Saturday, March 26, 2011

Charter School Champion Shifts Focus

Charter School Champion Shifts Focus
Sam Dillon

New York Times
March 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/us/26charter.html?ref=education

Topic: The evolution of Charter Schools

This is an article about the founder of an organization who has more enthusiasm than patience and is moving on from his project to take on new ones. It is a typical pattern.

Key Points: Steve Barr, the founder of an LA based charter school organization, "Green Dot" has moved on to form his own organization in New York and elsewhere.

Green Dot is one of a dozen or so nonprofit, high-performing charter chains that focus on students from low-income families and have grown rapidly over the past decade with philanthropic financing. Most of the others, which include the Kipp Schools, with 99 schools in 20 states, and Achievement First, with 19 schools in Connecticut and New York, operate with largely nonunion teachers.

Green Dot is similar but staffs its schools with union represented teachers.

Relevance: The article is a good jumping off point for a look at different charter school operations. It references a forthcoming book about the Green Dot experience written by Alexander Russo, which might be interesting to those with interest on the subject.

2 comments:

  1. I am super interested in Charter Schools. The Community School in Forest Grove sounds particularly intriguing. I have many questions about how they operate. If we had one here in Newberg I would have definitely looked into.I love that parents are having some options.

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  2. If you are interested in seeing some information about the LA high school Green Dot took over:

    http://www.greendot.org/green_dot039s_transformation_of_locke_high_school_yields_impressive_retention_and_enrollment_rates

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