Good day, CharterFolk.
Short on time today. Let’s just get through the news as quickly as we can.
We lead with dismal PISA scores.
Not the happiest news to lead with, I know.
Just trying to keep it real around here, CharterFolk.
On a more inspiring front, Eva Moskowitz writes compellingly about the state suppressing the release of achievement data from her schools – data showing that her students are far outpacing students in district schools.
An amazing story out of Los Angeles about Scholarship Prep – an organization whose schools I have visited many times – doing phenomenal things with homeless students.
Continued growth anecdotes.
North Carolina continues to be one of our most compelling momentum stories.
But growth is currently a hard slog in this environment of declining enrollment. Some of the estimates I am now hearing about overall K–12 enrollment loss this year are staggering.
I’ll return to this shortly.
Meanwhile, positive news keeps coming in about charter school performance.
The data case in Indianapolis continues to build. Here is one from last spring that I never highlighted before.
Meanwhile, a new local funding measure is being brought forward in Indianapolis that includes all schools. It is heartening to see almost all parties step up to support it.
With only one entity, sadly and predictably, opposing the new measure.
Parker Baxter recently released more compelling data about the historic progress that charter schools have made in Denver.
Would that the Denver Public Schools Board were as exemplary as Denver’s charter schools.
Embroiled in the middle of the controversy is a district board member who is an employee of the teacher union.
It’s a fairly common practice, though teacher union employees will often deny their employment status, requiring journalists to suss out the truth.
This is the same district where not too long ago school board members learned from the union that the district’s search for a CEO had been terminated.
Of course, this is also the district whose misrepresentations about its finances are now being called out by an independent ratings agency.
You can delay accountability only so long …
… as it looks Rhode Island’s charter-school-moratorium-supporting governor is preparing to demonstrate.
Speaking of accountability, last month I highlighted how the July jobs report included roughly 58,000 local-government-education job losses.
Now the August report shows 42,000 new hires.
So these numbers are clearly bouncing around, and I should not read too much into any one month’s result.
Still, across the past four months, local-government education employment is down about 36,000 jobs.
Just trying to keep it real here, CharterFolk.