Los Angelenos fleeing unionized schools

Los Angeles Unified opened 20 charter schools this fall - roughly one-third the total launched statewide - with most of them modeled after existing programs, the California Charter Schools Association announced Thursday. The opening this fall of 65 public charters in California brings the total to more than 600 campuses, with some 220,000 students enrolled. With that surge, one in 15 public schools statewide is a charter.

More significant, association officials noted, is that most of the new charters are modeled after existing programs. "We've created great schools and now we're building on those successes," said Caprice Young, president and CEO of the association. "In the past we had a lot of brand-new schools that were based on the ideas of individually great educators and parents," Young said. "For the first time we've seen a concerted effort to replicate great ideas and great schools, and that's an exciting thing."

LAUSD has 103 of the independent public schools, the most of any district in the nation. It has opened 40 charters since 2005. Young projects that the LAUSD will continue to add 20 to 30 charters a year. Statewide, more than 300 charter schools are in development.

Half the charters that opened this fall are in the Los Angeles, San Diego and Oakland unified school districts, underscoring the trend that charters are more popular in urban communities with high concentrations of underserved students. "It means the district and charter schools are going to be partners forever, and we're eager to have a closer relationship with the district to make the educational system great for all students," Young said.

But the explosion of charters concerns the Los Angeles Unified board. The growth in the number of charter schools has caused enrollment to drop in the nation's second-largest school district, which has to compete with the independent campuses for students - and funds. District officials, as well as the president of the teachers union, bristle at assertions by the Charter Schools Association that middle and high school charters are significantly outperforming their district counterparts.

A fairer comparison would be with the district's magnet schools, which outperform charters, school board member Jon Lauritzen said. "I think it's basically unfair to compare an entity that is able to take their entire budget and focus it entirely on their own schools," he said. "They have some real advantages over our schools in the flexibility of actually providing the type of education that a particular community wants, whereas we are trying to provide a curriculum that works for everyone all across the school district."

Earlier this year, Lauritzen was unsuccessful in his bid to place a moratorium on approving additional charters. Other board members have indicated they may support legislation that would make it easier for school boards to deny charters that would have a negative fiscal impact on the district. Contrary to Young's prediction that the charter movement will continue to grow, Lauritzen believes it will slow as enrollment in the district drops. "Initially, there were a lot of schools where there was overcrowding, where a charter fit well into the program, but as we continue the declining enrollment, there's going to be less and less room for charters and less demand for the services charters offer," Lauritzen said.

Among the 20 charters that opened in Los Angeles this year was Excel Academy, modeled after Community Charter Middle School in San Fernando, which was founded in 1999 by Jacqueline Elliot. "It was a natural progression to replicate Community Charter when there's a great demand," said Elliot, whose initial campus has blossomed into PUC Schools, which has a waiting list of more than 1,000 students.

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Australia: Low income students do well at university

Research has exploded some myths about university entry and performance - including the notion that richer children and students from private schools get better marks. They do not, sometimes by a wide margin. One study, based on research that examined the performance of 26,000 children, found that less well-off students often performed better at university than their richer or privately educated peers. But the truth of some perceptions was reinforced: the research shows that far fewer students from less privileged backgrounds ever make it to tertiary study, and fall dramatically behind their richer peers in the final years of high school even if they have the same measured ability in year 9.

Economists at La Trobe University and the Australian National University examined the students - 13,000 starting year 9 in 1995, and 13,000 who started it in 1998 - to shed light on why students of high ability from disadvantaged backgrounds remain badly underrepresented at university. The results of their research, which was funded by the Australian Research Council's Discovery Project, could force policymakers to reconsider how to improve access to tertiary education.

The researchers found no evidence that fear of large HECS debts discourages poorer students from proceeding to university - contrary to Labor Party rhetoric. The authors say HECS appears to have solved the problem of funding constraints for poorer students.

And the findings imply the Federal Government is wasting its money on scholarships designed to increase university participation among rural, indigenous and other disadvantaged groups. If they achieve the same entry score, students from disadvantaged backgrounds are just as likely as rich students to enter university - and they are more likely to go on and do well. "We're failing to find any evidence that money is an issue once they've finished high school," said one of the researchers, Buly Cardak, of La Trobe University. Dr Cardak and Chris Ryan, of the Australian National University, present their findings in Why are high ability individuals from poor backgrounds underrepresented at university?

A separate study, to be published by the University of Western Australia's Professor Paul Miller and Dr Elisa Rose Birch, shows students from less-privileged backgrounds get first-year university results that are more than 3 percentage points higher than rich children, for any given university entry score. Their paper, The Influence of Type of High School Attended on University Performance, shows the private school students were significantly more likely to fail.

Both studies imply that disadvantaged children smart or motivated enough to get to university may not need help from there. "But something is going on before then," Dr Cardak said. "They're not able to convert their talent into the same entry score as more advantaged kids." Dr Cardak and Dr Ryan found two out of three students from privileged backgrounds went to university; fewer than one in five disadvantaged students did so.

Having a disadvantaged background was found to weigh hugely on performance in the final years of school. If a rich student and poor student had the median level of literacy and numeracy in year 9, the rich one was likely to go on to achieve a university admission index (or ENTER) score of 77. But the poorer student was likely to have a score of just 63 - and probably miss out on university . The gap was even greater at lower levels of year 9 aptitude. "Disadvantaged students are unable to capitalise on their ability in the same way as their advantaged counterparts in terms of ENTER scores," they write.

The results were broadly unchanged even when the sample was limited to students who stated an intention to go to university in year 9 - which seems to rule out student motivation as the difference. Dr Cardak and Dr Ryan argue that "policy needs to address the schooling decisions and outcomes of these students . well before the beginning" of their final year at school.

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

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