Lá por Fora

Do new exams produce better teachers? States act while educators debate

 

Porque Será Que Não M’Admiro?

Mas este é um daqueles exemplos um pouco na senda dos objectivos originais das charter schools americanas destinadas a dar uma melhor educação a quem dela precisava e não encontrava oferta adequada.

Só que isso afasta muita gente…

Charter schools more segregated than traditional public schools

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — At Sugar Creek Charter School on North Tryon Street in Charlotte, black students make up 96% of the student body while at Community School of Davidson, black students account for about 3% of the school.

And a Duke University researcher who studied charter schools in North Carolina found charters are more racially segregated than traditional public schools.

Charter school advocates say the segregation is an inevitable part of giving parents choice over where their kids go to school and parents and students are just “voting with their feet.”

“I honestly have never met a soul who said, ‘I chose Sugar Creek because all the kids were black.’  I just haven’t,” said Cheryl Turner, Director at Sugar Creek Charter School.

At charter schools students typically apply and are chosen at random through a lottery.  So charters say their students simply reflect the races of the applicant pool.

At last count there were 709 black students at Sugar Creek and five whites.

“When we have open house we might have three white parents come and a lot of times, if they come and see who else is here, this isn’t the choice they want to make,” said Turner.

Turner says neighborhood schools, especially elementary schools, near North Tryon and West Sugar Creek are also largely segregated.

“So this environment -– a segregated environment –- is the school they were going to go to if they went to school in Mecklenburg County,” she said.

But while Sugar Creek offers bus service and free and reduced school lunches, many charters don’t.

 

The American Way

Agradecendo a referência ao Pedro D:

How Colleges Are Selling Out the Poor to Court the Rich

A new report finds hundreds of schools are charging low-income students obscene prices, even while lavishing tuition discounts on their wealthier classmates.

 

 

Ranking De Profissões

Nas 10 melhores estão algumas muito ligadas à pura ficção, mas a maior parte está no ramo dos especialistas médicos.

O giro é que parece ser melhor andar a colocar tijolos do que a gerir exposições e museus…

Jobs Rated 2013: Ranking 200 Jobs From Best To Worst

Os professorzecos estão em 93º, um bocado acima de advogados (117º) e economistas (120º) o que me faz pensar que a América, afinal, não é assim tão injusta.

Como historiador (25º) é que estaria bem… tenho de ponderar o futuro e ver se emigro de vez…

 

Enquanto Se Fala De Boston

Texas fertilizer plant explosion:
14 bodies recovered from site

Bodies include those of firefighters who were tackling a blaze at the West Fertilizer Company when blast occurred.

Texas explosion: residents of West shocked by devastation

Report: As many as 35 killed in Texas plant explosion

 

Lá Por Fora

 

Já Foram Convidados Para Uma Entrevista Na RTP

Seis políticos norte-americanos detidos por suborno na corrida a “mayor” de Nova Iorque

 

A Ler Com Alguma Atenção

Equal or Fair?
A Study of Revenues and Expenditures in American Charter Schools

Algumas curiosidades:

Páginas 3-4:

Expenditures: In most states, charter schools report spending less money per pupil than traditional public schools. They spend less on instruction, student support services and teacher salaries. This study finds, however, that charter schools pay more for administration, both as a percentage of overall spending as well as for the salaries they pay administrative personnel.

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Página 8:

Lower teacher salaries are often the result not of greater efficiency but of lesser quality. While some schools may enjoy a loyal and talented staff who stay when the school simply does not have money for better salaries, it is fair to say that lower salaries often result from a lower level of qualifications — especially in years of experience — of teachers recruited by or seeking employment in charter schools. Thus, the cost advantage of lower salaries may be offset by a loss in valuable expertise, and as such they may be seen as a disadvantage rather than an advantage.

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Lower costs may stem from lesser services. Unlike public schools, charter schools are not obligated to provide such additional services as adult education or vocational education.

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Lower costs may come from greater student selectivity. With some exceptions, charter schools generally serve students who are less costly to educate than students in traditional public schools. Enrollments in charters schools are more concentrated at the elementary level, where per-pupil costs are lowest.  Charter schools also have considerably fewer students classified as English Language Learners, fewer English students with special education needs, or both. Those students with disabilities who are enrolled in charter schools tend to have mild and less-costly-to-remediate disabilities. While traditional public schools do receive special education funds from state and federal sources, those seldom cover all the costs incurred; districts thus must cover additional special education costs as part of their current operating expenses.

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Mas há mais coisas interessantes em todo o documento que demonstra que em especial as charter schools geridas por organizações lucrativas conseguem baixar os encargos pagando menos aos professores, prestando menos serviços aos alunos e pagando mais a uma curta elite ligada à administração.

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Onde é nós já (ou) vimos isto?

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O Objectivo Da Coligação MEC/Privados Em Relação À Carreira Docente

Este é o resumo do que se passa em Los Angeles, no grupo privado Green Dot, o único que aceita professores sindicalizados:

Onde acham que os nossos arranjaram inspiração para aquelas boas práticas?

 

Informar, Informar, Informar…

A Simple Way to Send Poor Kids to Top Colleges

THE packages arrived by mail in October of the students’ senior year of high school. They consisted of brightly colored accordion folders containing about 75 sheets of paper. The sheets were filed with information about colleges: their admissions standards, graduation rates and financial aid policies.

The students receiving the packages were mostly high-achieving, low-income students, and they were part of a randomized experiment. The researchers sending the packets were trying to determine whether most poor students did not attend selective colleges because they did not want to, or because they did not understand that they could.

The results are now in, and they suggest that basic information can substantially increase the number of low-income students who apply to, attend and graduate from top colleges.

 

Lá Como Cá…

… o que interessa é vender a narrativa de sucesso.

Charter proponents make small talk in WSJ

 

Pela Blogosfera – Diane Ravitch’s Blog

Vouchers Don’t Work: Evidence from Milwaukee

 

Lá por Fora

Chicago school closings ignite furor and fears

The announcement last week that Chicago Public Schools will close 54 schools before classes begin next fall is creating a furor and igniting fears.

 

E O Deles Anda Pelos 4-5%!

Forget the Good Jobs Report, Long-Term Unemployment Is Still Terrifying

 

Lá Por Fora

Judge Says State Cannot Withhold Aid to City Schools Over Teacher Evaluation Impasse

State officials, for now, cannot stop $260 million in aid from flowing into New York City’s schools as a penalty for the city’s failure to iron out a plan for evaluating public school teachers, a state judge ruled this week.

 

Follow The Money

Special Report: The profit motive behind virtual schools in Maine

Documents expose the flow of money and influence from corporations that stand to profit from state leaders’ efforts to expand and deregulate digital education.

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A investigação tem alguns meses mas foi agora premiada.

Por cá… as investigações ou não se fazem ou, sendo feitas, dão origem a inspecções que… plufffff…

 

Sobre A Educação Especial

Com algum interesse:

Shifting Trends in Special Education

 

Leituras Inconvenientes

The inconvenient truth of education ‘reform’

(…)

Events this week revealed how market-driven education policies, deceivingly labeled as “reform,” are revealing their truly destructive effects on the streets and in the corridors of government.

From the streets, we heard from civil rights and social justice activists from urban communities that school turnaround policies mandated by the Obama administration’s education agenda are having disastrous results in the communities they were originally intended to serve.

From the corridors of government, we were presented with irrefutable evidence that leaders driving the reform agenda are influencing public officials to write education laws in a way that benefits corporate interests rather than the interests of students, parents, and schools.

 

Por Nova York

Demand a Moratorium on School Closures & Co-locations!

Over the past 12 years, the Bloomberg administration has closed 140 schools. 60% of new elementary and middle schools have performed worse than the ones they replaced.

Simultaneously, the Mayor’s Dept. of Education has forced public schools to co-locate with charter schools, often resulting in huge inequities in classroom resources within individual school buildings.

None of the Mayor’s policies have been more divisive or created more opposition from parents, students and communities than forced school closings and co-locations.

 

Discursos

Proposta do João Tavares: