As if defunding public education in underserved schools wasn't bad enough ---now private charter chains are set to make things worse. In Baltimore, it is the justice organizations backing this charter takeover of city schools....most other cities are fighting back. ALL MARYLAND CITIZENS NEED TO BE CONCERNED ABOUT THE CHARTER TAKEOVER IN BALTIMORE BECAUSE THEY WILL EXPAND THIS CHARTER PLATFORM TO THE ENTIRE STATE! WALL STREET CHARTER CHAINS ARE NOT YOUR WARM AND FUZZY COMMUNITY CHARTER~


Friday, 25 April 2014 07:05

Charter School Pirates of Privilege Plunder Public Schools
MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT


It bears repeating again and again that the concept of charter schools is a scam and - more significantly - a betrayal of society's obligation to provide communities filled with economic opportunities to all.

A recent article in the Huffington Post - "Big Profits in Not-for-Profit Charter Schools" - lays out one of the most basic complaints about charter schools: The primary parties they enrich are the administrators and nonprofits that run them, along with the for-profit consultants who provide services to allegedly "improve" public education. The article notes that some charter school administrators make "very heady profits":

Currently, there are approximately 2.5 million students enrolled in publicly funded charter schools in the United States. These charter schools are operated by both profit-making companies and "not for profit" organizations. In New York City every charter school is operated by what is known as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. In New York State, only 16 out of 209 charter schools are operated by for-profit companies. In other states, particularly Michigan, Florida, and Arizona, for-profit companies dominate the charter school movement. In Michigan, about 65% of the charter schools are run by for-profit educational management organizations

However, operating non-profit charter schools can be very profitable for charter school executives like Eva Moskowitz. Moskowitz earns close to a half a million dollars a year ($485,000) for overseeing school programs that serve 6,700 children, which is over $72 per student. By comparison, New York State Education Commissioner is paid a salary of $212,000 to oversee programs with 2.7 million students or about 8 cents per student. In other words, Moskowitz earns about 100 times more than King for each student enrolled in a Success Academy Charter School. Carmen Farina, New York City School Chancellor is paid $212,000 a year to oversee 1.1 million students or about 19 cents per student.

According to my calculations and The New York Times, other non-profit charter school administrators also make some very heady profits. The head of the Harlem Village Academies earns $499,000 to manage schools with 1,355 students or $369 per student. The head of the Bronx Preparatory School earns $338,000 to manage schools with 651 students or over $500 per student. The head of the Our World Charterearns $200,000 to manage schools with a total of 738 students or $271 per student. The local head of the KIPP Charter Network earns $235,000 to manage schools with 2,796 or $84 per student. By comparison, the chief educational officer ofTexas is paid $214,999 to manage a system with almost 5 million public school students.

As most readers of BuzzFlash and Truthout are aware by now - if you follow the school privatization debate - many large foundations play large roles in bankrolling big salaries and resources that dwarf the capabilities of underfunded public schools. This includes the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, of course, and a host of neoliberal and right wing philanthropists who think that they are improving education by privatizing it and even further neglecting the students in real need of educational attention.

Charter schools are a triple winner for the agenda of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's apostles, whose goal is to essentially stigmatize public education. This allows them to enrich the already-wealthy individuals who oversee the charter schools and movement; break the back of teachers' unions; and eviscerate perhaps the most basic role of society in a democracy: providing enriching and effective education to all students.

Although some studies show charter schools performing better - perhaps because they often cherry-pick their students - many analyses indicate charter schools, in general (despite their enhanced philanthropic resources), perform no better or worse than schools teaching comparable students. In short, the whole supercilious, patronizing notion that the "best and the brightest" in society must come to the rescue, with their haughty assertion of superior knowledge about how to educate young people, is nothing more than a self-profiting sham.

The charter school movement is inextricably bound up with economic inequality in the United States. After all, it is rare to see any move toward charter schools in well-off or even middle-class suburbs. What the charter school movement is about is blaming large swaths of urban areas for being economically abandoned due to an alleged failure of the public school systems. It is not phrased that way by Duncan, who grew up in Hyde Park near President Obama's home and attended Harvard, but that is the heart of the issue.

Systemic changes to economic inequality (impacting destitute minority communities in the cities - and poor rural white communities that do not even enter the national charter school agenda) for the most part, are not on the table. That suits the ruling elite just fine. They have no desire or sense of obligation to alter an economic system that has produced urban plantations of poverty that are patrolled by a police state. Yet, they blame teachers' unions for producing students who are allegedly unemployable in communities where there is no significant number of jobs (other than illicit ones, which give the police a reason to occupy the communities).

Charter schools do provide us with a lesson in education, but not the intended one. It is incontestable that in the United States, school districts with greater economic resources and families with higher incomes have higher graduation rates and fewer dropouts.  

We have learned a lot about charter schools over the past few years.

The most salient educational lesson we have absorbed is that the rich have found a new way to make money off of the poor - and leave the most needy even further behind.




__________________________________________________________________
The charter schools system is not only allowing segregation by race and class but it is sending public education money to wealthy communities that do indeed effect per-pupil funding that creates ever more disparity.  Maryland is an example of this with its tiered funding favoring affluent schools and students.

IT CAN'T BE EQUITABLE AND IT IS NOT DEMOCRATIC....


Education
DC drifting towards separate school systems. Are they equal?

by Ken Archer   •   November 16, 2012 10:04 am

DC Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson announced yesterday that DCPS plans to close 20 schools. All of the closed schools are east of Rock Creek Park, and 9 are east of the Anacostia River.


Ron Brown Middle School in Ward 7, slated for closureIn these areas, charter schools continue to grow and DCPS neighborhood schools shrink, while families are clamoring to attend neighborhood schools in the wealthiest parts of the District.

The danger of this trend is that the District will drift toward two, completely separate public school systems: a neighborhood-based school system primarily in the city's west, and a charter school system in the east.

These two systems are very different and geographically separate. But are they equal? That's the central question that yesterday's announcement raises. And it's a question not for Henderson, who is responsible just for DCPS, but for the Mayor and Council.

DC is splitting into 2 separate school systems

For the past decade, more and more children who live in boundary for some traditional public schools, particularly west of Rock Creek Park, have wanted to enroll. The result has been a network of high-quality and popular local elementary schools—Janney, Key, LaFayette, Hyde-Addison, Murch, and so on—feeding into strong middle schools and ultimately into Wilson High School.

The Wilson boundary runs along 16th Street, next to the park that is re-dividing the city into the educational haves on the west and charter lottery applicants on the east. There are a few exceptions, like schools on Capitol Hill, or Ross Elementary in Dupont Circle, but even in these neighborhoods, most families leave DCPS after elementary school because they're not yet comfortable enough with the middle and high schools.

For decades, this boundary mattered far less as schools west of the park had spare capacity for many students east of the park in the out-of-boundary lottery. However, rising in-boundary enrollment west of the park will soon make bus trips across the park a thing of the past.

Wilson High was designed to serve 400 students per grade. Yet there are 750 4th grade students in the schools that feed into Wilson.

In much of the rest of the city, the local elementary school, anchor and civic space of the community, is too becoming a relic. As school closures due to under-enrollment eviscerate the institution of the neighborhood school, car and bus trips criss-crossing the city to charters are increasing in number.

Meanwhile, middle and high schools east of the park struggle to coordinate programming with schools in their feeder patterns as schools open and close and students come and go in droves.

These two public school systems are as separate as they could possibly be. Are they equal?

Is separation a problem?

Should we worry about this? Some, such as perhaps the Washington Post editorial board, might say there's not a problem. If one type of schools works well in some neighborhoods, but is failing in others, why not keep it where it's working and ditch it where it's not? Maybe we need a completely different educational approach for the poorest neighborhoods versus the richest.

However, even education experts still don't agree about whether a system of all charters will actually work better. Charter school critics repeatedly point to studies that show charter schools do not, on the whole, deliver better results than do traditional public schools. Of course, parents across the city know several charter schools that deliver amazing results.

The Public Charter School Board is supposed to address this problem by closing under-performing charter schools. However, they have been more likely to give charters extensions of time to improve. If that works, perhaps that is wise, but there's a real danger it just means more under-performing schools linger for years while doing their students a real disservice.

As out-of-boundary students get pushed out of the most desirable schools, many of them become less diverse. Many wealthier families choosing between public and private school cite diversity, both ethnic, income, and otherwise, as a major advantage of public education. And one of the best ways to help students with disadvantaged backgrounds is to include them in schools with many higher-performing peers.

Having 2 separate school systems could also create political problems. If there is one system that serves rich neighborhoods, and another service the poor neighborhoods, would well-meaning parents in the wealthier and more politically powerful neighborhoods lobby for more funding for traditional public education and inadvertently disadvantage less affluent areas? Or would politicians from the poorer wards of the District end up opposing DCPS's needs? A battle for resources between the haves and have-nots is not what we need, regardless of how it turns out.

From a transportation standpoint, it's not great to have most kids riding buses or being driven long distances to charter schools that might be nowhere near their neighborhoods, if there can be a good alternative nearby.

It's not like residents of the poorest wards want to abolish all of their neighborhood schools. Staffers for Councilmember Marion Barry explained that most of their constituents want neighborhood schools to stay open, to improve and succeed.

What can be done?

Both traditional public schools and charter schools clearly have important roles to play in our public school system. Few deny that. The question is, how do their roles fit together such that we don't end up with separate and unequal school systems?

For one, there needs to be leadership at a high level to reconcile these two systems. DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson will come in for the most strident and vocal criticism of the school closures. This is unfortunate, as she only controls DCPS.

It's difficult to fault Henderson for closing schools left under-enrolled by students leaving for charters. What is the alternative—keep many mostly-empty schools around?

The Deputy Mayor for Education and the DC Council are the bodies that should be thinking about the public school system as a whole, not Chancellor Henderson. Yet both bodies claim organizational impotence. The result is that no one is leading our public school system.

Second, these leaders need to think about this problem and explore ways to address it. For the more successful schools, they could consider a "controlled choice" system, which Michael Petrilli mentioned when interviewed for a recent Washington Post article, and which David Alpert discussed in a series of articles this year.

A related idea on the other side, which Councilmember Tommy Wells has been pushing and I previously discussed, is to give children who live near a non-specialized charter school a preference to attend. Charters would set aside some percentage of their spots for in-boundary families.

This would engage charters in the struggles of their community. While many charters will object that they need parents who are committed to their program, these objections miss the point of charter autonomy. Autonomy is supposed to be autonomy from the bureaucracy and red-tape of DC Public Schools, not autonomy from the educational challenges that students in one neighborhood present.

Ideas such as these for aligning and situating our two public school systems for the good of the entire system come up periodically from isolated councilmembers, advocates, and in the press. It's time for someone to rise to the moment, and forestall a return to separate and unequal school systems in the nation's capital.

____________________________________
Letter: Charter school act puts education in corporate hands

Posted: March 23, 2013 - 4:20pm

The proposed Kansas Public Charter Schools Act would basically allow an unlimited number of corporately run schools, which would have the most up-to-date equipment and draw from the elite in the educational field, to compete against the cash-starved public schools for tax dollars. It will allow for preferential treatment of the students of the owners, donors, and staff, with a lottery for everyone else. What parents wouldn’t want to have their student go to a publicly funded, corporately run school that will guarantee success?

It will cause major unemployment of teachers and allied professionals in established public schools throughout Kansas. The act allows students throughout the state to attend any publicly funded charter school. All they have to do to receive preferential treatment is have rich parents donate, like they do at colleges, to the charter school.

This bill is fraught with potential problems, but is reflective of the conservative-controlled Legislature, which hates public employees and advocates for the privatization of government functions.

JEFF IMPARATO,
TOPEKA


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Contact William J. Mathis, (802) 383-0058, wmathis@sover.net
Andrew Maul, (303) 492-7653, andrew.maul@colorado.edu
URL for this press release: http://tinyurl.com/9wacp9q
 
BOULDER, CO (February 12, 2013) – The overall research base is now clear that the charter school sector largely mirrors the conventional public school sector in terms of students’ test scores. This is again confirmed by a recent analysis of charter schools in Michigan. A new review of that study points to some limitations but concludes that it employs solid analytic methods and relies on a large, impressive dataset.
 
Charter School Performance in Michigan was reviewed for the Think Twice think tank review project by professor Andrew Maul of the University of Colorado Boulder. Maul’s scholarly work focuses on measurement theory, validity, and generalized latent variable modeling. The review is published by the National Education Policy Center, housed at the CU Boulder School of Education.
 
The Michigan report is the work of the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University. The CREDO researchers analyzed differences in student performance at charter schools and traditional public schools in Michigan.
 
Up to this point, the majority of high-quality research studies on charter effects in the U.S. have tended to show no meaningful impact—positive or negative—on student achievement. Against this background, the new CREDO Michigan study has been trumpeted by charter advocates as showing a “smashing success” for charter schools.
 
In truth, the new study estimates that students in charter schools in Michigan experience 0.06 standard deviations more academic growth than comparison students in traditional public schools. As Maul points out, “This is equivalent to saying that about a tenth of one percent of the variation in academic growth is associated with school type.” Such a finding of almost no difference between charters and non-charters is very much in line with the overall body of past research. Some studies suggest slight benefits, some suggest slight harm, and many show no difference.
 
The study itself has both strong and weak elements. “As with CREDO’s previous reports on charter schools, the study employs a large and comprehensive dataset and fairly solid analytic methods,” Maul notes. But he goes on to point out “significant reasons for caution in interpreting the study’s results.”
 
Maul’s discussion of research methods is somewhat technical but is clearly explained in his review. One concern is the study’s failure to use methods that could have directly modeled both individual student growth and school-level effects, such as hierarchical linear modeling, which would have been better matched to the goals of making generalizable statements about both students and schools. He also questions whether the seven variables used in the study’s “virtual twin” matching approach are truly sufficient to capture all meaningful differences between charter students and those at traditional public schools.
 
Despite such caveats, Maul concludes that the study contains enough information that it represents an interesting contribution to the research literature on charter school effectiveness.
 
Find Andrew Maul’s review on the NEPC website at:
http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-charter-performance-michigan
 
Find Charter School Performance in Michigan, published by CREDO at Stanford University, on the web at:
http://credo.stanford.edu/pdfs/MI_report_2012_FINAL_1_11_2013_no_watermark.pdf.
 
The Think Twice think tank review project (http://thinktankreview.org) of the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) provides the public, policy makers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected publications. NEPC is housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education. The Think Twice think tank review project is made possible in part by support provided by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.
 
The mission of the National Education Policy Center is to produce and disseminate high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. We are guided by the belief that the democratic governance of public education is strengthened when policies are based on sound evidence.  For more information on the NEPC, please visit http://nepc.colorado.edu/.
 
This review is also found on the GLC website at http://www.greatlakescenter.org/


______________________________________________________________________________
In Baltimore we just had a for-profit trade school go out of business mid-session after taking all of the student's tuition and then saying there was not enough to continue.  These were underserved students trying to do all the right things to get ahead and yet again they are allowed to be scammed.  Taxpayer money was behind much of the funding as well.

This for-profit system is just as riddled with fraud as all business sectors but when we talk about education, just as we talk about health care......these are fundamental human rights that need to remain public and equal.


Mass. AG Expands Probe Into For-Profit Schools By The Associated Press February 4, 2013

BOSTON — Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley has broadened her investigation into recruiting and lending practices at for-profit colleges and trade schools.

Coakley, who began examining a handful of schools two years ago, says she’s now looking into whether more than a dozen institutions in Massachusetts misled prospective students about costs, the odds of graduating, or the likelihood they would find employment in their field of study.

Critics of the schools say they leave students with deep debt, and often do not lead to decent-paying jobs.

The Boston Globe reports that Coakley compares the problem to the subprime mortgage crisis, when some lenders encouraged home buyers to take out loans they could not afford.

There are 136 for-profit schools in Massachusetts. A schools trade group defends their record.



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Miracle Schools!: Proceed with Caution By P.L. Thomas on December 30, 2012 3:00 pm   Daily Uncensored


 During her tenure as Secretary of Education (2005-2009), Margaret Spellings announced No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was proving to be a success based on a 7 point gain in NAEP reading scores from 1999-2005. The data evidence referenced by Spellings was factual as framed, but when Gerald Bracey and Stephen Krashen dug beneath that broad claim, Spellings’ claim fell apart since the gain occurred entirely between 1999-2002, before any implementation of NCLB had occurred.

Lessons embedded in the false claims based on factual data by Spellings include the need to be skeptical about media and political analyses of data, the danger of assigning causation to any data without careful analysis, and the essentially distorting effect of large data points that blur the nuance of more detailed data.

While many educators and scholars have spent a great deal of time and effort to confront the enormous amount of misleading negative claims about education, little attention has been paid to the dangers of praising school success.

Miracle Schools!: Proceed with Caution



Historically, reaching well back into the nineteenth century, public schools have been maligned more often than praised, and in the past decade, most school success stories have either been claims of “miracle” schools or advocacy for high-flying charter schools.

“Miracle” schools almost always are unmasked once the claims are closely analyzed—but claims of “miracle” remain robust with the public. Charter schools also appear one type of schooling politicians, the media, and the public embrace uncritically when portrayed as successful.

Once compared to schools with similar populations of students, however, claims of charter schools outperforming public schools in South Carolina proved inaccurate. As well, Matthew DiCarlo has detailed that data on charter schools show “there is nothing about ‘charterness’ that leads to strong results.”

One key intersection of misguided claims of school success involves schools serving high-needs populations of students—children living in poverty, English language learners, and special needs students. One claim of a high-needs school succeeding immediately proves that all high-needs schools could succeed, and the implications surrounding that claim are often linked to high expectations by the faculty and a simple formula of willing success against the odds.

Yet, when Harris examined closely the data on “high-flying” schools—high poverty schools with strong academic achievement—only 1.1% of high-needs schools actually excel, revealing that even when success occurs, that success is an outlier and thus unlikely a bar against which other schools can or should be evaluated.

While praising “high-flying” public schools is rare, the Chair of SC’s Education Oversight Committee, Neil Robinson, has identified the Darlington (SC) County School District as “pro[of] that success is possible amid challenging circumstances.”

Robinson’s claim rests on Darlington having an Excellent rating among districts in SC. Darlington’s rating when compared to districts like Darlington shows that it is among only 4 of 22 districts achieving the top rating. Further, about Darlington’s success Robinson notes:

“What’s the key to Darlington’s success? Superintendent Rainey Knight doesn’t cite a particular program or method for the success of the students and schools. Instead, she believes, their success starts with a belief that all children can learn at high levels….

“Holding high expectations is another important part of the district’s success. Knight meets quarterly with each principal. She sets achievable goals with each principal, and they develop strategies to reach those goals, which are closely monitored….

“Appreciating teachers, who Knight believes are the single biggest factor in the success of a child, is very important in Darlington County schools. Darlington pays teachers more than any other school district in the Pee Dee….

“Finally, Knight recognizes how important it is to have supportive partners with businesses and within the community. Dental and counseling services are provided when needed. Nearby Sonoco has provided a grant to implement the Comer Model in four schools. The model teaches skills that some children from high-poverty homes do not arrive at school with — things like how to deal with conflict and recognize social cues.”

On balance, Robinson’s praise rests on accurate data and reveals a relatively complex picture of what leads to the success he identifies. Yet, this praise and the data supporting the praise require a great deal of caution.

First, the district rating of Excellent includes 22 separate schools, most of which have relatively high Poverty Indices. But, once those separate schools are examined in the context of schools like those individual schools, a different picture emerges, one in which Darlington County schools are essentially typical, not excellent—15 of the 22 schools receive Absolute ratings similar to most schools like them:

DistrictSchoolPoverty IndexAbsolute Rating Comparison to “Schools with Students Like Our”DARLINGTON 01DISTRICT TOTAL81.82ABOVE TypicalExcellent 4/22DARLINGTON 01HARTSVILLE MIDDLE75.16TypicalAverage 35/63DARLINGTON 01HARTSVILLE HIGH69.8ABOVE TypicalExcellent 13/45DARLINGTON 01LAMAR HIGH86.69ABOVE TypicalExcellent 3/30DARLINGTON 01SPAULDING MIDDLE90.24TypicalAverage 39/65DARLINGTON 01BROCKINGTON ELEMENTARY85.39ABOVE TypicalGood 30/139DARLINGTON 01CAIN ELEMENTARY85.82TypicalExcellent 13/13DARLINGTON 01CAROLINA ELEMENTARY56.23TypicalExcellent 34/46DARLINGTON 01LAMAR ELEMENTARY91.4TypicalExcellent 11/11DARLINGTON 01NORTH HARTSVILLE ELEMENTARY70.41TypicalExcellent 44/89DARLINGTON 01PATE ELEMENTARY92.13TypicalExcellent 11/11DARLINGTON 01ROSENWALD ELEMENTARY/MIDDLE100TypicalAverage 73/146DARLINGTON 01SPAULDING ELEMENTARY89.15TypicalAverage 89/131DARLINGTON 01BRUNSON-DARGAN ELEMENTARY96.21TypicalAverage 115/201DARLINGTON 01ST JOHN’S ELEMENTARY84.84ABOVE TypicalGood 22/131DARLINGTON 01THORNWELL SCHOOL FOR THE ARTS97.33TypicalAverage 83/161DARLINGTON 01WEST HARTSVILLE ELEMENTARY92.99TypicalAverage 117/202DARLINGTON 01WASHINGTON STREET ELEMENTARY91.94ABOVE TypicalGood 13/156DARLINGTON 01DARLINGTON HIGH86.18ABOVE TypicalExcellent 4/27DARLINGTON 01DARLINGTON MIDDLE87.55TypicalAverage 39/52DARLINGTON 01SOUTHSIDE EARLY CHILDHOOD CENTER86.4TypicalExcellent 11/11DARLINGTON 01MAYO HIGH SCHOOL FORMATH  SCIEN46.02TypicalExcellent 23/29DARLINGTON 01CHOICES92.73BELOW TypicalAt-Risk 2/58Next, to state that Darlington County is uniquely elite—and that success is built primarily on high expectations—and then to use that combination to argue that any high-needs school can do the same doesn’t honor properly Darlington’s genuine success or the hard work occurring at many schools without the attention but with similar results.

While this discussion is not suggesting no schools succeed, and not a call to stop praising schools, a careful analysis of a misleading claim shows that media, political leaders, and the public should look at all school success stories with more than a grain of skepticism. Some cautions include:

• If it is too good to be true, it likely isn’t true. Discount claims of “miracle,” especially if those claims imply that an outlier is a valid standard for normal.

• Temper praise of school success that suggests this school cares more and tries harder than other similar schools. To argue that “we care more and try harder” is a harsh judgment of other schools and teachers; in fact, something this judgmental requires a level of evidence and analysis that virtually no data provide. Beyond the technical problem with showing that a “no excuses” model is the cause of success, this is simply a hateful way to praise, demeaning the exact school receiving the praise.

• Avoid large data points as proof. Just as the above analysis shows, the larger rating of an entire district misrepresents a more detailed look at each school.

• Beware causational claims and beware comparisons that do not prove that such comparisons are apples-to-apples.

SC sits in the bottom quartile of poverty in the U.S. and has suffered an unfair history of negative evaluations of schools based on low tests scores more closely aligned with that poverty than with school or teacher quality. As well, districts such as Darlington represent an unaddressed burdened on the state, the notorious Corridor of Shame made famous by a law suit and documentary of that name.

In SC and across the nation, high-needs schools are doing wonderful things while also suffering under burdens that are being ignored and discounted by the media and political leadership.

Misguided and overly simplistic praise or criticism of schools benefits no one and likely will never serve to inspire the action that currently is absent in education reform.



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FOR THOSE WHO THINK THESE CHARTERS ARE JUST GOING TO ACT AS GENTRIFIERS OR CHANNELING THE POOR INTO VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS.....WALL STREET IS EXPANDING ESPECIALLY IN SOUTHERN STATES....

MARYLAND IS MOVING BALTIMORE TOWARDS THIS CHARTER MONOPOLY, BUT EXPANSION STATEWIDE WILL ONLY BE A MATTER OF CHANGING A LAW......DO YOU TRUST MARYLAND LEGISLATORS?


Charter schools expanding rapidly in more U.S. cities Charter schools now enroll more than 20 percent of public school children in 25 school districts across the country, according to a new report from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, which tracks charter-school growth annually.

Students at Akili Academy, a charter school in New Orleans. (Photo by Sarah Garland)

Overall, charters enrolled more than two million students in 41 states and the District of Columbia during the 2011-12 school year; that amounts to about 5 percent of public school enrollment nationally.

In only one community, New Orleans, did charters serve more than half of the public school children last year. But the data suggest that within the next few years, charters will likely educate a majority of students in other communities as well. For instance, charters enrolled 41 percent of students in both Detroit Public Schools and the District of Columbia Public Schools in 2011-12. Seven other communities experienced growth greater than 25 percent in charter-school enrollment between 2010 and 2011.

Apart from New Orleans, Washington, D.C., and a few other Southern cities, Midwestern towns dominated the top 10 list.

The report cites parent demand as a major explanation for charters’ growth. But President Barack Obama’s Race to the Top program also motivated some states to lift or eliminate their caps on the number of charter schools allowable under state law.

For more background on the history and politics of charter schools, please see this Education Writers Association guide.

Districts serving the highest percentage of charter school students (2011-12):

New Orleans Public Schools (Louisiana), 76 percent

Detroit Public Schools (Michigan), 41 percent

District of Columbia Public Schools, 41 percent

Kansas City, Missouri School District (Missouri), 37 percent

Flint City School District (Michigan), 33 percent

Gary Community School Corporation (Indiana), 31 percent

St. Louis Public Schools (Missouri), 31 percent

Cleveland Metropolitan School District (Ohio), 28 percent

Albany City School District (New York), 26 percent

Dayton Public Schools (Ohio), 26 percent

San Antonio Independent School District (Texas), 26 percent

Indianapolis Public Schools (Indiana), 25 percent

Roosevelt School District 66 (Arizona), 25 percent

Toledo Public Schools (Ohio), 25 percent

Youngstown City Schools (Ohio), 25 percent

Adams County School District 50 (Colorado), 23 percent

Grand Rapids Public Schools (Michigan), 23 percent

The School District of Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), 23 percent

Milwaukee Public Schools (Wisconsin), 22 percent

Phoenix Union High School District (Arizona), 22 percent

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ARE WE SURPRISED WITH THIS STAT?  NO ONE BELIEVES THAT A CHARTER SCHOOL THAT HAS SPECIAL PRIVACY CONTRACTS THAT KEEP ALL THEIR DATA FROM PUBLIC SCRUTINY IS PLAYING FAIR.  WE ASSUME THE OPPOSITE.  SO, WHEN YOUR INCUMBENT PASSES LAWS THAT ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN.....FOR WHOM ARE THEY WORKING?

VOTE YOUR INCUMBENT OUT OF OFFICE!!!!!


Charter Schools Under-Enroll
Students With Special Needs,
New Review Finds
 
Contact William J. Mathis, (802) 383-0058, wmathis@sover.net
Bruce Baker, (732) 932-7496, ext. 8232, bruce.baker@gse.rutgers.edu
URL for this press release: http://tinyurl.com/b7hqavn
  BOULDER, CO (December 6, 2012) – Several recent reports, including one from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, have found that charter schools generally under-enroll special education students when compared to conventional public schools. A new report from the Center on Reinventing Public Education, however, asserts that charter schools’ special education rates are much closer to those of district public schools than is described by these other recent reports.
 
A review of that new report concludes that, even though it was touted as reaching different conclusions – more favorable to charter schools – than past research, in fact the results are very much consistent. It confirms that charter schools are systematically under-enrolling students with special needs.
 
The report, New York State Special Education Enrollment Analysis, by Robin Lake, Betheny Gross, and Patrick Denice, was reviewed for the Think Twice think tank review project by professor Bruce Baker of Rutgers University. The review is published by the National Education Policy Center, housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education.
 
“While the report does show that under-enrollment patterns vary by grade level and to some extent by location, it downplays the fact that the largest subset of charter schools in its sample—elementary and K-8 schools, most of which are in New York City—do systematically under-enroll such children,” Baker writes.
 
Baker offers praise for some elements of the study but also points out that the authors skewed the selection of schools they examined in ways that stacked the deck in favor of finding less of an imbalance. But the report still found that district schools enrolled proportionally more disabled children than charters – albeit not to the degree that an unskewed comparison of schools would likely have found.
 
In fact, Baker offers his own analyses of data from Houston and New York City that show similar patterns of under-enrollment.
 
Baker also rejects an attempt by the report’s authors to explain away the under-enrollment at the elementary level. The report includes several statements to the effect that the real problem may be that conventional elementary schools over-identify children as having special needs or that those schools don’t do as good a job as do charters with early interventions and thus with avoiding identifications. Baker observes that the report includes no evidence or foundation for that proposal. He then uses data from New Jersey and from Philadelphia to show that the special needs students served by charters are disproportionately in the low-needs, “marginal” categories – the exact ones that early interventions and discretionary under-identification would be expected to remove.
 
“The report’s objective seems to be to provide the appearance of an empirical basis for an advocacy goal: convincing policymakers it would be unnecessary to adopt “enrollment target” policies to address a special education under-enrollment problem that may not exist. The report’s own findings do not support this contention,” Baker writes. And even the degree to which it may offer some insights, he concludes, is “severely limited by the scope of the report’s analyses, which focus on charter schools largely concentrated in a single urban context—New York City.”
 
 
Find Bruce Baker’s review on the NEPC website at:
http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-ny-special-ed
 
Find New York State Special Education Enrollment Analysis, by Robin Lake, Betheny Gross, and Patrick Denice on the web at:
http://www.crpe.org/publications/new-york-state-special-education-enrollment-analysis
 
The Think Twice think tank review project (http://thinktankreview.org) of the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) provides the public, policy makers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected publications. NEPC is housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education. The Think Twice think tank review project is made possible in part by support provided by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.
 
The mission of the National Education Policy Center is to produce and disseminate high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. We are guided by the belief that the democratic governance of public education is strengthened when policies are based on sound evidence.  For more information on the NEPC, please visit http://nepc.colorado.edu/.
 
This review is also found on the GLC website at http://www.greatlakescenter.org/.
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WHY IS THAT????????


Charter schools face opposition except in Baltimore January 29, 2012 at 10:21 pm

By Megan Poinski
Megan@MarylandReporter.com

Public charter schools have had a difficult time expanding in Maryland, except in Baltimore, which has 37 of the state’s 51 charter schools.

Students from Chesapeake Science Point Public Charter School in Hanover participate in the science fair. Photo courtesy of the CSP website.

Charters applications are often rejected – more often in some jurisdictions than others – and some counties have no charter schools.

Charter school advocates can easily identify some of these challenges, but they are rather complicated. David Borinsky, chairman of the Maryland Charter School Network, said that there’s nobody in Maryland who is necessarily opposed to charter schools, or actively fighting against establishing new ones, though some advocates may disagree.

All charter schools applications must be approved by school board where they are located. Some school boards and administrators are more open-minded on charter schools such Baltimore, where school CEO Andre Alonso has been enthusiastic. Others have boards that are loath to allow charter schools.

Sometimes, charter schools are seen as competitors to the public schools, said Borinsky and Alison Consoletti, research director of the Center for Education Reform. Interested in holding their monopoly on public education, they said some school boards less open to the idea of charter schools might use that argument to turn applications down.

Diverting money from other schools

A common argument against charter schools is that they divert money from the public school system, since they also get some of the funding sent to school boards from the state and federal government. Borinsky calls this argument a “red herring.”

“Everything you do diverts money from something,” Borinsky said. “The question you should be asking is, ‘Is it a good idea or not?’”

Consoletti said that one obstacle to establishing charter schools is that socioeconomic background impacts the way people see and think about them. Many charter school programs are aimed at turning around failing inner city schools, and are successful. However, there are also many school districts in the suburbs. Suburban districts tend to have more successful public school programs, so the utility of a charter school is not always obvious.

“If the current program is working great for their kids, they don’t really need another school,” she said.

Montgomery County considered difficult

Montgomery County has earned the reputation among charter school advocates as being a difficult place to get a charter school. Of all of the applications the district has received, only one charter has been accepted: the Community Montessori School, scheduled to begin operation in the fall.

Public school spokesman Dana Tofig said Montgomery County’s reputation is undeserved. Five years ago, former superintendent Jerry Weast tried to start a charter school through the KIPP model in the district, but met with problems. Other than that, the district has only received three applications for charter schools.

The board has been open with its reasons for rejecting charters and held a detailed evaluation process. Many of the concerns that Montgomery County has had with applications have to do with issues in the curriculum and questions of the institutions’ financial stability, Tofig said. It has nothing to do with not wanting charter schools.

“Our superintendent is on the record as saying that charter schools have a place in public education, but they are not a panacea,” Tofig said. “We welcome those that face all of the issues all schools have: great teaching and great leaders make a great school.”

In order to help bring more charter schools into the fold, Montgomery County has a detailed website that offers information on what it is looking for in its charter school applicants. There are also technical assistance workshops, where applicants can learn more about the exact process to go through to successfully apply to start a charter school.

Tofig made no excuses for the stringent approval process.

“We have high expectations for all of our schools,” he said “We certainly wouldn’t have any different expectations for a charter school than for a school run by MCPS.”

Students at Afya Public Charter School in Baltimore smile for the camera. Photo courtesy of the Afya Public Charter School website.

Maryland’s charter school law criticized

Many of the problems charter schools face come directly out of the state’s charter school law, which opponents say is very short and unspecific.

Consoletti, whose organization rated Maryland’s charter school law a D, said that the biggest problem is that approving new charter schools is only in the hands of the local board of education. At best, she said, a board of education would not have the time to spend on charter school applications and issues. At worst, the board of education could be philosophically against charter schools.

States that do better on the Center for Education Reform’s scorecard, such as the District of Columbia, have separate authorities that oversee charter schools  Some states have an independent agency that deals with charter schools. Others partner with universities and have them monitor and work with the charter schools. Some states have more than one entity that keeps tabs on charter schools.

Another problem with the charter school law is that the funding language is vague. Charter schools are supposed to get the same per-pupil dollars as public schools. Whether they do is difficult to tell, since funds are disbursed differently. Though it doesn’t matter much, since charter schools have different expenses than their publicly run counterparts. Many charter schools have to find and pay for their space.

This has been a bone of contention in Anne Arundel County, where Chesapeake Science Point Charter School has argued that it hasn’t gotten full-funding from the school system, which disputes the claim.

“The facilities are really a problem,” Borinsky said. “Some are really fortunate and are in school buildings, so they don’t have to do much. Others have to pay 10-15% of their revenues on rent for the building where they are. So is the funding really equivalent?”

Unionized teachers

Maryland also requires that teachers in charter schools be unionized. Consoletti said this can be a problem when a charter school has unconventional hours, or a longer-than-usual school day. The teachers themselves may be excited to teach under those conditions, but the union may enforce provisions like asking for overtime pay. Consoletti said that this issue is murky throughout the state.

Curriculum also is not as independent as it could be, and Borinsky said that the standards that a charter school must meet are not clear. He suggested that the General Assembly pass legislation making the standards more obvious and more easily – and uniformly – followed by all school districts.

Consoletti said that Maryland has a lot of work before it can be where it should with charter schools.

“It’s good to have a law, but there’s a long way to go to have a strong law,” she said. “Maryland’s laws haven’t changed too much in almost 10 years.”






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NEW YORK AND CALIFORNIA HAVE STRONG LABOR UNIONS AND TEACHERS UNIONS ARE NO EXCEPTION.  THE HAVE BEEN BATTLING CHARTER TAKEOVERS FOR A DECADE OR MORE.  BALTIMORE HAS NO UNION STRENGTH AND AS SUCH, THE TEACHERS NEED TO LOOK TO THESE UNIONS FOR HELP AND ADVICE.  WE KNOW THE DISPARITIES FACED BY THE SEGREGATING GOAL OF CHARTERS AND IT IS THE TEACHERS STANDING WITH THE PARENTS THAT WILL FIGHT THIS.  THOSE WHO THINK THEY WILL WIN WITH THESE POLICIES WILL SEE THEMSELVES AND THEIR CHILDREN ON THE WRONG END OF A FUTURE EDUCATION POLICY.......PRIVATIZING PUBLIC EDUCATION.  THERE IS NO WIN-WIN IN HAVING WALL STREET HEADING THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION.

BALTIMORE TEACHERS NEED TO GAIN SUPPORT FROM NEW YORK AND CALIFORNIA IN YOUR FIGHT TO MAINTAIN A DEMOCRATIC, WORKER FRIENDLY, EQUAL-ACCESS EDUCATION SYSTEM.

Charter School Call-in Campaign is Building Momentum Aug. 23, 2012
9:09 am
by Miles Trager
No Comments Filed under: Charter Schools

Thank you to all of those who have reached out on behalf of New York City Charter High School for Architecture, Engineering and Construction Industries teachers. Our call-in campaign is building momentum and we need your continued support as we enter Week 4.

This week we are targeting board member Robert Burton to help demand justice for teachers at this charter school in the Bronx.

Teachers, parents and other community members are participating in this call-in campaign to support the teachers at AECI.

In January 2010, teachers at AECI formed a union to provide a positive and stable learning environment for their students. They have been working for two years without a contract. Meanwhile, AECI’s administration has engaged in a campaign of intimidation against teachers; they have suspended, terminated and otherwise disciplined union activists and supporters.

Call board member Robert Burton at 917-376-4182 and tell him to respect teachers’ rights.

Demand that the board:

• End all retaliation by administration against teachers and staff involved in the organizing and contract campaign.
• Respect educators’ right to strengthen their school community by advocating for the best working conditions for teachers and learning conditions for students.
• Negotiate a contract in good faith.

Go to the UFT’s campaign page for talking points and additional information »

Please report back to us through the campaign page above or our Facebook page and pass the word along to friends and colleagues.

Middle School Charters — Suspending Their Way to the Top Aug. 14, 2012
9:26 am
by Jackie Bennett
3 Comments Filed under: Charter Schools

In June, School Stories published the names of the 10 charter schools with the highest suspension rates. Many of these were middle schools and three had suspension rates at least four times above the city average.



Now, the city test results are out, and two additional facts emerge about these schools.

First, students in these schools weren’t just suspended; they also disappeared. Specifically, as classes moved up from one grade to the next, the number of students in them got smaller and smaller. The average reduction was 15% between 5th and 6th grade alone, which is when the size of cohorts is most likely to shrink.

School Grade Span Change in number of students in cohort % Reduction in cohort Harlem VIll. Acad. Ldrshp 5th (2011) to 6th (2012) 96 to 77 -20% Bed Stuy Collegiate 5th (2011) to 6th (2012) 81 to 69 -15% Kings Collegiate 5th (2011) to 6th (2012) 80 to 71 -11% Classes shrink faster at these charters than as just about any other charters in the city. All three, in fact, rank in the top five citywide (and citywide the median reduction from 5th to 6th grade is 6%).1

The second thing we learn about these high-suspension schools from the latest testing results is that as students disappear the passing rates rise dramatically. The average gain between grades 5 and 6 was 21 percentage points.2

School Grade Span % Reduction in Cohort Increase in Number of Percentage Points (ELA) Change in Percent of Students ELA Harlem VIll. Acad. Ldrshp 5th (2011) to 6th (2012) -20% plus 24 33% to 57% Bed Stuy Collegiate 5th (2011) to 6th (2012) -15% plus 20 35% to 55% Kings Collegiate 5th (2011) to 6th (2012) -11% plus 21 37% to 58% So what’s the relationship between high suspension rates, shrinking cohorts and rising passing percentages?

The most benign way to tell that story is to claim that attrition and suspension have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Under this scenario, less school time for troubled kids is actually a good thing, so good in fact that these suspended kids experience terrific academic growth — much better than they otherwise would have — which accounts for the rising passing rates. True the cohorts are shrinking, but that’s only because other students, not these troubled students, are disappearing to lower grades-levels or other schools.3

Hmmm.

What seems more likely is that some students with behavioral problems, and possibly emotional disabilities, are being pushed out of these schools by repeat suspensions. If that’s the case, then the students who remain are generally those who arrived more ready to learn and then became even more so after seeing what quick work had been made of their more rambunctious peers. We don’t know if that that’s true, but we do know that many charter schools sanction this approach. In a report from the charter community itself, for example, the writers record what some charter operators see as the happy outcome that results from ridding schools of troublesome kids:

“…By this logic, schools should be full of students who share a common culture of learning, provided that the culture is not defined in an exclusive fashion … a student who leaves one school to find a better fit at another should be considered a success story.”

A success?

Was that how we were supposed to be measuring the success of charter schools?

Everyone who works in education understands just how hard it is to create the kinds of school cultures that keep kids focused on their education. And we do not have enough information to know for sure how many struggling students are pushed out of charters by a culture of punishment (though we do have anecdotal evidence). What we do know, however, is that these schools are public schools, and at public schools we take it as our mission to support every student who shows up at the door.

If these charters are suspending students right out of the school, we would not call that a success story.

We’d call it a disgrace.

1Another two middle school charters have similarly high attrition between grades 5 and 6, at 19% and 25%. All five belong to the same two charter networks: Uncommon Schools (the Collegiate schools) and Deborah Kenny’s Harlem Village. In fact, the seven schools with the highest attrition all belong to these networks.

2It should be noted that a fourth charter school, South Bronx Classical, followed the same pattern as these three middles schools — over four times the city average for suspensions, a 39% reduction in size of the cohort, and a 36 point increase in the passing rate. Because this post focuses on middle schools, I have omitted it from the main body of this text.

3While we don’t know for sure that shrinking cohorts indicate that students have left the school altogether, it seems much more likely that they have left than that they have been left back. When students are left back, we expect the class they join to rise in size — or at least to stay the same. But in these schools, the pattern is just the opposite — most cohorts shrink, including the ones that would be receiving students from shrinking cohorts. It seems likely therefore that numbers are shrinking because students left the school.

Keep Up the Fight for AECI Teachers Aug. 9, 2012
9:00 am
by Rob Callaghan
No Comments Filed under: Charter Schools

For those who have already called-in this past two weeks, the educators at AECI thank you. We are certain our message was heard by the board and is having an effect, but we must keep up the pressure.

We want to ask you to once again call another board member to help demand fair treatment for teachers at this charter school in the Bronx.

Read our post from two weeks ago for the background on this campaign.

Call board member Maria M. Ramirez today at 917-807-2273 and tell her to respect teachers’ rights.

Demand that the board:

• End all retaliation by administration against teachers and staff involved in the organizing and contract campaign.
• Respect educators’ right to strengthen their school community by advocating for the best working conditions for teachers and learning conditions for students.
• Negotiate a contract in good faith.

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BELOW YOU'LL SEE A FEW ARTICLES ON CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES AND PUBLIC SCHOOL REFORM.  WHAT WE ARE SEEING ACROSS THE COUNTRY AND IN BALTIMORE IN PARTICULAR IS AN EXTREME CASE OF TIERED SCHOOLING THAT SEES ALL STUDENTS AT A DISADVANTAGE, WHETHER DUE TO SOCIOECONOMIC REASONS OR DISABILITIES BEING CORDONED OFF INTO WHAT MOST PARENTS DESCRIBE AS SUBSTANDARD LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS.  YOU'LL SEE TOP-NOTCHED ENVIRONMENTS IN PRIVATE TUITION-BASED SCHOOLS....THESE EDUCATION CONDITIONS EXISTED IN AMERICA IN THE 1700 - 1800s....

Developer helps school for autistic individuals

David S. Brown Enterprises Ltd., an Owings Mills-based commercial office, retail and residential real estate company, is building a 36,000-square-foot school for Linwood Center, an Ellicott City-based, non-public, special education school and residential program that provides services for individuals living with autism and related developmental disabilities. Preliminary design plans for the new facility came in at about $12 million, far too great for the school’s fund-raising abilities. School officials then got in touch with Howard S. Brown, the company’s chairman. Brown brought in a new team of architects, engineers and other vendors who were able to redesign the project to meet the school’s specifications for approximately half the cost of the original design. Said Bill Moss, Linwood Center’s executive director: “It would not be an under-statement to suggest that the Linwood Center new school project would not be occurring without the vision, talent and generosity provided by Howard Brown and his development team.”

Tuition and Fees Determining if Baltimore Lab School
fits into your family’s financial plans is an important step of the application and enrollment process. We’re here to help. If you have questions about Baltimore Lab School’s tuition and fees, or if you’d like to discuss payment options, please contact Annette Fallon, Director of Admissions at 410-735-0058.

Application
Non-refundable Application Fee: New Applicants: $100 Re-applicants: $50 (Summer school students or previous applications) Tuition 2012-2013 tuition includes academics, athletics, and the integration of services: Lower School - $32,510 Middle School- $35,650 High School- $37,070 Tuition costs listed above include a non-refundable $2,000 enrollment fee. Additional fees are required to receive individual and small group clinical related services. For information, please contact these departments directly.

Charter Schools Fall Short On Students With Disabilities Posted: 06/19/2012 10:14 pm Updated: 06/20/2012 7:46 am

Advocates, lobbyists and celebrities including Bill Cosby are rubbing shoulders in Minneapolis this week to celebrate 20 years of the charter school movement. But a report released late Tuesday confirms a flaw that charter critics have raised over the last two decades: charter schools don't enroll students with disabilities at the same rate as traditional public schools, despite federal laws that require all publicly funded schools to serve disabled students.

The Government Accountability Office report, commissioned by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), found that 11 percent of students enrolled in public schools during the 2009-2010 school year had disabilities, compared with 8 percent of students in charter schools. The report is the first to quantify this gap.

"We have known for several years that students for disabilities were underrepresented in charter schools," Jim Shelton, the U.S. Education Department assistant deputy secretary for innovation and improvement, told The Huffington Post. "The report puts a fine point on issues we were concerned about," said Shelton, the U.S. point person on charter schools. In a letter attached to the GAO report, Shelton wrote that the Education Department is working on new guidance to help charter schools meet federal standards for enrolling special-needs students. Shelton also noted that his agency's Office for Civil Rights is conducting four compliance reviews into charter schools that appear to have underserved students with disabilities.

While 34 percent of traditional public schools had populations with high concentrations of students with disabilities, only 23 percent of charter schools had similar compositions, the report said. To help explain the data, GAO investigators visited 13 charter schools and concluded "some charter schools may be discouraging students with disabilities from enrolling."

Charter schools originated in Minneapolis to increase flexibility in rigid public schools -- and to give students stuck in failing public schools an alternative that isn't determined by where they live. Charter schools receive public funding, but can be privately run by non-profit organizations and for-profit businesses. Unlike traditional public schools, charter schools can choose how to hire, fire, and pay their teachers, escaping union rules and school district regulations. They can also have more specialized curricula, extended hours and a longer school year.

More than 5 percent of America's school children now attend charter schools. All but nine states have laws allowing charter schools.

Charter school critics assert that rather than improving the overall quality of public education, charters create a two-tiered education system with different resources that cater to different populations. They have pointed to cases where charters allegedly discouraged the enrollment of special-needs students, or kicked them out once the school year started. The GAO report suggests that the number of special education students enrolled in charter schools may be lower because parents are drawn to traditional public schools with more resources for such kids. And, in some cases, state laws around charter-school funding might

The report comes as charter advocates edge into their third decade of operation, trying to convince politicians and school districts that the schools are worth the money. Advocates realize that in order to sustain that momentum, they need better results. While some charter schools perform exceptionally well on standardized tests, a steady trickle of research has shown that overall, their students perform neither better nor worse than those in traditional public schools.

Miller told reporters that bipartisan charter school legislation the House of Representatives passed last year may help curb any discrimination.

Read highlights of the report below:Charter School SWD Highlights_ June 2012





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IN BALTIMORE WE HAD A COMPLETE DISMISSAL OF LONG-SERVING TEACHERS AND ADMINISTRATORS BECAUSE THEY WERE 'BAD' TEACHERS AND WE HAD CHARTER SCHOOLS TAKE THE PLACE OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS BECAUSE TO DO BETTER SCHOOLS HAD TO BE FREE OF PUBLIC SCHOOL RESTRICTIONS.  NOW WE ARE SEEING ACROSS THAT NATION THAT MOST CHARTER SCHOOLS DO NO BETTER THAN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS THEY REPLACED.  BECAUSE THIS CHARTER MOVEMENT IS ALL ABOUT PRIVATIZING PUBLIC EDUCATION AND NOT STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT, YOU SEE TIME AND AGAIN THAT FAILING CHARTERS ARE LEFT OPEN OR REPLACED BY OTHER CHARTERS RATHER THAN REVERT BACK TO PUBLIC SCHOOLS.  WE NEED TO SHOUT LOUDLY AND STRONGLY THAT NOTHING BEING DONE IN CHARTERS CAN'T BE DONE IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS.........EXCEPT SOCIAL ENGINEERING WHICH IS THE PURPOSE OF CHARTERS!!!!!!

Bloomberg Praises a Charter-to-Charter Turnaround Chelsia Rose MarciusMayor Michael R. Bloomberg speaks at a benefit for Harlem Prep Charter School.
March 7, 2012, 12:57 p.m.   By Chelsia Rose Marcius  New York Times

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has used public school closings as a cornerstone of his school reform strategy, sometimes replacing them with charter schools.

When the Harlem Day charter school lost its charter last year because of poor academic performance, it was replaced by another charter school, the first charter-to-charter turnaround in the city, and Mr. Bloomberg said it was a model for how to deal with other failing charter schools.

The mayor spoke at a benefit Tuesday night for Democracy Prep, a network of charter schools in Harlem that is taking over the failed school, and has reopened it under the name Harlem Prep Charter School.

Democracy Prep is the first charter-management organization to take on the task of restructuring a failing charter school. At the benefit, Mr. Bloomberg praised its emphasis on academic achievement, which includes keeping a close eye on teacher performance.

“Harlem Prep believes that with great instruction, high standards and hard work, every child, in this case, all 270 scholars, can and will succeed,” Mr. Bloomberg said, noting the number of students currently enrolled in Harlem Prep.

“And that’s a vision that our administration shares for all the kids in the city,” he said. “It’s why we’re so committed to reforming New York’s once-broken school system and the new teacher evaluation system we’ve negotiated with Andrew Cuomo, and hopefully the teachers’ union will not try to stop the accords or by not negotiating the last few little details will really give parents the information they need to make decisions.”

Most of those at the event, held at the Rouge Tomate on the Upper East Side, were teachers, administrators and board members at either Harlem Prep or one of the other Democracy Prep schools.

“I think we’ve been absolutely lucky to live in a city where the people who are politicians are supportive of charter schools, because I think they’re not just supporting charter schools, I think they’re supporting education for kids,” said Linda Easton, senior director for human resources and facilities at Democracy Prep.

Before working for Democracy Prep, Ms. Easton served in a nonpaid advisory capacity on the board of Harlem Day. She left the board several years ago, before it was closed, and then went to work at Democracy Prep.

“The culture was not right; we had people whose heart was in the right place,” she said of the experience at Harlem Day. “And it was just ironic that I was here. But I was very grateful that I was here because I felt like we failed and now I can help to be part of a turnaround.”

Katie Duffy, interim executive director at Harlem Prep and chief of staff at Democracy Prep, also has a history at Harlem Day.

She started at the now-defunct school in 2003 as director of student affairs, the beginning of her career in charter schools. Ms. Duffy left in 2007 for Democracy Prep.

“To come back and do what I wasn’t able to do then, I don’t think many people get the chance to do a do-over,” she said.

Seth Andrew, the founder and superintendent of Democracy Prep, said that since State University of New York trustees approved a model to restructure charter schools last year, other charter schools from across the country had called him to inquire about his model for restructuring Harlem Day.

He said he would like the Education Department to do the same.

“As the authorizer, the D.O.E. needs to create a restructured renewal process so that low-performing charter schools as well as low-performing district schools can be turned around instead of just closed,” he said. “If the only option for a charter is renewal or closure, that’s a bad dichotomy.”

HERE IS AN EXCELLENT COMMENT FROM A TEACHER:

Is Mayor Bloomberg saying that if a child doesn`t attend a charter school they don`t get an education? Mayor Bloomberg, please come to my class where I teach students who in 6,7 and 8 grade are learning the Latin alphabet along with learning how to speak, read and write in English. Not to mention that some have serious learning disabilities, besides the fact that they are ELLs.According to the regulations supported by your administration next year they will all be taking the state tests : ELA and Math You are giving students 2 years of grace period and let them sink. You brought this system to the brink of chaos, just to come up with a `different version` that will save us all. Just by reinventing the wheel every other year, success won`t be achieved. Today you are blaming the public school, the teachers and the UFT, tomorrow it will be another name but the same people working. Teachers in charter schools don`t come from Mars, they don`t have a different training, they went, like the rest of us, to colleges to get a degree in education. So, what the major difference is between the public and the charter is the PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT because you give them a free hand to pick and choose their students. Please let me handpick my students and only teach the kids whose parents care about them. But, then what will happen to the kids who need us the most? The kids whose parents are on different continents? hospitalized or in refugee camps? Kids whose parents can`t afford a hot meal or a jacket? Or the time to sit down and ask their own kids how their day was? It is time for you to face the reality . ________________________________________________
ALL ACROSS THE COUNTRY WE ARE SEEING THE SIGNS OF A BREAKDOWN IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM BY A VARIETY OF PRIVATE FOR-PROFIT MODELS ALL CLAIMING GREAT RESULTS....NONE OF THE DATA AVAILABLE.  TIME AND AGAIN STATES ALLOW THESE PRIVATE CHARTERS TO SETUP UNDER THE GUISE OF SAVING MONEY.  OFTEN IT IS SOLD TO UNDERSERVED SCHOOLS AND COMMUNITIES THAT ARE NOT GETTING STATE SUPPORT WITH THE INTENT TO EXPAND OVERALL.

 N.C. School Districts Fight Online Charter School by Dave DeWitt

June 25, 2012

One of the fastest growing segments of the charter school movement is online charter schools. For-profit company, K-12 Inc., runs online charters in more than two dozens states and wants to expand to North Carolina. But it's run into fierce opposition from public school districts there

MY RESPONSE TO NPR'S STORY:

Race To The Top was about privatizing public education and this is one of many examples of the push by Republicans and Third Way Democrats like Obama to do just that.  Opening the Department of Education up to all kinds of 'innovation' in education when we have a successful model in our schools in the 1950s - 1970s shows it is just a push to privatize yet another public institution.  Teach for America and union-busting will be necessary for market efficiency and low-wage teaching options!

March 28, 2012

  by Eyder Peralta

Anyone who watched Nursery University — a documentary about the trials and tribulations of getting your toddler in the "right" pre-school — won't be surprised by this story.

Still, it's worth noting. The Wall Street Journal's Smart Money reports today that more parents are borrowing to pay for their kids' K-12 education. The whole piece is an interesting read, so we encourage you to click over. But here's how the Journal came to this conclusion:

"Though data is scarce, private school experts and the small number of lenders who provide loans for kindergarten through 12th grade say pre-college loans are becoming more popular. Your Tuition Solution, one of the largest lenders in this space, says demand for the upcoming year is already up: This month, the total dollar amount of loans families requested rose 10% compared to a year ago; at that pace, the company expects its total funding to rise to $20 million for 2012-13. Separately, First Marblehead, which exited the market in 2008, reentered last year as demand for loans began to rise.

"Much of this demand is coming from high-income families. Roughly 20% of families that applied for aid to pay for their children's kindergarten through 12th grade private school education had incomes of $150,000 or more, according to 2010-11 data, the latest from the National Association of Independent Schools. That's up from just 6% in 2002-03. Those who don't get approved for free aid, like grants, increasingly turn to loans, experts say."

The Journal spoke to some parents who said they do this because they believe a better grade school education will put their kids on a path to a better college.


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California and New York are the leaders in charter school creation.  This review of its system ten years ago, when the system was fledgling like Maryland's now shows the problems and solutions identified.  Maryland's charters are not transparent so in many cases the public does not know what is happening or if the reports they receive are accurate.  Maryland has a systemic problem with accountability and one does not have to stretch to be concerned as to how that relates to its charter schools.  If you listen to teachers and parents today........there is not much to like about many charter schools.  Below we see an update on charter concerns:

Three California charter school reform bills would change how schools are run July 8, 2011 |
 By Adolfo Guzman-Lopez

Three charter school bills making their way through the state legislature would significantly change the way charter schools are run.

The promise of charter school advocates has been to create better-managed, publicly funded campuses that outperform traditional public schools.

A large portion of the state’s 823 charters have fallen short.

State Sen. Joe Simitian says he and Assemblywoman Julia Brownley want poor performing charters to close their doors.

"We’re also concerned about the fact that charter schools, frankly, while they have the flexibility of fewer rules and less need to abide by various state regulations, sometimes operate with less transparency," Simitian says. "And I think what we’re hoping for here is that the same conflict of interest rules and the same open government rules that apply to other local schools, local school districts, would apply to charter schools."

Another bill would ensure charters don’t enroll only high performers at the expense of students struggling to learn English and kids with learning disabilities



REPORT 2002-104 SUMMARY - NOVEMBER 2002 California's Charter Schools: Oversight at All Levels Could Be Stronger to Ensure Charter Schools' Accountability HIGHLIGHTS Oversight of charter schools at all levels could be stronger to ensure schools' accountability. Specifically:

• The four chartering entities we reviewed do not ensure that their charter schools operate in a manner consistent with their charters.
  
  
• These chartering entities' fiscal monitoring of their charter schools is also weak.
  
  
• Some charter schools assess their educational programs against their charters' measurable student outcomes, but others do not.
  
  
• The Department of Education (department) could, but does not target its resources toward identifying and addressing charter schools' potential academic and fiscal deficiencies.
  
  
• Finally, although two new statutes attempt to add accountability, without the chartering entities and department increasing their commitment to monitoring, these new laws may not be as effective as they could be.

RESULTS IN BRIEF The California Legislature passed the Charter Schools Act of 1992 (Act) to provide opportunities for teachers, parents, students, and community members to establish and operate schools independently of the existing school district structure, including many of the laws that school districts are subject to. The Legislature intended charter schools to increase innovation and learning opportunities while being accountable for achieving measurable student outcomes. Before a charter school can open, a chartering entity must approve a petition from those seeking to establish the school. Under the Act, three types of entities-a school district, a county board of education, and the State Board of Education (state board)-have the authority to approve petitions for charter schools. As of March 2002, there were 360 charter schools serving approximately 131,000 students throughout California. More than 70 percent of the agencies chartering those schools have only 1 charter school. Chartering entities play a role in overseeing the schools they charter to determine if the schools operate in a manner consistent with their charters and follow all applicable laws. These responsibilities are not explicitly stated; rather, they are implied through the Act and its amendments, which authorize the chartering entities to approve charters, inspect or observe a school at any time, collect fees for oversight costs, and revoke charters under certain conditions. As such, we expected to find that the chartering entities had established policies and procedures for assessing the academic achievements of students in their charter schools, in accordance with the measurable student outcomes required in each charter. We had similar expectations for the chartering entities' assessment of their charter schools' financial operations. Without academic and fiscal monitoring, the charter schools are not held accountable for achieving their measurable student outcomes or for prudent use of the taxpayer funds they receive. Despite our expectations for academic monitoring, the four entities we reviewed-Fresno Unified School District, Los Angeles Unified School District, Oakland Unified School District, and San Diego City Unified School District-do not monitor to determine if their charter schools are achieving their student outcomes. Although each charter agreement contains standards for gauging the academic performance of the school, chartering entities typically do not have guidelines in place to effectively monitor their charter schools, nor do the chartering entities adequately monitor their charter schools against the agreed-upon student outcomes. Without periodically monitoring their schools for compliance with the charter terms, the chartering entities cannot ensure that their schools are making progress in improving student learning in accordance with their charters, nor are they in a position to identify necessary corrective action or revocation. Because the chartering entities were not effectively monitoring their charter schools for compliance with the measurable academic outcomes listed in their charters, we visited a sample of schools. Although some schools assess their educational programs against their charter's measurable student outcomes, others do not. By not assessing student performance against the charter terms, the schools are not demonstrating their accountability for meeting their agreed-upon academic goals. Further, although charter schools are exempt from much of the Education Code that governs public schools, they are still subject to at least three legal requirements as conditions for receiving state funds, including hiring teachers who hold a Commission on Teacher Credentialing permit, offering a minimum number of instructional minutes, and certifying that their students have participated in state testing programs. However, we found that chartering entities are not always ensuring compliance with these legal requirements at each of their charter schools. Like the chartering entities' academic monitoring, their fiscal monitoring also had weaknesses. Some schools rely on their chartering entity for operational support. Other schools manage their own operations; these schools we consider to be fiscally independent. Because the chartering entities do not control the financial activities of their fiscally independent charter schools, the risk that these schools will develop financial problems is greater. Thus, we targeted the chartering entities' oversight of fiscally independent charter schools. We found that the chartering entities lacked necessary policies and procedures for effective fiscal monitoring and have not adequately monitored their charter schools. Although all four entities outlined the types of financial data they wanted their charter schools to submit and how often this data should be submitted, and all asserted that they have data review procedures to identify and resolve problems, none could provide evidence of these procedures. Further, even though all four chartering entities recently adopted new policies and procedures for charter schools, only two address fiscal monitoring and appear to provide for improved monitoring of their charter schools' fiscal health. Without adequate monitoring, schools that develop fiscal problems and other reported deficiencies might fail to meet the terms of their charter or deteriorate financially to the point of having to close, disrupting their students' education. Moreover, some charter schools are fiscally unhealthy. Based on fiscal year 2001-02 financial data, 6 of the 11 charter schools showed year-to-date expenditures in excess of revenues, and 4 of the 6 schools did not have prior year-end fund balances sufficient to cover their deficits. If these schools' problems go uncorrected, the schools may have to close and displace their students. In addition, the schools' closures may result in a loss of taxpayer money. The chartering entities are authorized to charge up to 1 percent of a charter school's revenues for the actual costs of providing supervisorial oversight, or up to 3 percent if they provide the charter school with substantially rent-free facilities. For fiscal years 1999-2000 and 2000-01-the latest years for which data was available during our review-the four chartering entities charged their charter schools more than $2 million in oversight fees. Nevertheless, none of the four chartering entities could document that the fees they charged corresponded to their actual costs, in accordance with statute, because the entities failed to track their actual oversight costs. Rather, the entities automatically charged a percentage of charter schools' revenues, assuming that their oversight costs exceeded the revenues they charged. As a result, the entities may be charging their charter schools more than permitted by law. Moreover, these chartering entities participated in the State's mandated-costs reimbursement process, which reimburses organizations for the costs of implementing state legislation. The chartering entities claimed more than $1.2 million in costs related to charter schools for the two fiscal years. However, because the chartering entities did not track the actual costs associated with overseeing their charter schools, they risk double-charging the State. Finally, although the statute is clear that the entities' oversight fee is capped at a certain percentage, the statute is unclear regarding which types of revenues are subject to the oversight fee. Consequently, the chartering entities are interpreting the law differently and may be applying their oversight fee to too much or too little of their charter schools' revenue. The Department of Education (department) plays a role in holding charter schools accountable for their fiscal and academic practices. The department has the authority to recommend that the state board take action, including, but not limited to, charter revocation. Although the chartering entity is the primary monitor of a charter school's financial and academic health, the department has the authority to make reasonable inquiries and requests for information. It currently uses this authority to contact chartering entities if it has received complaints about charter schools. If the department reviewed the information that it receives related to charter schools and raised questions with the chartering entities regarding fiscal or academic practices when appropriate, the department could target its resources toward identifying and addressing charter schools' potential academic and fiscal deficiencies. In this way, the department would provide a safety net for certain types of risks related to charter schools. The concept of the State as a safety net is consistent with the California Constitution, which the courts have construed to place on the State the ultimate responsibility to maintain the public school system and to ensure that students are provided equal educational opportunities. Although we found that the accountability system at the chartering entity level is weak, our work does not demonstrate the need for the department to play a greatly expanded and possibly duplicative role in overseeing charter schools, or any function beyond that of a safety net. Moreover, when we asked the department to provide any data it had to demonstrate pervasive academic concerns or fiscal malfeasance that may support the need to expand its oversight role beyond that of a safety net, it did not provide any. To apportion funds to charter schools, the department relies primarily on the certifying signatures of school districts and county offices of education-both of which lack the necessary procedures to ensure that charter schools comply with apportionment requirements. As a result, the department cannot be sure that charter schools have met the apportionment conditions the Legislature has established and that they receive only the public funds to which they are legally entitled. In addition, there appears to be a policy gap regarding a chartering entity's authority following a charter revocation-an authority that statutes do not clearly address, as Fresno Unified School District's recent revocation of Gateway Charter Academy's charter demonstrates. Finally, although two recently enacted laws, Senate Bill 1709 and Assembly Bill 1994 (Chapters 209 and 1058, Statutes of 2002), attempt to add accountability to the existing charter schools environment, without an increased monitoring commitment on the part of chartering entities and the department, these new laws may not be as effective as they could be. RECOMMENDATIONS The Legislature should consider amending the statute to make the chartering entities' oversight role and responsibilities explicit so that the chartering entities hold their charter schools accountable through oversight. To ensure that charter schools are held accountable for the taxpayer funds they receive and demonstrate accountability for the measurable outcomes set forth in their charters, the chartering entities should consider developing and implementing policies and procedures for academic and fiscal monitoring. To ensure that chartering entities can justify the oversight fee they charge their charter schools and to minimize the risk of double-charging the State for the costs of charter school oversight, they should:

• Establish a process to analyze their actual costs of charter school oversight.
  
  
• Compare the actual costs of oversight to the fees charged and, if necessary, return any excess fees charged.
  
  
• Use the mandated-costs reimbursement process as appropriate to recover their unreimbursed costs of overseeing charter schools.

The Legislature should consider clarifying the law to define the types of charter school revenue that are subject to the chartering entities' oversight fees. To fulfill its role as a safety net, the department should review available financial and academic information and identify charter schools that are struggling, then raise questions with the schools' chartering entities as a way of ensuring that the schools' problems do not go uncorrected. So that it does not improperly fund charter schools, the department should work with the appropriate organizations to ensure that charter schools' reported ADA is verified through an independent audit or other appropriate means and that charter schools have met other statutory conditions of apportionment. The Legislature may wish to consider establishing a method for disposing of a charter school's assets and liabilities and requiring the department to adopt regulations regarding this process, in this way, ensuring that a charter school's assets and liabilities are disposed of properly when it closes or has its charter revoked. AGENCY COMMENTS The four chartering entities: Fresno, Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Diego, strongly disagreed with our conclusions related to chartering entity oversight and stated that we misinterpreted the law and held them to a standard of charter schools oversight that the Act does not contain. They object to being evaluated based on sound oversight criteria unless that criteria is explicitly in statute. Each chartering entity noted repeatedly that the legislation regarding charter school oversight is unclear and several stated that chartering entities have little or no grounds to deny a charter or enforce a charter. The department also disagreed with our audit as it relates to its oversight role. The department stated that it had strong concerns about our interpretation of the Act and our interpretation that the department has the authority and responsibility to monitor the fiscal and academic performance of charter schools. The department also stated that our recommendations do not account for its limited staffing resources. Although not rendering a legal opinion on the issue of oversight, our view that the Act places some monitoring responsibilities on chartering entities is informed by our reading of the statutes as well as the constitutional obligations of the State regarding the public school system. We believe that the statutes, although not explicit, do envision a monitoring role for chartering entities and that a monitoring process is absolutely essential to identifying key issues, providing charter schools the opportunity to take corrective action, and determining whether a chartering entity should exercise its authority to revoke a charter. Finally, we carefully analyzed each of the chartering entity's responses and we stand by our interpretation of the law and our audit conclusions.


California State Auditor, Bureau of State Audits
555 Capitol Mall, Suite 300, Sacramento, CA 95814
(916) 445-0255

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