Few of today's teachers can remember an economic situation quite like the one everyone now faces. To find analogies for the collapse of the housing bubble and the subsequent credit crisis, one has to search not his or her memories but the textbooks. "The Great Gatsby" and "The Grapes of Wrath" suddenly make more sense now. Generations of students…

In a decade and a half, the charter school movement has gone from a glimmer in the eyes of a few Minnesota reformers to a maturing sector of America's public education system. Now, like all 15-year-olds, chartering must find its own place in the world. First, advocates must answer a fundamental question: What type of relationship should the…

This article presents a dialogue with Monte Joffee. Joffee has been an active leader in the small school and charter school movements in New York City for over 20 years. He is a cofounder of The Renaissance Charter School in New York City and served as its founding principal (1993-2007). In this dialogue, Joffee articulates the ways in which…

The Washington, D.C. school system has a long history of poor academic achievement; however, over the past decade, the District of Columbia has made strides in offering families greater choice about which schools their children attend, thanks to a strong charter school law and the federally funded D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. District…

This article analyzes Chicago's new Renaissance 2010 school plan to close public schools and reopen them as choice and charter schools. Grounding the analysis in participatory research methods, the authors argue that Chicago's education accountability policies have laid the groundwork for privatization. They furthermore argue that Renaissance 2010…

By reducing class size we will close the achievement gap in public school education, caused by prior neglect especially since the civil rights era of the sixties. Additional, highly qualified and specialized teachers will more effectively manage a smaller class size and serve more individual student needs in the crucial early grades, where a solid…

After the 2000 presidential election during which George W. Bush erased the enormous advantage Democratic nominees had enjoyed on education by relentlessly decrying the "soft bigotry of low expectations," the president worked with Congressman George Miller (D-Calif.) and Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) to assemble a bill that ultimately…

"Reopening the school as a public charter school" is Option #1 on the list of NCLB's restructuring alternatives for failing schools. But this has not proved a popular choice. NCLB made the bold assumption that states and districts would voluntarily turn over the reins to charter operators. The authors of the legislation must have…

In response to Mr. Ayers and Mr. Klonsky, Mr. Duncan argues that Chicago's Renaissance 2010 initiative is holding adults accountable by closing low-performing schools rather than trapping children in a failing educational environment.

While teaching in a California charter school in the late 1990s, I had the experience of working one year under the dictates of a highly scripted curricular program and the next year in the absence of an effectively crafted instructional plan. In both cases it proved difficult for teachers to provide quality instruction to students. In an effort…

In this essay, the author suggests that worldwide disasters are providing the means for business to accumulate profit. From the Asian tsunami of 2005 that allowed corporations to seize coveted shoreline properties for resort development to the multi-billion dollar no-bid reconstruction contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, from the privatization of…

This paper takes on the question of whether and how school authorizers should be held accountable for their own performance. The author presents reasons why scrutiny and accountability are needed not only for schools but also for chartering agencies, identifies what types of accountability are present now, and offers ideas for ways accountability…

The three major players in the current efforts to privatize schools are the following companies: Education Alternatives, Inc., the Edison Project, and Public Strategies Group Inc. Explanations of their programs include core competencies, economic capability, technological capability, and strategic capability. (MLF)

Uses Nancy Fraser's theory to provide a rationale for charter schooling, introducing the social justice and democratic possibilities inherent in some charter school proposals. The article argues that Fraser's notion of multiple public spheres, combined with her strategies of economic redistribution and cultural recognition, provide a compelling…

In the June "Kappan," Marc Tucker summarized the "Tough Choices" report, the sequel to a report issued in 1990 by a predecessor group, which attributed the nation's low productivity growth in the 1970s and 1980s to inadequate American schools. The authors critiqued it and charged Tucker with trying to stampede policy makers into adopting reckless…