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Another View: Data can bedevilcharter schools
January 9, 2012 By admin Leave a Comment
Kathleen Gibbons, a Rocklin parent whose child attends a public virtual school, is a board member of California Parents for Public Virtual Education. She is responding to the Jan. 2 editorial “Charter schools should embrace accountability,” which stated: “The California Charter Schools Association, in setting its own higher standard for measuring charter schools, has started a lively dialogue centered on the right thing – student performance and how to measure it.”
Last month, the California Charter Schools Association announced an initiative that would have tragic ramifications for some public charter schools. Under this proposal, any charter school failing to meet the association’s arbitrary standards would not be permitted to renew its charter. After close examination, though, the educational community may want to rethink CCSA’s assessment and its effort to limit parental choice under the guise of accountability.
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Pearson’s U.S. Online Public Schools Fall to Bottom of Class
January 7, 2012 By admin Leave a Comment
Jan. 6 (Bloomberg) — Online public schools, where students as young as kindergarteners log on from home to take classes, don’t make the grade, according to a study released today.
Less than a third of the “virtual” schools managed by for- profit companies made adequate progress toward meeting state standards last year, compared with about half of all public schools, according to the report from the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The findings demonstrate that online public schools, which educate more than 200,000 students nationwide, don’t have the results to justify their growth, said Gary Miron, lead author of the study and a professor at Western Michigan University.
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Opinion: Fighting for the future of California education
December 26, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment
As a parent and active member of the California Parents for Public Virtual Education (CPPVE), I have a vested interest in items of education policy. Regardless whether a student attends a public school in a brick-and-mortar classroom or at home in the virtual environment, a student deserves the best in academic and social opportunities.
As parents, we want to give our children a chance at a bright future. However, it seems that even those with the best of intentions can sometimes stray from their original goals and neglect the interests they originally sought to serve.
Recently, the California Charter School Association (CCSA) announced a new initiative that would have tragic ramifications for a number of California public schools. CCSA suggests that any charter school failing to meet its (CCSA’s) arbitrary standards not be permitted to renew their charter. After close examination of CCSA’s assessment methodology, the educational community may want to rethink CCSA’s assessment rubric and their ability to bully individual schools and limit students’ academic opportunities. Included in their list are two public virtual schools: California Virtual Academies at Kern County and Insight School of California-Los Angeles.
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