Thursday, March 10, 2016

The Nation: Charter School Violence Spiked at Double the Rate of Public Schools

The despicable Families for Excellent Schools is exposed in this Nation piece. FES must disparage public schools to counter the Eva bad pub. Elizabeth Green at Chalkbeat carries Eva's water in a more subtle way - Beyond the viral video: Inside educators’ emotional debate about ‘no excuses’ discipline - but I'll get to that another time.

And let me know if you see a link to this article at Chalkbeat.

 Why Has Charter School Violence Spiked at Double the Rate of Public Schools?

Meanwhile, charter advocates continue to criticize the safety of traditional public schools.


A few weeks after The New York Times released a controversial video of a Success Academy Charter School teacher lashing out at a student, New York City’s deep-pocketed charter school advocates are looking to shift the public narrative on who is committing violence in city schools.
Over the last few weeks, Families for Excellent Schools, a charter school lobbying and advocacy group with close ties to Success Academy, has placed TV ads, held a press conference, and taken to social media, claiming New York City public schools are in a violent “state of emergency.” The charter school campaign appears to be a response to the public backlash that Success Academy has received for its controversial disciplinary approach.
 Taking state data, which includes “violent” incidents not involving the police, Families for Excellent Schools asserts that between 2014 and 2015 schools suffered a 23 percent uptick in violence. The public action was meant to undermine New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who recently claimed school violence has gone down, thanks to his administration’s softer disciplinary approach.
A Nation analysis of the charter school group’s data, however, suggests the move may backfire, since the numbers also show that charter schools themselves reported a far higher spike in incidents of school violence, 54 percent, more than double that of the public school average between the 2014 and 2015 school years.

MORE at: http://www.thenation.com/article/why-has-charter-school-violence-spiked-at-double-the-rate-of-public-schools/

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