Right now, 10 charter schools are operating in the City of Rochester. Soon, you can expect to see more. The Farash Foundation plans to award up to $1 million in grants to spur charter growth in the region. While the grants will be available to selected charter schools in Monroe and Ontario Counties, nearly all […]
charter schools
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Quality issues in charter schools
Champions of charter schools were dealt a sobering reminder of their core mission recently: to innovate effective and new education models that can be successfully channeled into the nation’s broader public school system. A new report from Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes questions whether this, after 20 years, is happening. According to […]
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Running out of time
Significant cuts to All City High’s teaching and non-teaching staff have set off alarms about that school’s survival, but there’s much more to it. The cuts have also ignited a much larger concern about the future of the Rochester school district and the role that charter schools will play in that future. All City High’s […]
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Reductions at All City High may signal trend
Cuts to All City High’s teaching and non-teaching staff amount to a self-inflicted wound for the Rochester school district, says Adam Urbanski, president of the Rochester Teachers Association. All City High’s instructional staff of about 120 teachers will be cut next school year to about 64, according to current plans, Urbanski says. That doesn’t include […]
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Vargas foresees a smaller Rochester school district
It’s difficult to create stability in a system whirling from change, but that’s where the Rochester school district is today. Historically speaking, the district is facing an unprecedented drop in student enrollment, says Superintendent Bolgen Vargas. The main reason: charter schools. President Obama’s education policy — Race to the Top — lifted the cap on […]
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Could charters chew up the Rochester school district?
Lately, there’s been a lot of chatter about charter schools. Rochester, with some of the lowest-performing schools in the country, is a market ripe for an explosion of charters, according to some local educators. Rochester schools Superintendent Bolgen Vargas has on multiple occasions talked about the decline in student population, which is largely attributable to […]
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City schools and the Rochester mayor’s race
The mayoral race is officially under way and if past elections are any indication, be prepared for plenty of heated debate about the city school district. Though the situation is far from perfect, the district and the city have been working more collaboratively over the past two years than at any other time in recent […]
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Schools, neighborhoods,and the future of the city
Every once in a while, the topic of neighborhood schools comes up in Rochester. And while part of this stems from nostalgia, there’s also a fiscal argument. The Rochester school district spends a lot of money busing children to schools outside of their neighborhood. The reason: the district’s “school choice” system, which lets parents choose […]
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New report analyzes charter schools
A new report from Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes indicates that the success of charter schools can be determined within the first three years. Charter schools that are well-managed, high-performing schools from the start are likely to remain so, the report says. And those with problems in their first year aren’t apt […]
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Parent trigger law invoked in California
Parents of students attending Desert Trails Elementary School scored a major victory this week with their use of California’s parent trigger law. The Adelanto School Board voted unanimously to convert the long-failing school into a charter school. It marks the first time the law in California has been invoked. The country’s first parent trigger law […]
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Charter schools: innovation or mission creep?
Why do two schools about a mile apart with similar demographics, largely disadvantaged African-American and Latino kids, have such different outcomes? What is a charter school like True North Rochester Prep Elementary doing differently from what a traditional city school is doing that leads to dramatically higher student achievement? Those were some of the questions […]
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The schools’ problem? Concentrated poverty
“The sky is falling.” And as usual, it is falling on schoolchildren. Recent headlines place the academic performance of US students near the bottom of the world. These reports are partially true, but problems with our education system are exaggerated for some groups of students and underreported for others. Consider that: • Countries we […]
