Charter School News
In Dehli, Lousiana, at the Dehli Charter School, female students who are pregnant or who refuse to take a pregnancy test are expelled - in violation of federal law.
From the ACLU:
Get Tested Or Get Out: School Forces Pregnancy Tests on Girls, Kicks out Students Who Refuse or are Pregnant
Innovative! Free from restrictive regulation! Aren't charter schools great!
From the ACLU:
Get Tested Or Get Out: School Forces Pregnancy Tests on Girls, Kicks out Students Who Refuse or are Pregnant
Innovative! Free from restrictive regulation! Aren't charter schools great!
Comments
CT
Newman
SolvayGirl
From the Wall Street Journal:
"The founder and former chief executive of a troubled charter-school network in Brooklyn was indicted Thursday on charges that he repeatedly failed to pay income taxes, embezzled money from his schools and created phony records."
In Philadelphia:
"Federal prosecutors unveiled a 62-count indictment against charter school mogul Dorothy June Brown and four codefendants last week, and said in court papers that additional charges could be lodged."
From Columbus, Ohio...
"A former treasurer for more than a dozen Ohio charter schools was charged Thursday with embezzling more than $470,000 in federal education funds over six years."
I don't see how the charters could be worse in that regard.
Parent
Glad you recogninze that that practice is "extreme." It is the norm in Seattle Schools.
Parent
Here's the current grant announcement:
"To create incentives for high-quality charter schools to collaborate with non-chartered public schools and local educational agencies, the Department of Education (DOE) created the Charter School Exemplary Collaboration Awards. The awards are intended to promote strong partnerships with public schools and enable exemplary charter schools to share and transfer best educational and operational practices and to disseminate information about these practices. On July 30, 2012, the Department took two actions to start the application process:
Published final definitions, requirements, and selection criteria for Charter School Exemplary Collaboration Award competitions in fiscal year 2012 and beyond
Invited applications for new awards for fiscal year 2012. Applications are available as of July 30, 2012, and a pre-application webinar will be held on August 6 (2:30 to 4:30 PM). The deadline for transmittal of applications is August 29, 2012."
Of course the DOE supports charters - Arne Duncan is the DOE. This is another example of how charters secretly cost more than public schools. Charters get funding via the district, and can also get money from the DOE. Some states also offer block grants to charters in addition to the district monies and the private donations. Usualy those extra dollars all go to administrative costs, not to teachers or students or transportation. In AZ there are charter school "administrators" who make $300-400K running one or 2 charter schools. How much will Banda make to run how many schools?
CT
You know what SPS says to that bit about your rights? So sue me... if you want your rights that is, or if you want us to follow the law.
So great, we've got our rights, maybe, if we have 30 or 40 or 50 thousand bucks to go to court and prevail. In that case, why wouldn't you just opt out all together for something private and better?
-Another Parent
-Another Parent
In Seattle schools, you can be pregnant and go to school. We even have an alternative high school with a daycare (good luck finding a charter with that).
These aren't extreme examples; this is what charters have evolved to.
Utah did not kick them out either - they just made sure they got married very, very quickly.
As for sped rights - you still have far more avenues of recourse with public schools than with charters. In AZ, the charter board oversees charter schools, and most sped appeals are dismissed, and the judiciary is hesitant to rule against charters because they are the money players these days. Nothing in 1240 leads me to believe it will be any different in WA should this go through. I've heard far worse stories from sped parents in AZ in regards to charter schools than I have from those whose kids were in public, and they have to navigate the charter system on their own. At least WA has a sped ombudsman for public schools - and I've referred a few families there who have had difficulties getting services for their kids - all with good success.
Here's a sped parent perspective on charters from NOLA:
http://edutalknola.com/2011/03/18/a-parent-perspective-on-charter-schools-and-special-education-where-does-school-choice-meet-idea/
CT
-Another Parent
Yes, Pottergate. And our old friend the not-so-great financial guy, Olchefske. But this blog and countless others made highly public protestations.
These became really big deals. A plethora of small charters are much harder to audit adequately.
Keep it in perspective.
n...
Oompah
Charters are private businesses, funded by tax dollars (along with some grants, donations from big donors, etc.). As such, they expect, and receive, the same relief from watchdogs and oversight that all private companies get. And to the extent that shady, or lazy, folks have figured out that there are tidy sums to be made in running "budget" charters-- because the dollars flow in with little or no oversight -- until years after the fact -- these outcomes are entirely predictable. The exact same thing occurred in the federal student loan consolidation business (another industry where tax dollars (or dollars that were federally guaranteed) flowed to unaccountable private businesses.
Charters differ from regular "private" schools in their ready access to huge amounts of public money. Go look at ANY private schools. Few, if ANY are places where the upper management can make 300K to 400K per year. As a result, you may get bungled mismanagement. And you may get the occasional treasurer taking some money -- but the big shady players aren't going to bother trying to embezzle from Bertschi, or Overlake, or Epiphany. There simply is neither the opportunity nor the money for them to bother.
In public charter management companies, the opportunity IS there. The dollar potentials are HUGE. The oversight doesn't exist -- and the shysters KNOW it.
Face it. If you want the "public side" proponents to own up to, and honestly discuss, the challenges and shortcomings of public schools, I think you need to be willing to honestly admit that charter school management presents an astonishing opportunity for misuse, mismanagement, and outright theft of taxpayer dollars.
And that is just the money -- the potential for abuse of students and teachers (also due to lack of oversight and the fact that such abuse can be profitable) is also far greater than it is in public schools.
Jan, n... our public schools especially fail students with disabilities and routinely flaunt disability laws. Do we really need examples? Students with disabilities are entitled (by law)to EVERYTHING students without disabilities are afforded, WITH accommodation for their disabilities, AND THEN special services for disabilities. But in our district, it is one or the other. You can get special education OR you can have all the bennies of everybody else. For example: What was the "language immersion school" plan for students with disabilities? Oh yeah. None. Actually, the non-plan was: remove the students with disabilities from an entire region of the city. (You know, the popular one around Hamilton.) Back in the good ole days Lowell always had a Washington DC trip for students without disabilities. What was the plan to include students with disabilities in that annual school activity? The non-plan was: of course students with disabilities won't go on out of town trips in summer. They couldn't possibly benefit anyway. There are many other schools with similar field trips and camps. Then there's the school riser process (everyone else knows this as enrollment). It's completely different for students with disabilities, and completely different from any other district. It has improved a tiny bit, but only because the district has decided NOT to provide special education with it's new non-program: ICS. THen there's Seattle's own special suspension rate for students with disabilities: Just keep the kids in time out all day, and don't bother even reporting this as a suspension. Nobody will know the difference, right? When the district does this it avoids all sorts of reporting issues and bothersome "manifestation" hearings. It's also illegal. In-house supsension is still a suspension. That's just a few random items on a very long and serious list.
Anyway, the point is: WHere's the "outrage" when it comes to plain public school and these issues? The only "outrage" comes when a charter school is doing the exact same thing that our public schools do all the time. Suddenly people are really interested in SPED and ELL and any other thing. Suddenly, a million posts about those poor sped kids. Suddenly people care "oh so much" about exclusion, and sped student relocation. Both entities have the same obligation, and the same response to failure. That response is: so sue me. The outrage just sounds so false and support-status-quo-at-all-costs to me.
-AP
you need to know that the federal DOE is a writhing mass of GATES and BROAD people, all the way through senior management...
If I remember correctly, its own office supposed to investigate civil rights violations, is headed by a Broadie
I havent checked state DOEs for the affiliations of their senior staff...
Might pay for someone to do that...
I have heard that charters exist that have a mission to serve all sorts of students all together. I can't see anything in I-1240 that makes it likely that schools like that will be established in WA. Do you? If so, please tell me where to look.
-AP
But adding the expense, distraction, and deceit (with respect to inclusiveness or services to any child that costs any extra money to educate) of charter schools to a situation that already needs fixing will only make things worse.
You want to work with disproportionality issues in the current environment? Fine! I am with you. But I utterly fail to see how criticizing the problems of the current system is a reasonable defense of a new, worse, less accountable system. How does your argument in any possible way, shape or form constitute a basis for supporting the charter legislation that is currently on the ballot?
Is there ANY evidence out there that adding charter schools to a state's education system has been beneficial for the state's SPED kids? Or their ELL kids? I am not interested in "one hearwarming anecdote." I WOULD be interested in something that says that in X state, more SPED kids (or even a proportionate number) are in charters than in the public schools -- or that the ones who are there are graduating in proportionate (or greater) numbers -- or being expelled (or counselled out in fewer (or proportionate) numbers.
Am I missing some great study out there with this information? I would love for that to be the case. If I am not, because I AM aware of lots of literature to the opposite effect (that fewer SPED and ELL kids are admitted to charter schools, that they are expelled (or drop out) in higher numbers), then why are we continuing to pretend that the problems with SPED in ELL in any way support a move to charters?
Two years to go
I don't know that charters are a magic bullet. I gotta hope that some of these teachers and administrators might start caring more if they knew there were other options out there, ready to take on the challenge. Robin Lake of the CRPE claims to have data supporting charters for students with disabilities. If we had charters, at least there would be an OPPORTUNITY for people who actually cared about all students to make a difference. An opportunity isn't a guarantee of course.
-AP
If Robin Lake "claims to have data supporting charters for students with disabilities" it would benefit the cause of those in favor of charters to make this data available.
There is, however, a big difference between claiming to have data (that supports a particular position) and actually having data that is not a heartwarming collection of anecdotes.
If ya got it, show it.
Oompah
My oldest just recieved her masters in teaching, after working for two years in a K-8, and I think she would say teaching is her OPPORTUNITY to make a difference, and the best place for that is a school with accountability for all.
Additionally, the charter school was all upper-middle class white kids, and the administrator raked in the cash while paying the "teachers" crap wages. His wife was supposedly in charge of the front office and she made more money than the unqualified teachers. It got great test scores despite the teachers because all of the kids were upper-middle class white kids with plenty of opportunities at home (music lessons, sports, homework assistance from college-educated parents). The administrator and his wife bought a house in a tony part of Scottsdale a few years after opening their charter. Meanwhile the successful neighborhood elementary, which was 1/2 gen Ed, 1/2 sp Ed at one time and had a fabulous blended program became a failing school based on NCLB measurements because the charter had stripped it of almost all of it's white kids.
You think there are problems in public schools now? Charters add a whole other layer of issues. 1240 is so poorly written that WA is guaranteed to repeat the same issues. I can also assure you that there are some very unscrupulous people just waiting for a fresh market where they can come in, open a charter school, then disappear after a few years along with a lot of money. These are people who have made it a habit to change states just as the authorities are catching up to them. Ben Chavis in California - accused of fraud in the millions with his Oakland Charter School - is in the middle of opening a school in Arizona. The authorities don't talk, so he'll get that school opened and reinfuse his bank accout with more cash, then after a couple of years, he'll move on to someplace else, like Florida. Think he gives a rip about kids? Nope - just money.
-CT
I'm not sure what you mean by this.
Do you mean that public school employees who care about students would seek employment at the charter schools where they could act on that care?
Or do you mean that, spurred by the competition from charter schools which appropriately serve students with disabilities, public school employees would start to care as well?
Either way, I think you presume things which are both not in evidence and which are not consistent with what we know.
If public school employees care, they can currently act on that care. They don't need new management for that. And many (probably even most) do. The suggestion that public school employees don't care isn't one that I can reconcile with the facts.
If you're suggesting that competition will spur the public schools to action, then I don't think you understand that there is no profit motive in the public sector and therefore no meaningful competition.
Robin Lake may well have data supporting charters for students with disabilities. Of course, we already know that charters, in general, serve many fewer students with IEPs than public schools and we already know that charters typically find ways to remove those students from their schools.
You write: "If we had charters, at least there would be an OPPORTUNITY for people who actually cared about all students to make a difference."
I assure you that they have that opportunity now, in our public schools. Your suggestion to the contrary is both false and insulting - insulting to your readers as well as education professionals.
First of all: no, IF they care, they also need a system in which many others care too. They need administrators who care too. The idea that 1 white knight (caring) teacher can save some kid (or group of kids) is really exactly the charter image, isn't it? Now you're saying 1 really caring person can work in regular school too. Well, let's see it!
Secondly, your idea that most do care about ALL students - well, that's based on your experience, being who you are, and not data. Others have a different experience. If "most" public school employees actually did care about ALL students, I think you'd see much different results than are published everywhere you look. EG. You just posted the data on discipline. People who suspend students for being disabled (eg. for being who they are born as) obviously do not care about them. They know it will not help them, they know it will not make them un-disabled. And SPS is rife with that. Teachers ask for suspensions, administrators oblige.
-AP
She also wrote Chapter 4 of Hopes Fears and Realities (2011) which is called Making Choice Work for Students with Special Needs. It acknowledges all of the reasons charters might have not to serve students with special needs well and lays out ways charter regulation could encourage charters to serve those students. I didn't see any data or case studies there about charters that are currently doing that well. I don't know if I-1240 is written in a way that takes Ms. Lake's recommendations into account.
This is definitely an issue of interest for Ms. Lake. There may be useful data in the book. You can buy it here for $19.95.
I did not write that "1 white knight (caring) teacher can save some kid (or group of kids)" and I would not write any such thing.
However, you seem to writing that there is not even one caring person in the district.
Secondly, let's look at the data. The very data you cite shows that students with IEPs are suspended at higher rates (16.0%) than non-disabled students (6.5%).
This means, of course, that 84% of students with IEPs are NOT suspended. We have certainly heard about a lot of actions that equate to suspension without appearing in the suspension statistics, but the statistic shows 84% - which I think you will agree qualifies as "most" - are not getting suspended for being disabled. So, yes, let's rely on data rather than personal experience.
There are very few people who go into teaching without caring about kids. They are the exception rather than the rule. To believe otherwise is absurd. To state otherwise is unsupportable.
-FYI
Let's remember, nearly 3/4s of the students with disabilities in SPS have learning disabilities, not developmental disabilities. My guess is that 16% suspension rate (of REPORTED suspension) targets that remaining 1/4. So more than 1/2 of the students with development disabilities are being subjected to suspension and removals, v 6% of students without disabilites. What will Supt Banda and whatever new management team he puts into place do about this?
Our special needs kid has been subjected to countless "inhouse" suspensions and none enter into the formal discipline reporting for the district. This is a very common practice along with the "come get your kids" call.
Remains to be seen if Banda and his new management team --surely he is not going to keep these Ed Directors on the payroll?-- will do something to make change.
Parent
However, you seem to writing that there is not even one caring person in the district.
No. I never said 100% of SPS staff cared nothing at all for 100% of the students. Of course I believe most educators and administrators care about some aspect of education, for some group of students, at a minimum.
But from my years and years in the system, a vast majority of our education professionals, especially at the secondary level, do not care very much at all for our students with disabilities. They may "accept" them in their classrooms, if they can somehow look and act non-disabled most of the time - but they feel no obligation to teach them anything. And, when you're willing to throw one group under the bus, inevitably you'll throw others there too, because, once there's a group you decided you don't have to serve it's easy to put others into that group. (Plenty of outcome data to show that lots of groups thrown under the bus. The achievement gap and all.) There are of course always exceptions.
Ok. You think educators mostly care. Is that based on "data" you claim to love so much? No. There is no "data" to prove that one way or the other. That opinion is based on your experience, and it is limited on this issue.
As you've read, students with disabilities are subjected to countless undocumented suspensions. And yet, even the suspension rate they acknowledge is likely 16X greater than the rate for your nice white daughters. That doesn't even speak to the small group within the special ed who is likely being suspended: those in general ed who refuse to "act" non-disabled. As others point out, the normal seeming disabled students - well, they aren't getting the suspensions because they aren't identifiable. And, those in self-contained settings aren't suspended either. It's OK to be disabled if normal people don't have to see it.
Ok. You don't want to hear any of that, nor consider it. Your business.
-AP
As a parent of a special needs students, it's all very sad but charters have not driven the needle for change in any discernible way. And the suspension rate for Special Ed minority students in New Orleans? Almost off the charts.
If you want something different for difference's sake, that's one thing. You want better, that's another.
AP writes: I don't know that charters are a magic bullet. I gotta hope that some of these teachers and administrators might start caring more if they knew there were other options out there, ready to take on the challenge."
Many, if not most, decisions made in the political arena result from applying what we know or hope to a set of future circumstances that are unknown. In this case, here is what we "know."
Our public schools are currently not adequately addressing the needs of many SPED kids (including many of "normal" or above average intelligence with significant learning disabilities). They are excluded from opportunities too often; they are suspended/expelled with far greater frequency than neurotypical kids, they pass classes and exams (WASL and HSPE) far less often, and they have much lower graduation rates. And none of this even begins to touch social inclusion, etc. -- which is largely unmeasured by districts nationwide.
We also know that charter schools, in the aggregate, accept even fewer of these kids, and suspend/expel them even more frequently. I do not have any data on graduation rates, course passage rates, etc. -- but since the "calling card" of many of these schools is statistics like passage of high stakes tests and graduation, I have no trouble hypothesizing that some percentage of their discrimination on the front end comes from their fear of what having these kids in their classes (if they fail to learn) might mean for their ever precious statistics on the back end. 1240 contains not a single word, anywhere, that gives me any reason to believe that it will, or even legally could, "discriminate" against potential charter operators by granting a preference to those that might be inclined to set up and operate charter schools that target the learning needs and styles of the various SPED groups. Given the paucity of such charter schools on a national basis, the statistical data that shows that charters in general do even worse than public schools at accepting and teaching SPED kids, and the fact that nothing in 1240 deals with the issue (or even permits regulators to write regulations that would favor schools that work with SPED kids), I cannot see what basis you have for this "hope." It is like hoping that if we allow banks to grow really big, they will aggregate so much expertise and knowledge that they will never screw up and fail; or like hoping that if we cut all income tax rates to 5% and reduce federal spending by 50%, somehow, growth will explode and economic benefits will trickle down on everyone, causing the middle class to flourish, the group now at or below the poverty line to shrivel, and the deficit to shrink -- even though the CBO numbers do not support this, and it has never happened at any time in history (either in the US or any other country).
In light of all known evidence AND the language of the charter initiative, I just cannot see how one can support the initiative based upon the hope that it will do anything good for SPED kids.
AP continues: "If we had charters, at least there would be an OPPORTUNITY for people who actually cared about all students to make a difference. An opportunity isn't a guarantee of course."
True. But if we had charters, there is (based on known history in 40 other states) and the language of the initiative (including the lottery provisions, etc.) a FAR GREATER opportunity for people who absolutely do NOT want to have SPED kids in their schools and in their classes to exclude them, so they can get on with the "easier" task of educating other students without having to understand, fund, or meet the special educational needs of SPED kids.
continued
Nonetheless, I am totally confident that the solution to the current problems is NOT a badly written charter initiative that costs money that we can't afford to spend, and permits (de facto, if not de jure) weakly regulated charter schools to ignore what few laws and regulations do exist to protect kids like mine.
Send me a charter bill written so that the only schools that qualify are schools that agree that no fewer than 1/4 or 1/3 of their kids will be SPED kids who have IEPs or 504 plans, and who agree to suspension/expulsion targets that meet or are lower than those for neurotypical white and Asian kids -- and I would vote for it in a heartbeat! But funny -- the big money behind charter bills doesn't seem to be angling for that population.
And Melissa -- my apologies for consecutive posts. I know you have asked us to try not to.
AP wrote that SPS is "rife" with teachers who suspend students and that suspensions are evidence of not caring. But 84% of disabled students were not suspended, so the claim that SPS is "rife" with teachers who suspend disabled students is false.
I do not claim to love data. That statement is false.
I sometimes envy people who feel such a strong sense of entitlement that they can presume so much, misstate things so badly, and invent their own facts. They must lead magical lives.
I assure you, your deal is way better and it impacts your understanding in almost everything you write - which is also filled with entitlement.
-AP
Big deal.
-AP
FYI, the overwhelming majority of charters are elementary, followed by middle and even fewer high schools. I would venture that looking at charter high school data would be hard to use as any gauge.
I don't think Charlie bashed Jan. She's a thoughtful commenter and I welcome her careful and clear writing.
AP, do NOT go after anyone's children. If I see that again, I will delete it. You are warned.
I also think it strange that you presume my daughters are white.