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I work at one of those high-performing charter schools that serves primarily low-income students. It's interesting hearing the criticisms of the charter moveme
by adpirz 12y ago
I work at one of those high-performing charter schools that serves primarily low-income students. It's interesting hearing the criticisms of the charter movement as a whole considering its actually made up of many different types of schools serving many different demographics. That said, there are quite a few studies, the Stanford CREDO study cited in the article chief among them, that demonstrate the effectiveness high-performing charter networks aimed at lower income populations (Uncommon Schools, Achievement Prep, and RePublic Schools in the south -- also where I work).
Also, we have, to my knowledge, one of the only compulsory middle school computer programming courses in the state (that's what I teach), maybe the country--the goal being that all of our kids have solid computer programming and web development fundamentals under their belt before they graduate high school.
- mc32 12y agoI wish San Francisco could bring itself to embrace charter schools. SF is a perennial laggard in educational performance for its public schools. There are a few good schools, mostly heavily leaning Asian --due to parental acculturation. But, for the most part the schools are very under-performing. I wish there was something to get them to address the issue --and parents need to stop thinking 'education' and aptitude begin and stop in the classroom. Also, it would help to have special schools for children of parents for whom education was not part of their upbringing --those kids need some full blown indoctrination to get them to see schooling as an essential part of their lives and not something which interrupts their lives.
- adpirz 12y agoI don't know about SF proper, but there's a pretty sizable charter movement in the Bay Area. See: http://www.kippbayarea.org/ http://www.kippbayarea.org/ http://www.rsed.org/bayarea/ http://www.rsed.org/bayarea/ Those are two off the top of my head, but I'm pretty sure there are others...