Keyword: charterschools
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Education: The president of the Chicago Teachers Union charges that racism and "rich white people" are to blame for the immense financial and educational crisis facing the Chicago Public Schools. Tbe Chicago Public Schools (CPS) represent everything that is wrong with public education in America. They are in thrall to the unions that run the system and bankrupt it through bloated salaries and pensions while too many of the students trapped inside graduate as functional illiterates, if they graduate at all. Poor academic performance generally, a huge budget shortfall and poorly attended schools in declining neighborhoods recently forced CPS to...
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On May 15, 2013, the Turkish Prime Minister, Erdogan, an anti-Semite, attended a ceremony a stone’s throw from our nation’s capital celebrating what he claims “will likely become the largest and most striking example of Islamic architecture in the Western Hemisphere.” Next year, when completed, the Turkish American Culture and Civilization Center, in Lanham, Maryland “US of A,” a project of the Islamist Turkish government, will be the grandest Islamic site in the Western Hemisphere. Allah Akbar! The 15-acre neo-Ottoman empire inspired complex will have five buildings and a mosque capable of serving over 750 faithful Muslim worshipers. I have...
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I wrote recently how teachers unions, parent-teacher associations and school bureaucrats form an education "Blob" that makes it hard to improve schools. They also take revenge on those who work around the Blob. Here's one more sad example: Ben Chavis, founder and principal of the American Indian Public Charter Schools, got permission to compete with the Blob in Oakland, Calif. Chavis vowed, "We'll outperform the other schools in five years." He did. Kids at the three schools he runs now have some of the highest test scores in California. His schools excel even though the government spends less on...
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<p>SOUTH HADLEY, Mass. (AP) — The head of a western Massachusetts charter school says a student production of a play that retells the biblical story of Genesis with gay characters will go on as planned despite objections from some who say it's offensive to Christians.</p>
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One of the most highly compensated superintendents in the state is from a charter public school whose high school received an “F” on an academic performance report card in 2012. Alison Cancilliari had a gross salary of $250,000 with a total compensation of $339,850 in 2011-12 for overseeing Summit Academy in Flat Rock and Summit Academy North in Romulus. Cancilliari oversees just over 2,000 students in five buildings. Summit Academy North High School was ranked 543rd overall out of 592 high schools and was given an “F" on the Mackinac Center report card. The report card measures student academic scores...
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<p>ATLANTA (AP) — Campaign finance records show that supporters of Georgia's charter school amendment have outspent opponents by a significant margin.</p>
<p>Voters will decide Tuesday whether to approve the proposed constitutional amendment, which would expand state influence over charter schools.</p>
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SUBJECT: Conservative Case Against "Charter School" Amendment I am a fan of our local Milton representatives in the Georgia legislature and their passion to reform public K-12 schools. School choice, competition and other reforms are long overdue, and more "funding" for status quo won't solve anything. Having said that, no conservative leaning voter who believes in local control and real reforms should be voting for the proposed constitutional amendment on charter schools. It is fundamentally against principles of conservatism. State government take over of decisions away from "elected" local school boards is just wrong, no matter the stakes. While defeating...
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School boards are not permitted to use taxpayer money to oppose the charter schools amendment, Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens wrote in a letter to Superintendent John Barge Wednesday. His letter – which followed complaints about boards’ actions on that issue — doesn’t appear likely to end the argument. Rather than provide clarity, the letter itself became a sort of political Rorschach test, with amendment supporters and opponents interpreting it in starkly different ways. And superintendents and board members said they plan to press the case against an amendment they believe will lead to more charter schools and less money...
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Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis walks, talks and barks like a rootsy Occupy Wall Street activist. But this Big Labor loudmouth who's leading the abandonment of nearly 400,000 schoolchildren in the Windy City is just another power-grabbing union fat cat. Instead of academic excellence, she rails about "social justice." Instead of accountability, she fumes about "profits" and curses merit pay. Lewis has marched with the Occu-clowns denouncing capitalism and promoting "socialism (as) the alternative." She raves: "Occupy Wall Street and the whole concept of the 99 percent is an extraordinarily important movement." And she earned praise as a "fist-in-the-air,...
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Is it possible for charter schools to increase educational options and diversity in the public school system but decrease diversity overall; to spend less money than regular public schools but cost taxpayers more overall, and to outperform regular public schools but decrease achievement overall? Unfortunately, it is not only possible but is happening in cities across the nation. This mix of intended and unintended outcomes is what’s known as the “charter school paradox,” which hints at the uneasy place these relatively new educational options have in our society. But it is only a paradox if we take a narrow view...
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Fethullah Gülen is a Turkish imam, considered one of the most influential imams in the world, no doubt due to his brilliant creation of taxpayer funded chartered schools with more than a whiff of Islam in the curricula - in the United States. The experiment started with full U.S. taxpayer funding. Gülen Charters is the largest charter school network in the U.S. There were 134 U.S. Gülen charter schools in 2010, in 26 states with 45,000 students. They continue to receive taxpayer dollars and have the distinction of being the nation's largest users of H1B visas. Teachers with poor English...
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Two thousand years ago, somebody (like the future Alexander the Great) who wanted to learn from a famous philosopher (like Aristotle) had to visit him in person, or vice versa. Written correspondence was of course possible, but every letter had to be written by hand, and it could take months to reach its destination. It was hardly possible to have an ongoing, two-way exchange of ideas under these conditions. With the invention of the printing press, it became possible for one teacher’s ideas to reach hundreds or thousands of students, and the mass production of books increased literacy rates enormously....
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Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has openly invited Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen to Turkey in a speech he delivered during the closing ceremony for the 10th Turkish Olympiads amid a standing ovation from a crowd of over 50,000. Erdoğan, who spoke after he was granted a special award by the organizing committee of the Olympiads, implied that Gülen, without directly mentioning his name, should return to Turkey as soon as possible. The well-known scholar has been residing in the US for nearly 13 years. “We want this yearning to end,” he said, receiving a lengthy standing ovation from...
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SAYLORSBURG, Pa. -- Fetullah Gülen has been called the world's top public intellectual and the face of moderate Islam. He has held court with Pope John Paul II and received praise from former President Bill Clinton. "You're contributing to the promotion of the ideals of tolerance and interfaith dialogue inspired by Fetullah Gülen and his transnational social movement," Clinton told audience members during a video address at the World Rumi Forum in 2010. Yet others have branded Gülen a wolf in sheep's clothing and a modern day Ayatollah Khomeini. CBN News recently took a closer look at the the life...
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Entering my freshman year at Georgetown University, I should have felt as if I’d made it. The students I once put on a pedestal, kids who were fortunate enough to attend some of the nation’s top private and public schools, were now my classmates. Having come from D.C. public charter schools, I worked extremely hard to get here. But after arriving on campus before the school year, with a full scholarship, I quickly felt unprepared and outmatched — and it’s taken an entire year of playing catch-up in the classroom to feel like I belong. I know that ultimately I’m...
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The charter school movement was presented to the American people as a way to have more parental control over public school education. Charter schools are public schools financed by local taxpayers and federal grants. Charter schools are able to hire and fire teachers, administrators and staff and avoid control by education department bureaucrats and the teachers unions. No doubt there are some good charter schools, but loose controls have allowed a very different kind of school to emerge. Charter schools have opened up a path for foreigners to run schools at the expense of the U.S. taxpayers, without much...
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Campaigning in Idaho on Tuesday, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum suggested that he is opposed to a public school system overseen by the government. "We didn't have government-run schools for a long time in this country, for the majority of the time in this country," he said. "We had private education. We had local education. Parents actually controlled the education of their children. What a great idea that is." Santorum's campaign did not respond to multiple requests for an explanation of whether he was calling for an end to public schooling as it now exists. But the former Pennsylvania senator...
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School choice is changing the face of education in the United States in 2012. In spite of the increasing cost of public school education, parents are no longer satisfied that it is preparing their children for the competitive world of the 21st century. They are turning to home schooling or charter schools that meet their expectations.
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Like many charter public schools in Michigan, South Arbor Charter Academy must hold a lottery to distribute its limited classroom slots among an overwhelming number of applicants. In this video, the parents of some 556 student-hopefuls vie for just 26 slots at this achievement - and values - focused school.
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A Detroit Free Press editorial opposing legislation that would remove arbitrary caps on the number of charter public schools contains a series of misleading, inaccurate and intemperate statements. The newspaper’s opening argument exemplifies the latter: “[T]he experiment [the Legislature] is trying to inflict on children and their parents is ill-conceived and dangerous.” No charter public school has ever “inflicted” anything on parents or children, for a very basic reason: The only children who attend charters are those whose parents have voluntarily and conscientiously chosen to send them there. In fact, the Legislature cannot itself increase the number of charters —...
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