This is the seventh in a series of exchanges about the new federal law, the Every Student Succeeds Act. I asked the questions, and David P. Cleary, chief of staff to Senator Lamar Alexander, answered them.
Does the law impose any requirements on charter schools regarding funding, selection of students, financial transparency, or accountability?
Short Answer:
Sen. Alexander has been a long-time advocate of charter schools. In his last act as Secretary of Education in 1993, he wrote a letter to all of the nation’s superintendents encouraging them to look at the idea of creating charter schools like those started in Minnesota.
The Every Student Succeeds Act makes several updates to the federal public charter school program to modernize the program and ensure public charter schools are held to the same standards as other public schools. The charter school program provides federal grants to support the creation of new charter schools, and the new law is updated to also allow such grants to support the replication and expansion of high-quality charter schools. The bill also includes important changes to eliminate barriers to enrollment for some students, increase charter school financial transparency, and include charter schools in the state accountability system in the same way that traditional schools are included.
Long Answer:
Funding: The law continues support for the competitive grant program for grants to states and other state entities for the purposes of opening new, or replicating or expanding high-quality charter schools, and to provide technical assistance to improve the quality of authorized public chartering agencies (including developing capacity for and conducting fiscal oversight and auditing of charter schools). The new law also continues support for the facilities grants programs to enhance the availability of loans or bond financing for charter schools since so many charter schools are denied access to the capital budget of state or local school construction and financing. We also focus efforts at the federal level to make competitive grants to replicate and expand high-quality charter schools to try to build on their success.
Funding in the latest appropriations bill for all of these activities was $333 million.
Selection of students: The new law requires grantees to “work with charter schools on recruitment and enrollment practices to promote inclusion of all students, including by eliminating any barriers to enrollment for educationally disadvantaged students.” This language is found in section 4303(f)(1)(A)(viii)(I) of the new education law. Section 4303(f)(2)(C) requires the state’s public chartering agencies to adequately monitor charter schools in recruiting, enrolling, retaining, and meeting the needs of all students.
Financial transparency: The law made several changes to improve financial transparency of charter schools, both to ensure that public funds are being spent well, and to learn more about the disparities in funding for public charter schools compared to other public schools.
State grantees are encouraged to adopt strong authorizer practices, including increased financial transparency for charter schools. The law includes changes to increase financial transparency, oversight, and monitoring, including through financial audits. State grantees also need to focus on promoting quality charter authorizing, including through more efforts to audit charter finances and hold charter schools accountable for academic, financial, and operational efforts.
Accountability: In the new law, charter schools are treated the same as traditional public schools in the state’s accountability system. All public schools in the state are included in the accountability system that the state develops. The law explicitly requires that the law’s accountability provisions are overseen for charter schools in accordance with state charter school law.
Oh you need fluff fluff fluff to make a fluffer law there, lots of Congress fluff and special interest butter.
SomDAM Poet,
AMEN.
The website, Truthout posted an article yesterday, “Obama Admin Enables Takeover of US Schools”.
The “DemocracyAwakening.org” rally planned for April, in DC, should make its way to the front steps of the Dept. of Education, and call out the privatizers, who hold court there.
The last line negated all of the rhetoric that preceded it. The charter school lobby writes the state laws. The charter industry does not need to be subsidized. Charter schools are not really public schools. Charter school funds are flowing to religious education. That should be illegal, but Ohio actively courage it. Ohio has a corrupt charter school system. Neither the states nor the federal government should be funding charter schools, or charter colleges of education. The funding of magnet schools makes far more sense.
Every Student succeeds act? When in the history of education has that NOT been the goal. True, in segregated schools etc, not so but that was not the teachers fault, just the political scene at the time.
How different is that scene from what is happening now?
“The law explicitly requires that the law’s accountability provisions are overseen for charter schools in accordance with state charter school law.”
And who has invested big big bucks in lobbying for charter laws? The charter industry and it is corrupt to the core in Ohio with John Kasich a big part of the problem.
John, Thanks for the reference.
With all due respect to Senator Alexander and his chief of staff, the ESEA falls far, far short of the claim that under “the new law, charter schools are treated the same as traditional public schools in the state’s accountability system.”
Again federal law passes the buck to states and to charter authorizers that are in many instances unaccountable to the public or to public records laws for how our federal tax dollars are really being spent.
And, as part of the bipartisan compromise in the new law to contend with the manifest failures of the No Child Left Behind scheme, the federal government continues to siphon more money away from traditional public schools to fuel the charter school industry, which is already well propped up by billionaires.
As the Inspector General and others have noted, in several states charters could not account for assets they acquired with our tax dollars, and yet now the federal government is directing even more funds toward their facilities, which have not reverted back to the public in many instances upon the failure of numerous charters and indeed auditors in a number of instances could find no actual accounting for core expenditures.
I believe it is time for real accountability in how each and every charter spends its funds
like truly public schools–and that is not the case under the provisions in the new act.
Moreover, ordinary public school districts have to go to the citizens in many instances to build or improve new facilities but charters–despite the numerous failures and fraud prosecution–get to bypass local democracy and local control and access a special fund of Americans’ federal tax dollars, without any real public review.
Beyond all that, the Department of Education has delegated review of charter school grants to unelected, unappointed, secret, and unaccountable volunteers from the charter school industry to work with its OII charter advocates to approve millions in spending–as with the reckless decision to give Ohio the biggest award in the past charter school expansion grant cycle despite the state’s effort to hide bad charter testing results and the numerous documented problems in Ohio’s charter schools: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2015/09/12944/federal-millions-wild-west-charters
So, rather than pat themselves on the backs for a job well done, policymakers really ought to be apologizing to the American people for the numerous failures and frauds that their lax regulation of the charter school industry has spawned.
Here is one of our reports on the dismal lack of accountability in the charter school industry: http://www.prwatch.org/files/new_charter_school_black_hole_report_oct_21_2015.pdf
More context:
the 2015 grant cycle for state ed agency charter school program grants awarded approx. $120 million. in 2016 under the appropriations and assumed ratio from ESSA applied this year of 80% that means $266 million in charter school stimulus. and each year after more than $260 million unless something dramatic happens to unplug this program.
Look to the regs below for insight into this program as it actually allocated the funds in 2011 and 2015, not the marketing of that staffer because ESSA leaves lots of leeway to Dept of Ed:
2011 SEA Grant NOTICE INVITING APPLICATIONS
(see http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-01-25/html/2011-1518.htm)
Competitive Preference Priority 1–Periodic Review and Evaluation (up to 10 points)
Competitive Preference Priority 2–Number of High-Quality Charter Schools (up to 8 points)
Competitive Preference Priority 3–One Authorized Public Chartering Agency Other than a Local Educational Agency (LEA), or an Appeals Process (5 points)
Competitive Preference Priority 4–High Degree of Autonomy (up to 5 points).
Competitive Preference Priority 5–Improving Achievement and High School Graduation Rates (up to 12 points)
Competitive Preference Priority 6–Promoting Diversity (up to 5 points).
Competitive Preference Priority 7– Improving Productivity (up to 5 points). Projects that are designed to significantly increase efficiency in the use of time, staff, money, or other resources while improving student learning or other educational outcomes (i.e., outcome per unit of resource).
Invitational Priority: Under this competition we are particularly interested in applications that address the following priority. For FY2011 and any subsequent year in which we make awards based on the list of unfunded applicants from this competition, this priority is an invitational priority. Under 34 CFR 75.105(c)(1), we do not give an application that meets this invitational priority a competitive or absolute preference over other applications. This priority is: Support for Turnaround Schools. The Secretary is particularly interested in projects that are designed to turn around persistently low-performing schools by providing support for one or both of the following types of activities: (1) the creation of a charter school in coordination with an LEA in the vicinity of one or more public schools closed as a consequence of the LEA implementing a restructuring plan under section 1116(b)(8) of the ESEA; or (2) the creation of a new charter school under the restart model of intervention as described in the Final Requirements for School
Improvement Grants as Amended in January 2010
2015 Grant NOTICE INVITING APPLICATIONS
(See: http://www2.ed.gov/programs/charter/applicant.html)
In 2015, the Department plans to use up to $116,000,000 for this competition, and estimates making 12 awards (the Department is not bound by any estimates).
Applications are due by July 16, 2015, at 4:30:00 p.m. (Washington DC time), and must be submitted through Grants.gov. Applicants must register at Grants.gov prior to submitting an application. The registration process can take up to several weeks if all steps are not completed accurately or in a timely manner.
Absolute Priority 1 – Periodic Review and Evaluation
Absolute Priority 2 – Charter School Oversight
a)Each charter school in state:
1)operates under legally binding charter or performance between itself and the school’s authorized public chartering agency;
2) conducts annual timely and independent audits of the school’s financial statements that are filed with the school’s authorized public chartering agency;
3) demonstrates improved student academic achievement, and
b) That all authorized public chartering agencies in the State use increases in student academic achievement for all groups of students described in Section 1111(b)(C)(v) of the ESEA of 1965 as amended ESEA 20 USC 6311(b)(2)(C)(v) as one of the most important factors when determining whether to renew or revoke a school’s charter
[DEFINITION: “Adequate yearly process shall be defined by the state – includes separate measurable annual objectives for continuous and substantial improvement for each of the following:
(I) The achievement of all public elementary school and secondary school students. (II) The achievement of— (aa) economically disadvantaged students; (bb) students from major racial and ethnic groups; (cc) students with disabilities; and (dd) students with limited English proficiency; except that disaggregation of data under subclause (II) shall not be required in a case in which the number of students in a category is insufficient to yield statistically reliable information or the results would reveal personally identifiable information about an individual student;
Competitive Preference Priorities (Optional) 1 – High quality authorizing and monitoring processes (up to 15 points)
Competitive Preference Priority 2 – One authorized public chartering agency other than a local education agency or an appeals process (0 – 5 points)
Selection criteria A – State-level strategy
Selection criteria B – Policy context for charter schools (5 points)
Selection criteria C – Past performance (10 points)
Selection criteria D – Quality of Plan to support educationally disadvantaged students (15 points)
Selection criteria E – Vision for Growth and Accountability (10 points)
Selection criteria F – Dissemination of information and best practices (10 points)
Selection criteria G – Oversight of authorized public chartering agencies (15 points)
Selection criteria H – Management plan and theory of action (10 points)
Selection criteria I – Project design (10 points) “The secretary considers the quality of the design of the SEA’s charter school subgrant program including the extent to which the project design furthers the SEA’s overall strategy for increasing the number of high quality charter schools in the State and improving student academic achievement.