Seattle Schools Community Forum

That's the question that Thomas Friedman asks in the NY Times this week.    The reason he brings it up is a recent study by PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) which is the testing group for 15-years around the world on math, science and reading skills.  It's the testing used to compare countries' education systems. PISA was encouraged by OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) to go beyond testing and look at what is happening in the home.  They looked at about 20 countries and parents of 5,000 students in those countries.  They then compared that information with test results and published these three findings. “Fifteen-year-old students whose parents often read books with them during their first year of primary school show markedly higher scores in PISA 2009 than students whose parents read with them infrequently or not at all." "On average, the score difference is 25 points, the equivalent of well over half a ...

While doing some research on charter law, I saw this article from the LA Weekly, entitled " Charter Schools: Getting Your Child on the List - How to cut in line and pervert the concept of public education " by Gene Maddaus that I thought worth passing along. Apparently, at least a couple of tony LA charters had figured out how to exploit a federal guideline to pull in more of the "right" parents AND support their bottom line. Here's the basis for the problem (and I had never heard of this before so news to me): under federal guidelines, there are a handful of lottery preferences.  One is siblings.  Already have a child in the school? The next one is in.  Two is a preference for children of staff (according to most of the state charter law I found, this is restricted to 10% or less of the student population).  And three?  Well, that's for "founding parents."