Guest Column: A different kind of Jewish education
By SARAH KASS
The Jerusalem Post
When charter public schools began in the US more than a decade ago, proponents were divided as to whether their purpose was efficiency (bang for the buck) or innovation (raising the bar). As American Jewish philanthropists explore investing in this sector - in light of the successful launch of the Ben Gamla Charter School in Florida - they would do well to identify their purpose, and to clarify the Jewish future they aim to propel.
he Jewish community has long worried about the rising cost of Jewish education in the United States, where unlike most other countries with Jewish citizens, there is no public support for religious schools. High tuition costs - upward of $25,000 per child per year in New York City, beginning in kindergarten - ensure that, beyond the Orthodox world, where secular school is out of the question, a Jewish education is largely a privilege for the rich. Moreover, as leaders of these ever-financially-strapped Jewish day schools spend so much of their time raising money, they find themselves devoting precious little attention to how they are raising the kids. And so, concerned philanthropists have wondered how to relieve the financial burden on Jewish day schools so that Jewish education in America might be more accessible and more educational.
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INSTEAD OF private Jewish day schools, how about public Jewish charter schools? And given the tiny matter of America's first amendment, which precludes public financing of religious education, the new pitch is for public Hebraic charter schools. Rather than fitting form to function, this plan fits function to form, remanding Jewish education to the flushest box, the one supported by Uncle Sam. The purpose would appear to be bang for the buck: better to get more Jewish kids a Jewish-style education on the cheap than to figure out how to pay for the best Jewish education.
While the 180-day six-hours/day school year of a public charter education is free to the parent-consumers, success is extremely expensive for the educator-producers. Opening a charter public school is no cheaper than opening a private day school. There is precious little public funding for start-up costs. There is no public money for facilities. Taxpayers do not provide computers or furniture. There are no free science labs or gymnasia, playgrounds or parking lots. There is no public money for curriculum development, personnel recruitment, professional development, policy creation or the building of operating systems.
***
PERHAPS HEBRAIC charter schools could prepare the next generation to practice and promote the principles of a Mosaic politics, embodied in the Jewish people's founding civic institutions such as brit mila, Shabbat and shmita, nourished by the topology of a land rich in promise but poor in natural resources, where rain is a gift and not an assumption, and designed to prevent individual and collective regress into the abuse (and allure) of Egyptian strongman rule.
Perhaps, 60 years into modern statehood in the ancient Jewish homeland, Jewish education, even in the Diaspora, could once again be civic education, focusing on the Jewish meaning of power, plenty and the future - the core concerns of any sovereign nation governing in its own land or sojourning beyond its borders. Hebraic charter schools might indeed reboot Diaspora Judaism and enable future Jewish leaders to propel a nation which can truly be or l'goyim, a light unto the nations.
Click here for a link to the original article.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Friday, April 4, 2008
Charter schools give students unique options
Dynamic programs engage and challenge Rhinelander students
By Ana Davis - Special to The Daily News
The Daily News
Rhinelander’s three charter schools, Northwoods Community Elementary School, Northwoods Community Secondary School and Rhinelander Environmental Stewardship Academy, are all working hard to offer local students excellent learning environments and expanded educational opportunities as part of wider effort by the school district’s strategic planning committee to enhance the area by improving its schools.
***
The charter schools are also reaching out to include those students who are home-schooled for religious reasons or because they have previously struggled to succeed.
“NCES also offers a K-5 virtual program for students that have previously been home-schooled,” Jacobi said. “Teachers work closely with families to provide an individualized program that meets the needs of the child, and virtual students are invited to school for guidance, library, music, art, physical education, projects, field trips, and other school activities.”
***
Click here for a link to the original article.
By Ana Davis - Special to The Daily News
The Daily News
Rhinelander’s three charter schools, Northwoods Community Elementary School, Northwoods Community Secondary School and Rhinelander Environmental Stewardship Academy, are all working hard to offer local students excellent learning environments and expanded educational opportunities as part of wider effort by the school district’s strategic planning committee to enhance the area by improving its schools.
***
The charter schools are also reaching out to include those students who are home-schooled for religious reasons or because they have previously struggled to succeed.
“NCES also offers a K-5 virtual program for students that have previously been home-schooled,” Jacobi said. “Teachers work closely with families to provide an individualized program that meets the needs of the child, and virtual students are invited to school for guidance, library, music, art, physical education, projects, field trips, and other school activities.”
***
Click here for a link to the original article.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
From Catholic Schools to Charters: What's Left?
From Catholic Schools to Charters: What's Left?
Marc Fisher
The Washington Post
The bottom line is clear, says Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl: The Catholic Church can no longer afford to run a full complement of inner-city parochial schools serving a population that is, by an overwhelming majority, non-Catholic.
So, facing a deficit of about $50 million over the next five years, the church is moving to convert at least seven D.C. elementary schools into secular, taxpayer-funded charter schools.
"We simply don't have the resources to keep all those schools open," Wuerl said in an interview with Washington Post reporters and editors the other day. "We have exhausted the resources available to us."
But as the parochial schools move through the charter approval process, the question is what would those schools be if they emerge as publicly-supported, non-religious institutions? Catholic schools, even when they are educating a population that is 76 percent non-Catholic and almost entirely black and Hispanic, as in the Archdiocese's D.C. schools, "provide a faith-based formation," Wuerl says. "These schools give kids a self-confidence, a hope."
Take away the religious foundation and what remains? You'd have "the same teachers, the same kids, the same environment," the archbishop says. "There will still be a level of value formation."
***
But the bottom line is the bottom line, and he figures charters are the best the church can do right now: "If the alternative is a failing public school, then isn't the charter school the better" choice, he asks.
Perhaps so, but any institution that chooses to save money by chipping away at its appeal to the next generation is buying a big box of trouble. In the end, the church is following its members, naturally focusing its educational work on places where there are more Catholics. Sadly, that entails pulling back on a grand urban tradition of educating inner city children, regardless of their denomination.
Click here for the original article.
Marc Fisher
The Washington Post
The bottom line is clear, says Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl: The Catholic Church can no longer afford to run a full complement of inner-city parochial schools serving a population that is, by an overwhelming majority, non-Catholic.
So, facing a deficit of about $50 million over the next five years, the church is moving to convert at least seven D.C. elementary schools into secular, taxpayer-funded charter schools.
"We simply don't have the resources to keep all those schools open," Wuerl said in an interview with Washington Post reporters and editors the other day. "We have exhausted the resources available to us."
But as the parochial schools move through the charter approval process, the question is what would those schools be if they emerge as publicly-supported, non-religious institutions? Catholic schools, even when they are educating a population that is 76 percent non-Catholic and almost entirely black and Hispanic, as in the Archdiocese's D.C. schools, "provide a faith-based formation," Wuerl says. "These schools give kids a self-confidence, a hope."
Take away the religious foundation and what remains? You'd have "the same teachers, the same kids, the same environment," the archbishop says. "There will still be a level of value formation."
***
But the bottom line is the bottom line, and he figures charters are the best the church can do right now: "If the alternative is a failing public school, then isn't the charter school the better" choice, he asks.
Perhaps so, but any institution that chooses to save money by chipping away at its appeal to the next generation is buying a big box of trouble. In the end, the church is following its members, naturally focusing its educational work on places where there are more Catholics. Sadly, that entails pulling back on a grand urban tradition of educating inner city children, regardless of their denomination.
Click here for the original article.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Blaine On Trial
Blaine On Trial
Gerald J. Russello
National Catholic Register
April 6-12, 2008 Issue
Ever hear of the Blaine amendment? It’s sort of obscure, but it remains one of the last remnants of bigotry in the statute books. Some court cases are finally beginning to tackle this shameful legacy.
***
In 1998, New York enacted a charter school law, which enables the state to provide funding for private or independent schools. These schools are usually in areas where the public schools are failing, and would give poorer families a chance at shaping their children’s education.
New Horizons Church Ministry is a Baptist congregation in New York City’s Harlem, and applied for a charter school license under the law.
But the law establishing the charter school program provides — following New York’s Blaine amendment — that support should be refused to any school “wholly or in part under the control of direction of any religions denomination, or in which any denominational tenet or doctrine would be taught.”
New Horizons was refused funding by the state because it proposed to establish a school in keeping with its religious principles.
Late last year, the pastor of New Horizons sued the state seeking a court to declare the prohibition of funding religious schools in the charter school law and New York’s Blaine amendment as a whole unconstitutional under the federal Constitution.
The case is now making its way through the court system, and is one of a number of challenges to state-level Blaine amendments.
The New Horizons case should be of considerable interest to all those interested in religious education, but specifically in Catholic education. While the development of parochial schools developed independently of public schools, there is no reason why Blaine amendments should block Catholic schools from accepting funds pursuant to a state charter school program.
Indeed, in poorer neighborhoods, the need for such schools is greater than ever, and eliminating Blaine amendments would enable religious schools of all types to have a chance to succeed and help their communities. And Catholics should have a particular desire to see these legal remnants of anti-Catholic discrimination erased from the statute books.
In other words, it is time for the bigoted heritage of the Blaine amendments to pass into history.
Click here for the original article.
Gerald J. Russello
National Catholic Register
April 6-12, 2008 Issue
Ever hear of the Blaine amendment? It’s sort of obscure, but it remains one of the last remnants of bigotry in the statute books. Some court cases are finally beginning to tackle this shameful legacy.
***
In 1998, New York enacted a charter school law, which enables the state to provide funding for private or independent schools. These schools are usually in areas where the public schools are failing, and would give poorer families a chance at shaping their children’s education.
New Horizons Church Ministry is a Baptist congregation in New York City’s Harlem, and applied for a charter school license under the law.
But the law establishing the charter school program provides — following New York’s Blaine amendment — that support should be refused to any school “wholly or in part under the control of direction of any religions denomination, or in which any denominational tenet or doctrine would be taught.”
New Horizons was refused funding by the state because it proposed to establish a school in keeping with its religious principles.
Late last year, the pastor of New Horizons sued the state seeking a court to declare the prohibition of funding religious schools in the charter school law and New York’s Blaine amendment as a whole unconstitutional under the federal Constitution.
The case is now making its way through the court system, and is one of a number of challenges to state-level Blaine amendments.
The New Horizons case should be of considerable interest to all those interested in religious education, but specifically in Catholic education. While the development of parochial schools developed independently of public schools, there is no reason why Blaine amendments should block Catholic schools from accepting funds pursuant to a state charter school program.
Indeed, in poorer neighborhoods, the need for such schools is greater than ever, and eliminating Blaine amendments would enable religious schools of all types to have a chance to succeed and help their communities. And Catholics should have a particular desire to see these legal remnants of anti-Catholic discrimination erased from the statute books.
In other words, it is time for the bigoted heritage of the Blaine amendments to pass into history.
Click here for the original article.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Rhode Island Charter School operated by a Christian Brother
Note: This article is about Steve Aveson, a one time Baltimore Journalist. It mentions a Providence, RI charter school run by a Christian Brother.
Whatever happened to... Steve Aveson?
The Baltimore Sun
Jacques Kelly
February 23, 2008
When WJZ-TV's Evening Magazine went off the air at the end of 1990, its popular co-host, Steve Aveson, went on to gain a national audience.
He moved to New York and spent four years at ABC News as a Good Morning America and 20/20 correspondent. He also was an anchor for ABC News programs, including World News This Morning, Good Morning America Sunday and Discovery News, a science program. He also had a stint with the broadcast division of The Christian Science Monitor and then returned to a metro market as an anchor at Fox 25 in Boston.
***
In his free time, he mentors at-risk boys in a Providence charter school run by a Christian Brother. He also works with the Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Rhode Island and the Juvenile Diabetes Association.
Follow this link to the original article.
Whatever happened to... Steve Aveson?
The Baltimore Sun
Jacques Kelly
February 23, 2008
When WJZ-TV's Evening Magazine went off the air at the end of 1990, its popular co-host, Steve Aveson, went on to gain a national audience.
He moved to New York and spent four years at ABC News as a Good Morning America and 20/20 correspondent. He also was an anchor for ABC News programs, including World News This Morning, Good Morning America Sunday and Discovery News, a science program. He also had a stint with the broadcast division of The Christian Science Monitor and then returned to a metro market as an anchor at Fox 25 in Boston.
***
In his free time, he mentors at-risk boys in a Providence charter school run by a Christian Brother. He also works with the Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Rhode Island and the Juvenile Diabetes Association.
Follow this link to the original article.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Notre Dame Catholic School closing
By Nancy Pasternack
The Appeal-Democrat
Marysville, CA
When teachers at Notre Dame Catholic School received the bad news last week, they gave their students an extra-long recess outdoors, and cried.
Then they pulled themselves together and threw the Valentine's Day party the children were expecting.
After more than 150 years of offering catechism instruction along with reading, writing and arithmetic, Notre Dame Catholic School in Marysville will graduate its last eighth-grade class this year.
***
Broughton and an advisory board made up of parents and students already have begun the process of trying to create a new public charter school within the Marysville Joint Unified School District.
Hopefully, Broughton said, "we'll be able to continue the school, but without the religious instruction."
The group will model the charter school on one in Paradise that has a similar history and population, Broughton said.
Eisermann, Kemmerly and the school's other teachers say they support the charter school idea, and that they will teach at the new school, if it comes to fruition.
Follow this link for the full original article.
The Appeal-Democrat
Marysville, CA
When teachers at Notre Dame Catholic School received the bad news last week, they gave their students an extra-long recess outdoors, and cried.
Then they pulled themselves together and threw the Valentine's Day party the children were expecting.
After more than 150 years of offering catechism instruction along with reading, writing and arithmetic, Notre Dame Catholic School in Marysville will graduate its last eighth-grade class this year.
***
Broughton and an advisory board made up of parents and students already have begun the process of trying to create a new public charter school within the Marysville Joint Unified School District.
Hopefully, Broughton said, "we'll be able to continue the school, but without the religious instruction."
The group will model the charter school on one in Paradise that has a similar history and population, Broughton said.
Eisermann, Kemmerly and the school's other teachers say they support the charter school idea, and that they will teach at the new school, if it comes to fruition.
Follow this link for the full original article.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Ross County Christian Academy is growing
Ross County Christian Academy is growing
Officials still hoping for permanent home
By JONA ISON
Gazette Staff Writer
Ross County Christian Academy is gearing up for a second year of operation and hopes to expand services.
Although the academy still hopes to have a permanent home of its own one day, Brookside Church on Egypt Pike has agreed to allow the academy to operate there again for the 2008-09 school year, said Mike MacCarter, co-director of the academy.
***
The school serves students in kindergarten through sixth grade, but if enrollment warrants it, the academy will expand to include seventh grade in 2008-09. Also, an interest survey has been distributed to the academy's endorsing churches to determine if there enough families interested in preschool to create a preschool program at the academy.
Beginning next school year, MacCarter said the academy hopes it will be approved as a state charter school.
"They have some regulations with curriculum, which we're doing most of those already," MacCarter said.
Follow this link for the complete original article.
Officials still hoping for permanent home
By JONA ISON
Gazette Staff Writer
Ross County Christian Academy is gearing up for a second year of operation and hopes to expand services.
Although the academy still hopes to have a permanent home of its own one day, Brookside Church on Egypt Pike has agreed to allow the academy to operate there again for the 2008-09 school year, said Mike MacCarter, co-director of the academy.
***
The school serves students in kindergarten through sixth grade, but if enrollment warrants it, the academy will expand to include seventh grade in 2008-09. Also, an interest survey has been distributed to the academy's endorsing churches to determine if there enough families interested in preschool to create a preschool program at the academy.
Beginning next school year, MacCarter said the academy hopes it will be approved as a state charter school.
"They have some regulations with curriculum, which we're doing most of those already," MacCarter said.
Follow this link for the complete original article.
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