There have been a number of cases of outright
corruption and
mismanagement of charter schools in Ohio, symptoms of weak oversight. But that doesn't have to mean that Ohio charter schools are bad on average. Except they are, according to a
new report from the Stanford University Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO). While the study found that students in urban charter schools outperformed statewide averages, on the whole:
Compared to the educational gains that charter students would have had in a traditional public school (TPS), the analysis shows on average that students in Ohio charter schools perform worse in both reading and mathematics. The impact is statistically significant: thinking of a 180-day school year as "one year of learning", an average Ohio charter student would have completed 14 fewer days of learning in reading and 36 fewer days in math.
Education expert Jan Resseger
flags comments on the study by CREDO director Margaret Raymond that:
This is one of the big insights for me because I actually am a kind of pro-market kind of girl, but the marketplace doesn’t seem to work in a choice environment for education.
Now if only policymakers would act on that insight ...
Continue reading below the fold for more of the week's education and labor news.
A fair day's wage
- As always, you should check out the Belabored podcast. This week:
As protests continue to grow around the country under the banner “Black Lives Matter,” workers in the Walmart and fast food organizing campaigns have linked their struggles to those of people calling for justice for Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and other black people killed by police. We talk to Washington, D.C. Walmart worker Glova Scott and St. Louis Burger King worker Carlos Robinson about their strikes over the last two weeks and the connection to calls for boycotts and further action by the growing racial justice movement.
- Will this be the latest thing for Republicans to be outraged at the NLRB about?
In a significant win for labor unions, federal regulators ruled Thursday that employers can't prevent their workers from using company email to organize and discuss their working conditions outside of work.
The decision issued by the National Labor Relations Board gives workers a statutory right to use work email systems for those purposes after hours, so long as they already have access to work email. The ruling overturns a Bush-era ruling by a more conservative labor board that said workers have no such right.
- New York City and eight labor unions reach tentative contract
- The UAW is officially representing 45 percent of the workers at Volkswagen's Chattanooga plant:
The results of the independent audit of union membership clear the way for the union to meet regularly with management on workplace issues. The UAW said Monday night it was not told the exact percentage by VW but believes the final tally could be more than 50%, which would give the union more leverage.
The union plans to push to be recognized as the exclusive bargaining agent for workers in the plant.
- What's the most distinctive job in your state?
- This is what Walmart's supply chain looks like. (It looks like beatings, starvation, and withheld pay.)
- The Senate confirmed Lauren McFerran to the National Labor Relations Board, something that would have been an iffy prospect once the Republicans take control of the Senate.
- The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation won't say how much money it has invested in private prisons, because philanthropy! It makes a kind of sick sense, funding the Gates Foundation's corporate education policy agenda through investments in private prisons, though.
- Shocking finding: When politicians go out of their way to make the federal government a miserable, under-appreciated place to work, job satisfaction will go down. Federal workers don't think much of their bosses, either.
- Ugh, SCOTUS: According to the Supreme Court, it's just fine for your boss to keep you well after work, without overtime pay, to make sure no one is stealing anything.
- Another company goes for major cuts in its union contract. That would be Kellogg cereal.
Education