Seattle Schools Community Forum

In what can only be called an "We told you so, just a matter of time" event, charter teachers disrupted the National Charter School Conference in New Orleans over their ability to form a union.  (You just can't make this stuff up.)  From one of my favorite ed bloggers, EduShuyster : When is *disruption* not just a super cool buzz word but something that’s actually, well, *disruptive*?  That would be when teachers at the National Charter Schools Conference in New Orleans ask the CEO of an Ohio charter management organization about firing teachers for trying to organizing a union at his schools—and using taxpayer money to pay the fine when he got caught.  This went about as well as you might expect. And when security arrived, combing through the crowd for disruptors, that’s when things got really disruptive… 

A.G. Rud, the dean of the College of Education at Washington State University, and Ken Zeichner, professor of Teacher Education at UW, have written a quiet op-ed reviewing the most important ideas in enacting charters in Washington State. They express the concern, based on fact, that some of the more successful charter models have a "stripped down" curriculum that focuses on the basics but has little else for a well-rounded student. A lean curriculum focused only on improving standardized test scores is common among schools run by charter-management organizations elsewhere in the country. As documented by prominent education historian Larry Cuban, franchise-school operators such as Rocketship often target low-income communities and offer a stripped-down version of schools that most charter advocates would not want for their own children.  They also offer these recommendations (and they are valid - transparency and accountability are key): • Ensuring that the cha...

The "Washington Charter School Resource Center", a long-time website for charters in Washington State (started by Jim Spady of Dick's fame), announced a convention in Tacoma for all things charter. It's on Saturday, December 15th at UW Tacoma from 9-5.  It costs $25 per person before the 9th and $35 after the 9th. Oddly, this info isn't at Stand's website or LEV's and the link at the Spady website is gone. Luckily I have one .