Districts & Charter Schools

From school districts to charter schools, we cover public schools and the ways they are governed.

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The good news about Florida’s charter school growth

Florida’s charter schools grew by more than 15,000 students this school year. And new research suggests their steady growth might help students in district schools. In recent years, charter schools in our state have scored under-the-radar policy wins, clearing away barriers to their growth and inching closer to funding parity... READ MORE
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Opinion: Why NAEP scores should be used with skepticism when ranking states’ charter schools
Harvard University’s Paul Peterson and M. Danish Shakeel wrote a response to a critique of their Charter School Report Card. The authors note that I misinterpreted their study in saying...
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‘They can’t drain our districts; only WE can drain our districts!’
Americans started a Baby Bust in 2008 (on behalf of Gen-Xers-welcome you to the club youngsters!) In addition, the public school system seems determined to do their best imitation of...
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Two ‘double-F’ charter schools spared automatic closure in baseline grading year
Florida released a new batch of A-F grades to schools, but without some of the usual negative consequences. The 2022-23 school year was the first under a new state assessment...
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Paging Special Agent Johnny Utah to investigate Utah mystery
“Point Break” follows the adventures of newly minted FBI Special Agent Johnny Utah as he unravels the mystery of a group of Los Angeles bank robbers known as “the Ex-Presidents.”...
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Florida school district sees charter schools as ally in managing rapid growth
Suzanne Legg had a problem. She had co-founded her county’s first charter school. Classes had barely begun, and already student behavior was causing serious issues. As a first-time charter school...
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‘Game Changers’ in K-12 choice
Perun, the rock star of Australian defense economists doing awesome hour-plus hour PowerPoint presentations on YouTube, recently did two such presentations on “game-changing” weapon systems in the ongoing Ukraine-Russian war....
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Florida Senate’s deregulation push targets third-grade retention, testing and turnarounds
A provision that made Florida a national literacy leader 20 years ago could be repealed in an effort to ease the regulatory burden on Florida’s school districts.  A state Senate...
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Three trends worth watching in public sentiment on schooling
EdChoice is out with its latest Schooling in America Survey, one of the most comprehensive snapshots of what Americans think of their schools. It’s packed with interesting data points to...
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Miami-Dade School District proposes new job perk: school choice priority for employees’ kids
As schools in cities across the United States continue struggling to attract and retain teachers, the nation’s fourth-largest district seeks to carve out a new benefit: better odds for its...
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Get smart fast, vol. 3: Policy failures
Broken Promise? iPromise Academy, LeBron James’s widely publicized foray into educational transformation, is stumbling. Five years in, not one of its current eighth graders has passed the state’s math test,...
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