Back in the early 1990s, when the charter school idea first began to spread, there was a simple way of explaining the concept. The charter schools would be accountable for results. If they didn’t get the results, they would close. Period. The deal was called “accountability in exchange for results.” Advocates said it was impossible to close a public school that didn’t get results, but it would be easy to close a charter school.
This is not the way things are working out.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel recently announced the closing of 54 public schools in Chicago. Mayor Bloomberg has closed well over 100 public schools. Parents, students, and teachers have objected loudly, but they are routinely ignored.
As Karen Francisco reports in the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, it is not easy to close charter schools. One authorizer realizes they are failing to deliver results and withdraws sponsorship, and the charter schools goes shopping and finds another sponsor. These, she says, are “zombie schools.” They are failing but they will not die. They refuse accountability, but some other sponsor picks them up.
It turns out to be easy to close public schools; the mayors don’t care what poor black and Hispanic parents say. But it is hard to close charter schools because they have powerful political friends and campaign contributors.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I talked with 2 parents yesterday who have children with autism and attended 2 charter schools. After cases of bullying and lack of support from the administration and teachers, the parents removed their children from the schools.
LikeLike
Here in Michigan, the state has little to no authority to close a charter school. When the highly conservative Detroit News had the audacity to publish an article revealing that many charters were functioning poorly, a state board of education member stated that the authorizer had the ability to close a school. The state had no real mechanism for doing that.
Since most charters in Michigan are for-profit, the only reason to close is financial losses. Performance is not a meaningful metric in the decision.
LikeLike
The authorizers get a three percent administrative fee. Do you see a conflict of interest? It takes a lot to get one shut down. The school can have incredible staff turnover which is anindication of poor CEO. Management and low test scores yet the school remains open and the cash flows upward. There are rumors that more will be shut down since the cap was lifted. Well see
LikeLike
Michigan has become an education shyster’s dream.
LikeLike
Two takeaways from Research for Action’s Issue Brief on Charter Authorization: http://bit.ly/XwAvCC
1) Charter authorizers can range from State Education Agencies and Institutions of Higher Education to Local Education Agencies, which is the most prevalent type.
2) Across authorizers, closure rates are low, ranging from two to nine percent.
Not-For-Profits have both the highest approval (46%) and closure (9%) rates,
and have been found to have less rigorous approval processes.
The brief is a good read as it provides information on types of providers, gives examples from different states, and finished with a best practices guide.
LikeLike
The other claim, Diane, was that they could be more innovative as well as responsive to parental and professional and student ideas since there would be no bureaucracy between each mucking up the works.
HAH
LikeLike
debmeier: holding the edubullies to their own standards and claims is so, you know, twentieth century!
🙂
Well, I’m guess I’m just a hopelessly outdated stick-in-the-mud kind of person who believes that integrity and walking your own talk is ALWAYS in fashion, whether before or after the Common Era.
Someone else once said something like “No one stands so tall as when they stoop down to pick up a child.” To riff off that well-turned phrase: Thank you for doing so much to pick us all up.
Keep standin’ tall.
🙂
LikeLike
Charter schools started in 1992 in California. Some of the first were Vaughn Street and Fenton in the Pacoima San Fernando area where my shops were for over 25 years. Yvonne Chan of Vaughn Street is know as the mayven of charter schools and was even a California State Board of Education. For fun I went up and looked at her school over time, API scores. What a failure over more than 20 years. If you read the latest, Sept. 2013, DOE OIG report on the total lack of accountability of charter schools in Florida, Arizona and California you will see this in detail. What a bad joke on us. Why not just “Really” hold our public schools accountable.
LikeLike
“Zombie Schools” How appropriate
LikeLike