Saturday coffee.

Happy Halloween.

Yesterday the kids paraded through the hallways in costume. They couldn’t parade around outside because it looked like a monsoon.

A fifth grader dressed as Tippi Hedron in the Alfred Hitchcock movie, “The Birds.” And she had actually seen the movie. Ah! That’s my kind of kid: A cinephile at the age of eleven.

Of course, there were the usual number of princesses and ninjas, lots of Blues Brothers and Transformers.

I kind of like the costumes that I can’t figure out. A parent found some old stuff in the basement and put something together and the kid gets to look goofy at school. Would I sound old and crusty if I pointed out that this isn’t so different from a normal day?

Three Chicago charters win the union battle.

After more than a year of legal back and forth, the three Chicago International Charter School teachers have won historic union and collective bargaining rights.

There’s another first in Chicago’s decade-plus history of charter schools: a teachers’ union.

After a year of meetings, teachers at three campuses of Civatas Schools’ Chicago International Charter Schools filed notice Friday with state and local officials that they had voted to form a union.

The teachers at three campuses of the Civatas Schools’ Chicago International Charter Schools have been meeting for nearly a year to consider forming a union and recently the majority of teachers voted to support the move.

While the charter school has 12 campuses in Chicago, the vote only affects teachers at three locations: Wrightwood, 8130 S. California Ave.; Northtown Academy, 3900 W. Peterson Ave.; and Ralph Ellison, 1817 W. 80th St. The three campuses have about 115 teachers, the majority of whom voted to join, officials said.

Another study on performance-based pay.

For those who love long research articles with their morning oatmeal and coffee, Alfie Kohn provides it. This from Public Administration Review:

…our analysis joins earlier studies in concluding that public sector performance-related pay fails to produce performance improvements…

One in five California students attend a charter school. LA leads the nation.

Last week we reported that 40% of DC students were in charter schools. KPBS reports that 20% of California students attend charters. NEA and AFT better get busy on the collective bargaining front. No shit.

New data shows there’s a charter school boom in California this year with roughly one in five students attending a charter school in the Golden State.

Research from the California Charter Schools Association shows more than 80 new charter schools opened their doors in California this year. That brings the total number to just over 800.

Ten of the new schools are in San Diego County. The region has the second largest number of charter schools in the state with more than 80. Los Angeles has the most — in fact, with more than 160, it has more than any school district in the nation.