Seattle Schools Community Forum

 Update: the Times has more reporting on the situation with First Place Scholars.  According to their article, two Commissioners wanted to revoke their charter. It was pointed out that FPS will probably owe money back to the state because they did not enroll as many students as they said they would.   FPS has another deadline of June 17th - less than a month - to meet the Commission's requests.  It appears most of the Commissioners agree that if these requests are not met by June 17th, they won't "kick the can" down the road again.  Head of FPS, Dawn Mason, continues to claim it's not FPS' fault because they opened too quickly.  end of updates From the PI , news about charter schools in Washington State: First Place Scholars is still under scrutiny. According to written reports to the commission, the school has made some progress in its work with students who do not speak English at home and in setting academic plans for children with spec...

Great National Education Policy Center (NEPC) paper called "Wait, wait. Don't Mislead Me!  Nine Reasons to be skeptical about charter waitlist numbers. " So the next time you hear some huge number of kids are on charter school waitlists, remember these. In brief: Students apply to multiple charter schools Waitlist numbers cannot be confirmed Waitlist record-keeping is slipshot and unreliable Many charter applications are for non-admissible greades It's likely that most charters aren't very oversubscribed NAPCS's (National Association of Public Charter Schools)Methods aren't available for independent verification NAPCS numbers are inexplicably precise What are we comparing charter waitlist numbers to? charter waitlists can be trimmed by requiring "backfill" From the Seattle Education blog , a good explanation of the bills in Congress to give a big boost to charters (seemingly in the name of accountability). To note, over in Spo...