I am honored to be invited to talk with Dr. James Avington Miller Jr. on his popular radio program. Call in and chat with us.
This Sunday, May 17 at 2:00pm PST / 4:00pm Central/ 5:00pm Eastern on ‘THE WAR REPORT ON PUBLIC EDUCATION’ on BBS Radio – ‘A Conversation with Nancy E. Bailey’ an education activist and a former special education teacher. Her book titled ‘Misguided Education Reform: Debating the Impact on Students’ says “no” to the reforms that fail, and challenges Americans to address the real student needs that will fix public schools and make America strong. We will be discussing her views on education reform, the effects of high stakes testing on students and teachers, the trouble with testing and common core standards, the abandoned commitment to special education and her plea to return childhood to our children. Join us!
Hi Nancy, great interview. I’ve stayed up especially to hear you and have learned lots, including several similarities between the directions of the US and UK education reforms. One of these being that your ‘Charter Schools’ and have a similar feel to our ‘Academy Schools’ programme. Over here ‘failing’ state schools are forced into becoming Academies, meaning they may receive additional financial support from personal or corporate Sponsors and those Sponsors are responsible for improving the performance of their schools. On the other side of the coin, state schools which are considered ‘excellent’ by our Schools Inspectors Ofsted are eligible to become Academy schools too. Plus new Academies being created. Lots of controversy over this. We’re also carefully watching how things play out as US students/parents/teachers opt-out of testing… many here are considering it with new tests coming in at the start of primary school for 4/5 year olds. Keep talking Nancy! Keep spreading the message! P.S. “The upside, of course [of this approach by central government], is that it puts teachers, students, and parents on common ground — by bewildering them all” – quote from this article [https://medium.com/human-parts/school-s-out-forever-6b3fda629ac9] by another teacher who’s left school.
Hi Leah, Thanks for listening! I am confused between the meaning of Free Schools in the UK. But I will try to figure it out one of these days. Thank you for the information.. Take care.
The lady you want to talk with about that is Janet Downs. From what I can see on our interactions on-line she’s on form with all the UK terminology and really has her finger on the pulse of what’s going on. She’ll be able to correct or add to the brief descriptions I gave above. I’ll point her to this post to see if she’d like to add anything…
Roger Titcombe gave me a nice description a while back, but Free Schools and Academies seem similar. But thank you. Take care.
Free schools are legally academies so not really any substantive difference. However, academies are usually, though not necessarily, schools that have converted to academy status having previously had a different status. Usually that previous status would have been as a local authority ‘maintained’ school but occasionally a private school converts seemingly mostly to obtain funding from the government.
Free schools are usually (but not always) new schools – the claim was that they would be set up by groups of parents in areas where there is a shortage of places or the parents were concerned about standards in existing schools. In reality they are often created in areas where there is a surplus of places and/or appear to be set up by staff who possibly fancy a quick way, in effect, of appointing themselves as headteachers/principals.