Monday morning updates
Hope that everyone had a nice weekend. A few headlines this morning to start off the week.
K12 Leads the Way Back To School
Virginia-based business, K12 Inc, is “the nation’s leading provider of proprietary curriculum and online school programs for students in kindergarten through high school (K-12), is engaged in the largest back-to-school effort in the company’s history. With innovative web-based courses, over 2,000 online school teachers, and the delivery of more than 1,500 tons of education materials, K12 is bringing school directly to tens of thousands of students in the U.S. and across the world.”
We’ve said it before- school choice is about more than just one “choice,” it’s about innovation and creating a vibrant educational system with lots of choices to meet the unique needs of all of our children. K12 Inc is playing an important role in that.
The K12® virtual school program combines an award-winning curriculum – using engaging online lessons and hands-on education materials – with professional teachers, advisors, and state-of-the-art technology that connect students to a vibrant world-wide school community. This gives K12 students the opportunity to receive a complete education in their home, on the road, or wherever an Internet connection can be found.
DCPS Enrollment at 37,000, charter facility allotment must be restored
Despite Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s prediction that there would be 45,000 students in her system this term, an increase from the 44,681 that attended last year, it looks like the flood gates allowing parents to enroll their children in charters shows no sign of closing. Bill Turque of the Washington Post reports today that DCPS enrollment dropped to approximately 37,000.
These figures represent a decrease 17 percent decrease for DCPS and mean that charters now educate 43 percent of all public students in the nation’s capital at just over 28,000, a 10 percent increase over last year.
There is now no excuse for not restoring the extremely painful reduction in the Mayor’s current budget of the charter school facility fund. Remember that Mr. Fenty proposed cutting these dollars by $24 million in a scheme to pay schools only what they were currently spending on space. The Council put back $16.7 million of the allotment resulting in charters receiving $309 less money per pupil this term.
But it is much more expensive to teach a kid in DCPS compared to a charter.
Jay P. Greene’s Blog: The Special Ed DC Bubble
We mentioned last week the Manhattan Institute’s new study by Drs. Jay Greene and Marcus Winters on the impact of special education vouchers.
Dr. Greene has another informative post on his blog, noting that, “One of the (many) problems with education policy analysts is that a large number of them live in or around Washington, D.C.”
He goes on to elaborate:
The problem is that people tend to generalize from their immediate experiences. If something happens to you, you hear about it from people you know, or you read about it in your local paper, you tend to think that’s the way it is for everyone. So, DC education analysts are always at-risk of drawing policy conclusions based on incredibly atypical experiences.
Which is very true- and not just for DC education analysts.
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