Long ago, in the late 1980s, charter advocates said they could get better results at less cost. They said, give us autonomy and hold us accountable. Part of the apeal of the charter idea was the cost savings that would certainly occur by eliminating bureaucracy.
Now, however, charters say they need the same funding as public schools. There apparently are no cost savings.
The Arizona Supreme Court turned down a request by charter schools for equal funding.
“The Arizona Supreme Court has dismissed a request to review a lower court’s previous opinion that the state’s education funding formula is constitutional despite the fact that charter schools do not get the same amount of funding as traditional school districts…
“The court of appeals ruling in Novemeber stated that the fact that charter schools provide students with free, adequate education is enough to satisfy the law regardless of whether their funding is equal to traditional public school districts.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Aside from the charter issue, I hear in the quote of the court about FAPE, echoes of school systems telling parents that they only have to provide a “floor” when parents change IEPs. A bare minimum is “good enough” . Makes me wonder is there is a funding adequacy issue for all schools in that state.
LikeLike
That should be “challenge ” iep’s.
LikeLike
Of course the charters want to maintain the highest possible funding. They need that extra money to pay their exorbitant salaries and award their friends and family lucrative no-bid contracts.
LikeLike
Really good simple explanation of the charter funding mess in Ohio:
“There has been a claim floating in the ether that states something like this: Charter school funding in Ohio has a neutral impact on funding for non-charter students. Marianne Lombardo — an analyst for Democrats for Education Reform — has made this case pretty emphatically.
I don’t wish this to be so, but the data don’t lie. If kids in local schools have $5,000 in state money (as an example) before charters get paid, and $4,850 in state money after charters get paid. How, exactly, does that not adversely impact children who aren’t in charters?”
I’m baffled why the national ed reform lobbyists in Ohio can’t figure this out. If the state funds a public school student at 4k and the student leaves for a charter and takes 5k, that’s a state funding loss for the public school student.
It’s also back door local funding of charter schools, which voters have never approved statewide and lawmakers have never allocated because the district has to make up the difference, which then operates as a local funding subsidy for each charter student.
It’s the same kind of odd, narrow blindness to the systemic affects of charter schools within a system of schools we see over and over again in ed reform. They just ignore second and third level consequences. They never think past the charter schools. It’s as if the public schools in the system don’t exist.
http://www.10thperiod.com/
LikeLike
Yay!! Some good news in AZ!! It’s about time.
LikeLike
Charter schools are a ridiculous idea. The experiment has failed. Still finding then altogether. If parents want private schools, let then send their kids to private schools without any public funding.
Charter schools are an attempt to re-segregate education, teach Christianity over science and provide a sheltered environment for parents who can’t handle the reality of the world. It is past time to put them out of our misery and rebuild the great public school system we once had. Enough “reform.” The Confederate Tea Party can go to hell.
LikeLike
You said it. They are a sham and a scam. So are vouchers.
LikeLike
The first paragraph of this posting:
“Long ago, in the late 1980s, charter advocates said they could get better results at less cost. They said, give us autonomy and hold us accountable. Part of the ap[p]eal of the charter idea was the cost savings that would certainly occur by eliminating bureaucracy.” [brackets mine]
Promises. Promises. Promises.
And that wasn’t so long ago! Remember the above when hearing rheephormsters touting the pleasures of CCSS and the accuracy and reliability of standardized testing and all the wonders of charters and vouchers and online blended (l)earning[s].
And best, or worst, of all: fiscal transparency, accountability and responsibility.
I’m still reeling from the vacuousness of rheephorm rheetoric…
Really!
“I reject that mind-set.” [Michelle Rhee]
And she means that in the most Johnsonally sort of ways…
Rheeally!
😎
LikeLike
Unfortunately, I suspect the charters simply will take this issue to the hyper-conservative legislature to change the funding formula.
Done deal!
LikeLike
I am a serious conservative, yet for 20 years I’ve asked these questions. If charter schools yield a better educated student why not just legislate (at the state level) that every public school be treated as are charters and eliminate the charters? If charters don’t produce a better educated student, as appears to be the case, eliminate the charters? In either case the whole charter school concept, from a “better educated student” perspective, appears to be preposterous. We panicked and one of the things we threw against the wall in hopes it would stick was charter schools. Now, just like the majority of the “reform” ideas, we are finding the wall to be slicker than we supposed.
LikeLike
Slicker than Slick Willie or Uncle Teflon Raygun????
LikeLike
Court ruling gives me a snickering regarding the state’s gravitation toward anti-teacher, nativistic, xenophobic, privatization pull.
LikeLike
I am fairly certain that very few people know what charter schools are in terms of management, accountability, sources of funding and willingness to obey laws and rules of the public school districts in which they have an impact.
That is largely true of the media responsible for reporting the information.
LikeLike
In AZ, charter schools tell the state where to stick it when they ask for an accounting of the public monies they’ve gotten. And no one in the legislature does anything about it. In AZ, charter schools open and close all the time, one day open, 3 days later chained shut. Staff doesn’t get paid, kids/parents don’t have access to records. In AZ, several of the bigger charter school chains buy textbooks from their buddies, or offshoots of their own charter school business, and direct parents to purchase their supplies from the same. No one the legislature does anything about it.
In AZ, charter fraud and profiteering is common, and all the legislature does push for more charters even as they hold their hands out for kickbacks.
Doesn’t matter what the “rules” are. The bulk of AZ charter schools don’t follow them, and no one will enforce them anyway.
LikeLike
There will eventually be better reporting on it. It took a decade in Ohio for the “facts on the ground” to trump the marketing campaigns. Then it took 5 years after that to reach saturation with the public.
There’s a kind of critical mass reached and then it becomes impossible to ignore but that doesn’t come from top down, it arrives bottom up.
The state legislature will literally be the last people to hear about it.
I think charters have a fundamental governance problem. It’s designed poorly, probably because it was designed by people who are ideologically opposed to government. “Good government” wasn’t the objective, less government was- that’s why there’s no transparency, no checks and balances, all these ethical conflicts, etc. The governance system sucks.
LikeLike
Judge Dietz also denied additional funding to charter schools in the Texas litigation for adequate and equitable funding, We await the Texas Supreme Court ruling. Rumor is that they are going to remand, both as a strategy to overturn the district court ruling since Judge Dietz has retired and to stall legislative action for another two or more years. Texas kids have been waiting since 2006 for funded public schools, and “kids can’t wait” forever. They are kids for a very short time.
LikeLike