FCAT scores at Pinellas charter school that used Scientology 'study tech' are among lowest in Tampa

[seafan]

Source: Tampa Bay Times

DUNEDIN — When Hanan Islam and her management company took control of the struggling Life Force Arts and Technology charter school here last summer, she passed out lesson plans based on the work of Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

She said Hubbard's "study technology" would enlighten children and help save the school. ..... Life Force's third- and fourth-graders scored the lowest or second-lowest passing rates in math, reading and writing of more than 300 elementary schools across Tampa Bay.

"It's a classic case of how a management company mismanaged this school, was paid an extraordinarily large fee for dismal services, and the ultimate victims were those poor children," said Dot Clark, the Pinellas County school district's coordinator of partnership schools.

.....

For those results, Life Force paid Islam's companies — her charter school management firm, Art of Management, and a study-tech promotional group, the World Literacy Crusade — more than $100,000 in public funds over a span of five months, bankruptcy records show.






Read more: http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/testing/article1232114.ece

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C'mon back from Singapore and Taiwan, Jeb Bush.

No need to hide from the stunning failure of your "Bold Educational Reform".


You will soon face the very public consequences of what you have done.

Jeb Bush ‏@JebBush 18 May

Provocative idea by @willweatherford. We need disruptive innovation in higher education. http://ow.ly/b0JwA

Jeb Bush ‏@JebBush 24 May

RT @excelined: Applauding Mississippi Gov @PhilBryantMS as he signed A-F Grading bill into law yesterday!

Put down the Twitter Machine, Jeb.


Your decades-old dreams of destroying public education by stealing the money from it are blowing up.

[No Elephants]

1. I just read the wiki on charter schools for the first time and am stunned.

The charter school idea in the United States was originated by Ray Budde,<9> a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and embraced by Albert Shanker, President of the American Federation of Teachers, in 1988 when he called for the reform of the public schools by establishing "charter schools" or "schools of choice". At the time, a few schools already existed that were not called charter schools but embodied some of their principles, such as H-B Woodlawn. As originally conceived, the ideal model of a charter school was as a legally and financially autonomous public school (without tuition, religious affiliation, or selective student admissions) that would operate much like a private business—free from many state laws and district regulations, and accountable more for student outcomes rather than for processes or inputs (such as Carnegie Units and teacher certification requirements).

Minnesota was the first state to pass a charter school law in 1991. California was second, in 1992. As of 2009, 41 states and the District of Columbia have charter school laws.<10>

I think I posted a week or two ago that I had heard Lamar Alexander say on Morning Joe that one of the last things he had done before leaving his post as Poppy Bush's Secretary of Education (from 1991to 1993) was recommemnd that Republicans look into "the charter schools that the Democrats are talking about." I did not necessarily believe Alexander, but I was not totally surprised that the idea had come from the Left. But the then head of the AFT?

Yet again, the Pogo rule applies.

[dtexdem]

2. Oh my gosh! Who could have predicted that?

;-)