Morning Shots

In 2003, after years of decline and poor performance in the Saint Louis public school system, the business community and many civic leaders, including St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay, joined together to support a new slate of candidates committed to implementing controversial reforms designed to increase student performance and administrative accountability.  The city schools have tenuously held onto provisional accreditation from the state of Missouri for some time.  The four members of the slate, Vince Schoemehl, Dr. Robert Archibald, Darnetta Clinksdale and Ronald Jackson, all won decisively and established a new majority on the board.  The new majority replaced the retiring superintendent, Cleveland Hammonds, by hiring the turn-around firm of Alvarez and Marsal to implement major changes under the direction of interim superintendent William Roberti.  

Then things really got messy.  In order to close an enormous budget gap, schools were closed, services were privatized and jobs were cut.  Protests by unionized school employees, long used to the school district providing good jobs to the community, became a regular occurrence.  A board member not a part of the new majority, Rochelle Moore, put a voodoo curse of the Mayor at a school board meeting.  Moore also began to post strange comments on local web sites, was arrested for creating a public disturbance, and was finally removed from the board by the court in 2004.  Her replacement, Veronica O’Brien, was appointed by the mayor as a reformer who was expected to join the new slate in pressing for change.  Instead, O’Brien quickly joined with the faction attempting to block the majority’s reform efforts.  Around this time, interim superintendent Roberti sued school board member Bill Haas for libel over Haas’ calls to investigate the sale of a school building to St. Louis University and insinuations that there were back-rooms deals involved

Read More …

The following is written by Edspresso contributor Collin Hitt, who was present at the legislative meetings he recounts below.  It should be noted that he does not take a position on the proposed charter school ban (Illinois House Bill 232) and that any opinions expressed below are solely his own. -ed.

Last month, State Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago) introduced House Bill 232, which would ban local school boards and the Illinois State Board of Education from “establishing, maintaining, or in any way supporting any virtual schools or virtual classes for elementary or secondary students in this State.

It has become abundantly clear that this is a thinly-veiled attempt by the Chicago Teachers Union to close the newly-opened Chicago Virtual Charter School – a mixed delivery virtual school open to all students in Chicago. The CTU, it should be noted, is currently involved in litigation to close that school down.  When the school was approved by the state board of education last fall, the CTU pledged to “block or stop the opening of this school.”  Well, it’s open, and doing well.

Davis and the CTU’s intentions were made clear last week, when she amended HB 232 to extend the proposed ban to charter schools, as well.  Now, if the bill becomes law, neither public funds nor charters’ private foundation funds will be allowed to support or maintain virtual schools or classes.  After amending the bill, however, Rep. Davis elected to hold HB 232 and not vote on it.  You see, the meeting room of the House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee was at that time packed to the rafters with students, parents and teachers from the virtual charter school.

For her part, Davis denied any connection to the Chicago Teachers Union, when a fellow representative insinuated that the legislation was initiated

Read More …

Nevada residents concerned about their children’s education and how their tax dollars are spent might like to know more about how the “empowerment” project that Gov. Jim Gibbons is planning worked when it was implemented in one Canadian city.

The school choice concept is quite new and rare on the Canadian scene.  School choice options that are available to more and more American parents are almost unheard of in most Canadian provinces. There are no large-scale public voucher programs.  Partial, direct public funding for independent schools is limited and varies widely across the country.  Alberta is the only province that allows charter schools.

About ten years ago, Edmonton, Alberta’s provincial capital, faced problems with student achievement and a disturbingly high dropout rate.  Edmonton’s public school board realized it was rapidly losing students to independent schools and the newly approved charter schools.  Parents were quickly voting with their feet.  Many schools were faced with closure.  One innovative educator decided to do something about it.  Rather than throw up his hands to whine and lament, the school board superintendent displayed a refreshing attitude—“What if we behaved as if we weren’t a monopoly?”  

The foundation of this revolutionary concept for public education is based on entrepreneurship, accountability and school choice.  Schools faced with imminent closure were given the freedom to be more creative and offered new options to a public that demanded better.  Many alternative-focus schools are now offered under the public umbrella ― everything from religious schools to sports schools, traditional model, single-gender, language-based, science, and more. Some excellent independent schools have since chosen to come under the public umbrella.  To date, Edmonton offers about 40 different specialty-focused alternative schools in addition to its regular public schools.

Principals are like CEOs of their schools and all 199 of them report directly to

Read More …