The following item appeared this morning in Politico.com’s education edition:
– “I guess it’s ironic or something that the only public school that will be open in Seattle tomorrow is a charter school,” tweeted [http://bit.ly/1VMDdnj ] education researcher Robin Lake, a nod to the Washington state Supreme Court ruling late last week that the state’s charter school law is unconstitutional.
What is even more ironic is that Robin Lake (of the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington), which advocates for charters and “portfolio districts” and is Gates-funded) continues to refer to charter schools as “public schools” even after the Washington State Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that charter schools were not eligible for public funding because they are not “common schools” (public schools), as defined in the state constitution, not answerable to an elected board but to a private board.
Apparently the Center on Reinventing Public Education does not accept the ruling of the state’s highest court as meaningful or definitive. What part of the ruling do they not understand?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Center On Reinventing Public Education (CORPE)
‘Nuff Said …
Why are Seattle schools closed today?
Oh, duh, strike, right? Nevermind me.
To Robin, Gates is king of the land.
To Ohio’s Congress and Department of Education, ECOT is the kingdom.
Charter schools are not Public Schools. They do not accept all students and students with,problems are “counseled out” they are told the school is not a “good fit” for that particular student. Public Schools do not do this and they can not. My daughter worked at a charter school and they did that. It happened to ESL students and children with behavior problems. I say again charter are not Public Schools.
I agree. They also are not run by democratically elected boards, don’t have to provide certified teachers, don’t have to follow the same rules as public schools, and they are not subject to transparency or auditing of accounts.
Some are subject to audits. The 7 Magnolia Schools in LA (Gulen charters), and the 16 PUD charters in LA (Ref Rodriguez charters), were only held accountable for money they owed LAUSD and did not pay, through internal and public audits.
Maybe it should be called
Center On Regurgitating Pernicious Semantic Evasions (CORPSE)
“I guess it’s ironic or something that the only public school that will be open in Seattle tomorrow is
a charternot a public school,” said Robbin Hood, of “The Center on Re-inventingPublic EducationReality” at University of WashingtonThere. Fixed.
Outstanding.
your legalese is laughable — in a good way
“What part of the ruling do they not understand?”
They understand the ruling. The just don’t like it, so they spin, spin, spin.
They keep throwing this stuff on the wall ’cause they think some of it will stick… & in some cases it has!
Clearly Robin Lake’s zero days as a public school educator and administrator put her in a unique position to reinvent public education.
Charter laws differ from state to state. The Walton Rural Charter School, for example, is run by the local school board.
Unions are striking all over Washington and for a variety of reasons…but according to the news reports it always boils down to salaries (that is suppose to be for the betterment of children)—which paints the teachers in an ugly light. The press choose not to elaborate on the HST, CC or the large class sizes especially in the larger cities. There has been no COLAs for many years and teachers want to slowly get caught up over several years. The state budget this year improved the situation a lot, but not enough, according to the state Supreme Court. Ironically, the entire legislature, governor and all judges just got an immediate sizable raise which hardly seems fair. Some teachers unions are going into mediation. You often cannot reduce class sizes because of the lack of space for more rooms (out buildings might remove entire playgrounds). Some unions are simply asking for more paras in those large classrooms and a reduction in collateral duties and the districts are resisting.
1200 students in several new charter schools (now declared as non public) will remain in session and will be financed privately. Bill Gates largely financed the election…he wanted it…now he can pay for them!
I am not a teacher and I am not especially fond of public sector unions but count me on your side.
Issues revolve around testing, teacher evaluations, capping counselor case loads, supporting special education, allowing children to have recess and host of other issues.
The district seeks to standardized schools and wanted to close alternative learning programs.
Seattle Public School administrative salaries range $150-$200K and they want a raise, which will cost taxpayers $1M.
There should be an Ohio Supreme Court decision coming shortly that will determine whether charter schools in my state can continue to claim they are private entities as far as ownership of assets and transparency, but public schools as far as funding.
The charter school management company argued they were private. Since I didn’t hear a word of complaint from the ed reform “movement” I have to conclude they are private.
This has been litigated over and over. The only outage I’ve seen has been in this one case. Why is that? Why wasn’t the Gates foundation hiring lawyers to argue Ohio charter schools are public when the case was about who owns the assets they purchased with public funds and whether they have to do ordinary financial reporting?
I didn’t hear a word about that public-private dispute. Why not? Where were the ed reform “movement” when the Chicago charter chain were arguing before the NLRB that they were private contractors so as to avoid allowing their employees to join a union?
I can’t help but notice this issue only comes up when it gets in the way of charter expansion. When it’s about protecting the public investment or allowing employees collective bargaining rights the “movement” is no where to be found.
So, do they want to keep books private because their philosophy is to pay a ton at the top and not to teachers? And they support their own philosophy but don’t want to have to defend it? I don’t get what they need to hide.
If the Ohio Supreme Court comes back and says charter schools are private contractors so therefore they own the assets they purchased with public funds and they don’t have to reveal anything to the public, I plan on accepting that decision. I’d be crazy not to. That’s what charter schools insisted on. It’s the result they wanted. They’ve been litigating for 5 years to be adjudicated private contractors.
But we’ll still have this ridiculous fiction that they are “public schools” in my state because “publicly funded” apparently means “public” now, but only in this one area of government contracting. All other government contractors are private. Just not charter schools, because we say so.
I have a lot of sympathy for the charter school parents in Washington, but then I had a lot of sympathy for the public school parents in Chicago when their schools were shuttered and I have a lot of sympathy for the public school parents in Youngstown who had their schools taken away via the secret decision of an unelected, self-appointed “cabinet”, so I’m consistent.
The Charter Commission allowed charter schools to open and charter operators chose to open schools. They knew full well that I 1240 was in the court system.
There was no mandate, from the Charter Commission, to inform parents that I 1240 was in the courts.
In the event that I 1240 was deemed unconstitutional, the Charter Commission was urged to make contingency plans and they failed to do so.
At this point, there is no solid legal path forward and private funders will give funding to existing charter schools.
Washington Charter Association campaign is in full swing…highlighting striking teachers and children in charter schools.
Well, I find it ironic that Robin Lake is so dumb.
I find it typical.
Hopefully the reformers are really pushing choice and charters and vouchers and norm referenced testing because they truly believe money should only be spent on the most advantaged, beginning in kinder.
Otherwise, they are all dumb. These are ways of getting around the Supremes declaring education a right (read entitlement) rather than a privilege.
Given the knots real public schools have to tie themselves into regarding all discipline and grading issues I could give them more credit if they would just say that is what they think.
Since the Chicago public schools are not run by an elected board, does that mean they are not public schools?
Are the public schools in the nation’s largest city run by an elected board?
There is a long history of court decisions that restrict civil and human rights. The Washington State Supreme Court fits into that tradition.
I would venture to guess it depends on what how its state constitution reads. This matter was ripe for Washington based on its state constitution, no? Charters are quasi private is what I would say; they definitely aren’t public if the only thing that makes them public is taking taxpayers’ money.
There are many quasi private features to schools. I paid many fees to my public schools. In New York, the admission policies at the qualified admission high schools are determined by the state legislature. not any local school board (of course there is no school board at all in the largest school district in the country). Admission to Thomas Jefferson High School in Fairfax County Virginia is handled be an “independent” organization. Are these public schools?
Weird how the ed reform movement mobilizes to protect charter schools but sits on their hands when 32 states cut public school funding and the Philadelphia public schools almost didn’t open last year.
Where was the huge “movement” mobilization there? Where were the movement paid-lawyers filing emergency stays?
No calls for a special session of the legislature when public school kids get hammered on funding by ed reform governors like Kasich, Walker and Corbett in OH, WI and PA. There’s a Pennsylvania public school district that can’t pay their teachers. That seems urgent to me. Silence from the “movement”. Is that because the “charter sector” there is doing just fine or are public school parents just not as high a priority in “choice” schemes?
But if they are under mayoral control, it is the same thing for all intents and purposes. There is some accountability by elected officials. Charter schools are private schools funded by taxpayers, which should be flat-out illegal. There is no reason for them to exist except as yet another wealth transfer scheme from the many to the few.
Susan,
What about the charter schools that are controlled by the local elected school boards? Would you allow those schools?
There are also some very old charter schools. The Pennsylvania School for the Deaf (founded 1820) comes to mind.
Do you think these schools are illegal, or do you need to make some thoughtful distinctions between schools?
Mayoral control isn’t even remotely an acceptable substitute for a democratically elected school board. In New York City it has been a train wreck, with a “reformer” and then a “progressive” holding the office.
Joe, look, you can generally be more reasonable than most charter advocates. By the standards I expect from you, this is a little melodramatic.
In my state, Michigan, charters are generally public because that’s the source of their funding. They don’t function like public schools in any other way. They don’t take all students. They are run by private management organizations (which are mostly for-profit and do much to keep financial matters opaque). They provide sweetheart real-estate deals to themselves (which public schools can’t do. The don’t have elected boards and therefore have little if any responsibility to the public. I could add a few more but I’m officially bored pointing out the differences.
I guess they don’t charge tuition like a private school. But in every other way, they function like a public entity and do everything in their power, in many instances, to restrict public view and input from their operations. They’ve even enjoyed legal victories that provide them the rights of private organizations when it’s to their advantage.
C’mon, Joe. These reasons and others are why I resent any comparison between charters and traditional public schools. The two entities are playing by different rules (many of which are advantageous to charters) and I would dare to say they are barely playing the same game. Can’t we just call it what it is?
Excuse me, in the middle I meant to type “But in every other way they function like a private entity…” in my second from last paragraph.
To flip Joe’s argument around: these large public school districts -should- have elected school boards, and these large public school districts are bordering on unconstitutional. It’s not that the Washington State Supreme Court made a bad decision; it’s that they made the right decision, and everyone should take note of the implications.
well said.
They are run by an elected board in the second largest city, Los Angeles. And the reformer mayors Bloomberg and Emanuel killed off elections. They want total control. So c’mon Joe…stop with this sarcasm.
“It is well established that unions provide benefits to workers — that they raise wages for their members (and even for nonmembers). They can help reduce inequality.
A new study suggests that unions may also help children move up the economic ladder.
Researchers at Harvard, Wellesley and the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, released a paper Wednesday showing that children born to low-income families typically ascend to higher incomes in metropolitan areas where union membership is higher.”
Tough study for the ed reform movement. Maybe it turns out children do better when their parents have some economic security, dignity and a voice at work.
That’d be a shocker. Children do better when their families do better. Someone alert Tom Friedman and then maybe Arne Duncan will read it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/10/upshot/how-an-areas-union-membership-can-predict-childrens-advancement.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
That study just proves to the reformers that they have to do more to squash the 99%. I ask myself all the time, how much money do they need? How many things do they need? We’re going to reach a point when the haves will have it all, and the have nots will have nothing. That doesn’t bode well if they discontinue social services, have us all living in squalor in the streets, without even a dime to purchase Walmart’s cheep goods. What then? How will we feed and shelter ourselves? Let us all die while they live in their ivory towers petting their possessions? I really don’t get their point of view or reasoning. I guess I’m just not a greedy thieving so and so.
…cheap….but cheep works too.
Well, they better get busy putting some new anti-labor laws in:
“The data may surprise you: more than fifty percent of nonunion workers say that, if an election were held in their workplace tomorrow, they would vote for union representation. ”
They’re getting restless! 🙂
http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/fixgov/posts/2015/09/07-labor-day-williamson
Arne Duncan’s office has many preferences in funding charter schools with our taxes. Grants in the amount of $100 million are available to States for the Charter School Program (one of several federal channels of money). Under the umbrella of honoring “federalism” states that get money to redistribute to charter authorizers compete for those funds. Here are just a few of the announced criteria that Arne and staff are using to evaluate proposals from states. Keep in mind that USDE has failed two or more audits of this grant program–inadequate record keeping 101. A short list of criteria for selection of grantees. The language seems to make Arne the exclusive “decider.”
(b) Policy Context for Charter Schools. The Secretary considers the policy context for charter schools under the proposed project. In determining the policy context for charter schools under the proposed project, the Secretary considers one or more of the following factors: ( note the flexibility in how many factors he may want to consider)
(1) The degree of flexibility afforded to charter schools under the State’s charter school law, including:
(i) The extent to which charter schools in the State are exempt from State or local rules that inhibit the flexible operation and management of public schools; and
(ii) The extent to which charter schools in the State have a high degree of autonomy, including autonomy over the charter school’s budget, expenditures, staffing, procurement, and curriculum; ( in effect, this could also exempt the state from any oversight of these matters: but wait,there is more ).
g) Oversight of Authorized PUBLIC Chartering Agencies. The Secretary considers the quality of the SEA’s plan–including any use of grant administrative or other funds–to monitor, evaluate, assist, and hold accountable authorized PUBLIC chartering agencies. In determining the quality of the SEA’s plan to provide oversight to authorized PUBLIC chartering agencies, the Secretary considers how well the SEA’s plan will ensure that authorized PBLIC chartering agencies are—
(1) Seeking and approving charter school petitions from developers that have the capacity to create charter schools that can become high-quality charter schools;
(2) Approving charter school petitions with design elements that incorporate evidence-based school models and practices, including, but not limited to, school models and practices that focus on racial and ethnic diversity in student bodies and diversity in student bodies with respect to educationally disadvantaged students, consistent with applicable law;
(3) Establishing measurable academic and operational performance expectations for all charter schools (including alternative charter schools, virtual charter schools, and charter schools that include pre-kindergarten, if such schools exist in the State) that are consistent with the definition of high-quality charter school in this notice;
(4) Monitoring their charter schools on at least an annual basis, including conducting an in-depth review of each charter school at least once every five years, to ensure that charter schools are meeting the terms of their charters or performance contracts and complying with applicable State and Federal laws;
(5) Using increases in student academic achievement as one of the most important factors in renewal decisions; basing renewal decisions on a comprehensive set of criteria, which are set forth in the charter or performance contract; and revoking, not renewing, or encouraging the voluntary termination of charters held by academically poor-performing charter schools;
(6) Providing, on an annual basis, PUBLIC reports on the performance of their portfolios of charter schools, including the performance of each individual charter school with respect to meeting the terms of, and expectations set forth in, the school’s charter or performance contract;
(7) Supporting charter school autonomy while holding charter schools accountable for results and meeting the terms of their charters or performance contracts; and
(8) Ensuring the continued accountability of charter schools during any transition to new State assessments or accountability systems, including those based on college- and career-ready standards.
I think that this is a sham process that privileges autonomy over accountability and attempts to disguise that by tossing around the term PUBLIC for appearances and make it possible to subsidize schools. Once “the Secretary” approves a grant, the money is out the door and states with their laws take charge. The perk for the state agency is 5% of the grant to do all of the “accountability” promised to the feds when that agency accepted the check.
You can find more and a federal definition of a “high quality charter school” at Final Selection Criteria for State Charter School Grants 2015, Find the definitions quickly by using that key word to search the document.
https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2015/06/15/2015-14391/final-priorities-requirements-definitions-and-selection-criteria-charter-schools-program-grants-to
I don’t know what the big mystery is here.
Charter school are always public when they want our tax dollars and they are always private when they want to be insulated from disclosing how our tax dollars get spent.
Is that so wrong?
simply put
“Charter Matters”
The charters are like matter
Both particles and waves
They’re “public” to get fatter
And “private” loot in caves
(“pirate” works too)
Diane,
It only gets worse. It is worth noting that the Washington Supreme Court struck down charter schools.
Now, we have “private” donors stepping-up to FULLY fund “public” charter schools.
http://www.kplu.org/post/wash-charter-schools-advocate-if-state-funding-stops-donors-will-step
Which way is it- public or private? Charter schools are public or private…depending upon their need.
Meanwhile, the State’s Office of Public Instruction is calling for a special session to create a legislative pathway for charter schools.
This battle isn’t over
Charters are NOT Public Schools. So now they are calling a sow’s ear as a purse.
Egads … what spin! Sarah, you are right: The battle isn’t over, and this is TERRIBLE. I will say it again: Charter Schools ARE NOT Public Schools. Anyone who believes that that Charter Schools are Public Schools is a FOOL and/or making $$$$$ at the expense (in all ways) of tax payers, our young, their parents/guardians, and the general public.