Catholic Schools In D.C. Adapt To Lower Budgets, Changing Requirements

Across the country enrollment in online charter schools is disproportionately white, except in one state- Colorado. In Oregon, the opposite is true. This article compares what factors differentiate the state of Colorado versus the state of Oregon in terms of enrollment in charter schools along racial lines. Some differences include a larger diverse population in the state of Colorado, alternative schools that target at-risk students, and a larger team devoted to overseeing charter schools.

The Summit Learning Program is an online program that offers personalized lessons in science, social studies, math, and English language arts for students in grades four through 12. “Nearly 400 schools use it across 40 states.” The Hechinger Report spent a year exploring the platform in schools, while there are some drawbacks there’s also evidence it works. In some schools, student test scores jumped after using Summit.

In 2017, researchers found that Chicago elementary and middle school students were improving their test scores at a faster pace than almost all of their peers nationwide. Reflecting on this surprising statistic and lessons learned from 30 years of education reform experimentation, CPS points to its emphasis on high quality principal development and teacher mentoring programs as one of the most crucial factors in the turnaround.

A Colorado nonprofit takes a "place-based" approach to improving student outcomes. By offering wraparound social and educational services, Blocks of Hope aims "to flood a carefully defined geographic area with services in the hopes of touching a critical mass of residents, usually around 60 percent." On its third anniversary, the trumpeted program has started to lose steam, running up against the realities of a gentrifying neighborhood and funding shortages.

The ecosystem of D.C. charter schools that has evolved over the last two decades represents a cornucopia of creative and nontraditional approaches to education, in addition to fairly traditional college-prep schools, and is now producing some of the highest graduation rates, college acceptance rates, and average test scores in public schools in the nation.

Tapestry graduates 93 percent of its students on time, and 80 percent of graduates go on to college in the fall. Its success derives from its autonomy as a charter school and from its idea of forming "crews" of students that act as in-school families.

The Charter School for Applied Technologies has the highest graduation rate in Erie County, despite its predominantly poor, minority student makeup, in large part simply by instilling high expectations.

Bangladesh schools had very low attendance because children were kept home to work and conditions were unsafe for girls, ethnic minorities, and those with disabilities. BRAC, one of the world's largest and most comprehensive NGOs, has built new schools addressing all the reasons, at home and school, that were preventing children from attending.

After a period of backpack searches and police pepper-spraying students, Students Deserve, a youth-led activist group, pushed for the Los Angeles Unified School District to withdraw all funding for school police and divert it to mental health support for Black students. The school board approved a plan to cut one third of the school police budget, roughly around $25 million, and instead use it to fund “221 psychiatric social workers, counselors, “climate coaches,” and restorative justice advisers to schools with the highest number of Black students.”

Despite its tiny size and modest resources, the Port Orford-Langlois school district in Oregon managed to minimize coronavirus spread among students in the 2020-21 school year. A key factor was the partnership between the town and school libraries. Librarians prepared educational packets, sparing parents from having to scramble for materials. Schools and families dutifully followed safety guidelines while putting a priority on getting the youngest students into the classroom as soon as possible and preserving opportunities for them to play together. There were no cases of the virus spread in the schools.