Governor Brown has until October 11 to sign or veto legislation that would ban for-profit charter schools in California. it is outrageous to squander taxpayer dollars on profits for investors and outrageous executive salaries. This bill should be a slam dunk for Governor Brown, a man with a keen sense of justice. Now I hope the legislature tightens oversight of nonprofit charter schools and reviews their executive salaries to be sure that they really are nonprofit. And while they are at it, they should ban charter schools in affluent communities, which violate the spirit if the charter movement, which wassupposedto help the neediest kids, not to enable rich parents to create a publicly-funded private school for their children.
Here is the legislation awaiting Governor Brown’s signature:
“For-profit charter schools: Charter schools run by for-profit corporations would not be allowed in California under the terms of AB 787, authored by Assemblyman Roger Hernández, D-West Covina, which passed the Legislature. Six for-profit charter schools operate in the state, and California Virtual Academies, managed by the for-profit K12 Inc., is the largest. The bill’s author noted that K12 paid its top six executives a total of nearly $11 million in 2011-12, while the average California Virtual Academies teacher’s salary was $36,150, about half of the average teacher pay in the state. The author raised the question of whether a for-profit corporation would try to limit services to students to increase profits.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
Wake up California!
Since we are on California issues…today in the LA Times, there are many pro public ed and pro teacher letters to the editor, and similar recent articles. Recent columns by Steve Lopez and Sandy Banks actually laud teachers.
Could this be due to the takeover of the major LA print media by their Chicago Trib owners? Could it be that getting rid of Austin Beutner, Eli Broad’s partner in charter school takeover of LAUSD, has improved the reporting honesty of the LA Times? Some of the comments here yesterday mentioned the good reporting by Howard Blume, particularly lately, since the Trib is running the show.
Hope the Trib never folds to demands of Eli Broad, nor sells this paper to him.
Don’t give the Trib any credit for anything good happening at the LA Times. If you can read the Trib without throwing up or the top of your head shooting straight up in the air, you are a better person than I am.
Agree completely Dienne…but compared to the Broad/Beutner partnership on ed and charters, widely explicated by the LA Times, it is an improvement…so far. Shows you how terrible Beutner did as the overbearing fixated CEO/Publisher. These two billionaires are completely driven egomaniacs.
Yes
And while they are at it, they should ban charter schools in affluent communities, which violate the spirit if the charter movement, which wassupposedto help the neediest kids, not to enable rich parents to create a publicly-funded private school for their children.
I guess it doesn’t matter to you that they produce better students for less public funding than public schools? Simple fact…
TBrown757,
Neither for-profit charters, nor their biggest profit makers–the online virtual schools–produce better students. They have high attrition, low scores, low graduation rates. They produce big profits.
Yes, that is simple. But, of course, that would ignore lots of other factors which allow for “better students” (i.e., better test scores). I’d get into the long litany but it would be repetitive to informed readers on education policy.
Better scores are the result of: high attrition, no backfill, “counseling out”, teaching constantly and specifically to the state tests, narrowing the curriculum, turning away ELLs and special ed students at high rates, and a host of other factors.
So, no, it doesn’t matter to me. When a charter takes EVERY kid in a community and does whatever it takes to keep them in their school regardless of their self-discipline or natural academic ability, then I’ll buy the narrative.
Look deeper tbrown. You’ll be disappointed.
It’s very revealing of the so-called reform mindset when you say that charters “produce better students” than the public schools, as if children are objects to be “produced,” and are passive recipients of education, rather than active agents of their own learning.
It illustrates one of the major, unseemly premises underpinning so-called reform, that children are raw material to be engineered, mass produced (according to certain Standards) and monetized or sold.
Aside from the fact that you are wrong even within your narrow terms – the overwhelming majority of charters schools, in fact, do not produce “better students,” even according to the debased standard of test scores – you reveal the fact that none of it has anything to do with children, except insofar as they can meet the consumption and production needs of the Overclass funders of reform.
Well said.
Exactly, Michael. Thanks for this response.
tbbrown: Research your “simple” facts. You’ll be very surprised at what you find.
Please share your “facts.”
I’ll write him right away. K12 stole an entire semester from one of my at-risk students. They enrolled him. When he didn’t do his classes, they did not report his lack of attendance as is required by state law.
K12 teachers can have 300+ students per semester. Theoretically, mentors assigned to each student are supposed to be closely monitoring student progress, which of course is a function of attendance, but at K12 mentors are paid just as badly as teachers, so there’s always a push to make the teachers responsible for following up with students, which of course they can’t do as they’ve 300+ students to teach, numerous live sessions each week (to which students don’t usually come), and then there are the mandatory eight hours a week teachers spend posing as tech support and manning help lines and issuing trouble tickets, while under strict instructions NEVER to reveal that they are not, in fact, actual tech support.
You have to be careful, though. There’s a couple of entities that are potentially involved. Can it be a “nonprofit” charter that is 90% (or better) managed by a for-profit? It’s really easy to wrap a for-profit in a non-profit shell to *technically* comply with state law. You have to look at each layer, and there can be potentially three layers.
I think most people in the public would say it’s a for-profit if 90% of operations and decisions are thru a for-profit (and that’s where the risk of profiteering comes in, because they would skimp on services) but the “charter” entity could be a “non profit”.
I think you’d also have to look at property transactions. Is there profiteering going on there, regarding facilities and financing?
A good example of this would be Imagine Schools, which are creeping into California….three schools now but attempting to continue adding more. VERY for profit Real Estate company that has its own non-profit corporation to run its schools…..Among the lowest performing in the country, at least one state shut all their schools down in the past few years. I am not sure this legislation goes far enough….
Oh, I hope so! I am one person who simply does not understand how for-profit charter schools were allowed to happen in the first place. If citizens want charter schools, they should have them but they should be under the management of educators and strictly overseen by the state, in regard to the money. Taxpayers have a right to know that their school tax money is not be siphoned into private pockets!
Governor Brown seems to have a good moral sense so I’m predicting that he will put an end to this shameful hustle.
Please take a look at the position of the California Charter School Association on present bills, including opposition to AB 787 and also their opposition to AB 709. On one hand, CCSA claims it’s in favor of more transparency and oversight, but when push comes to shove, they oppose any attempt to change the laws.
http://www.ccsa.org/advocacy/statewide/current-legislation.html
Educator…this is what I got by clicking on the link to CCSA….what can this be about?
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http://www.ccsa.org/advocacy/statewide/current-legislation.html
This is a known dangerous website. It is recommended that you do NOT visit this site. The detailed report explains the security risks on this site.
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I hope jerry figures out something to do. It is important for whatever it deals with, or fails to deal with in California, but even more importantly…..it should be consequential enough to lead the democrat party nationwide away from avoiding the issues of education. Powerful people are having success in re segregating public education based on levels of wealth. Jerry Brown, who won 57% of the vote in an election year in which democrats were getting clobbered might be a leader who can make public education the important issue it should be to all democrats.
Governor Brown for president!
Yes! He shouldn’t let his age get in the way because he is still sharp as many (most?) seniors are.
Vote for Jerry! five years older—-but twenty five years less senile!
This is a very good and necessary thing, but does it also prohibit incestuous, interlocking relationships between “non-profit” charter schools that contract management out to for-profit EMOs at outrageous rates, or similar relationships between the charters and the real estate companies they pay exorbitant rents to?
Doubtful, and I think we need to remind everyone that 501c3 is merely a tax status. Most CMO/EMO setups are just as lucrative as their so-called for-profit counterparts, they’ve just added a “non-profit” governance shell to deflect criticisms of profiteering. When we look at all the side businesses that Refugio “Ref” Rodriguez opened under his own name and then “hired” to provide services to his 501c3 non-profit PUC charter empire, the distinction between for-profit and non-profit corporate charter schools is shown to be one of semantics. Self dealing is seemingly the norm in the charter school sector, and since 501c3s are subject to negligible government oversight and regulation, they might be a better vehicle for the privatization charlatans to steal money from children and communities. http://rdsathene.blogspot.com/2015/09/california-secretary-of-state-upgrades.html
Agree with you Robert…and it is worrisome that Jerry Brown still has Refugio Rodriguez appointed to the prestigious State Ed committee despite the two audits, one internal by LAUSD and the other by the State, of PUD and showing its various legal lapses. Brown should certainly remedy this ill-advised appointment.
Has Rodriguez paid his much overdue charter school bills yet? Has he disengaged from his sweetheart deals re food services by his Board member to his schools?
He is already wreaking havoc, joined at the hip with his cheer leader, Monica Garcia, on the LAUSD BoE, where they both are leading Eli Broad’s charge for charterizing 50% more of the districts public schools.
HA HA- not a chance! He never really delivers, like the rest of the Democrats.
“There is another alternative – one that California got very close to implementing in 2011, before Jerry Brown vetoed the bill. AB750, a bill for a feasibility study for a state-owned bank, passed both houses of the state legislature but the governor refused to sign it. He said the study could be done by the Assembly and Senate Banking Committees in-house; but 2-1/2 years later, no further action has been taken on it.”
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/23547-robbing-main-street-to-prop-up-wall-street-why-jerry-browns-rainy-day-fund-is-a-bad-idea-for-california
The Los Altos school district has been battling for years with the Bullis Charter school people who “suggest” a $5,000 yearly donation for families who send their kids there.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/06/1117114/-How-to-Destroy-a-Top-Notch-School-District-Open-a-Charter-School
Brown is a huge Charter Supporter so we will see how he comes out on this. He vetoed a bill that passed the Assembly that would have, in essence, eliminated the monetary incentive to convert public high schools to charters.
The big charter supporter was Arnold Schwarzenegger. He appointed charter owners and advocates to a majority of the state board.
Jerry Brown opened two charter schools when he was mayor of Oakland. One was a military academy, the other arts focused. A couple of years ago, I spent two hours with Gov Brown and came away with the understanding that he knows that charters are ok but cannot replace real public schools. That’s why he fought so hard for Prop 30, to raise taxes for the state’s underfunded schools.
Governor Brown vetoed the bill. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billStatusClient.xhtml?bill_id=201520160AB787
Profit has no place in eduction or health care. Both education and health care should be provided for all citizens. I certainly hope Governor Brown signs the legislation banning for profit charter school operators from California.
Is there a petition online asking Gov Brown to support the ban on for-profit charter schools in California?