This has all been tried in other states before. It made no difference even to close the school. The poor kids just went to another school and it now became the bad school.

Prents and students of most poor performing schools didn’t want their schools closed when the day came.

Once again it will make no difference because the problem is not the principal or the teachers. The problem is poverty.

If it is a matter of poverty, if the performance of a student is so closely correlated to the student’s socio-economic status how is that proving that schools in Ontario are doing a good job ?

On the contrary, it shows the public schools are failing their mandate to equalize opportunity by giving a leg up to the most disadvantaged.

The poor are on the bottom educationally everywhere on Earth. The idea is relative success. The poor have a chance with public education and an even bigger chance when public education is well funded and targets the poor.

Would this be the same teachers union that boo-hoo’d at a new rule that teachers who taught in the California public schools couldn’t send their kids to private or alternative schools?

Tough cookies. The time the are a changing.

You will notice the CREDO study from Stanford university that Charter schools in the main do worse than public schools. That will soon be clear everywhere. I have no worries about that.

CREDO study just reinforces what I said in the blog posting following:

To quote respected Harvard economist Carolyn Hoxby, who wrote in response to the charge that charter schools lagged behind their public school peers:

“The goal of charter reforms is not creating good charter schools in the midst of mediocre public schools.  The goal is boosting the performance of all schools by fostering competition and innovation.  In the long run, we want to see charter schools and neighboring public schools perform similarly, all at a higher level.  In states with a significant charter presence, like Arizona and Michigan, there is evidence that public schools rise to the challenge and raise achievement faster when they face a charter competitor.“  (Wall St. Journal, Sept. 29 2004)

So the fact that charters appear not to be doing so well relative to their regular public counterparts, might just mean that “all boats rise” and that things are working out as they should.

Same answer as in other section except this.

After over a decade of NCLB, and choice the NAEP the only test that all American kids take, there has been no progress. Principal have been fired, schools have been closed especially all over Chicago where Duncan closed them, teachers have been re-assigned, students have been moved to other schools and so on. It has made no difference because the problem is, wait for it - poverty.

To quote Larry Cuban emeritas professor of education from Stanford, “it is very difficult for schools to make children equal within a society which is otherwise dedicated to making them unequal.“

To quote Vito Perrone former dean of the Graduate School of Education at Harvard, “standardized tests don’t tell us anything that we didn’t already know.“

Good for Governor Schwarzenegger!
He’s got the guts many politicians need nowadays to stand up to these teachers’ unions.
Very soon we’ll begin hearing about the positive results from his bold legislation.
Parents and children in California are very fortunate!

Cal-E-fow-nia will be laying off 20 000 public school teachers and will have classes of 42 in public schools. Since charter schools don’t do as well as public schools in academic achievement, it doesn’t seem much like progress.

Teacher bashing leads nowhere.