Skip to main content

Education

647 Stories
  • caption: Asmeret Habte hugs her 9-year-old daughter, Kisanet Yohannes, while standing for a portrait on Monday, November 29, 2021, outside of their home in Burien. Yohannes was a 4th-grade student at Impact Puget Sound Elementary before she unenrolled several months ago.

    'Where is the accountability?' for WA's largest charter school chain, ask parents and staff

    Although Washington state's charter schools are granted more flexibility and freedom than other public schools, charter school backers have pledged to keep the schools subject to strict oversight, including annual performance reviews. But that accountability is lacking for the state’s largest charter school chain, Impact Public Schools, staff and parents told KUOW, and the students most affected are also the schools’ most vulnerable.
  • DO NOT USE THIS ONE Seattle Now logo

    The promise of a good education, a KUOW investigation

    There’s a lot weighing on the promise of a good education. Employability, creativity, and language acquisition – to name a few. Impact Public Schools, the largest public charter school chain in Washington state made a promise to parents and students to provide a good education and more. According to a recent KUOW investigation they are not fulfilling that promise. Ann Dornfeld, a reporter on KUOW's Investigations Team, breaks down her findings from her latest series, Broken Promises, an investigation of Impact Public Schools, the largest charter school chain in Washington state.

  • caption: Robin Marie and her 13-year-old son Brennan pose for a photo earlier this spring at a restaurant in Texas. Marie was visiting her son who's living and attending school at an out-of-state residential treatment facility paid for by his local school district and the state.

    Washington saca del estado a jóvenes en crisis, los contribuyentes son quienes pagan la cuenta

    Algunos padres con hijos en crisis en Washington están tomando una decisión desgarradora. Están enviando a sus hijos a internados terapéuticos fuera del estado. Y los contribuyentes están pagando la cuenta. Aunque se trata de casos atípicos, estos ponen de manifiesto las continuas carencias de los servicios estatales, carencias que quedaron al descubierto durante la pandemia de COVID. Antes de que la pandemia de COVID golpeara a principios de 2020, Brennan, el hijo de Robin Marie, asistía a una escuela para jóvenes autistas en Issaquah. Sus necesidades eran tan grandes que contaba con el apoyo de dos personas solo para atenderlo a él.

  • caption: Aurora Pacheco was both a parent and teacher at Impact Public Schools' Tukwila school before she resigned in 2021.

    A Seattle-area charter school’s controversial approach to holding students back

    This is the second story in Broken Promises, a series about Impact Public Schools, the largest charter school chain in Washington state. Art Wheeler’s daughter and son were thriving in the fall of their second year at Impact Puget Sound Elementary, a charter school in Tukwila, Washington. Their grades were high, Wheeler said, and they got glowing reports from their teachers. “Your kids are standouts,” he recalled teachers saying. “They’re a pleasure to have in class.” But two months into the school year, in November, 2019, Wheeler said letters arrived from Impact saying his children were failing, and may have to repeat the year — the year that had just begun. Wheeler was confused. “They messed up,” he thought. “This is for somebody else’s kids.”

Sponsored