January 2018: School Administrator
Charters and Choices
This issue focuses on choices, charters and innovations.
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Additional Articles
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School Choice, Segregation and DemocracyEducation Secretary Betsy DeVos insists that school choice is “the new civil rights issue of our time.”
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Getting Smart About the Risks of District-Charter CollaborationA researcher identifies six factors for assessing a school district's readiness to dive into a serious partnership
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Salary RatiosApplying a popular metric in the private sector to examine median entry-level salaries of teachers and superintendents.
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The Desperate OutburstAngered over the election of Donald Trump, a teacher lambasts his students who supported the victor for aligning with a “racist, misogynistic, Islamophobic” individual. The district must respond.
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Avoiding Deadly Silence at Your Retreat
An off-site school board gathering, handled well, can yield trust and healthy relationships.
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The Gratitude Effect
GRATITUDE AND SPIRITUALITY are positively correlated with well-being. The jury is no longer out. From Harvard Business Review research to schools worldwide with anecdotal evidence, a shift to practices of gratitude and mindfulness leads to a positive, nurturing and caring culture.
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Undercutting Our Democracy Through Vouchers
PRIVATE SCHOOL VOUCHERS always have been a bad idea, but with our democracy under considerable stress today, privatization schemes are particularly dangerous.
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'Flip' Your Interview When HiringAn alternative for the typical panel of district representatives that sizes up candidates.
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Student Choice, Not School ChoiceLOVE PUBLIC education because it provides every child access to an education that prepares him or her to be a contributing member of our communities, our country and the world.
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A Close Look at Scotland's School FundingShared insights from an educational excursion abroad.
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Inside AASA Tammy Barbara on Executive OperationsWHEN TAMMY BARBARA, AASA’s chief of staff, joined the association in spring 2016, she was hired to provide direct support to Dan Domenech, AASA’s executive director.
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Project-Based Learning With a Twist and a Turn
Another student transformation resulting from project-based learning was Hayden, a boy who had been pretty disengaged in his classes.
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Cautionary Lessons of Michigan's Charter Experiment
Charter school policy debates are so focused on test score comparisons of charter and traditional public schools that we lose sight of how powerfully the design and implementation of state laws shape outcomes.
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Managing a Small District's Online PresencePractical strategies that click for a superintendent of a 765-student district.
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Caution! Hiring Board Members' RelativesPerhaps the most dreaded issue faced by a CEO committed to fair and nonbiased employment practices.
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Leading Out LoudA superintendent in Kansas who leads “from the back of the room.”
Staff
School Administrator, January 2018
With middle ground (on any public policy issue) distressingly elusive these days, I found it refreshing to encounter an even-handed perspective of the charter school impact in Zachary Oberfield’s 2017 book Are Charters Different? A political scientist at Haverford College, he helps us understand the differences in the instructional climate between traditional public schools and charters.
In his article “What (If Anything) Makes Charters Different?,” Oberfield discusses what his study in schools across Delaware learned comparatively about teacher autonomy, collaboration and satisfaction. In the end, he describes the promises of charters being half-fulfilled.
This issue’s charter coverage also includes stories about the obstacles journalists face in getting basic performance information from charter school operators and the elements of an effective partnership between a school district and charter schools.
As always, I am interested in readers’ feedback.
Voice: 703-875-0745
E-mail: jgoldman@aasa.org
Twitter: @JPGoldman
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