002 report address three concerns: whether arithmetic skills are declining; what US students think of American high schools after attending school abroad; and how the nation's top high schools in football, basketball and baseball perform on tests of reading and maths. ... Read more

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Parents Founding Charter Schools investigates the founding, development, and early operations of two start-up, parent-run charter schools in neighboring urban areas in California. Both schools were among the first 105 charters approved in the state and provide an "up close and personal" view of the early years of charter organizing. The ethnographic case study method allows us to witness the impact of external and internal barriers to decentralization on the lives and relationships of charter parents, teachers, and administrators. Also rendered visible are the connections between internal chaos after the schools are operational and decisions or compromises made by sponsors and charter founders during the early developmental stages of the organizations. ... Read more

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Since Minnesota enacted the first legislation in 1991, charter school reform has swept the country. Although their stances are vastly different, both proponents and opponents of the charter movement emphasize its privatizing aspects. In this book Stacy Smith argues that the tendency to emphasize the privatizing, market-oriented aspects of charter reform is overly simplistic. Consequently, virtually all debate on the topic neglects, or at least downplays, the democratizing potentials of charter schools. She urges others interested in preserving the "public" nature of public education to consider such potentials as equalized and expanded choice, inclusive decision making, and localized accountability before summarily writing off charter school reform as antidemocratic. ... Read more

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This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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The Brown Center Report on American Education enters its fourth year of publication with the 2003 Report. The first section uses the latest and best available evidence to evaluate student achievement in America's schools. The second section investigates the characteristic of rural schools and examines their academic performance. The third section of the report presents a follow-up to the 2002 study of charter schools, and breaks out an analysis of state test results for "conversion" charters and those charters run by education management operatiors. ... Read more

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Written in a user-friendly fashion, this volume brings together the best scholarly articles in charter schooling by national experts and leaders. It is the ideal introduction for those interested in the charter school movement with numerous insights for and by charter operators, administrators, and teachers as well as the academic community. ... Read more

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Sponsored by the National Center on School Choice, a research consortium headed by Vanderbilt University, this volume examines the growth and outcomes of the charter school movement. Starting in 1992-93 when the nation’s first charter school was opened in Minneapolis, the movement has now spread to 40 states and the District of Columbia and by 2005-06 enrolled 1,040,536 students in 3,613 charter schools. The purpose of this volume is to help monitor this fast-growing movement by compiling, organizing and making available some of the most rigorous and policy-relevant research on K-12 charter schools. Key features of this important new book include:

Expertise – The National Center on School Choice includes internationally known scholars from the following institutions: Harvard University, Brown University, Stanford University, Brookings Institution, National Bureau of Economic Research and Northwest Evaluation Association.

Cross-Disciplinary – The volume brings together material from related disciplines and methodologies that are associated with the individual and systemic effects of charter schools.

Coherent Structure – Each section begins with a lengthy introduction that summarizes the themes and major findings of that section. A summarizing chapter by Mark Schneider, the Commissioner of the National Center on Educational Statistics, concludes the book.

This volume is appropriate for researchers, instructors and graduate students in education policy programs and in political science and economics, as well as in-service administrators, policy makers, and providers.

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The Charter Schools Decade provides a thorough, unbiased explanation of the charter schools phenomenon. Now well into its second decade, the charter schools movement has not been scrutinized carefully; it has enjoyed largely positive press generated by its advocates and occasionally some bitter criticism of opponents. Lockwood also examines problems and obstacles that charter schools need to overcome in order to succeed, and she gives a glimpse of what the next decade holds for charter schools. This book explores: _ ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Government Finance Review, published by Government Finance Officers Association on October 1, 2001. The length of the article is 2728 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Charter Schools and Private Profits.
Author: David N. Plank
Publication: Government Finance Review (Magazine/Journal)
Date: October 1, 2001
Publisher: Government Finance Officers Association
Volume: 17Issue: 5Page: 14

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The public cares so much about the education ofits children that schooling frequently becomes a political issue as partisans propose means for improving schools and support them with appealing rationale. This has certainly been the case with the charter school movement.

Proponents have seen charter schools as a means to improve student achievement and make schools more accountable to the public. The charter school movement has swept across the country powered by the momentum of these appealing ideas, even without data demonstrating these much touted benefits. Gordon Castanza provides an analysis of the history of the charter school movement and of school accountability. His original research reveals the answer to the question, "Are charter schools more accountable to the public than other schools?" Carolyn H. Chapman, Professor Emerita, U. of Nevada, Reno ... Read more

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Kudos for first research-based book about charter schools
Dr. Castanza's pioneering work provides the first comprehensive study from Alaska of the core issue in the current debate over the charter school system - the need to match freedom with accountability. His objective, factual examination reveals the current down-playing of accountability, traces the problem to the political tendencies which impact the school system, and digs deep down to the philosophical underpinnings of these tendencies. ... Read more

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Easy-to-read interpretations of theory are accompanied by practical applications. ... Read more

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This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's large-scale digitization efforts. The Library seeks to preserve the intellectual content of items in a manner that facilitates and promotes a variety of uses. The digital reformatting process results in an electronic version of the original text that can be both accessed online and used to create new print copies. The Library also understands and values the usefulness of print and makes reprints available to the public whenever possible. This book and hundreds of thousands of others can be found in the HathiTrust, an archive of the digitized collections of many great research libraries. For access to the University of Michigan Library's digital collections, please see http://www.lib.umich.edu and for information about the HathiTrust, please visit http://www.hathitrust.org ... Read more

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Takes the reader inside the world of individual educational entrepreneurs who have created charter schools from scratch and lived to tell about it. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Uneven quality
I try to read only current literature on charter schools because there's so much out there and I don't want to waste my time reading something outdated when I can be reading something that's more applicable to now. Since 2004 is (fairly) recent, I thought that it would be a good book to read. However, all of the essays refer to statistics from 1998 and 1999, as if that's the most current stats available, which makes me wonder if the author compiled these essays a while ago and just barely published them.

I wasn't impressed with some of the essays. One spent the first 2 - 3 pages telling his readers all about his background - where he worked, what companies he started, etc. I couldn't figure that out - did he really think that we cared? Didn't he realize that the readers are only focused on the process of starting the charter school itself, and any of his personal information is, quite frankly, pretty inapplicable? I can see him mentioning briefly that he's started X amount of companies and Y amount of non-profit organizations, just so that the reader knows that he has some background doing that, but a complete rundown of his professional background was unnecessary. At least to me it was.

So there were essays like that, and then there were essays (like the gentleman who started a charter school in Florida as part of his duties for a transportation company) that were really interesting and well-written. It was those essays that saved this book. Also, the introductory and closing chapter, written by Deal - those were well-written and had quite a bit of interesting information in them.

I would say don't buy the book. There isn't going to be anything here that you need to reread later anyway. Just borrow from your local public library and call it good. It's a fairly quick and easy read (the essays themselves are easy to read anyway - the introduction and closing contain more information and take a little longer to read). You won't have a problem getting the book back to the library in time.

Stories of failure and success, victories and defeats
The collaborative work of academicians Terrence E. Deal (former Irving R. Melbo Scholar, Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California) and Guilbert C. Hentschke (Cooper Chair in Education, Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California), Adventures Of Charter School Creators: Leading From The Ground Up is a seminal work in the areas of comparative education, educational reform, and academic leadership. The subjects are individual educational entrepreneurs who created charter school from scratch. Here are stories of failure and success, victories and defeats. Included are "education amateurs" such as an Episcopal priest working in the Pico-Union community of Las Angles; 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; and a retired military officer in North Carolina. There are also represented a number of experienced school teachers and school administrators as well. Arising from these stories are examinations of relevant issues the impact of entrepreneurial leadership upon school leadership, the differences between leadership in autonomous start-up charters and relatively dependent traditional schools, and what distinguishes charter school leadership from that more typically associated with traditional school leadership. Adventures Of Charter School Creators: Leading From The Group Up is an impressive work of considered scholarship and a highly recommended contribution to the on-going national dialogue over the advantages and disadvantages of charter schools within private and public education reform movements.
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This text is the result of the first national-scale study of charter school accountability. The authors researched 150 schools and 60 authorizing agencies in Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, and Michigan. ... Read more

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A decade ago there were only two charter schools in the United States. Today there are more than 2,400, serving more than half a million students. Charter schools are public schools that are free from many of the regulations that have long governed public education. Supporters include many of the country’s most prominent educators and politicians, among them President George W. Bush, who hope charter schools will reshape education, especially where it proves most challenging—in the inner city. The fact that most charter schools promise smaller classes and more parental involvement makes them immensely appealing to the nation’s most disadvantaged families. Charter school detractors, on the other hand, fear that these alternative schools will irredeemably ruin public education, drawing away the talented students and the most involved parents.

Clearly the stakes are high. But few Americans understand what a charter school really is—or what is involved in trying to create, attend, and teach in one. Written by a renowned journalist and education writer, and a former inner-city school teacher himself, Hard Lessons is the first book to capture the human drama of the entire experience. For three years, Jonathan Schorr was allowed complete access to the students, teachers, and parents of the E.C. Reems Academy in Oakland, California, making him uniquely qualified to tell their fascinating story. But would the new school succeed in effectively teaching children from urban neighborhoods where success is rare? Would it become a whole new bureaucracy or sabotage itself from within? The answers are found in the moving stories of some deeply involved yet very different individuals.

Among them, there is Nazim Casey, Jr.—rescued from his crack-addicted parents, he’s the last-chance child who will put inner-city charters to their ultimate test; William Stewart—a father whose fury at his daughter’s failed public school propels him into activism; Eugene Ruffin—the entrepreneur who helped introduce the personal computer to America, then collaborated with Wal-Mart heir John Walton to “invest” in education; and Valentin Del Rio—a young teacher whose idealism turns to exhaustion and the search for a punctual paycheck.

Through successes and setbacks, Hard Lessons reveals just how difficult it is, even with the best of intentions, to offer a quality education to every child in America. The story of E.C. Reems Academy offers invaluable lessons for anyone interested in America’s most pressing domestic concern. At once harrowing and hopeful, and in the finest tradition of modern nonfiction, Hard Lessons is one of the most important books to come along in decades. ... Read more

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Great Education Story With Lessons Beyond Education
I always like reading about industries unfamiliar to me firsthand because success and obstacles have common threads across industries, and looking from the outside in often gives a perspective that is tough to see when you're waist deep in immediate issues.Jonathan Schorr's Hard Lessons is a play-by-play of Oakland's struggle to open charter schools in the inner city.Told from multiple points of view -- teacher, student, parent, administration -- it's a fascinating story but also a good coaching book.Some lessons from Hard Lessons:

Progress can take a while.Schorr spends time describing the difficult start-up phase before and after the charter schools opened.You can feel how slow and seemingly hopeless the circumstances were.Yet, because we can see the fruits of plowing through the difficulty, we get the benefit (without the interminable wait) of hindsight and the encouragement that we too can prevail if we want something as badly as some of those parents wanted a good education for their kids.

But just because we push doesn't mean we have to rush.Some of the biggest problems came when decisions were rushed -- hiring calls where no references were checked, teachers using an approach without training and therefore digging a deeper hole for themselves.There are numerous examples of haste makes waste here.It reminds us that even when we want to move things forward, we shouldn't push things.

Sometimes you need to reconsider options you earlier might have dismissed.The parents who lobbied so hard against the district schools later aligned themselves with the district when a new administration came in.Great lesson on how we shouldn't be afraid to go back, reassess, and perhaps move in a direction that was not ideal before.Our circumstances change, and we should always adjust for what's best now, even if that means doing something deemed less than ideal before.
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Let's Face Reality
Powers has held a mirror up to the charter school movement and is forcing educators to look at the reality and ignore the rhetoric. ... Read more

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This volume brings together the most current empirical research on two important innovations reshaping American education today-voucher programs and charter schools. Contributors include the foremost analysts in education policy. Of specific significance is cutting-edge research that evaluates the impact of vouchers on academic performance in the New York City, Washington, D.C., and Dayton, Ohio, school systems. The volume also looks beyond the American experience to consider the impact of market-based education as pioneered by New Zealand.

Contributors also take stock of the movement's effects on public schools in particular and public opinion at-large. With thorough summaries of the existing research and the legal issues facing school choice, Charters, Vouchers, and Public Education will be key to readers who want to stay current with the burgeoning debates on vouchers and charter schools.

Contributors include Terry Moe (Stanford University and the Hoover Institution), Gregg Vanourek (Yale University), Chester E. Finn Jr. (Manhattan Institute and the Fordham Foundation), Bruno V. Manno (Annie E. Casey Foundation), Michael Mintrom and David Plank (Michigan State University), Helen Ladd (Duke University), Edward Fiske (former New York Times columnist), Jay P. Greene (Manhattan Institute), William G. Howell (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Patrick J. Wolf (Georgetown University and the Brookings Institution), Mark Schneider, Paul Teske, Sara Clark, and S. P. Buckley (SUNY-Stony Brook), Robert Maranto (Villanova University), Frederick Hess (University of Virginia), Scott Milliman (James Madison University), Brett Kleitz (University of Houston), Kristin Thalhammer (St. Olaf College), Joseph Viteritti (New York University), Paul Hill (University of Washington and Brookings Institution), and Diane Ravitch (New York University and Brookings Institution). ... Read more

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A colorful look at rural America's rebound--and at the tensions created when urban expatriates meet old-time country values--centered on a Colorado community and its one-room school house.

In the 1990s, rural America increased in population three times faster than it did in the 1980s, as people left cities searching for a slower pace, new opportunities, and better schools. Battle Rock is the examination of one such rural community tucked into McElmo Canyon in the remote southwest corner of Colorado. From 1999-2000, Bill Celis lived in the community and attended Battle Rock school, which sits in the middle of the canyon, providing both a real and figurative divider between the longtime farmers and ranchers from the newer urban expatriates. As Celis warmly describes the daily lives of the canyon residents, the children, and their teacher, he carefully paints the portrait of a community under pressure resulting from conflicting viewpoints, goals and values. Along the way, he encounters bull snakes and loaded revolvers, Anasazi ruins and majestic vistas, poverty, stubbornness, ghosts, a cattle drive, and the daily struggles on the playground and in school board meetings. In Battle Rock, Celis puts to rest the common misperception that smaller communities offer simpler lives. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A Wonderful Book
"Battle Rock" is a marvelous book that is not only about the history of a one-room school and the life and times of one particular one-room school, but also a marvelous look at a way of life most of us didn't even know existed in the 21st century. Celis brings a sharp reporter's eye and a delightful easy-to-read writing style that makes this one of the best reads of the year. He has taken a very serious subject, has researched it thoroughly, and presents it in a personal, moving work. It is as if Celis is sitting next to you gently telling you what he has seen and heard and why it is important. He is a remarkable story-teller. Don't miss this wonderful reading experience.

Getting to know a little known part of America
A compelling read. The author takes the reader to a part of America that I never knew existed. This isn't like Mayberry, it's the new real west.
Celis takes you into the hearts and homes of the residents of Cortez. You really care what happens to the people in this story and get to see all sides of the conflict. A wonderful year-in-the-life look at the rural west and the folks that choose to live there. ... Read more