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Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2006 > November > 02 > Entry
Fordham cracks down
The once highly regarded W.E.B. DuBois charter school in Cincinnati is in danger of being closed again.
You may recall that the school’s founder was criminally charged for alleged financial misdeeds and that the school’s sponsor is a nationally-known charter school champion, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.
Well Fordham has stepped up its scrutiny of its affiliated schools, according to a story by Jen Mrozowski in today’s Cincinnati Enquirer.
In an evaluation, Fordham said DuBois and its sister schools need to get their acts together or face closure.
This is more in line with the “tough love” approach to sponsoring that Fordham promised to provide when it began overseeing schools in Ohio. But it remains a stunner that DuBois could go so quickly from what some thought was the best charter school in the state to one which Fordham describes in a report as having “scant evidence of a coherent education program.”
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice
Comments
By Keith
November 4, 2006 8:10 AM | Link to this
After many years of legislators looking to the Fordham group as a knowledgeable source for education (rather than a politcal group) and the paper supporting anything that’s not public schools, the idea of holding charter/community schools accountable to the same or higher standards as public education is seeing a crack of dawn. I can only imagine the shenaigans that go on during standardized testing in the schools; just look at the money flow. Recently Fordham decided to toughen up on its unfailing support of every charter school it could start. Sort of like Oprah when she found out her favorite book was composed of lies. But the real, REAL, factor should be totally evaluating the waste of money to run schools with the SAME result as public schools and even lower. These schools were supposed to be wonderful because they would do MUCH BETTER than public schools for LESS money. They weren’t; they didn’t; and they aren’t. Don’t they sound llike political tools with failed promises just like governments at both levels have been???By Oldprof
November 3, 2006 8:17 AM | Link to this
Let’s try again to achieve clarity. If you wanted to experiment on a living thing, would you not require it be done by someone with an advanced degree in biology? For an experiment with inorganic compounds, wouldn’t you want a qualified chemist? So who got to experiment with education? Why, a bunch of legislators with no formal training in education, and a foundation that’s incapable of proper analysis of statistical data. Terry Ryan should never have been given access to the public’s system of education in the first place, no matter how much money he administers; failure was predictable (and those who didn’t predict it should now take time to figure out why they were fooled).