For a comprehensive roundup of recent news and developments regardingcharters and parent choice in Illinois,see this page from the Heritage Foundation.
The schools website saysit has a humanities based focus dedicated to teaching literature,history, and fine arts and that it uses Houghton-Mifflin textbooks,which have a literacy-based learning program for all subjects, including science and math.
First, charters are not in themselves a reform strategy; they are a blank slate.They are simply an opportunity to try something new, and they run the gamut from alternativeschools for inner-city dropouts and incarcerated teens to International Baccalaureateacademies in posh suburbs. A welter of studies has laid claims to both the superiority of charters andtheir inferiority, but we dont learn much from that.To discuss their effectiveness as a groupmeans about as much as trying to evaluate whether restaurants, as a group, are good.Some are wonderful, some dreadful, some have shut down and some probably ought to.
Erie Elementary Charter School:The website makes heavy reference to belief in Howard Gardners nciful theory of multiple intelligences.
Sounds great, right?Not all schools operating under theCCSF and CICS name have the same great curriculum! Heres how it works: TheChicago Charter School Foundationis the umbrella authority for all of theChicago International Charter Schools (CICS). The CCSF providesa host of business functions.But the actual operation of the schools, including curriculum and instructional design,is conducted by somevery different independent companies. Its all explainedhereon their website. These current CCSF operator partners are:
The only result of more or fewer students than estimated is actualrevenue that is either more or less than estimated. The key wordhere isestimated. A fundamental task of the school budget process,and one of the primary jobs of a district accounting office and localboard, is estimating next years student count. School districts inOhio know -- and have known for ages -- that they ce stiff competitionfrom other education providers (charters for sure but also homeschooling, virtual schooling, and private schooling). While they wailto the press about these pressures,districts continue to makeenrollment projections that pretend that charters dont exist, orarent the popular alternative they are,and they continue tooverestimate district enrollment. Thats not the ult of charterschools. Its the ult of naïve enrollment projections from peoplewho ought to know better.
Opponents of charter schools ...are monopolists. They want regular public schools protected fromcompetition at all costs. I suppose there is an argument formonopoly, but we must wonder whether critics of monopoly wouldpractice what they preach in other matters in which we take choicefor granted. Do the critics of charter schools wish to be forced tobuy Fords simply because Ford has llen on hard times and could usethe business or be required to buy HP computers though they mightprefer Apple or Dell? If they go to church, do they wish to paytithes to the church located closest to their house, though it isCatholic and they are Protestants? What if they do not go to church?If they live in Fort Collins, Colorado would they agree in all casesto send their children to C.S.U. and not to U.N.C. or to ColoradoCollege or to The Citadel or to M.I.T.? Would these public-schoolapologists as parents agree to have their children go only to theclosest pediatrician or dentist? Might they agree to being DenverBroncos ns even if they grew up in Pittsburgh or Dallas?
Illinois Charter School Developer Handbook(no current link available):This is an outstanding first source for information on starting a charter school in Illinois,prepared by Leadership for Quality Education (LQE), which has since merged into the Illinois Network of Charter Schools (INCS).However, the handbook gives the bad news in its introduction:
!-- this may have changed, so comment out ...
-- Jonathan Schorr, author and high school program director for the KIPP Foundation, Washington Post, September 11, 2005.
A very disturbing aspect of the UNO charter school system is that their own website provides (as of November 2008)no email addresses, no postal addresses, and no phone numbers for contacting theUNO charter school umbrella organization. This is odd, to say the least.Also, the UNO charter schools website formerly provided links to websites for the individual schools,but those links now (November 2008) have been dropped.
KIPP Ascend Academy, 715 S. Kildare, Chicago 60624.So r this is the only Chicago installation of the nationally admired KIPP program.
The Whack-a-Charter Game:How local school boards and their allies block the competitionby Joe Williams, Education Next, Winter 2007.By lobbying against good charter legislation and ir funding,financing anti-charter studies and propaganda, filinglawsuits, and engaging the public battle of ideas, teacher unions andother charter opponents openly wage what might be called an air waragainst charters.But there is also evidence of a perhaps more damaging ground war.Interviews with more than 400 charter school operators from coast tocoast have revealed widespread localized combat -- what oneadministrator called bureaucratic sand that is often hurled in theces of charter schools. ...The goal appears to be to stop charter schools any way possible. ...Many of the charter principals interviewed for this story reportspending upward of a third or even half of their time fighting thesebattles. In truth, charter opponents can lose some battles and stillwin the war, as charter school operations continue to be hampered byendless attacks on so many fronts. ...Truce cannot be expected anytime soon. The enemies of charter schoolsare motivated and well-financed. For charter supporters, then, thereis only one choice: fight back and win.
Seeking a Gold Standard in DC Charter Educationby Jay Mathews, Washington Post, November 19, 2007.In the charter school movements endless quest to recruit students,some of the best independent public schools support each other byword of mouth. The KIPP DC: KEY Academy, a high-performing middleschool, has sent 15 graduates to Washington Mathematics ScienceTechnology, one of the better charter high schools. But KIPP teacherssteer their graduates away from some charter schools.If I said which they were, the principals would kill me, said SusanSchaeffler, KIPP DCs executive director.Now, some charter leaders in the city that is a national epicenterfor their movement are planning to take the next step in this siftingprocess. They say they want to create a gold standard designation,to publicly identify for the first time which charters are doing themost to raise teaching quality and academic achievement forlow-income students. ...National charter school leaders say the idea of certifying theirbest ... is likely to spread as the 4,000U.S. charter schools ce a strong pushback from traditional publicschool advocates. National research shows that charter schools onaverage are no better at raising achievement than regular publicschools. But high-performing charter groups such as KIPP, AchievementFirst, Uncommon Schools, Aspire, YES and Green Dot say they are notaverage.Nelson Smith, president of the Washington-based National Alliance forPublic Charter Schools, said, A lot of people who are doing goodwork in charter schools think their work is compromised when it isassociated with an underperforming school. ...Sarah Hayes, principal of KEY Academy, said differences betweenschools can be seen just by watching. Last year, while Hayes waitedin the office of another charter school to see a teacher she wantedto hire, she observed repeated signs of disorder that would not havebeen tolerated at her school.The principal came down to make announcements, and a kid stuck outhis foot and tripped the principal, she said. The principal didntdo anything about it. I had a hard time just sitting in that school.
Housed in the former St. Jerome school building, CMSA uses the widely detested fuzzy mathConnected Mathematics Project
Some school districts have complained that the opening of charter schoolscost them money. In such cases, its r more likely that bogus or incompetent fiscal projectionsby the district itself are at ult. Read this:Charter Schools and District Budgetsby James Fedako, June 30, 2005. Excerpt:
How Much is Tuition?: Charter Schools Definedby Terrence Moore, Ph.D., September 2006.Charter schools are among the least understood public institutionsaround, perhaps even less understood than the bolder form of schoolreform known as vouchers. ...
... by some measures, several Chicago charters are seriously outperformingneighborhood schools. At the three elementary campuses ofChicago Internationalcharter schools, for example, math scores are off the charts compared with theneighborhood schools the kids likely would attend if the charter didnt exist.Officials there suggest it may have to do with theSaxon Mathprogram used at allits schools.
Choir Academy: OK, so we understand that the childrenget lots of music. Swell. What were not sure about is whether they get anything resemblinga useful K-8 academic experience. A terse write-up on their website claims the special featurethat kids use the written word and cooperative study in math class (uh-oh!), a woo-woo graphic and text onlanguage arts never mentions phonics (ouch!), science is hands on (on, no!) and social studies is a mishmashwith such solid academic undertakings as creating life-sized models of historical figures.All in all, sounds pretty grim, but well bet they sing great!
We are watching carefully to see what programs AQS offers for its first charter schooloutsideof the city. It is possible that they willnotoffer the same high level of quality programsfor their suburban school.
The whole point of having a charter school is to providea opportunity for an education option that isdifferentfrom the one offered by other public schools.It should come as no surprise, then, thatcharter schools are different from each otheras well. Read on ...
The largest charter organization in the city of Chicago is theChicago Charter School Foundation, which operates schools under the nameChicago International Charter Schools (CICS).CICS has enjoyed some excellent results, and thus some excellent press coverage. For example:
The Center for Education Reform has prepared reportson the status of charter laws in the 38 states that currently permit them.How didIllinoisdo? The CER rates the Illinois laws as weak, andranks them as 21st in the 38 states. Here are links to the details:
Bronzeville Lighthouse Charter School:UsesSaxon Math(yea!) andOpen Court reading(yea again!). They also claim to employselections from the Core Knowledge sequence although they do not claim to meet the full CK standard.
whole life charter school hearing Illinois Loop,Its important to emphasize the extraordinary variety of approaches used by charter schools! Some charters are designed around missions that are highly focused (such as on art, or with a particular ethnic emphasis)and in some cases these wind up being irly shallow in traditional academics. Other charters have heavy emphasis on building a foundation of knowledge for later learning, with rich academic content. Some charters use the most extremeprogressivistteaching methods, others use structured teacher-centered strategies. In other words, be careful never to lump them together (or trust reports that lump them together)!
Far from being private schools, charter schools arepublicinstitutions. ... Charter schools have been defined as independentpublic schools of choice, freed from rules but accountable forresults. Charter schools are independent in the sense that they donot report to school boards in matters of hiring, curriculum,administration, or governance. In ct, most charter schools havevery little interaction with their districts except when certainstate reports are due or standardized tests are being administered,in short, when certain state-mandated functions are being coordinatedat the district level. Almost all decisions made in a charter schoolare site-based as the lingo goes now. Though mostly autonomous,charter schools are nonetheless public because their revenue comesfrom public taxes and they are open to the public. ...
Huh? Thatsall?Why arent theremore?In theory, currentIllinoislaw on charters permits up to 15 schoolsin the city of Chicago, 15 in the Chicagosuburbs, and 15 downstate.But that is merely a theoretical cap. The real power is in charter authorization.Illinois very weak charter schoollaw vests most of theauthority for charter schools with the local school boards.The result is much the same as going to the local McDonaldsfranchisee and asking if you could build a Subway in theirparking lot so that their customers could have an alternative, healthier choice.Local districts in Illinois haveused any legal tactic possible -- whatever it takes -- to stop dead any charter school movement.In District 11, Alton, Illinois, the districtdenied the proposal for a charter, saying that the founder and managementteam were not qualified to operate a school -- even though each onehad some 20 years of direct experience in education. At a public hearing,one audience member asked the board abouttheirqualifications for runninga whole district. One member volunteered that he had once done somesubstitute teaching.So, as a result of its tal weaknesses, the Illinois charter law is a spectaculailure (except in the city of Chicago, where the school boardwelcomedcharter schools and the original 15 slots were quickly filled).There is only a single charter in thesuburbs, and even that school(which, sadly, has a very constructivist / progressivist curriculum)had to endure agonizing legal battles with local district boardsbefore gaining override approval from the state.Elsewhere in thesuburbs, numerous fledgling attempts at organizingor operating charters have been abandoned in frustration with the legal obstructions.For information on the status of charter schools inIllinois, see:
The Education Intelligence Agency uncovered thisscinating messagefromtheChicago Teachers Unionthat reveals what the charter school debate isreallyall about!
Lets see if we can muster the energy to pull togethera complete list of the charter schoolsin the Chicago suburbs.OK, here goes:
Are all charter schools great schools?
Illinois Network of Charter Schools (INCS): Organization that helps to network and providemutual support for charters in the city of Chicago. However, despite the word Illinois in its name,it has devoted little action in the cause of expanding charters statewide. The organizationhas also not shied away from proclaiming the political learnings of its executive staff.
Like those CCSF schools that are run by AQS, Civitas grade schools are builton awonderfulfoundation, including:
To get up-to-date information about charter schools in Illinois, and to retrieve all of theircontact information, consult these authoritative sources:
Charters Face Obstacles in Illinoisby Paul H. Seibert, Director, Charter Consultants, Belleville.This is another good analysis of the legal and bureaucratic hurdles thatIllinois has put in the way of charter schools.Charter Consultants also has anexcellent websiteof news updates pertaining to Illinoislaws and regulations on charters.
Some time ago Galapagos stated that itshistory and science programs were based onCore Knowledgewhich would be terrific if it were triue and still the case. Unfortunately,any reference toCore Knowledgehas now (2009) been removedfrom their website, and, in ct, science and history arent mentioned at all on thecurriculum pageof the schools website.
New to CCSFs stable of contracted companies is this New York- and Philadelphia-basedoperator. Victorydescribes its curriculum here, and it appears to be a mix of good ideas and bad ideas.That description starts with aheadline that Victory usesCore Knowledgebut then adds mystery by saying that their program is based on Core Knowledge,and in ct is proprietary. In reading, Victory claims use ofOpen CourtandDirect Instruction(yea!).But in math Victory warns that their programmakes use of student writing logs and requires students to write outexplanations for how they arrived at their answers to math problems and employs such programs asEveryday Math(aaack!),Math in Context(ugh!) andImpact Math.Science veers to the fuzzy as well, with Victory saying,Inquiry-Based Science: Victorys students dont just read about science in a textbook, they discover it for themselves(that is,constructivism)in a hands-on approach that provides students with authentic learning experiences. (Learn why thatstroublesome in our page onscience.)To coordinate its rollout and efforts in Chicago, Victory has created a aubsidiaryChicago School Performance Group (CSPG).Victory providesthis press releasediscussing its Chicago operations and managers.Victorys first Chicago location opened in September 2007,at the closed Immaculate Heart of Mary schoolnear Irving Park and Kedzie. In a breathtaking display of ignorance of the neighborhood,Victory originally called this campus Avondale until local residentspointed out that the school wasnt in Avondale. It is now known asCICS Irving Park.Students at this school are burdened with the notoriousEveryday Mathprogram.We havent learned why, but at the same time in 2007, CICS transferred management of itsCICS-Basilcampwhole life charter school hearing Illinois Loopus (1816 West Garfield) from Civitas to Victory. We do not know how this will affect the curriculum at Basil,although we are alarmed by this statement about Basil on the Victory website:In the classroom, teachers use student-centered and creative approaches to instruction. Uh-oh!
When Failure Means Success,editorial, Chicago Tribune, April 1, 2002.A charter school iled in Chicago last week. But its ordered closure by theChicago Public Schools board only demonstrates how well the charter model works. ...In Chicago, its . You dont perform, you dont survive. ...A study just released by the Chicago Public Schools helps explain why. All buttwo of Chicagos charter schools are outperforming their neighborhood publicschools on nearly every one of 70 different measures--from reading and mathscores to attendance to dropout rates. The most glaring exception was [the charter that wass just closed].In ct, by some measures, several Chicago charters are seriously outperformingneighborhood schools. At the three elementary campuses ofChicago Internationalcharter schools, for example, math scores are off the charts compared with theneighborhood schools the kids likely would attend if the charter didnt exist.Officials there suggest it may have to do with theSaxon Mathprogram used at allits schools.
The Galapagos website also warns that word problems in math are addressed with theso-called best practices of answering extended response, open-ended questions in math.Weve repeatedly observed how this converts math from a logical, clear-headed disciplineinto a prattling discussion of the kind that now dominates whats left of social studies programs.Worse, this best practice has the awful additional impact on some kids of expanding a verbaldeficiency into a math deficiency as well.
Update: due to collapsing enrollment (we wonder why?), Choir Academy will close in June 2009.
Namaste has avoided the typical fuzzy and chatty math programsused in Chicago schools, by choosing anatypicalfuzzy and chatty math program,Math Trailblazers. Too bad.
In an effort to identify and recognize charter schools devoted to substantive contentand classic liberal learning, the American Academy for Liberal Education has started aCharter School Accreditation Program.You can find out more about the program,and the first lists of schools it has accredited, at the linked website.
A charter school is apublic schoolthat has been developedto serve a particular mission. Often, a charter schoolis started by a group of parents who are seeking an alternativeto other existing schools in an area.
Gaffes Spell Doom: Students Sloppy Letters Aid Charter Schools Approvalby Kevin Rothstein, Boston Herald, February 25, 2004. Excerpt:All the proof state Board of Education member Roberta Schaefer neededto OK controversial new charter schools were the letters before herfrom public school students.Schaefer ridiculed the letters against a proposed school in Marlborofor their missing punctuation and sloppy spelling -- including amisspelling of the word school in one missive.If I didnt think a charter school was necessary, these letters haveconvinced me the high school was not doing an adequate job inteaching English language arts, Schaefer said.
Polaris Charter Academy:This school is based on something calledExpeditionary Learning, which is yet another variantof the same old, worn out,constructivist/progressivisttheory of education.
Galapagos has made a terrific migration from bad to great in their math program!First, they dropped their use of theuber-fuzzyMath Trailblazers.They replaced that program in early grades (K-2) withthe highly praisedprogram, but later grades were stuck with the dismalEveryday Math.But now Galapagos has seen the light and embracedwhole-heartedly!
Chicago Virtual Charter School:Chicago Virtual Charter School is proud to use an outstanding curriculum from K12. Developed by a team of leading experts, including veteran public and private school teachers, the K12 curriculum is known as one of the most researched and effective learning programs in the nation.
Playing to Type?(PDF)by Dick Carpenter, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, October 6, 2005. What does the phrase charter school convey? Besides some basic information aboutstructure, governance, and accountability,what does the word charter tell usabout the curriculum, pedagogy, and theory of learwhole life charter school hearingning of the roughly charter 3,500 schools?Not a heckuva lot.To fill the void of information, Dick Carpenter has shioned a typology ofcharter schools -- one that distinguishes between a giant lump of charters and 3,500 completely unique institutions.Some of his key points are:
Contrary to expectations of many, there are more progressivist charter schools (29%)than traditionalist/back-to-basics charter schools (23%). The single largest groupingidentified by Carpenter is general (30%) with no clearly identified educational philosophy.
CICS-Northtown Academy, housed in the buildings of theclosed Good Counsel High School. Startup funds included a $4 million dollar grant from the Gates Foundationas part of their well-intentioned but dubious plans to foster development ofsmaller high schools.
Do you remember the Simpsons episode(Girls Just Want To Have Sums)where a new principal splits the school by gender,and Lisa is appalled by the fuzzy junk the experts deem suitable for girls math?Well, welcome to the all-girls YWLCS!Really, it couldnt get much worse.The young ladies are saddled withhref=mathprograms.htmlimp>Interactive Mathematics Program(IMP),a program which a math expert has called the worst of all high school mathematics programs ...It represents the degenerate extreme of NCTM mathematics.
Passages Charter School:Associated with Asian Human Services:Helping Asians, Immigrants, & Underserved Communities, the Passages Charter School says it focuses specifically on the needs ofimmigrant and refugee students.
Providence Englewood Charter School:The last line of the schools philosophy statement is an eye-opener:Providence Englewood Charter School is nothing if not counter-cultural. In the midst of a society which may be characterized by chaos, we stand for academic excellence, order and discipline.They also seem to live up to that goal, teaching their students with the respectedSRA Real Mathprogram.
Some of the highest performing schools in a given community arecharter schools, but so are some of the worst performing.
Charter schools are alsomore accountablefor their results than areregular public schools. Charter schools are accountable principallyin two ways. First, they are required to take the same standardizedtests that all other public schools must take. ...Second, the element of choice also makes charter schools accountable.If parents do not like the education their children are getting, theyare free to take their children out of the school. ... A school ofchoice with a declining enrollment has no option but to change or,eventually, to go under. Without choice, [conventional public] schools areaccountable to no such pressures. They stay in business forever,whether they are successfully teaching students or not. ...
Why Illinois Political Cousins Have Far More Charters,Catalyst, November 2000. ...Youve got to wonder: Whats with Illinois? ... Michigan has 173 charters,Wisconsin has 83, but Illinois has only 19 and 13 of those are in Chicago.A Catalyst examination of the charter laws in these three statesfound both obvious and subtle reasons for the differences.(Update: As of May 2006, there were 183 charters in Wisconsin,and as of March 2005 there were 213 charters in Ohio.But even that pales by comparison to Arizona, where parentscan choose from over 500 charter schools.)
NCLB encourages school districts to convertunderperforming, traditional public schools into charters,but this policy assumes that charter status will improve performanceregardless of the educational approach employed.
Some may be, but others surely are not.Read why by clicking here:Charter Schools Are NOT All the Same.
Well check again in a while, to see if their math program evolves to something better.
Charter School Nonsense--Wall Street Journal editorial, August 28, 2006.All charters arent successful, but the bad ones tend to close in due course,which is a good thing and more than can be said for iling traditional publicschools.As for the rest, they are providing a st-growing option forunderprivileged children. This irks unions, school boards and others with avested interest in a public school monopoly thats iling to educate millions ofkids. But it doesnt mean the Bush administration has to give its politicalopponents fodder in the form of shoddy, oversold research on school performance.
UNO is the United Neighborhood Organization, a grassroots political groupformed in 1984 and modeled on an Alinsky style of community organizing.UNO has been particularly involved in effortsto grant amnesty to illegal aliens, assisting illegal aliens in filing workto apply for citizenship, and in registering new citizens to vote.UNO has also been very active in initiatives in the Chicago school system,going so r as to organize its own charter schools.Regarding curriculum, theUNO website provides the extremely good news thatthe excellentSaxon Mathprogramis used in its schools.On the other hand, at some point in the past the UNO website also carried the good news that their schools used the similarly excellentSRA Direct Instruction Program(K-5th Grade)andOpen Court Basal Reading Series(4th -5th Grade).However, those references now (November 2008) have been dropped from the website,which is discouraging.
Downstate and in the suburbs, it is r more challenging to secure a charter. In these areas there is typic
Those schools which are operated by AQSwithin the city limits of Chicagooffera terrific educational package! Thesecityschools all embrace a curriculum that includes:
Following are some of our notes on these schools, highlighting several of special merit or common interest.
-->What about history, geography and the other social studies?Galapagos has announced theextremely good newsthat they haveadapted theCore Knowledge Curriculumto provide the framework for its social studies program.Scholars are introduced to concepts in an organized, thematic manner which allows for scholarsand instructors to share a common knowledge base as they explore the world in which they live.
Uses the fuzzyEveryday MathandConnected Mathprograms. For reading, website touts balanced literacy, a.k.a. Whole Language.
Edison uses the Success For All program for reading (ugh!), a project-based proprietary programemphasizing childrens literature for social studies (ugh!!), andEveryday Mathfor math (aaaccckkk!!!)In Chicago, Edison runs the K-12 CICS-Longwood school for CCSF.
Charter Schools: Are They Reinvigorating Public Education?Parents, neighborhoods and new developments are gaining choices whenit comes to educational opportunities for their childrenby Jason Miller, inPublic Schools: A Toolkit for Realtors,National Association of Realtors.The benefits spread to charter schools immediate communities, too,says Vicki Cox Golder, CRB, a REALTOR® with Vicki Cox & Associates inTucson, Ariz., and a former school board chair and GovernorsEducation Task Force member.Charter schools improve a neighborhoodsquality of life mainly because [their residents] have a choice. Ifparents are given a choice thats affordable for them, that improvesthe quality of life in a community.
Editorial, Chicago Tribune, April 1, 2002
