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FRESNO - The founder of a California charter school was sentenced today to 14 years in state prison for siphoning off taxpayer and private funds she was supposed to be using to educate disadvantaged children from the San Joaquin Valley to Sunnyvale. Fresno County Superior Court Judge R. L. Putnam said former Gateway Academy Superintendent Khadijah Ghafur had shown sophistication, planning and leadership and an ``absolute complete lack of remorse in the face of overwhelming evidence of guilt'' for her embezzlement schemes. Today's sentencing of Ghafur and another Gateway administrator, who received probation, close the cooked books on the Fresno-based...

Should American taxpayers be forced to pay for a self-segregating school that teaches children to hate the United States? That is apparently what is happening in Los Angeles. Academia Semillos del Pueblo (ASDP), a charter school partially funded by the Los Angeles Unified School District, claims it only wants to help disadvantaged Latinos to earn a quality education. The school's true agenda, however, is far more radical and far more dangerous. Judicial Watch recently launched an investigation of the ASDP by filing a California Public Records Act request. Here is a small sampling of what we've uncovered so far: The...

WASHINGTON -- Fourth graders in traditional public schools are doing better in both reading and math than students in charter schools, the government says in a report fueling fresh debate over school choice. Tuesday's report said fourth graders in regular public schools scored an average of 5.2 points better in reading than students in charter schools on the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress test. Students in traditional schools scored an average of 5.8 points better in math.

SACRAMENTO A chain of family operated charter schools overcharged the state more than $57 million over three years and paid its two top executives a total of $644,000 in one year to run schools for at-risk students, a state audit released Wednesday found. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell immediately referred the audit of the for-profit Opportunities for Learning and the nonprofit Options for Youth schools to Attorney General Bill Lockyer, but the schools' operators challenged the findings. Spokeswoman Kerry Mazzoni, a former secretary of education, said the eight schools and more than 40 independent study satellite centers serve...

When California voters approved Proposition 39 six years ago, it was mainly known for lowering the threshold for passing school bond measures. These days, though, the law is in the legal spotlight for pitting two camps of public education against each other in a high-stakes fight over school buildings. Proposition 39 also requires districts to share their campuses “fairly” with charter schools, alternative public schools that are self-governed. How to share fairly is at the center of the dispute. The rationale behind the law is that charters serve students who otherwise would attend district-run schools. Therefore, they should be entitled...

Frustrated teachers and administrators are being lured by independent schools with the promise of more support and freedom. Amid the continuing growth of charter schools in Los Angeles, hundreds of teachers and administrators have left the city's school system to take jobs at the independently run campuses. In the latest wave of departures, dozens of frustrated Los Angeles Unified School District staffers have been courted away by Green Dot Public Schools — one of the city's leading charter operators. Others who are choosing to leave the district for Green Dot or other charters echo Funes' concerns. Working within the nation's...

Arizona Charter Makes Top 100 List Written By: Vicki Murray Published In: School Reform News Publication Date: July 1, 2006 Publisher: The Heartland Institute When Newsweek released its list of the top 100 high schools in the nation May 1, a charter school in Tucson made history. BASIS Tucson--which started out as "Beginning Academic Success in School" eight years ago but is now called by its acronym--ranked third in the nation, the highest place achieved by any charter school since the list's inception in 1998. BASIS Tucson is the first Arizona high school ever to make Newsweek's top 100....

Fresno County Superior Court Judge R.L. Putnam on Monday issued a bench warrant for the arrest of Khadijah Ghafur, superintendent and president of the now-closed GateWay Academy charter school system, after she failed to show up for her ongoing trial, where she is accused of stealing public funds. (excerpt)Ghafur is charged with five counts of misappropriation of public funds and five counts of grand theft by embezzlement.

The Department of Education has announced that $21.6 million were being given in charter school grants. “Three organizations—the KIPP Foundation, the Charter School Development Corporation, and the Local Initiatives Support Corporation—will receive a total of $21.6 million for three grants through the Charter Schools Facilities Grants program,” Secretary Spellings announced. The Department of Education released a preliminary breakdown of the grants. “The KIPP Foundation in San Francisco, Calif., has been awarded a $6.8 million grant; The Charter School Development Corporation in Washington, D.C., has been awarded a $6.6 million grant; The Local Initiatives Support Corporation in New York, N.Y., has...

America is falling behind the rest of the world in basic skills, and the policies that public schools have pursued will not close the gap, Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney said last month. “We have an excellence gap,” said Romney, “15 year olds are 24th out of 29 countries in mathematics. High school seniors are in the bottom 10 percent in math and the bottom 25 percent in science.” China has 7 times the number of people with engineering degrees than the United States, said Romney. “We also have an achievement gap,” he said, citing the serious gap between black and...

<p>Failure in the classroom is often tied to lack offunding, poor teachersor other ills. Here's athought: Maybe it's thefailed work ethic of todays kids. That's what I'm seeing in my school. Until reformers see this reality, little will change.</p> <p>Last month, as I averaged the second-quarter grades for my senior English classes at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va., the same familiar pattern leapt out at me.</p>

MINNEAPOLIS--Something momentous is happening here in the home of prairie populism: black flight. African-American families from the poorest neighborhoods are rapidly abandoning the district public schools, going to charter schools, and taking advantage of open enrollment at suburban public schools. Today, just around half of students who live in the city attend its district public schools. As a result, Minneapolis schools are losing both raw numbers of students and "market share." In 1999-2000, district enrollment was about 48,000; this year, it's about 38,600. Enrollment projections predict only 33,400 in 2008. A decline in the number of families moving into the...

The New Schools Venture Fund helped Michael Piscal found three schools in a poor area of Los Angeles. Venture capitalists of Silicon Valley.are eagerly financing a new group these days: schoolmasters. ...Recipients of the fund's investments...are public school teachers with a passion to improve the ways poor children are taught. ...New Schools Venture Fund is still investing its first $80 million... ...The View Park schools have 47 teachers who are not members of a union but earn salaries similar to the $42,000- to $54,000-a-year range of the Los Angeles Unified School District. View Park teachers can earn bonuses based on...

Supporters of African-centered education in Kansas City think the time is finally right to extend the program all the way through high school. A task force of parents and educators is pushing to open a district-sponsored African-centered charter school or campus for grades six through 12 by the 2007-08 school year, if not sooner. The school would extend the district’s African-centered education (ACE) program, which now consists of two elementary schools and a middle school. The effort is drawing national interest. “People want to see a test,” said Wade Nobles, a San Francisco State University social psychologist. “Kansas City is...

The New York Times ran a story on 28 January, 2006, entitled, “Public-School Students Score Well in Math in Large-Scale Government Study.” Well, it wasn’t a “government” study. It was only paid for by a government grant. When one looks into the methodology of the atudy and the histories of its two researchers, the results are highly suspect. The Times wrote: A large-scale government-financed study has concluded that when it comes to math, students in regular public schools do as well as or significantly better than comparable students in private schools. The study, by Christopher Lubienski and Sarah Theule Lubienski,...

Shuttered for teaching radical Islam, a Florida school reopens under a new name – and taxpayers are footing the bill. In July of 2003, the Islamic Academy of Florida (IAF), an elementary/secondary private school for Muslims based in the Temple Terrace suburb of Tampa Bay, was suspended from receiving taxpayer funded tuition vouchers. The voucher program is a statewide government initiative that was devised to help underprivileged students in underachieving schools get a better education. Up until that point, the school had received more than $350,000 in vouchers, the majority of which came from Florida PRIDE, an organization that funds...

Founders of the Cesar Chavez charter schools yesterday formally opened their second high school in the District with the expectation of continuing the perfect record of every graduate being accepted into college. "Every child in America should have access to a facility like this," founder Irasema Salcido said to a gymnasium packed with parents and students at the new Chavez Parkside campus. Principal Susan Flora has been with the Cesar Chavez Public Charter Schools for Public Policy since the first one opened in 1998 with 60 students in the basement of a Safeway grocery store. "Thank you for making education...

DetroitROBERT THOMPSON wanted to give away $200 million to help children escape some of America's worst public schools. But for three years the successful businessman turned education philanthropist suffered the wrath of Michigan's Democratic establishment for his politically incorrect charter-school proposal. Then finally in August, Thompson found an ally willing to accept his charity. The nonprofit Skillman Foundation will join him in creating the first of 15 planned charter high schools in Detroit. The schools' goal is a "90/90 system"--that is, a graduation rate of 90 percent (up from the city's current 50 percent) and a college admission rate of...

Relatives get prison terms for bilking state and U.S. of $6 million Three relatives were sentenced to prison Friday for helping defraud federal and state governments out of about $6 million by inflating enrollment and the number of free lunches served at the defunct Prepared Table Charter School. The accused mastermind of the scheme, the Rev. Harold Wilcox, died in March, three weeks before his wife, Louvicy; his stepdaughter, Roshall Frank; and his brother, the Rev. Anthony Mosley, pleaded guilty. U.S. District Judge Nancy Atlas said that if Wilcox were still alive, she would give him the maximum sentence. Atlas...

IT WAS ONCE unfashionable, even unpatriotic, to criticize one's local public school, and for years mainstream media were reluctant to reveal a systemic decline of public education. For better or worse, No Child Left Behind changed all that. Suddenly, schools became accountable and their shortcomings were made public. That was four years ago. Keeping in mind test scores, discipline problems, rising spending, stagnant graduation rates and schools that fail to teach children the "basics," parents face a sometimes frightening prospect of enrolling their children in public school today. Amid these fears, putting one's child on the school bus may appear...