The Emancipatory Promise Of Charter Schools

Offers a broad, multidisciplinary, and progressive look at school choice.

In recent years, a conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court, over vigorous dissents, has developed circumventions to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment that allow state legislatures unabashedly to use public tax dollars increasingly to aid private elementary and secondary education. This expansive and innovative legislation provides considerable governmental funds to support parochial schools and other religiously-affiliated education providers. That political response to the perceived declining quality of traditional public schools and the vigorous school choice movement for alternative educational opportunities provokes passionate constitutional controversy. Yet, the Court’s recent decision in Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn inappropriately denies taxpayers recourse to challenge these proliferating tax funding schemes in federal courts. Professors Winer and Crimm clearly elucidate the complex and controversial policy, legal, and constitutional issues involved in using tax expenditures - mechanisms such as exclusions, deductions, and credits that economically function as government subsidies - to finance private, religious schooling. The authors argue that legislatures must take great care in structuring such programs and set forth various proposals to ameliorate the highly troubling dissention and divisiveness generated by state aid for religious education.

Harnessing conceptual inspiration through the work of Harriet Tubman and Queen Nanny the Maroon of Jamaica, this book explores the historical and contemporary role that education has – and can continually play as an instrument of personal and group liberation. The book discusses the early formations of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, the enslavement of native populations, and the subsequent development of the Underground Railroad and Maroon societies in the Caribbean and Americas as systems of liberation. It investigates the development and maintenance of racial, gendered and class stratifi cation, and provides a personal path to freedom as a context for a broader discussion on using education as a mechanism for dismantling the effects of colonization, miseducation, and social-psychological domination in schools and society. As a contemporary issue, it presents an in depth analysis of the Tucson Unifi ed School District in Arizona, and the controversy surrounding its ethnic studies program as an example of one of the contested sites of curriculum development and student liberation. Additionally, it discusses high performing charter schools as an alternative model of education, which may help to provide a systematic way of unshackling institutional barriers and oppression. Ultimately, this book acknowledges that today the road tofreedom is still one we must all travel as: miseducation, school failure, school dropout, unemployment/underemployment, poverty, neighborhood violence, incarceration, and a growing prison industrial complex are all reminders of the work that still must be accomplished. Like those who historically sacrifi ced their lives to gain freedom and an education, today, with the lingering effects of institutionalized systems of domination, education must continue to be an instrument of social mobility and liberation, if indeed, we are to make schools and society more humane and inclusive towards those who are still waiting to be unshackled. The book presents implications regarding the treaties on education for freedom as a school reform and public policy topic.

Keeping the Promise? Examines one fo the most complex reforms in education: charter schools. This wide-ranging and though-provoking collection of essays examines the charter school movement's founding visions, on-the-ground realities, and untapped potential--within the context of an unswerving commitment ot democratic, equitable public schools. Essays include overviews from nationally known educators Ted Sizer and Linda Darling-Hammond, interviews with leaders of community-based charter schools, and analyses of how charters have developoed in cities such as New Orleans and Washington, D.C.

This volume explores key issues within the 21st century which can impact schooling issues for students within urban contexts. It investigates issues which help prepare both preservice and in-service teachers by focusing on both the theoretical underpinnings in the field and historical foundations. Some of the topics discussed here include issues related to the achievement gap, school and community partnerships, charter schools, teacher pay and compensation, culturally relevant pedagogy, teacher motivation, and racial classroom and school fatigue.

How public are America's public schools? They may be tax funded and free, but the effects of market-based policies, exclusionary governance, insufficient funding, and structural inequities impair schools' ability to prepare future citizens, workers, neighbors, and stewards of the planet. Gyurko offers a fresh look at the "publicness" of American education through historical accounts, scholarly research, first-hand reporting, and political analyses. Chapters on funding, governance, standards, accountability, and equity show what must be done to better identify and strengthen the shared aims of public schools. Novel insights explain how even controversial topics like charter schools, testing, teacher tenure, and unions can be part of a broad "Publicization Project." Champions of public education will find a compelling vision and achievable roadmap that moves the country beyond decades of privatization. Publicization is an essential introduction to major debates of past years with a hopeful vision of what it means to be an educated American. Book Features: Speaks directly to political controversies affecting education including school choice, book banning, the "reading wars," board elections, critical race theory, and teacher unions. Offers first-hand, never-before-reported accounts of high-profile efforts involving prominent political players including AFT president Randi Weingarten, former U.S. education secretary Arne Duncan, former NYC mayors Michael R. Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio and schools chancellor Joel I. Klein, Success Academy CEO Eva Moskowitz, former PBS correspondent John Merrow, KIPP cofounder David Levin, late philanthropist Eli Broad, small schools founder Deborah Meier, and historian and activist Diane Ravitch. Provides pragmatic recommendations that cross political divides, including a fresh look at charter schools, the role of unions and collective bargaining, parent involvement in school decision-making, standardized testing, and equity-advancing reforms. Gathers the history of education ideas, thinkers, and past reforms to provide new generations of educators with a cogent summary of what has come before to inform what comes next.