monkeyrotica

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 07:18:15 -0500

Can't recommend the truancy stories highly enough. There's something like 14 truancy officers covering a school population of over 50,000. That's, what, one truant officer for every 3,500 kids? That's a worse ration than hack-inspectors-to-cabs. Can't wait until Fenty, et al budgets for two more truant officers so they can claim "we're hiring more truant officers than ever before!"

woodstock

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 06:42:09 -0500

What's interesting is that two major issues have been exposed by the Post's series: 1) there are significant financial conflicts of interest for several current and several former charter school board members and 2) whether or not the charter system is effective. The first issue is immediately felt in neighborhoods. People are told that their traditional public schools are closing because they're under enrolled (read: not enough kids in the neighborhood to fill them) but are expected to accept a line of bullshit from sometimes multiple charter schools about how having them locate in buildings that aren't sited for schools, don't have the facilities that are really necessary, and will put a burden on the surrounding residents is "serving the local community." Simple fact is: Thom Nida and Karl Jentoft stood to and did benefit financially from decisions they made while sitting on the DC Public Charter School Board which means the decisions they made were not necessarily in the best interests of neighborhoods *or* the charter schools themselves. The second issue...well, whether or not charters are effective won't be determined until we see whether or not they produce literacy rates that are higher than what DCPS produces.

DCist: Schools Roundup: All Eyes on Charter Schools

monkeyrotica

woodstock