Recently, I wrote a post about Steve Zimmer, a member of the board of the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Zimmer proposed that the board develop a policy to hold charters accountable.
He was picketed and jeered by charter advocates, who rejected any demands for oversight. The charter lobby is supporting someone to run against Zimmer in the March elections.
Zimmer acted responsibly. Los Angeles now has more students in charters than any other district (over 100,000), and California now has more charters than any other state.
Even the national and state charter associations claim they want more accountability and more weeding out of bad charters. But actions speak louder than words.
A reader sent this background to the current debates in California:
“The following report tells it all. The vast majority of charters, between 65-70%, close due to financial or mismanagement reasons.
Click to access StateOfCharterSchools_CER_Dec2011-Web-1.pdf
Recently, Jed Wallace from the California Charter School Association, wrote about charter school accountability in the publication “Ed Source”.
Below are two sections from the report.
“The second state in the nation to allow charter schools, California has long been at the forefront of education reform. We must also lead the way in accountability, which is why the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) is proud to support the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) “One Million Lives” campaign, which kicked off in November. NACSA’s goal is to give one million children access to high-quality schools by encouraging effective charter authorizing, growing the number of high-quality charters across the country and closing those charters that are failing.
“NACSA has called for:
“All states to establish clear charter school performance expectations and close those schools that do not meet the standards.
Implement new laws to hold charter authorizers accountable for the schools they approve. Those that keep failing schools open will lose the ability to authorize schools.
Urge each state to create a statewide authorizer that will implement professional practices based on high standards and promote quality growth.”
“In order to meet the CCSA Minimum Criteria for Renewal, charter schools four years and older must meet at least one of the following criteria:
“Academic Performance Index (API) score of at least 700 in the most recent year, or
Three-year cumulative API growth of at least 50 points, or
Ranked “within” or “above” for at least two out of the last three years on CCSA’s Similar Students Measure.”
“There seems to be a lack of concern in this report about the financial and mismanagement issues. School districts apparently have no interest in appropriate oversight and/ or don’t have the resources to do it properly. Wallace did not address how to make these kinds of changes.
“Louis Freedberg, of Ed Source wrote the following articles to address these issues:
“As far as we know, the report promised by Mr. Zeiger on the millions in lost funds to failed charters either was never done or was not made public. No surprise here!!!!!
“Steve Zimmer did the right thing, but the charter lobby is incredibly powerful. It’s fine for Wallace to ask for tighter controls on charters, but again, he doesn’t address how this could and should happen. Zimmer tried. We know that Los Angeles has the most charters of any district in the U.S. It stands to reason that LAUSD should lead the way to tighten these controls.
“A recent example of massive failure by LAUSD to provide appropriate oversight is demonstrated in this audit done on three Magnolia(Gulen) Charter Schools. Sadly, the Board of Education has taken NO steps to revisit the renewal of these charters.
Click to access 12486MAGNOLIASCIENCEACAD.PDF
“Another controversial charter simply refused to participate in an audit as stated below:
Click to access 12492ACADEMIA%20SEMILLAS%20CHARTER%20SCHOOL.PDF
“The bottom line here is that hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars are being lost yearly. Public schools must make up the difference. It’s no wonder that CA has incredibly high class sizes and student to counselor ratios. We need more school board members like Zimmer to speak out and demand changes in the approval and oversight of charters.”
I hope these stories reach a national audience. The hypocrisy is almost unbelievable. Public schools are vilified and accused of not wanting accountability. Charter schools are the magic pill answer, yet they don’t participate in any measure of accountability. I scratch my head in astonishment. How is this even possible?
Then I remember that it is the media that can hype or not hype a story. Maybe change needs to come through a change in news presentation.
Accountability, sure. But the references to API and/or API growth still puts all purpose of schooling on the tests. So, we’re like dogs chasing our tails. We eschew the testing, then we demand it, all in the name of so-called accountability.
There are two accountability issues at play: fiduciary and educational. It is hard to fathom why ANYONE would be opposed to holding charters accountable for public funds… unless the folks who make decisions about the need of fiscal oversight are benefitting from misappropriations…. nah, that couldn’t be the case could it?
There’s a more nuanced way to approach this by saying while we oppose high-stakes standardized tests; the charter industry’s self-proclaimed raison d’être is their claim of superior test scores, that being the case, they don’t deliver on the only thing they claim superiority in. The old live by the sword idiom.
On another note, charters are excellent at making charter executives wealthy and funneling money into the pockets of their associated vendors and service providers. If the measure of the so-called “choice” movement is the number of hucksters its been a windfall for, then it indeed has been a smashing success.
If charter schools truly aren’t doing better than public schools why shouldn’t taxpayers simply pay less for the same?
Teacher unions have been promising improvements for 50 years if they just got a little more money, or a smaller classroom or better benefits, or just a couple more holidays .
Today marks the 50th Anniversary of George Wallace’s Inaugural Address
On this anniversary I’d like to paraphrase this historic and divisive speech.
Desegregation today.
Desegregation tomorrow.
Desegregation forever.
As Governor Wallace was on the wrong side of history 50 years ago today, so too will our current corporate driven education reform movement.
Public Education today.
Public Education tomorrow.
Public Education forever.
Thanks Diane for creating this forum. Thanks to all the teachers, administrators, parents and students who still believe in and support Public Education.
Board member Zimmer is jeered for wanting oversight? Meanwhile, Board president Monica Garcia is a guest speaker with Parent Trigger king Ben Austin at the January 25th National School Choice Week Whistle Stop Indoor Rally and Reception in Los Angeles. And Crenshaw High school families are fighting to save their school from reconstitution? Outrageous. This should be illegal.
Charter Schools in California tend to cream out poor performing students with learning disabilities. As a rule, Charter schools are unprepared or trained for special needs students. In fact, they will collect money to educate special needs children and put the funds in their regular payroll.
There is no oversight with Charter Schools, a good example is this audit of the Magnolia Science Academies that had blatantly not documented teacher or student health care, or kept a reserve fund.
Charter Schools such as Magnolia have no oversight on advertising or false claims of “award winning” Just because a school says they win awards look a little deeper, as those awards might be sponsored by the NGOs that feed into and from the schools as the Gulen Movement does. In California the schools were originally started by the Dialogue Foundation, (this is the name on the original application in San Diego) it has since been changed to Pacifica Institute, Willow Educaton, Magnolia Education Foundation and now the new Gulen operated schools in California are being opened as Pacific Technology Schools. Some of their contests are: Turkish Olympiad, Science Olympiad, CONSEF, Math Matters, Math Counts, I-Sweep and more.
Having no oversight on government funds gives special foreign interest groups like the Gulen Movement a license to steal.
I have had some of their ex students in my class room, and they are trained parrots who mimic sentences or formulas but in theory have no comprehensive idea what they are talking about. Mimic teachers who don’t have a good command of the English language is plain unacceptable. Learning to dance and speak Turkish are hardly anything worth mentioning on a college admission test.
http://www.magnoliascienceacademy.blogspot.com
I have a child in Magnolia Charter which is a Gulen school. They don’t follow the rules and know that they can get away with it. As a parent, I feel bad for putting my child in that environment. This cannot go on. It makes no sense. It’s like they don’t respect Americans and want our children to bend to theirs but they refuse to acknowledge that our children are different.