Cloaking Inequity

I had a coffee conversation with Mike Feinberg yesterday. About two weeks ago Mike Feinberg contacted me via email about one of my posts on Cloaking Inequity. He related that he wanted to clarify the conversation about KIPP’s funding. I agreed to meet with him at the Blanton Museum Café at UT-Austin for a coffee […]

Apologize for the CI hiatus. I have six PhD students that want to graduate, which translates to about 1,000 pages dissertation reading these past few days. I recently had a conversation with a conservative Harvard-trained attorney last Saturday in Houston. We were discussing Finland (I blogged about Finland a few weeks ago) and her point […]

Politicians and others often frame a narrative that charters are on par or better than traditional public schools. I have discussed how charters stack up traditional public schools extensively in posts here on CI on charters. Are there charters that are islands of excellence? Of course, there are some and I discussed this in my […]

When you think of school choice, what comes to mind? Vouchers? Charters? Intra- and Inter- district choice? Magnet schools? Today I received a forwarded email request from a senator that was gathering information in response to pressure for “school choice” bills at the Texas Legislature. I have been pondering “school choice,” and why it is […]

Jay Mathews is an education talking head, columnist, blogger and huge cheerleader for KIPP schools. KIPP is under fire for their attrition again— this time due to discipline in D.C. Mathews’ explanation and justification for KIPP actions were punitive and unsympathetic. Jay Mathews is clearly not an expert on this issue, so I asked someone […]

Today I will profile Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) schools on The Teat. The Teat is an ongoing series on Cloaking Inequity (the protuberance through which milk is drawn from an udder or breast) that seeks to trace financial support which various entities receive that are involved in current educational policy debates. The Teat Cow Haiku […]

A few day ago I spent the afternoon in an Education Summit hosted by the Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute. The entire afternoon I wished I could respond to the discourse, so here are the top five most innane things I heard and my brief thoughts (not in any particular order). 1. Reduced funding to […]

In a recent San Antonio Express New article outgoing Texas SBOE member Michael Soto stated : There’s pretty solid support for efforts to raise the bar academically on the board and throughout the state because these charter applications significantly raise the academic bar. Dr. Soto, I am disappointed. In response, Diane Ravitch stated on her blog […]

Today I conducted a quick analysis of Majority Latina/o High Schools in Texas. I was wondering, of those high schools that are Majority Latina/o, comparing charters and non-charters, what high schools in the state had a majority (more than 50%) of their Latina/o students college-ready (defined as scoring a 2200 on both Math and Reading) […]

Thanks to Karen from Houston for sending along the info for this thread. What John Banks needs to explain about charter schools What does NZ have to learn from an overseas schooling model that discards 30% of the most disadvantaged children and 40% of African American boys? If KIPP is about ‘no excuses’, what’s your […]

During the second segment of the Melissa Harris-Perry Show at MSNBC’s Education Nation 2012, we discussed access to charter schools. Charters are “public” schools that are run by a variety of organizations such as intergovernmental (UT-Austin), community groups (Making Waves), large privately-operated corporate networks (KIPP). Regardless of who runs the charters, the current public consciousness is that charters are visions […]

I received an email this morning from an educational professional from Houston. The issue of special needs students (English Language Learners, Special Education, etc) and charters is not going away. Hello Dr. Heilig, I viewed the panel on Education Nation that you were a part of and I wanted to thank you for trying to […]

Today, at the end of the first segment of the Melissa Harris-Perry Show at MSNBC’s Education Nation 2012, my brief (alter)cation with firebrand journalist Jonathan Alter went something like this: Alter: Its folly to cap charters schools— silly NEA. What are you thinking? Vasquez Heilig: Here’s why. Because according to a Stanford study (conducted by […]

Tune in to the Melissa-Harris Perry Show on MSNBC Sunday September 23, 2012 between 10 a.m-12 p.m EST. In the fourth segment, I will appear on a panel with Journalist Jonathan Alter, Derrell Bradford, Executive Director of Better Education for Kids, and Lily Eskelsen, Vice-President of the National Education Association to discuss school choice at NBC’s Education Nation Student Town Hall […]

In April of 2012, KIPP responded to a press release for Is choice a panacea? An analysis of black secondary student attrition from KIPP, other private charters and urban districts, a peer-reviewed paper published in the Berkeley Review of Education (BRE) about African American secondary student attrition from charter schools across the state of Texas. KIPP began their response by […]

Vasquez Heilig, J., Williams, A., McNeil, L & Lee, C. (2011). Is choice a panacea? An analysis of black secondary student attrition from KIPP, other private charters and urban districts. Berkeley Review of Education, 2(2), 153-178. Public concern about pervasive inequalities in traditional public schools, combined with growing political, parental, and corporate support, has created the expectation that […]