Thanks for sharing. I do wish the Free Press article had a little more information to look at. It did seem to only highlight the negatives from the charter school experiment. The thing that stood out was total spending was about 16% less and spending per pupil was about 30% less and it seemed to yield at worst equal results. The article seemed to highlight a lack of oversight and various other problems that I'm guessing happen in Michigan public schools as well, but who knows. I did a little more research and it seems that charter high schools have higher graduation rates and students seem to perform better on college entrance exams. They also seem to benefit minority and poorer areas much more than traditional schools. Charter schools are generally in those areas as well. https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...99e43c336ed_story.html?utm_term=.e018e2c00282 And another updated study by the same Stanford University group... http://urbancharters.stanford.edu/news.php http://urbancharters.stanford.edu/download/Urban Charter School Study Report on 41 Regions.pdf STANFORD, Calif. - March 18, 2015 - Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO), the nation’s foremost independent analyst of charter school effectiveness, released today a comprehensive Urban Charter Schools Report and 22 state-specific reports that combine to offer policymakers unprecedented insight into the effectiveness of charter schools. “One of our largest research efforts to date, this study targets our focus on charter schools in urban areas because these are communities where students have faced significant education challenges and are in great need of effective approaches to achieve academic success," said Dr. Margaret Raymond, director of CREDO at Stanford University. "This research shows that many urban charter schools are providing superior academic learning for their students, in many cases quite dramatically better. These findings offer important examples of school organization and operation that can serve as models to other schools, including both public charter schools and traditional public schools." Across 41 regions, urban charter schools on average achieve significantly greater student success in both math and reading, which amounts to 40 additional days of learning growth in math and 28 days of additional growth in reading. Compared to the national profile of charter school performance, urban charters produce more positive results. CREDO’s National Charter School Study results in 2013 found that charter schools provided seven additional days of learning per year in reading and no significant difference in math. Similar to the results in the National Charter School Study in 2013, the Urban Charter School report found local variation in the results. Across the 41 regions, more than twice as many urban regions show their charter schools outpacing their district school counterparts than regions where charter school results lag behind them. Despite the overall positive learning impacts, there are still urban communities in which the majority of the charter schools have smaller learning gains compared to their traditional school counterparts. This site seems to be pretty pro-charter, but they had a lot of data in this pdf so i posted it. https://www.edreform.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/2014CharterSchoolSurveyFINAL.pdf My general sentiment before was against charter schools for no particularly good reason. This very little bit I've done seems to show they do have a significant benefit for non-white non-rich communities. They seem to not benefit and underperform traditional schools in white wealthy communities.
and that said DeVos came off like an idiot in that Franken segment...i didn't watch anything else with her though.
Good luck Rick Perry. Please hurry up and learn fast! Sadness creep in... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/us/politics/rick-perry-energy-secretary-donald-trump.html?_r=0
this article is the very definition of fake news The entire basis for the article's premise (that Perry doesn't know what the DoE does) is a made up answer to made up question from a guy fired from the Trump team three weeks before Perry was nominated.
You people throw out the term fake news too causally. I'll post an example of it in the fake news thread later. But here is what Perry himself plan to say. Clearly, he didn't know many of the vital functions of DoE. "My past statements made over five years ago about abolishing the Department of Energy do not reflect my current thinking," Perry plans to say. "In fact, after being briefed on so many of the vital functions of the Department of Energy, I regret recommending its elimination." Edit: adding link for above statement - http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/rick-perry-energy-cabinet-233821
Yeah, that pretty much shows that he didn't know what DoE did. That appears to be accurate and backed up by Rick Perry's own comments.
It was all pretty brutal. Watch the Warren segment if interested too. The worst part is how smug DeVos was about not knowing anything (in this case about higher ed and student loan programs). It was Palin-esque, TBH, in terms of prideful ignorance. I'm at the point of hoping that she gets turned down. Her hearing was so bad that some republicans might vote against her.
Oops! Forms were very complex, and my smart lawyer,Thrown Underbus, thought we did it correctly https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/19/...ry-secretary-nominee-assets-confirmation.html
Trump's America, where Rick Perry replaces an MIT physicist as head of an Energy Department he wanted to close because he had no clue what they actually did. But Ricky has been readin up and now he's ready to do the job.
I like how this Stanford study calculated performance comprehensively rather than arbitrarily spit out raw data. I appreciate the information. I think charters can be used very effectively, and have been in places like Newark and Boston. However a main issue I have with DeVos is her support for private vouchers coupled w/ the 80% for profit, unregulated charter school experiment in Michigan. FWIW, here are two studies that show voucher programs actually have negative effects when put into practice. http://educationresearchalliancenol...Brief-Public-Private-School-Choice-160218.pdf https://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws...d Choice Evaluation Report_online edition.pdf Also, urban areas that clearly show improvements in student proficiency have a reasonable amount of oversight and regulation. I fear that after watching Mrs. DeVos display an unaware and ideological view of the U.S.education debate in the hearings, it doesn't seem like we're in the best of hands - to put it mildly. Sorry to derail the thread a little. How did Perry do? I've been busy today.
Scott Pruitt is Trump's best choice so far. He is a great choice. Pruitt will reform the EPA and boy does it need to be reformed.
Now that the final cabinet position was named (Perdue), Trump's cabinet (assuming all confirmed) will comprise of (out of 20 positions) 15 white men. There is one African American man. Four women. One Asian-American (woman). One (the first) Indian-American woman. Three billionaires. At least half of the cabinet has extensive corporate experience. And in a significant break with the recent cabinets, there is no Democrat member of the cabinet. And not a single Hispanic cabinet member. Trump's PR guy said the focus was getting the "best and the brightest" (which presumably eliminated Hispanics, black women, Democrats) and that we should stay tuned, there will be lots of Hispanics hired. Trump himself tweeted he will have the highest IQ cabinet ever (one more difference, no PHDs in this cabinet). btw, of the 690 positions in his administration that require Senate approval, Trump has only nominated 29. Though his PR guy explained Trump was waiting to nominate his cabinet before making lower level nominations.
And being so late with paperwork that enabled the nominees to be reviewed by the Ethics Office. In fact, I believe not all of the cabinet nominees have completed their paperwork, even in advance of appearing before Senate committees. I don't know how past administrations timed their cabinet nominations, but it seems expecting so many cabinet members to appear, get examined and approved in so little time, especially without paperwork, resulted in so few being in place on day 1. You'd think this process would have been scheduled a few weeks before day 1. And that is ignoring the reality that so many of his nominees are at best questionable in their backgrounds and qualifications to require a deeper examination by the Senate.
Not to provide any excuses, but I think they didn't expect to win and the transition team was in turmoil for a few weeks after the election. Un-prepared. Not ready. Playing catch-up. Then, nominating people that have to do the same... un-prepare, don't know what the hell is DoE for example, got a bunch of learning to do... sadness.
