As we approach National Charter School Week, there is much to be excited about. In our country, more than 1.6 million students attend charter schools and the numbers are growing. With strong bipartisan support in Congress, we are well on our way to achieving a more favorable political environment to support charter school growth and success.   

Join us as we celebrate the great work and accomplishments of our students, parents, teachers and administrators. Improving the nation’s public education system is not an easy task, but together we can make great strides.  Help us keep the momentum going by getting involved in your community.  Here are some ways you can support charter schools in your community.

• Make a tax-deductible donation to a school in our network— Every dollar counts (Click here to find a school in your community)
• Plan a charter school tour with local political and business leaders. (Click here to find a school in your community)
• Host a lecture by a prominent speaker on a key educational issue.
• Talk to your friends, families and social networks about the benefits of public charter schools
• Become a Fan of Mosaica Education, Inc. on Facebook (Click here)
• Send postcards and emails  to key constituents in your community announcing National Charter Schools Week 2010

Gene Eidelman

President

Mosaica Education, Inc.

Wednesday was the first of two student count days this school year, and those districts and schools saw drops in enrollment of between five and 129 students this fall compared to last fall.

Only the Western School District, Leslie Public Schools and Jackson Arts and Technology Academy — a charter school in the city — reported gains.

Jackson Public Schools did not have a final tally by Wednesday but plans to release the number as soon as it is available, said district spokeswoman A’Lynne Robinson.

“We think we’re level at the elementary. Some are up, and some are down,” Robinson said. “At the middle school and high school, we don’t know.”

Jackson Arts and Technology Academy gained the most students with an increase of 55 students from 108 last fall to a count of 163 Wednesday.

Principal Septembra Williams credits the increase to a new energy in the building, a family atmosphere and a commitment to the students’ educational and social well-being.

She also did some recruiting during the summer that included radio and television advertising and appearances at stores, churches and in neighborhoods.

“We just really go out in the community and let parents know what we’re all about,” Williams said.

Enrollment at Albion Public Schools dropped by an estimated 129 students — the largest number among Jackson-area schools, according to information available Wednesday.

Albion Superintendent Frederick Clarke could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

This week’s student counts are tentative. The state allows districts up to 30 days to account for students who were absent on count day.

Total enrollment — calculated by “blending,” a formula that uses the fall head count and the previous winter tally — is used to determine how much state aid public schools receive.

In other words, when a district loses students, it loses money.

“Our graduation class last year was larger than our entering kindergarten class, so we did anticipate and budget accordingly,” said Linda Brian, superintendent of the Hanover-Horton School District, which lost 14 students from a year ago. “But the bigger issue is that as we decline in enrollment, students don’t all come out of one class. … They’re across the board.”

In other words, it is a challenge to reduce costs because a district cannot simply close one classroom to save money, she said.

Schools with falling enrollment could be hit doubly hard with the state also trying to make $482 million in school cuts. That might include slashing $218 per student in state funding to schools.

“That really, significantly hurts districts,” Brian said.

During the last school year, each Jackson-area student generated at least $7,316 a year in state funding.

An estimated loss of 29 students and the potential cuts to state aid should not prevent Stockbridge Community Schools from maintaining its programs, Superintendent Bruce Brown said. He said the reduction in students was less than the district’s projected 1,650 blended student count.

“The enrollment drop from people leaving the state doesn’t seem to be as bad as we thought it was, but it’s not good,” Brown said.

Napoleon Community Schools lost only about seven students, a drop Superintendent Jim Graham said was a blessing.

“We were hoping to stay at least flat, and I think we accomplished that,” he said.

Area school districts

Student head counts for area school districts with the difference from September 2008 in parentheses:

Albion — 1,046 (-129)

Columbia — 1,660 (-25)

Concord — 884 (-38)

da Vinci — NA

East Jackson — 1,304 (-32)

Grass Lake — 1,251 (-21)

Hanover-Horton — 1,335 (-14)

Homer — 1,026 (-40)

Jackson — NA

Jackson Arts & Tech. — 163 (+55)

Leslie — 1,378 (+13)

Michigan Center — 1,358 (-49)

Napoleon — 1,584 (-7)

Northwest — 2,984 (-57)

Paragon Charter — 644 (-28)

Springport — 1,029 (-5)

Stockbridge — 1,667 (-25)

Vandercook Lake — 1,290 (-13)

Western — 2,870 (+5)

White Pine Academy — 160 (-55)

Sources: Center for Educational Performance and Information, Jackson County Intermediate School District and local school districts

Bay County student counts are in, drops as expected

By Andrew Dodson | The Bay City Times

October 01, 2009, 8:28AM

 

Sarah A. Miller | The Bay City Times

 

Students at the Bay County Public School Academy were allowed to wear blue jeans instead of uniforms on Wednesday as an incentive to make sure they came to school.

 

“It was enough to get them here,” said Principal Jennifer Parrish.

 

Principals and superintendents around Bay County wanted to make sure the highest number of students were in class Wednesday for the state’s count day, which falls at the end of September each year. The number of students in a district determines the school’s state funding. That funding is expected to be about $7,000 per pupil, although the state budget hasn’t been set yet. 

In Bay County, Bay County Public School Academy, a charter school, was the only district to gain, with 58 more students compared to last year’s fall count.  

 

“I think our smaller class sizes are helping,” said Parrish. “People have more of an awareness that we are here and we can offer personalized attention with our class sizes.”

 

The average class size is around 18 students, said Parrish.

 

In Bay City Public Schools, 8,878 students were counted Wednesday, down 75 students from last year. 

 

“We predicted we were going to lose a little bit more actually,” said Marty Gottesman, director of student services for Bay City schools.

 

The district will see a bit of an increase in the final numbers after full-time equivalent numbers come in from parochial schools, said Gottesman. Public school teachers who teach subjects in the arts and foreign languages at parochial schools can add up those hours to equal a number of students.

 

Essexville-Hampton schools counted 24 fewer students than last year. 

 

“We are losing students, not because of education quality, but because our students’ parents can’t find jobs,” said John Mertz, superintendent of Essexville-Hampton Public Schools.

 

Pinconning Area Schools had 78 fewer students and Bangor Township schools counted 54 fewer students. It was the first time in eight years that Bangor Schools reported a decrease in students. 

Wednesday’s numbers were a preliminary count. The final counts should be calculated by the end of the week, school officials said. 

 

Kathryn Lewis

Last Updated: September 14. 2009 2:22PM UAE / September 14. 2009 10:22AM GMT

ABU DHABI // Private companies will have a hand in the management of every state high school in the emirate when the new term starts next week, as part of the Abu Dhabi Education Council’s effort to turn around failing schools.

The schools will become part of the public-private partnership programme, a pilot initiative now in its fourth year. A total of 147 schools – roughly half of all state schools, primary and high, in the emirate – will be participating in the programme this autumn. Last school year, 118 state schools participated.

The pilot programme pairs state schools with private education consultancies to introduce the education council’s reform agenda.

At primary schools, the partnerships were accompanied by the introduction of a new standards-based curriculum developed for the education council by the Department of Education in the Australian state of New South Wales, and by the introduction of maths and science taught in English.

Under the public-private partnerships, education management companies help to run existing state schools, which retain their own teachers and principals. At present, a handful of companies are involved in the programme. Among them are the American charter school company Mosaica; a wing of the UAE-based education giant Global Education Management Systems, commonly known as GEMS; and the British firm CfBT Education Trust. Taaleem, the UAE’s second largest private school operator, will join next year.

The expansion of the partnership programme to high schools will focus more on English instruction. Pupils in Abu Dhabi high schools will get an additional 90 minutes of English instruction per week.

On top of the new partnership with teachers working in Abu Dhabi high schools next year, the education council has recently hired 455 native speakers of English to teach at state schools.

The announcement that all state high schools will be part of the pilot programme was made on Thursday at a meeting of state school principals organised by the education council.

At the meeting, Dr Mugheer al Khaili, director general of the council, stressed that schools must co-operate with the ADEC to lift standards.

“The change in the education sector is necessary to achieve the goals of the economic vision of the emirate,” Dr al Khaili said.

He called on school principals to exercise the appropriate initiative and work with the education council to improve schools.

Moving all state high schools into the public-private partnership programme is not the only change planned for this autumn.

When the new year starts, the school day will be extended at state high schools, and students will take four additional periods of English instruction each week and two additional periods each of maths and Arabic-language instruction. School maintenance work has also been outsourced to a private company.klewis@thenational.ae

The WSJ reported that “The US government doled out $502 million for a dozen wind and solar energy projects.” The big winner was Iberdrola, a Spanish wind giant. Coming in second was Horizon, a subsidiary of a Portuguese firm. Third place went to a UK-owned firm. These grants will likely result in an energy efficient infrastructure, but two things strike me as interesting, 1) the big winners were all foreign owned, an indication of where public incentives have encouraged private investment over the last decade, and 2) all the grant recipients were for-profit companies, an opportunity that the US Department of Education doesn’t share with its $100 billion stimulus.

The education sector bias (and related legal prohibitions) against investment by private companies is remarkable in contrast to other public delivery systems. Innovations in health care, energy production and transmission, and transportation are often the product of private investment in government requested, sponsored, or incentivized projects. We don’t mind if textbook publishers update versions, but hackles go up when private operators propose school management. Most of this is just disguised job protection; the rest is historical bias.

Yesterday I visited Atlanta Preparatory Academy, a new school run by Mosaica, a private charter school operator. After only a month of access to an old school building, the place was updated, orderly, and clean. On day two of a new school, it was clear that a common instruction vision and curriculum framework were a guiding force. Classrooms were colorful and organized and featured products of the rich art and history curriculum. A talented principal (trained by New Leaders for New Schools) introduced me to an amazing teaching staff, some of whom had transferred from a Washington, D.C. Mosaica school. The instructional day was an hour longer than local schools, with 12 extra days of school each year.

You’d see the same at a National Heritage Academy, a privately operated network of 70 public charter schools. Mosaica and NHA are offering a service that is clearly superior to near by public schools and doing it for less money. They usually have to provide their own facility with no public funding. Yet they are prohibited from holding charters directly in most states. They find or construct a non-profit corporation which seeks a charter and then contracts with them for school management services. They run the risk of being kicked out of a school that they invested hundreds of thousands of dollars to open.

The $650 million Invest in Innovation Fund (i3) will soon be doled out primarily to school districts — folks with very little ability to invest in, manage, or scale innovation. Unlike the Department of Energy, public-private partnerships are prohibited. If the US Department of Education was able to invest half of i3 in private ventures, it would be multiplied several times over by private investment (10x in some cases), it would fund scalable enterprises with the potential for national impact, and the innovation would be sustained by a business model.

The barriers and prohibitions erected against for-profit companies in education weaken American competitiveness. Many of the interesting schools and learning tools are being developed internationally — all with private investment.

This isn’t a hypothetical argument for me. I spent the last year raising money, starting companies, and hiring staff (during the worst recession in 60 years). Worse than the recession are barriers to entry that inhibit the tools and schools that will mark the next generation of personalized learning.

We send our kids to privately run hospitals, we travel over privately constructed roads, and we buy power from private companies. Private sector investment and innovation should play a more important role in American education. Private companies have built-in incentives for speed, quality and scale. Visit Atlanta Prep or an NHA school if you want to see private capital providing a great service for less.

www.EdReformer.com