#charter-schools

#charter-schools

Even when she was a little kid growing up in New Orleans, Stacey Gilbert knew she wanted to be a special education teacher. She remembers her reaction to the 1962 film The Miracle Worker, about Helen Keller, and watching other movies about children with special needs. In 2005, when Hurricane Katrina hit her hometown, Gilbert had been teaching in the city's public schools for almost two decades.

All through middle and high school in New Orleans, Geraldlynn Stewart heard the message every day: College was the key to a successful future. It was there on the banners that coated the doors and hallways, advertising far-flung schools, like Princeton University and Grinnell College. And she could hear it in the chants students recited over and over again. This is the way! We start the day! We get the knowledge to go to college!

"I was so against charter schools. I thought it was the pits," says Mary Haynes-Smith, the school's longtime principal. Haynes-Smith didn't like what she'd heard from parents that they felt shut out by the private organizations hired to run the charter schools. But as New Orleans crept closer to becoming the country's first all-charter system in the 2010s, the handful of traditional schools left, including Bethune Elementary, started feeling more pressure. "It was a forceful thing," she remembers.

"There are a lot of kids who want to go to charter school but don't have the opportunity so there should be more [charter schools]," he said. "It's more individualized attention. They challenge the kids more." Selina, meanwhile, is eager to get straight to work. "They focus more on you learning and growing from mistakes, instead of just a number on a notecard," she said. "They want to make sure every student has a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset."

The move followed Walters's false claim that the Trump administration had approved his plan to eliminate statewide end-of-year testing. On a right-wing outlet earlier this month, Walters bragged, "We went to the Trump administration and they said they were all for it," Notus reports. That wasn't true. McMahon publicly corrected him, telling reporters the waiver "has not gone through all the different steps that it needs to be." Asked whether she'd meet Walters during her visit, she shot back: "I don't believe that's on my schedule today."

Renewable electricity has the lowest cost of all generation methods. The big reason for high electricity rates is the cost of new transmission lines, not clean energy mandates.

Miami officials are transferring the historic Olympia Theater to SLAM, a charter school linked to a for-profit operator, raising concerns over public venue status.

The proposed budget significantly reduces funding for critical education programs, adversely impacting low-income students as we face rising poverty rates in America.