Charter School News

August 29-31st, 2009

New school blends past, future Sun-Times

The Ford Motor Co. Fund's first school in Dearborn, Mich., achieved those results, and now officials hope the same can be done at a new charter high school opened by the fund in Homan Square on Saturday.

Prairie Crossing Charter School updating its image Daily Herald

For example, Prairie Crossing represented Illinois as a national charter school of the year winner selected by the Center for Education Reform in 2007. ...

The Rubber Room New Yorker

The battle over New York City’s worst teachers…These fifteen teachers, along with about six hundred others, in six larger Rubber Rooms in the city’s five boroughs, have been accused of misconduct, such as hitting or molesting a student, or, in some cases, of incompetence, in a system that rarely calls anyone incompetent.

Charters shortchanged Rockford Register Star

(LTE) Taxpayers need to be willing to spend more on charter schools. You get what you pay for.

Let’s give charter, new school leaders chance to succeed Rockford Register Star

(LTE) Public schools are personally important to me. I am a product of the public school system in Kankakee. I graduated from a state university (University of Illinois, Champaign) and a publicly funded law school (University of California, Berkeley).

Tribune highlights YCCS student's triumphs

Youth Connection Charter School, who was featured as our first case study recently, has an inspiring article on their website right now about Nasia Smith, a student who just graduated:

Youth Connection Charter School 2009 graduate Nasia Smith was featured in a Chicago Tribune article on August 7, 2009. The article entitled, “In The Fight of Their Lives”, recent graduates of CPS schools discuss overcoming a growing problem in Chicago, homelessness. Nasia was one of the 236 homeless youth population enrolled in YCCS campuses this past school year. Her situation is classified as an “unaccompanied youth” - those who are homeless and not in the physical custody of a parent or guardian. The article written by Lauren B. Harrison, focused on the many struggles Nasia went through to graduate from high school. Despite having a baby and meeting his needs, being homeless and working several jobs to make ends meet, Nasia still persevered to graduation as salutatorian of her class this past June...

Read the rest on YCCS's website!

Charter School News

Friday, August 28, 2009

Charter school leader, others take pay cuts to help budget Daily Herald

Prairie Crossing Charter School's director and other administration office employees have agreed to pay cuts to help negate a projected $100,000 in extra annual interest expenses associated with a loan.

Legal eagles nurture young fledglings at Law Camp Chicago Tribune

..and almost became a TV movie, the Perspectives Charter School student started thinking law might be a good Plan...problem is to start young with students in middle school and high school and get them interested in the legal profession...

Paul Adam's Interview with Montel Williams

School Leader of Providence Englewood Charter, Paul Adams, was on Air America at 820 AM this morning (August 28) at 9:20 a.m. (Central Time). This was a live national interview for Montel Williams’ "Feel Good Fridays" nationally syndicated series.

Comings & Goings New Broad fellows, principals Catalyst

Seven new Broad Fellows will be working in Chicago schools through the Broad Residency program, which places executives from the private and civic sectors into two-year, top-level management positions in urban school districts around the country.

Single-sex classes at Ryerson help raise achievement for black boys--and girls Catalyst

In the May/June issue of Catalyst In Depth, I wrote about Ryerson Elementary School Principal Lorenzo Russell’s experiment with single-sex classrooms as a strategy to curb discipline problems and raise academic achievement. The focus was on helping black boys in particular at the West Garfield Park school.

Orr shaping up with Espinosa's help Chicago Sun-Times
After attending a Chicago Public School job fair, she was offered a job at Orr. She teaches health and physical education. But she also wanted to coach. ...

Teesee's Town: Marilyn Stewart, CTU president, to address City Club of Chicago lunch Chicago Defender

Newsy Names – Insiders and those in the know are predicting “a sell out” when Marilyn Stewart, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, addresses the City Club of Chicago’s Public Policy Luncheon on Oct. 1

State involvement in Chicago youth murder crisis - Part I Examiner.com
... topic that is apparently “persona non grata” for State of Illinois officials is the crisis-level murder rate of Chicago Public School (CPS) students. ...

CJA reinstitutes scholarship program National Jeweler Network

According to a 2006 study by the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago, only 54 percent of Chicago public school freshmen ...

Smart Child Left Behind NY Times

...study, by the independent Center on Education Policy, showed that more students are...But is that our only national goal in education? What might happen if federal law encouraged...a member of the task force on K-12 education at Stanford’s Hoover Institution...

Creating More Routes To High-Quality Education

INCS created Charter Up! to encourage forward thinking and academic excellence. Charter Up! provides charter schools with the opportunity to showcase programs that impact their students and communities and have the potential to be applied in traditional public schools. Each charter school had the opportunity to submit an overview of programs that have helped produce outstanding academic achievements. Participants were encouraged to submit programs/ initiatives that demonstrated creativity or innovation in leadership development, governance, parental involvement, curriculum, enrichment programming and funding. An independent judging panel reviewed the entries and chose five honorees based on their creativity, innovation, impact on student achievement and representation of the overall charter school experience.

We are pleased to highlight the 2009 “Roadmap to Innovation” profiles, a portfolio of program models that are shared with teachers and school leaders at in-district schools as well as within the charter school network.

• Chicago Math and Science Academy - College Path Program
• Civitas Schools - Community Leadership Program
• Namaste Charter School - Peaceful People Tools Program
• Noble Network of Charter Schools - Curriculum and Assessment Program
• Youth Connection Charter School - Grow Your Own Teachers

To learn more about Roadmaps, and how to implement these programs in YOUR schools, visit INCS' website.

Charter School News

State denies Joliet charter school petition Joliet Herald News
... according to the Illinois Administrative Review Law. In the letter to Joliet Academy Charter School and Superintendent Paul Swanstrom, Koch said state ...

New charter school opens on far South Side ABC7Chicago.com
(Plus video) Chicago International Charter School (CICS) is the largest charter school in Illinois, serving over 8000 students across 13 Chicago neighborhoods. ...

First charter school off to rocky start; communication key Rockford Register Star
Legacy Academy of Excellence opened Tuesday with frustrated parents, a superintendent seeking legal options, and the public wondering what’s going on. That’s not a good start.

Legacy school changes phone number Rockford Register Star
Parents, Rockford School District officials and others trying to reach Legacy Academy of Excellence officials by phone Monday and Tuesday heard only the sound of rings. That’s because the school changed the phone and fax numbers. Tuesday parents found notes attached to their children’s backpacks with the new school numbers.

Whose Fault is the CPS Budget Crisis? HuffPo
Is Chicago's high-wage / short day and year setup to blame for current pension woes? One charter school teacher says yes

If Illinois blows this ... Chicago Tribune
What's the best way to make the U.S. public education system serve students better? President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan are betting that cold, hard cash -- and plenty of it -- will do the trick. By September 2010, the administration will have distributed $4.35 billion in supplemental education funding to the states. But not every state will get a share of the loot. In fact, most states won't see a dime.

Dangling Money, Obama Pushes Education Shift NY Times
Holding out billions of dollars as a potential windfall, the Obama administration is persuading state after state to rewrite education laws to open the door to more charter schools and expand the use of student test scores for judging teachers.

Are charters schools a price of entry to reform? The Associated Press
Illinois lawmakers decided in July to allow 60 more charter schools to answer President Obama's challenge after a campaign in that state by the state ...

Student-Focused Education Illinois Review
By Rafael Rivadeneira, candidate for House District 41. These schools work for the students and parents, not for unions and outside interest groups. We need to encourage student and parent choice in the school decision process. Currently Illinois doesn't have enough Charter Schools to meet the demands of waiting lists.

Charter school debuts in secluded Altgeld Gardens Chicago Tribune
So on the first day of school this week, Shannon walked Tamyra Jones, 5, to kindergarten at Chicago International Lloyd Bond, the first charter school to ...

Medill student's slideshow about De La Cruz -- the building that UNO wants

New charter school opens near Altgeld community Chicago Defender
That's when the Chicago International Charter purchased the building from the Archdiocese of Chicago and spent $2 million in renovations, according to ...

Fewer male teachers are in K-12 classrooms in Illinois Chicago Tribune
But after two years teaching 8th-grade math at Calumet Middle School, a charter school in Chicago's Auburn-Gresham neighborhood, and two years at other area ...

The KIPP-ing Point The Jewish Week
Dubovi went to the campus of KIPP (the Knowledge is Power Program), flagship of a charter school network that has grown in 17 years from a single Houston ...

Ask Governor Quinn to Restore $3.4 Million in Transition Impact Aid!

As we rallied in the gym of Alain Locke Charter Academy last Thursday, July 30th for Governor Quinn’s momentous education bill signing which included the Charter Reform Act of 2009, everyone was not fully aware that the Illinois State Board of Education cut key funding that provides an incentive for districts to look at how charter public schools could be part of their district. This funding is called transition impact aid.

This aid was created in 2000 to provide districts with funding to offset the initial costs of charter public schools and help the district assess its administrative efficiency. When it was created in 2000, it was suppose to provide the district with 90% of the per pupil dollars that a district provided to a charter school in the first year, 65% in the second year and 35% in the third year. At the time ISBE cut this funding, it was only funded at about 35%.

Please help us bring back this integral funding to help spread innovation throughout the state of Illinois. We are asking Governor Pat Quinn to continue to support school districts in their exploration of charter public schools by funding Transition Impact Aid with his discretionary funds. Please ask the Governor for his support in restoring $3.4 million in Transition Impact Aid TODAY.

Click the link below to log in and send your message:
http://www.votervoice.net/link/target/incs36024454.aspx

A note from our Summer Intern!

Over the summer, INCS had several amazing interns that kept summer at INCS interesting and helped our work run smoothly. Read on to learn about one of our intern's experience at INCS:

My name is Janisha King, and I am currently an intern working with INCS through KPMG. KPMG is a large professional service firm that provides accounting services all around the world. My internship this summer consisted of interning at two different KPMG client sites which included INCS as one of those. I have been working with INCS for three weeks now and this has been such an incredible experience. During this internship I was given a variety of task such as putting data into the database, helping with the annual picnic, and reviewing Credit Card statements to name a few. These tasks were shaped for both my interests as well as INCS.

Taking on such a broad range of work allowed me to not only grow personally but also professionally. Not only has the work been affective but the people involved with INCS have as well. They are very determined and are truly devoted to what they do. This internship has given me an experience that I will never forget.

We’re very happy to have had Janisha at INCS over the summer and appreciate the work she's done!