Charter News Roundup - It's Not Pretty

  • Let's start with Diane Ravitch's call at her blog for ed reform stories from around the country.  It's staggering to read and most are about charters.
  • Diane's blog again - a story about the "American Indian Charter School" in Oakland, CA.   The school is about 86% Asian-American, not Native American.  It has been a high-performing middle school but parents and former teachers complained.  An audit found that $3.7M were wrongly spent by the founder and his wife.  (The founder told Newsweek that he thought it would help to get rid of school boards.  He also said he would prefer the Ku Klux Klan to the teachers' unions.)  I'm with Diane; if you can't trust them with the money, do you believe the test scores?
  • Via Huffington Post by the Detroit News, some pretty sad but not surprising news:  The majority of the Motor City's charter high schools underperform the city's traditional public schools, according to an analysis published Thursday by Detroit News.

    The report found that just six of 25 Detroit charter schools had higher math or science proficiency rates on the Michigan Merit Exam than those in Detroit's traditional public schools. The analysis notes that charter schools only surpassed Detroit Public School performance in social studies.
  • To Charlie's point on whether charters really are public schools, this article from School Finance 101.  I would agree to "limited public access" schools.  Here's the reasoning:
Charter schools are limited public access in the sense that:
1) They can define the number of enrollment slots they wish to make available

2) They can admit students only on an annual basis and do not have to take students mid-year
3) They can set academic, behavior and cultural standards that promote exclusion of students via attrition.



A traditional public school or “district school” or “government school” must accept students at any point during the year and but for specific disciplinary circumstances that may permit long term suspensions and expulsions. Traditional public schools cannot shed students who do not meet academic standards, comply with more general behavioral codes or social standards, such as parental obligations.


Note that while public districts may limit slots to individual schools, especially magnets (which are clearly also limited public access), districts must accommodate all comers (a charter school operated by a district would be part of a system that is not limited in enrollment).
  • Another great article from Ed Week about who should have the final say on allowing in charters to districts.  Is it a state control or local control issue?   Florida, Georgia and New Jersey are all arguing this point. 
Charter school proponents have complained for years that local school boards have an incentive to block new schools that can lure students and funding away from regular public schools. Local officials counter that state boards tend to make decisions about charter applications with little if any regard for whether those schools fill an academic need in their communities.


The push and pull between state and local officials over charters was on display this month, when the Florida state board of education overruled several local school boards' decisions to reject charter school applications, which included requests to open virtual charters and to replicate academically high-performing schools in new school systems.

In Georgia, meanwhile, a ballot measure that goes before voters in the fall would re-establish a state commission with the power to create charters over the objections of local school boards.


 In New Jersey, a bill sponsored by a Democratic state legislator would require the approval of voters in local communities before the state could approve charters within affected school districts.


The conflicts between states and local boards "are as old as charters themselves," said Todd Ziebarth, the vice president of state advocacy and support for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, a Washington organization that supports charters. His group favors giving charter applicants more choice of authorizers so that district school boards are not the only arbiters of whether schools can go forward.

But he says he recognizes that striking a balance is difficult, as is the case in Florida, where Mr. Ziebarth notes that districts that have their decisions overturned by the state board will be expected to act as authorizers for the very charters they rejected.


"The state is essentially arranging a shotgun wedding between two people who don't want to be together," Mr. Ziebarth said.


If this initiative passes, I guarantee the day someone files a charter proposal for Issaquah or Bellevue or Mercer Island, you'll hear the teeth-gnashing all the way here in Seattle.  

Comments

dan dempsey said…
In the news in Memphis ....

TFA has 175+ teaching in Memphis
HERE.

Memphis has announced a large number of possible teacher terminations.

Memphis Teachers get Job Loss notices.

-- Dan Dempsey
Anonymous said…
In the 46th Legislative District, we have Gerry Pollet VS. Sylvester Cann running against each other for 1 house position -

Gerry had a letter out AGAINST this charter bill soon after it was announced. Mr. Cann has the backing of Rueven and LEV.

In the other house position, Sarajane Siegfriedt testified in Olympia during the snow storm against the charter bill which was defeated. Her opponents are people who like to use that 'moderate' language peddled by DFER and SFC and LEV - language which means they'll end up 'compromising' by going 1/2 way to the crap that Gates and his Kipp-Kopp bandits
want.

Gerry and Sarajane.

Period.
Anonymous said…
"Not Fooled in the 46th" says:

Sylvester Cann has to back charters. He took a job at a south end learning project with LEvites to make a name for himself. He's been there - what - 6 months or something. But wow. He's now an Education Expert.

What a sham. Prior to this he booked appointments for now-deceased Sen. Scott White. Now that's in-depth governmental knowledge.

Vote Gerry Pollet.
EmeraldCityLifer said…
Thanks for the charter school links. It's mind-boggling that the state of Washington is even considering adopting charters when there is no track record of consistent success in any other state.

The history in other states show that there are twice the odds of a charter performing worse than public schools than doing better.

But the Seattle Times will likely beat the drum for charters while the petition signers are out this month. It's interesting that the Times places most of the blame on public school teachers when pushing for charters, but in yesterday's editorial about food stamps the newspaper emphasized another factor that impacts educating children:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/editorials/2018445687_edit18foodstamps.html

"At a time when much of America's focus is rightly trained on education, it is worth reminding the Senate that children with empty stomachs are less likely to do well in school."
Agreed said…
"Gerry had a letter out AGAINST this charter bill soon after it was announced. Mr. Cann has the backing of Rueven and LEV."

Gerry it is.
Anonymous said…
Charter schools enroll fewer disabled kids...
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/20/education/in-charter-schools-fewer-with-disabilities.html?hpw
-special

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