A longstanding selling point of the charter school movement has been budget independence—that is, schools are given the freedom to allocate resources as they see fit, relatively free from government...

Today, the UFT issued a report comparing New York City Charter Schools to the public schools in their respective geographic districts. One of the most striking findings, used as the...

In an earlier post, Ken reviewed some philanthropy statistics for New York City charter schools. The data was culled from the 2007-2008 audited financial statements that charter schools are required...

In a previous entry, we posted a database of all of the available tax-filings—known as Form 990s—for New York City charter schools. Since the filings are often lengthy and complicated,...

In March, Ken wrote a post that discussed the information available on the “IRS Form 990”—the required federal filing for tax-exempt organizations, which includes charter schools. The Form 990s contain...

Since you have had the entire holiday period to study the "No Child Left Behind Act of 2001", here is a little quiz.  For your convenience, this page contains a...

In a previous post, I bemoaned some of the steps that Michelle Rhee, my favorite chancellor, is taking in an effort to reform the Washington, D.C. public schools.  She is...

How do you combine Education Reform with Big Government?  First, you find a situation in which inflexible rules are hurting performance.  Second, instead of simply eliminating the inflexible rules, you...

The Big 3 car companies and traditional public schools are suffering from the same problem: they are burdened with productivity-destroying union contracts while they struggle to compete against non-unionized alternatives. ...

In an earlier post, I discussed the curious fact that there is an oversupply of teachers in NYC.  This past weekend, on a panel at a Teach For America alumni...