-
Thrive Schools: How an innovative California charter network grew to 700 students & 4 campuses in only 4 years through a focus on math, literacy & ‘the Light of Kindness’
At the Juanita Street campus of San Diego’s Thrive Public Schools, the day begins with a high-five and a warm greeting at the visitors’ gate. The charter elementary school currently occupies a handful of compact, semi-permanent buildings and a blacktop in a hilly stretch of the City Heights neighborhood. Its electronic gate is still pretty...
By Kevin Mahnken | October 3, 2018
-
LA’s first common application system launches for independent charter schools
*Updated Oct. 2 A new website, ApplyLA, debuts today that allows parents for the first time to apply to multiple independent charter schools in Los Angeles with a single application. Parents will be able to manage application deadlines, see the status of their applications, and accept offers in a single system. The application is mobile-friendly and available...
By Esmeralda Fabián Romero | October 1, 2018
-
Inside Citizens of the World, the intentionally diverse California school network built around community engagement and students’ unique backgrounds
Over the past year, researchers from The Century Foundation have analyzed roughly 5,700 charter schools in all 50 states in an attempt to produce the first-ever nationwide inventory of diversity in the public charter school sector. This school profile was adapted from The Century Foundation report “Citizens of the World Charter Schools: Balancing Network and Community.”...
By Halley Potter | June 22, 2018
-
Commentary: How our LA charter high school is reimagining education for homeless and foster care youth
As graduation season comes to a close, school leaders across the country have the opportunity to reflect on the way our schools are helping students from all walks of life prepare for their future, including students who are homeless, living in foster care, or experiencing challenges that prevent them from thriving in traditional school settings....
By Erin Whalen | June 20, 2018
-
‘I live in the same space as you’: As districts nationwide struggle with diversity, how one LA school network is recruiting teachers who look like the classrooms they lead
Each year, on the first day of school at KIPP Academy of Opportunity in South Los Angeles, teacher Kasi Moore-Watts has a reliable way of getting her students’ attention. Her mom was on drugs, Moore-Watts tells them, and her grandparents raised her. When she shares her background with students, she said, she sees “heads that...
By Brendan Lowe | June 19, 2018
-
Commentary: The LA teachers union has been trying to organize our charter school for 3 years. It’s enough. We’re not interested.
We, two public school teachers in Los Angeles, made a choice to teach at Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, the largest public charter network in Los Angeles. It was a deliberate decision rooted in our desire to make a life-changing difference in children’s lives, particularly children from traditionally disadvantaged communities. For both of us, this is...
By Daisy Jauregui and Cynthia Hacha | April 30, 2018
-
Exclusive analysis: New USC survey shows public support for charter schools has jumped 10 points in last year
For Democrats and Republicans alike, charter schools have long provided a happy compromise between vouchers for religious schools and no school choice at all. Charters give families an alternative schooling option but remain publicly funded, secular institutions authorized by government agencies. They have been warmly endorsed by Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama,...
By Paul Peterson and Albert Cheng | March 27, 2018
-
Even as UTLA looks to bolster declining union membership with push into charters, one school’s teachers voted to decertify after just two years
As the Los Angeles teachers union continues to try to organize educators at the city’s largest charter school network, teachers at one of the few independent charter schools that joined the union voted to leave it after less than two years because union officials were pushing their own agenda, according to interviews and documents reviewed...
By LA School Report | February 12, 2018
-
How a Blue Ribbon high school in downtown LA is daring its low-income Latino students to dream bigger — and guiding 87 percent of them into four-year colleges
*Updated Feb. 7 Jesús González Saucedo’s parents knew that even though he was born with a cleft palate that made it hard for him to speak, he could develop his potential and rise above the life they could offer him as street vendors. They just had to find the right school. “They had to sell...
By Esmeralda Fabián Romero | January 29, 2018
-
LAUSD agrees to more consistency when tacking on additional requirements to charter renewals
LA Unified’s charter division agreed this week to be more consistent when making additional requirements of independent charter schools during their renewal process. School board vice president Nick Melvoin requested the change at Tuesday’s board meeting because he said the added requirements, known as benchmarks, were being applied unfairly to some schools that were showing...
By Mike Szymanski | December 7, 2017