What's Happening with Charter Schools? Let's Review

It's almost hard to know where to start but one thing seems to be happening - charter schools are having a harder time with the passage of time. 

In Arizona where recently there was a massive teacher strike (which saw the teachers prevail), there are cracks in the charter schools.  From The Daily Courier in Prescott, Arizona:

In September, the Grand Canyon Institute released a portion of a detailed analysis related to charter school finances.

Though that report does not cite violations of law in its review, the research suggests a concern for malfeasance because charters are allowed to handle public dollars in ways that are not traceable to the taxpayers. Unlike district schools, the Institute states charter schools are not required to participate in competitive bidding for equipment and services, leaving open room for questionable financial deals and spending of tax dollars.

Another concern is that charter schools can set their own salary schedules for teachers and administrators, with administrators often earning more than district leaders and teachers getting paid less than their district colleagues.

More on money issues, this time from Oakland:

Two Bay Area school districts lost a total of $76.6 million to public charter schools during the 2016-17 school year, a new report concludes.

Two Bay Area school districts lost a total of $76.6 million to public charter schools during the 2016-17 school year, a new report concludes.

University of Oregon Labor Education and Research Center professor Gordon Lafer, who led the yearlong study, told this news organization that the purpose of “Breaking Point: The Cost of Charter Schools for Public School Districts” was not to advocate for or against charter schools but rather to provide a first-of-its-kind analysis of how they impact school districts’ financial health.

“The point of the study is that we can’t pretend this cost is zero,” Lafer said.

Some of you may not remember but Tacoma's school board had been considering being charter school authorizers and decided against it.  Then, when charter schools began to be authorized, to their surprise, a couple opened in Tacoma and the district started feeling those effects.  I recall being at a Washington State Charter School Commission meeting where a couple of board members asked if there wasn't something in the law to restrict the number in any given district.  There wasn't in that law and there isn't in the current one.

Any district who thinks that charters won't affect them is wrong.  One interesting case study, though, is Spokane which is the only school district authorizer in the state.   More on this in another thread.

Also in Arizona, enrollment issues, this the from AP:

Hundreds of Arizona’s state-funded charter schools use discriminatory enrollment policies to close their doors to certain students, according to a report released Thursday by a civil rights group.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona said an investigation found numerous schools had admission requirements that seemed intent on deterring students with certain vulnerabilities. They include disabilities, English-learning needs and past disciplinary issues, the report said.

“’School choice’ means that families should be choosing schools, not the other way around,” ACLU of Arizona executive director Alessandra Soler said in a statement.

Treatment of students at one chain, Noble Charter Schools in Chicago which are mostly high schools; this via NPR:

But despite its prestigious reputation, Noble has a peculiarly high teacher turnover rate.
And some of those teachers are speaking up about policies they describe as “dehumanizing.”

Noble’s handbook lists more than 20 behaviors that can elicit demerits. The dress code, for example, requires students to wear light khakis, plain black leather belts, black leather dress shoes, and school-branded polo-style shirts that must be tucked in. Hair must be only a “natural” color, and students can't have any designs in their hair.

Five Noble campuses lost at least half of their teachers over the past four years. Part of that is due to burnout: The charter network requires teachers to work longer hours, and often on weekends. 

This kind of strictness speaks to something I have believed about some charters, like Noble and KIPP:

Bell, however, believes the rules are necessary to mold low-income students into college material.

I think many parents choose strict charters because they are trying to give their child a kind of structure that they may not have at home or in their neighborhood.  It's a feeling of safety for the parent and a "molding" of the students by the schools.

Jane Sundius, a social psychologist who focuses on poverty, children and education, says low-income families tend not to question systems like those at Noble. She points to a study by sociologist Melvin Kohn, exploring how parenting styles vary by social class.

“What he found was that working-class parents focus very much on obedience. Off little Johnny went to school and his mom said, ‘Listen to the teacher! Be good! Be quiet!’

And upper-class parents focused on learning and creativity and having fun,” she says.

“The working-class parents trained their children to be workers on an assembly line, not empowered, while the upper-class families taught their children to believe that they had a legitimate right to their opinion and their views.”

But this is discipline at Noble:

One of the policies that made her most uncomfortable was demanding “level zero,” or complete silence, in the hallways during passing period, which she says teachers could activate by yelling “hands up.”

“Teachers were applauded if you had the ability to shut down the hallway,” Baltzer says. “We had no awareness that it would be inappropriate to shout ‘hands up’ at a hallway full of black children. And so we had white teachers shouting ‘Hands up’ and kids putting their hands up and going silent. That is insane.”

Deshawn Armstrong, who graduated from Hansberry in 2017, says level zero sometimes extended from passing period to the lunch period.

“I do remember there was a period, my sophomore year, I want to say, when we were on level zero lunch and level zero hallways for approximately a month and a half,” he says. “So in essence, during the school day, there was no conversation taking place between students in the halls or at lunch, which is really the only time that we have the opportunity to speak to one another.”

And this speaks volumes:

Discipline varies widely among Noble’s 17 schools, but data provided by the network shows students at five predominantly black Noble campuses last year got about twice the number of demerits as students at Noble’s 10 predominantly Hispanic schools. Two additional predominantly-Black campuses had lower demerit numbers, but they are different by design. One of them, Gary Comer College Prep, is housed in a newly-constructed building where every classroom has glass walls, to promote “transparency and accountability.” The other, Butler College Prep, is Noble’s “social justice” school, and most teachers and staff members are Black.

Well, there's some irony that Noble seems to miss; when you staff with teachers/staff of color, you have fewer discipline issues with kids of color.  Maybe all their schools need to be "social justice" schools.

NPR followed up with another story because of the volume of comments/feedback and heard from Noble teachers and students, current and former.  The most shocking issue raised:

One described an issue raised by others at some Noble campuses, regarding girls not having time to use the bathroom when they get their menstrual periods.

“We have (bathroom) escorts, and they rarely come so we end up walking out (of class) and that gets us in trouble,” she texted. “But who wants to walk around knowing there’s blood on them? It can still stain the seats. They just need to be more understanding.”

At certain campuses, teachers said administrators offer an accommodation: They allow girls to tie a Noble sweater around their waist, to hide the blood stains. The administrator then sends an email to staff announcing the name of the girl who has permission to wear her sweater tied around her waist, so that she doesn’t receive demerits for violating dress code.

Last year, two teachers at Noble’s Pritzker College Prep helped female students persuade administrators to change the dress code from khaki bottoms to black dress pants. Although their initiative was based in part on a survey showing that 58 percent of Pritzker students lack in-home laundry facilities, it remains a pilot program available only at the Pritzker campus.

If you have ever been a middle school girl with her period, this should make you shudder.  It's beyond humiliating. 

Lastly, I attended the Washington State Charter Schools Convention a couple of weeks back.  Quite interesting and I'll have a thread on that event soon.

At this point, I think people on all sides should be worried.  Charter schools because of their growing (and in public) difficulties and traditional districts that are losing money to charter schools (and not being able to fight back).