Garden State Governor Chris Christie doesn’t mince words, and doesn’t suffer fools. His reaction to a compromised school choice bill, watered down to allow for swift passage in the legislature:

“If you gut the purpose of the program to begin with, what good is it?…

If you compromise yourself away to nothing, then I don’t know what you’ve won…

(Legislators) are irrelevant in this in comparison to the children in 200 plus failing schools in New Jersey who are being stripped of hope…

People wonder why there is violence in our cities. Violence is commited, in the main, at least in my experience, by people without hope.

They wonder why there is drug abuse in our cities. People who turn to drugs are generally people with out hope.

They wonder why families are disintegrating in our cities. Families disintegrate because of the poison of a lack of hope.

And the greatest antidote to a lack of hope is a world class education“.

(Watch his complete response.)

States Work Together To Create New Academic Tests
Associated Press, June 23, 2010
Two big coalitions of states are competing for federal dollars to create a series of new national academic tests to replace the current patchwork system.

FROM THE STATES

California

All Is Not Lost for Cielo Vista Elementary As a Charter School
The Desert Sun, CA, June 24, 2010
Cielo Vista Elementary School will open in August as a charter school, despite a last-minute funding loss and union concerns.

Florida

Race to the Top: This Time A Charm
Florida Times-Union, FL, June 23, 2010
By all rights, Florida ought to qualify for up to $700 million in increased education funding in federal Race to the Top grants. The Sunshine State narrowly missed on the first round, finishing fourth. Georgia just missed, too, finishing third.

Illinois

Union Blasts Chicago Public Schools’ Tenure Attack
Chicago Sun-Times, IL, June 24, 2010
Chicago School Board members Wednesday went on the attack against teacher tenure, agreeing to lay off the worst-rated teachers first — regardless of seniority — amid moves to raise class size and shrink a record budget deficit.

Maryland

Ehrlich’s Right About Charter Schools
Baltimore Sun, MD, June 23, 2010
The former governor wants to eliminate barriers to the establishment of new and innovative educational models.

New Jersey

Coming to a District Near You: That Other Choice Program
NJ Spotlight, NJ, June 23, 2010
Inter-district School Choice Act has quietly redrawn school borders and may soon be an option for any district in NJ.

New York

Transforming the High School Experience
MDRC, June 2010
Since 2002, New York City has closed more than 20 underperforming public high schools, opened more than 200 new secondary schools, and introduced a centralized high school admissions process in which approximately 80,000 students a year indicate their school preferences from a wide-ranging choice of programs. At the heart of these reforms lie 123 new “small schools of choice” (SSCs) - small, academically nonselective, four-year public high schools for students in grades 9 through 12.

Ohio

Transform Schools For Children’s Sake
Cleveland Plain Dealer, OH, June 24, 2010
Bold transformation of the district, including ensuring that the very best teachers are retained at the schools, is the key to our children’s future. There are significant challenges for our city, yet hope for the future. Two facts from the Ohio Department of Education, the first one terrifying, and the second one encouraging:

Pennsylvania

Woodland Hills Board Reverses Vote, Renews Propel East Charter
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, PA, June 24, 2010
In a dramatic reversal, the Woodland Hills school board voted unanimously last week to renew the five-year charter of Propel East, a K-8 charter school in Turtle Creek that serves about 400 students.

Texas

State Board of Education Considers Renting to Charters
Texas Tribune, TX, June 24, 2010
Hoping to tackle the longstanding challenge of financing charter school facilities, the State Board of Education is considering taking on a novel and controversial role for an elected body: landlord.

Virginia

Va. Charter School Committee Seeks Advice On Application Reviews From National Experts
Richmond Times-Dispatch, VA, June 24, 2010
Through legislation pushed by Gov. Bob McDonnell, board members are to establish procedures for receiving and reviewing charter school applications before they are submitted to a local school board for approval or denial.

West Virginia

West Virginia Needs To Try Charter Schools
Charleston Daily Mail, WV, June 24, 2010
For 2010, just over 1,600 schools - or 6 percent of all the public schools in the United States - made the list. What’s notable is that 15 public charter schools made the Top 100 list, though charters only represent 5 percent of all high schools. Thirteen of the charter high schools were start-up schools, while only two were conversions from traditional public schools. Sadly, not one single public high school from West Virginia made the Top 100 list.

Keep Pressure On For Reform
Wheeling Intelligencer, WV, June 24, 2010
Six of the eight school reform bills Gov. Joe Manchin wants to become law have been agreed upon by a 10-member committee of state legislators. But the lawmakers have been able to reach consensus on only watered-down versions of some Manchin proposals - and not at all on two.

What happens when you are assigned to a school that could easily lead your kids down a path of failure?

The tag line says it all:

Four families… and the chance of a lifetime.

The Lottery opens in Washington, DC this weekend. Find out where you can see it in your neck of the woods.

(Read our earlier review in Newswire…)

NATIONAL

School Choice Case Headed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Restore the Role of Parents
Catholic Online, CA, June 23, 2010
One of the important public policy issues making its way through the Courts is “school choice” or more accurately, “Parental Choice” - since parents are the ones who should make the educational decision for their children. The unwillingness of those in charge of the Federal Educational Bureaucracy to consider this approach at a time when we all know the educational system is broken exposes the difference between rhetoric and reality.

Charter Schools Get a Good Grade
Washington Times, DC, June 22, 2010
A rigorous study of a national charter school system has found that most of its low-income students achieve “overwhelmingly positive” academic improvements in a few years.

Rocket for Change
Huffington Post, NY, June 22, 2010
Information technology has transformed how we live and work, but not K-12 education. For the most part, it operates like it did 50 years ago even after US schools layered 10 million computers on top of how we’ve always done things. But in a few places, that’s changing.

FROM THE STATES

California

L.A. Unified Hires Gates Foundation Official As Deputy Superintendent
Los Angeles Times, CA, June 23, 2010
A top official with the influential Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was chosen Tuesday as second in command in the Los Angeles Unified School District , raising speculation that he would be a top candidate for superintendent within two years.

District of Columbia

D.C.’s Successful Voucher Program Deserves A Second Life
Washington Post, DC, June 23, 2010
STUDENTS AWARDED vouchers to attend private schools in the District had significantly better chances of graduating from high school, and parents who sent their children to schools using scholarships were happy with having a choice of good, safe schools.

School Choice Leaders to Congress: Renew D.C. Voucher Program
PR Newswire, June 22, 2010
Congress should take immediate action and reauthorize the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program in light of a new report demonstrating that the school voucher program boosts student graduation rates by 21 percentage points, according to the American Federation for Children a leading school choice advocacy organization.

Maryland

Ehrlich Looks To Boost Charter Schools
Baltimore Sun, MD, June 22, 2010
Former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and the state Board of Education, holding separate and unrelated events Tuesday, discussed strikingly similar proposals aimed at encouraging the growth of charter schools in Maryland .

Md. Makes Change To Charter School Policy
WBAL Baltimore, MD, June 22, 2010
The state Board of Education approved a new policy Tuesday aimed at making Maryland charter school regulations stronger.

New Jersey

Gov. Christie to Review Proposed Changes to N.J. School-Choice Bill
The Star-Ledger, NJ, June 23, 2010
The fate of a school-choice bill backed by Gov. Chris Christie was in flux Tuesday after a sponsor announced significant changes in hopes of winning quick legislative approval.

Pennsylvania

First They Won the Lottery, Now They Get To Win At Life
Philadelphia Daily News, PA, June 23, 2010
THOSE FIRST 200 students who were admitted to the Arise Academy thought that they had hit the lottery.

Rhode Island

Highlander Charter School, in Providence, Gets Reauthorization Reprieve
Providence Journal, RI, June 23, 2010
Listening to the public outcry over an earlier recommendation to close the popular Highlander Charter School unless it showed dramatic improvement, state education officials Tuesday reversed themselves and recommended the school be granted a three-year extension.

Utah

Teacher Merit Pay
Salt Lake Tribune, UT, June 23, 2010
Performance pay for teachers is a perennial issue long supported on this page. Utah legislators of both political parties, too, are convinced that rewarding excellence can have a direct beneficial impact on education. Well-designed merit-pay systems have proven their worth, and the federal government is offering funding that encourages all schools to adopt them.

The opening of Virginia’s latest charter school (one of only four operating around the state) has been nothing but a roller coaster ride, not to mention a textbook example of the more-often-than-not contentious relationship between school districts and their charter schools when districts hold all the cards under a weak charter law:

Since the start of their dance with Richmond Public Schools (RPS) in the spring of 2008:

- Patrick Henry was forced to go through the RPS approval vote process three times

- Patrick Henry was initially left out of this year’s RPS budget

- Patrick Henry is to be held to higher standards than other RPS schools, but will receive 21 percent less funding

- Patrick Henry was “generously” granted leased space from RPS at a cost of $1 per year - facilities which came with a crippling renovation price tag of close to $1 million

Enough already?

Apparently not. Yesterday, a school more than 2 years in the making, one that will offer families a longer school year and a curriculum focus not available in traditional Richmond schools, was faced with the possibility of being on the receiving end of one more hit - the potential refusal by RPS to hire their first principal just as the final preparations for their inaugural school year get under way.

More “The hits just keep on coming”