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Over the past several years, privately run, publicly funded charter schools have been sold to the American public as an education alternative promising better student achievement, greater parent satisfaction, and more vibrant school communities. But are charter schools delivering on their promise? Or are they just hype as critics contend, a costly experiment that is bleeding tax dollars from public schools? In this book, Jack Buckley and Mark Schneider tackle these questions about one of the thorniest policy reforms in the nation today. Using an exceptionally rigorous research approach, the authors investigate charter schools in Washington, D.C., carefully examining school data going back more than a decade, interpreting scores of interviews with parents, students, and teachers, and meticulously measuring how charter schools perform compared to traditional public schools. Their conclusions are sobering. Buckley and Schneider show that charter-school students are not outperforming students in traditional public schools, that the quality of charter-school education varies widely from school to school, and that parent enthusiasm for charter schools starts out strong but fades over time. And they argue that while charter schools may meet the most basic test of sound public policy--they do no harm--the evidence suggests they all too often fall short of advocates' claims. With the future of charter schools--and perhaps public education as a whole--hanging in the balance, this book supports the case for holding charter schools more accountable and brings us considerably nearer to resolving this contentious debate.

Administration officials have hinted at plans in the coming weeks to make more surplus public school buildings available to facilities-starved charter schools.

[...]said Mayor Vincent C. Gray's spokesman, explaining why there has been no action on a proposal by the high-performing public charter network to build a high school in Southwest D.C. But KIPP is not seeking a handout; it would lease the land from the city and use $40 million in private money to build a state-of-the-art school while providing the community with a medical clinic and recreation center.

From the failure of the Normandy and Riverview Gardens school districts to reach state accreditation, to the fallout from the transfer crisis that followed their failure, to the slipping test scores in some of the provisionally accredited St. Louis Public Schools, to the Legislature's failure to fund schools or deal with the transfer crisis, to the ridiculous attack on new Common Core standards by a few misguided Republicans, there has been more bad news than good.

[...] researchers said KIPP students are more likely to be low-income and black or Hispanic and, prior to their enrollment in KIPP schools, to have lower-than-average test scores in their local school districts.

In return for such liberties, charter schools are held accountable for producing results in the classroom. And no charters in the country have made better use of their independence than KIPP. The brainchild of two Teach for America alums, Dave Levin and Mike Feinberg, the first KIPP school was started in Houston in 1994. There are now 52 schools nationwide serving 12,000 kids. More than 80% of KIPP students are low income and 95% are black or Latino, yet they regularly outperform their traditional public school counterparts in math and reading tests. Waiting lists are commonplace. By contrast, KIPP students were acing state tests. At the KIPP Academy Middle School, 99% of eighth-graders scored \"proficient\" or \"advanced\" in math and reading. The corresponding results for their district counterparts were 57% and 79%. No wonder the current KIPP waiting list in Houston is 2,500 students long.

This study presents findings from a pilot randomized controlled trial, testing a 12-week intervention to train parents of youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to advocate for adult disability services—the Volunteer Advocacy Program-Transition (VAP-T). Participants included 41 parents of youth with ASD within 2 years of high school exit, randomly assigned to a treatment ( N  = 20) or wait-list control ( N  = 21) group. Outcomes, collected before and after the intervention, included parental knowledge about adult services, advocacy skills-comfort, and empowerment. The VAP-T had acceptable feasibility, treatment fidelity, and acceptability. After participating in the VAP-T, intervention parents (compared to controls) knew more about the adult service system, were more skilled/comfortable advocating, and felt more empowered.

Although many governments invest significant resources in public-diplomacy campaigns, there is little well-identified evidence of these efforts’ effectiveness. We examine the effects of a major type of public diplomacy: high-level visits by national leaders to other countries. We combine a dataset of the international travels of 15 leaders from 9 countries over 11 years, with worldwide surveys administered in 38 host countries. By comparing 32,456 respondents interviewed just before or just after the first day of each visit, we show that visiting leaders can increase public approval among foreign citizens. The effects do not fade away immediately and are particularly large when public-diplomacy activities are reported by the news media. In most cases, military capability differentials between visiting and host countries do not appear to confer an advantage in the influence of public diplomacy. These findings suggest that public diplomacy has the potential to shape global affairs through soft power.

Purpose Workplace bullying is a serious problem among nurses, which results in negative workplace behavior. Therefore, this study aims to understand how workplace bullying affects employees’ knowledge hiding behavior. Specifically, this study explored psychological contract breach as an underlying mechanism between workplace bullying and knowledge hiding; and learning goal orientation as a boundary condition between psychological contract breach and knowledge hiding. Design/methodology/approach The study collected data from 343 nurses working in the health-care sector of Pakistan on convenience basis using a questionnaire-based survey between December 2021 to March 2022. The data were analyzed through structural equation modeling. Findings The results revealed the adverse effect of workplace bullying on knowledge hiding behaviors among nurses, and psychological contract breach was noted to mediate this association. Further, learning goal orientation was noted to buffer the relationship between psychological contract breach and knowledge hiding. Research limitations/implications The cross-section design may restrict causality; however, the findings suggest health-care administration take appropriate measures to reduce the adverse effects of workplace bullying. In addition, the administration is suggested to implement training programs to make nurses capable of dealing with workplace stressors (bullying and psychological contract breach). Originality/value This research provides a novel perspective to consider psychological contract breach as a mechanism between workplace bullying and knowledge hiding in the health-care sector from the conservation of resources perspective. It further explored learning goal orientation as a buffer to mitigate the effect of psychological contract breach on knowledge hiding.

In this essay, Shirin Vossoughi, Paula Hooper, and Meg Escudé advance a critique of branded, culturally normative definitions of making and caution against their uncritical adoption into the educational sphere. The authors argue that the ways making and equity are conceptualized can either restrict or expand the possibility that the growing maker movement will contribute to intellectually generative and liberatory educational experiences for working-class students and students of color. After reviewing various perspectives on making as educative practice, they present a framework that treats the following principles as starting points for equity-oriented research and design: critical analyses of educational injustice; historicized approaches to making as cross-cultural activity; explicit attention to pedagogical philosophies and practices; and ongoing inquiry into the sociopolitical values and purposes of making. These principles are grounded in their own research and teaching in the Tinkering Afterschool Program as well as in the insights and questions raised by critical voices both inside and outside the maker movement.