Wells Fargo Charter School Observation Report

Springsteen Charter school located in Newark New Jersey opened in 1999 with forty Kindergarteners. Marc Jones joined the school as its founding principal. The Newark School District was one of the lowest performing districts in New Jersey on the four mandated state tests (assessments of Math and Literacy in grades 3, 4, 8, and 11). Springsteen Charter had 190 students in grades K-4. The school demographics were 85% African-American, 15% Latino (Latino contingent is growing; all 2nd/3rd generation) and 90% of the students received free/reduced lunch. The school was built on an academic focus of improving math instruction and greater parental involvement, all students participate in an 1½ hour math blocks every day. Teaching staff was young and eager to succeed. However, the youth of the staff also caused high turnover. The school did not believe in classifying children as ESL(English as a second language) or SPED ( special education) only under extreme situations. It is 2003, and Springsteen Charter Elementary School has now been open for five years. Jones’ original group of students had entered the 4th grade and were the first group to take the state test—New Jersey 3rd grade Assessment of Skills and Knowledge (NJASK3). The students performed moderately better than the District in Literacy (60% proficient

Urban Prep Charter Academies is a three campus charter public school in the city of Chicago. Urban Prep is located in the West, Bronzeville, and Englewood communities. The three campuses have grew the name of getting 100% acceptances into college, with the population of African American young males. “Urban Prep’s mission is to provide a high-quality and comprehensive college-preparatory educational experience to young men that results in our graduates succeeding in college” (About Urban Prep, 2012). Upon my discovery, Urban Prep counseling department consist of academic counselors, personal counselors, and college counselors. Each department work together towards fulfilling the school’s mission of providing and assisting in implementing a high-quality

As a new charter school located in a vibrant neighborhood in Wilmington, our school has worked directly with neighbors, community groups, local nonprofit organizations and local elected and government leaders to establish a good relationship and prepare the way for our students and families to benefit from our neighborhood and location. The Brandywine neighborhood where our school is located is in the center of downtown Wilmington, easily accessible to many local businesses and government agencies, and area neighborhoods, by foot and by public transportation. We have worked extensively with local community groups, agencies and organizations to ensure that the relationship between our school and the community is mutually beneficial. When

She has been recognized as being the Principal of a “Gain Making School” and a “John Irwin School of Excellence,” by the Colorado Department of Education.” (Aurora Academy, 2013)

Week two of field observation at Crestone Charter School. My Second week of field observations was really fun and interactive. I had the opportunity to work with several students from the k-1 class with special needs. We traveled to several reading stations and did a read along with the fourth and fifth-grade students. At arrival, I met with the main Para, Ammie Morphet and was informed that Lexi whom is one of the charter schools highest priority/needs students was the student I would be working with. Lexi usually has a personal in class Para that works with her throughout the day, but she was out sick. Since I know Lexi and have personal experience working with her we came to the conclusion that it would be best if I assisted with Lexis daily routine and any other classroom needs. This allowed Mrs. Morphet to attend to the other students she had previously scheduled for us to meet with.

James is an eleven year old child who is currently going into the seventh grade at the Harlem Success Charter School.

My name is Kerry Huxley, I am a recent graduate of Prosper High School. It has come to my attention that there is a debate whether or not we should accept or deny an offer made by Virtuosity regarding there new virtual reality system. I believe we should not accept this offer due to the flaw that technology can provide.

To understand the state of charter schools today, it is important to know how a charter school was envisioned to be. Tell explains that charter schools, by nature, should be more accurately described as “contract” schools. These schools are contractually obligated to serve the interest of the general public by providing education opportunities using the funds provided from taxes. Traditionally, charter schools are defined as “tuition-free, publicly funded, performance-based, non-sectarian, public schools of choice open to all.”[1] These schools are considered autonomous because they are exempt from most, if not all, local and state rules and regulations regarding education. The reduction of applicable laws pertaining to these schools are supposed to liberate them from the supposedly strict regulations that bog down the education system that prevent teachers from what they were actually hired to do: to teach. Although novel in concept, this idea has been difficult to implement in reality.

Technical efficiency is achieved when output is maximized given fixed levels of input. For a school to achieve technical efficiency, the school would have to provide students the best education possible given the fixed levels of labor and capital. A start-up charter school, with no permanent facility, would have to maximize the test scores of their students with the space being used. Also, a charter school must increaseased. If a charter e output when input is incr school moves to a larger facility or hires more teachers, the level of education for the students must increase as well. Traditional schools have trouble with increasing inputs. Those schools have one facility and can only fit a certain number of teachers within that facility.

I teach in the Westside Consolidated Number Five School District in Jonesboro, Arkansas. The school district is a consolidation of three small rural town school districts Bono, Egypt, and Cash, Arkansas in 1968. I met with my mentor Mr. Scott Gaunt the school district superintendent on January 18, 2017 between meetings with district leaders and countywide superintendents. We met and discussed the community relations plan and identified the two most important issues for our district as identified in the poll by the Phi Delta Kappan and the Gallop poll. The issues were the lack of financial support for the school district to provide an adequate education for students and the testing and regulations imposed on school districts that lower educational time for students while in school.

Charter schools in the United States were created as a response to the perceived lack of educational achievement among American students. A community of critics consisting of educators, parents, politicians and entrepreneurs came together under the unified belief that current education policy was too restrictive and prohibited educational innovation. As a result, the education reform movement was born. According to the National Conference of State Legislators, “Charter schools are publicly funded, privately managed and semi-autonomous schools of choice. They do not charge tuition. They must hold to the same academic accountability measures as traditional schools. They receive public funding similarly to traditional schools. However, they have more freedom over their budgets, staffing, curricula and other operations.”

I attended the Centennial Christian School to visit one of the student, Ashley, who is diagnosed with cerebral palsy. It was interesting to see Ashley’s care plan that was written by Chris Robberts that outlines care of her stoma, flushing of water every hour at school via feeding tube, administering mediation via feeding, and what to do when the student has a ‘blank stare’ or grand mal seizure.

XYZ Charter Academy is an elementary school with a total of 450 students and service at risk students on the verge of failure as well as live in low poverty areas. Two- hundred eight five students have been identified as at risk students and 60 of them are in the early childhood program. Those students have been identified as being at least one to two grade levels behind with a reading comprehension level at kindergartern. These students also have high behavior issues and have been suspended several times. According to Cox (2009) students can learn according to their abilities and needs. This form of teaching is also great for the teacher because it gives him/her the time to work individually with students who may be struggling.

Financial literacy is essential in living in today’s society, therefore it should be taught at a young age because people have been going bankrupt more than ever before. According to Kelly Walsh, “Students between ages 18-25 have at least one credit card. By the time they graduate half of them have four or more credit cards that have an average balance of $3,000” (Walsh). If students were taught at a younger age how credit cards actually work; they would better understand the consequences of debt. For instance, if students were to research different credit

I decided to explore different career options with Wells Fargo other than management roles. The move to Colorado needed to happen by the end of April and because of the time constraints transferring into a management role was an unrealistic goal. I started networking and followed the capstone project guidelines. In the class lecture for week 8 the University Of Buffalo School Of Management provides suggestions for questions to ask during an exploratory interview,