Please sit down before you read this column by Carol Burris about charter schools in California. Burris went to California to visit charter schools and meet with education officials. She has done careful research and concluded that charters in California are a massive rip-off of taxpayers. Burris, who recently retired as a high school principal in New York, is executive director of the Network for Public Education.
Her story begins like this:
You can find a charter in a mall right near a Burger King, where students as young as 12 meet their “teacher on demand.” Or, you can make a cyber visit to the “blended learning” Epic Charter School, whose students are required to meet a teacher (at a convenient, to be determined location) only once every 20 days. There is an added bonus upon joining Epic: Students receive $1,500 for a personal “learning fund,” along with a laptop computer. The enrollment site advertised that students could boost that fund by referring others to the charter chain.
A superintendent can expand his tiny rural district of 300 students to 4,000 by running “independent study” charters in storefronts in cities miles away, netting millions in revenue for his district, while draining the sometimes unsuspecting host district of students and funds. If he is clever, he might arrange a “bounty” for each one opened, while having a side business selling services to the charters. Charters can even provide lucrative investment opportunities for tennis stars and their friends. And then there is the opportunity to “cash in” on international students at a jaw dropping $31,300 per student.
Please read this in its entirety. Charters in California are a national disgrace. They cheat students and taxpayers. Why does the legislature and Governor Jerry Brown permit this sleaze?
We know that Governor Brown opened two charters when he was mayor of Oakland, so perhaps he is partial to charters. We know that the California Charter School Association is the most powerful lobby in Sacramento.
But why would the leaders of the state cheapen and destroy their state’s public schools by allowing this charade to siphon off public dollars?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
We’ve been trying to tell the world. Thank you Carol Burris.
http://www.teach4equity.org/
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Yes, Carol, thanks for sitting with local parents and educators in California, and listening carefully to the plethora of tales of fraud and deception, and. coupled with your empiric info, now letting the world know about how the corrupt charter education Tsars in California function.
One name that I did not see in this article is that of former felon, Michael Milken, who continues to enrich himself (remember the Drexel Burnham scandal for which he went to prison) off the hard work of American taxpayers for the failed K12 online charters.
Also, the Gulen Charter Schools, largest chain in the U.S., which follows the teachings of the Islamic Imam, Fetullah Gulen, a current ‘resident alien’ living in the Pocono Mtns. in Pennsylvania, who is now claimed to be the leader of the recent Turkish coup attempt. His billion dollar organization, supported by all of us who pay taxes, foments political upheaval in the Middle East while the Turkish leader, Erdogan, demands his extradition back to his native land to stand trial for treason. Caprice Young, formerly on the LAUSD BoE and once head of CCSA, is now the director of Gulen’s group of Magnolia Schools in LA. Some people will do anything to get to the big bucks.
Carol Burris’s factual series will surely be a most valuable expose on CCSA and how they lobby in California, and nationally to expand this profiteering. And it will show the rampant thefts of public money by some of those who administer the charters, such as the head of El Camino HS. Thank you Carol, and Diane, for this expose.
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I was at the mysterious–per the Burris article, and that it is– Learn4Life (Mission View Public Charter–Inglewood–one of the districts in Ravitch’s “Reign of Error”) for over a year and when the school acquired a new principal (formerly at Opportunities for Learning OFL, another charter chain), she and the Lead Teacher–also ex-OFL– began a “witch hunt” campaign of intimidation — being the newest hire, he put me under full-time observation under the pretext of “training” me. This Lead Teacher would tell everyone that student attendance was by choice and not compulsory, yet we collected funds based on fabricated ADD. Then, he would memo–cc ALL–about my training details, student folder by student folder, racking up Brownie points; he has since been promoted to LCC (Learning Center Coord.)The lead teacher tapped on his keyboard, at his desk directly behind me, taking “field notes” 24/7, then he would move around data in my electronic grade book, and fabricate allegations, all false. The Principal would call me Ms. rather than Dr. (Ed.D.) and drew up a list of false allegations, based on the Lead Teacher’s notes, which she demanded I sign, under pain of dismissal. They dismissed me “At will,” and my colleagues and former students, who have kept in touch, tease me that I refused to cook the books; hence my fate. It seems, there is no legal recourse for me.
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As one of the people Carol sat down with during her visit to California, I can tell you that her shock and dismay over the situation here in regards to charters was palpable. Honestly, it defies all logic for a blue state to have allowed this to happen. We are fighting against a Democratic legislature for the very soul of public education in California.
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Why would leaders of the state cheapen and destroy their states public schools? Here’s a useful diagram:
State school funding $–>Charter School $–>Charter School PAC $–>$ to Pockets of those very politicians – KACHING!
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I was very troubled when Brown did this. He is a product of private schools and perhaps has a jaded view.
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“Charters in California are a national disgrace.” This simply isn’t true. There are way too many generalizations here to be taken seriously. I suspect you would get more people to listen if you didn’t always make it sound as if the world will end if charters aren’t closed.
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Kraig,
I see you are writing from AIMS charter schools. Is that the chain whose leader, Ben Chavis, had to step down because a state audit discovered that $3 million was transferred from the schools’ bank account to his own? Is this the same school whose leader ridiculed multiculturalism, liberals, unions, and made racist statements about blacks?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Chavis_(educator)
Are do you represent some other charter schools with the same initials?
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Welcome to our troll of the week.
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Threatened Out West:
What you wrote.
😎
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FRAUDS!
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This reminds me of a post–several years ago–written by a Florida psychologist who visited a charter “school” in a strip mall. I believe it was next to a gun shop. The “playground” consisted of the rear area of the building–you all know how strip malls look
(generally, garbage dumpsters are out back). There was something disturbing about the “registrar,” as well–to my recollection, she was the registrar/counselor–yet she did not possess either a degree or certification in counseling.
I just know that when I read this account, it made my skin crawl & caused my eyes to tear up. I certainly hope that it has since closed, & that the kids are attending a good, public school, with a real school building, a playground & degreed, certified & experienced staff.
As for this disgrace in California, I had expected better of Jerry Brown.
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In all likelihood, that same charter in Florida has found a way to expand to California and now houses a dozen more of these charter “schools” in strip malls in many counties. I kid you not, they are creeping up like cockroaches in strip malls and churches. They offer “homeschool” options, which means, “We take the ADA money and hand you a cheap computer and a website address and you drop by now and then to check in.” It is disgusting. Taxpayers just don’t seem to get that they are paying for this.
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Please phone CA Governor Jerry Brown RIGHT NOW at (916) 445-2841 and:
URGE HIM TO SIGN AB709
https://govnews.gov.ca.gov/gov39mail/mail.php
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Jerry Brown is another closet right winger. Kinda like Obama and Hillary. He’s no threat to the investor class. Just like O and H and D. The only differences are in sanctioned wedge issues
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And even the staunchly pro-charter school Los Angeles Times (which acknowledges that its “reporting” on charter schools is paid for by a billionaire charter school advocate) complained in an editorial that “the only serious scrutiny that charter operators typically get is when they are issued their right to operate, and then five years later when they apply for renewal.” Without needed oversight of what charter schools are actually doing with the public’s tax dollars, hundreds of millions of tax money that is supposed to be spent on educating the public’s children is being siphoned away into private pockets.
One typical practice of charter schools is to pay exorbitant rates to rent buildings that are owned by the charter school board members or by their proxy companies which then pocket the public’s tax money as profit. Another profitable practice is that although charter schools use public tax money to purchase millions of dollars of such things as computers, the things they buy with public tax money become their private property and can be sold by them for profit…and then use public tax money to buy more, and sell again, and again, and again, pocketing profit after profit.
Charter schools are clearly private schools, owned and operated by private entities; nevertheless, they get public tax money. And, as the NAACP and ACLU have learned, charter schools are often engaged in racial and economic-class discrimination.
Charter schools should (1) be required by law to be governed by school boards elected by the voters so that they are accountable to the public; a charter school entity must legally be a subdivision of a publicly-elected governmental body; (3) charter schools should be required to file the same detailed public-domain audited annual financial reports under penalty of perjury that genuine public schools file; and, (4) anything a charter school buys with the public’s money should be the public’s property.
The Washington State and New York State supreme courts and the National Labor Relations Board have ruled that charter schools are not public schools because they aren’t accountable to the public since they aren’t governed by publicly-elected boards and aren’t subdivisions of public government entities, in spite of the fact that some state laws enabling charter schools say they are government subdivisions. Lawsuits challenging the legality of giving public tax money to private charter schools must be filed in every state in our nation.
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Mystery solved:
“Yesterday, I posted about how Donald Trump was visiting a Cleveland charter school that received an F on the state report card for student growth — a grade I called “failing” in several press accounts. And, in fact, I found it curious that Trump would visit a Cleveland charter with such a poor student growth grade given that Cleveland is the only area of the state where there are several high-performing charters.
I suggested that it was because Ron Packard — a notorious political operative in the education space — ran the for-profit company that operates the school. And, right on cue, Trump shouted out Packard at the beginning of his speech. I’m willing to bet that a Packard donation will show up in Trump’s next campaign finance report”
http://www.10thperiod.com/2016/09/when-f-isnt-f.html
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Here’s another on the double standard:
— how charter school administration scandals are handled
VS.
— how traditional public schools scandals are handled
BELOW is a detailed story of a sex scandal at the Summit Tahoma Charter School in San Jose, CA,
First, here’s some TV news coverage of this that I just found:
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/02/29/police-investigate-whether-sj-principal-broke-law-in-teacher-sex-case/
At this point when this was broadcast, there still existed the possibility that the principal at Summit Tahoma, Nicholas Kim, might face criminal charges, but as the story BELOW indicates, that never happened, or hasn’t yet happened.
And here is that more detailed story:
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Here’s a story — relevant to the issue of deregulation of charters — that I’ve been sitting on for a couple months. (long post, but worth reading, trust me)
This sordid tale was going around at the California delegation at the NEA-RA convention held in D.C. in early July of this year. (and yeah, I freely concede tht there’s a possibility of the story being embellished in the re-telling, as in the “telephone game” effect. However, I was able to find some corroboration of the main facts in media reports available on the internet. SEE BELOW)
It’s about how a principal at a Summit Tahoma Charter School in San Jose:
1) heard a report that one of his teachers was having sex with a female student;
2) he conducts “an internal investigation,” where he, on his own, concluded that nothing happened, and thus, never goes to the authorities;
(This action is a total violation of California law, and a major dereliction of duty, as he is not allowed to make that call NOT to tell the police. Like all adults working in a school setting — administrators, teachers, counselors, nurses, etc. — he is a mandatory reporter. Under penalty of jail and a steep fine for failing to do so, he MUST IMMEDIATELY contact the police. In LAUSD, we have to watch a video and take a test to this effect twice a year.
This situation is similar to when the officials at St. Hope charter school failed to report what Kevin Johnson was doing.)
2) it’s rumored by some (again, I heard this from some people at the NEA-RA in early July) that during the charter principal’s so-called “internal investigation,” he found out the story was true; it’s further alleged that, instead of reporting this to authorities as he was legally required, he pressured both the student and the teacher to deny the affair if and when any police or any other oversight authority questions them as in “Do this, and it will all go away;
“You don’t want ruin Mr. So-and-so’s life and send him to prison. Do you?” … or words to that effect.
(UPSHOT: the best interests and reputation of the Summit Charter Schools are more important than the well-being of the schools students, or following the law, or removing a teacher whom the principal knows full well likes to get it on with underage girls.)
3) even though the principal allegedly tried to bury the story, the word got out anyway, and — THANK JESUS!!!! — a non-involved parent did what the principal had a mandatory legal requirement to do, but did not — she called the police;
4) the police, responding to the parent’s reporting, show up at the school site while the principal is off-campus, and the assistant principal allows the police to question the girl in question in a private room;
5) the questioning starts just as the principal arrives back at the school;
6) the principal discovers what’s going on, and frantically calls the Summit charter chain’s main headquarters, and talks his superior and the charter chain’s lawyer, who tells them the principal has a legal right (???!!!) to barge in to the room, stop the police questioning, and order the police to leave. Incredibly he attempts to do just that, invoking the legal advice he was just given over the phone to the police present;
7) the police tells the principal that their Summit Charter School chain’s lawyers or management to whom he just spoke are in error, and furthermore, the police allegedly tell the principal that if he doesn’t back off, he will be charged with obstruction of justice, and handcuffed; suitably chagrined, he backs the-hell off, and shuts the-hell up;
8) the police questioning continues, but the girl sticks to her story — the story the principal allegedly pressured her to tell — nothing happened with the teacher;
(Whew! That was a close one! … ehhh … Not so fast, Principal Kim!)
9) later, the girl is questioned again by police at her family’s house, and away from the allegedly obstructing principal, she spills the beans;
10) the teacher is arrested and is currently being prosecuted;
(He’s a goa-teed loser, from the mug shot in the media coverage BELOW… “Seriously Dude, does affecting that ‘Robin Hood look’ help you score with the girls whom you teach?” Sweet Jesus! God save us all! )
11) the principal and Summit Charter School put out a very carefully and legally vetted statement, saying that the school’s administration is happy that the evil pedophile teacher has been removed, that’s what they wanted all along if the story was true, and that, contrary to the gossip that been going around, he and the Summit Tahoma Charter school administration cooperated with authorities at all times, and they view the well-being of the victim and of all their students as paramount blah-blah-blah…
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Quite a yarn? Ayy?
Here’s the actual media coverage I was able to find corroborating the this rumor/story floating around the NEA-RA convention in D.C. this July:
http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_29568103/san-jose-house-probe-teacher-student-tryst-elicits
The police and other authorities were furious at principal’s outrageous claim that he could simply conduct his own investigation, and then conclude on his own whether or not this matter did warranted contacting the police.
William Grimm, senior attorney for the National Center for Youth Law based in Oakland was quoted in the above article link, and did not mince words:
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SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS:
” ‘The fact that he decided to take some of his time to investigate it automatically means it crosses the threshold of ‘reasonable suspicion,’ he (Grimm) said. ‘And what expertise does the principal have in identifying potential teacher-student sexual relationships?
” ‘He (the principal himself) posed a danger to the school by doing this and not having the qualifications necessary.’ ”
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When the principal of Summit Tahoma Charter, Nicholas Kim, entered the room where police were questioning the alleged victim of a teacher’s molestation, this transpired:
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SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS:
“And in the early stages of the police investigation at Summit Tahoma Public School, the same principal, Nicholas Kim, burst into a room to demand police stop interviewing the alleged victim, only to be rebuffed by a sex-crimes detective. This came a short time after the detective reminded the principal about his duty to report any potential child abuse allegation; the principal asserted he was following the direction of his management and legal team.”
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Here’s some of Summit’s legally vetted statement about this affair:
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SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS: (with my editorial NOTE’s in parentheses)
“In a statement to this newspaper, Kim (and the Summit Charter chain) wrote that …
” ‘At no point was there any intent by the school to conceal or hide any information. We acted in good faith. Under the circumstances and evidence available to us, we acted immediately and with speed to find all information. When we received information we followed up according to legal requirement.’
(NOTE: “followed up according to legal requirement” = chose not to go to the police when he heard a report alleging sexual abuse of a minor, so that, had the parent not gone on his or her own and reported it to the police himself or herself, no one would have ever been the wiser, and that goa-teed Robin-Hood-looking perv would still be on the loose preying on minors at San Jose’s Summit Tahoma Charter School.)
” ‘Once law enforcement became involved and interrogated the student, new evidence came to light that we acted on immediately.’
(NOTE: while that “new evidence did eventually “come to light” in the context of a police interview, it was no thanks to either Principal Kim, or to the Summit Management or to its legal team who gave Principal Kim the ridiculous and unlawful direction to barge in the room where police were questioning a witness, and attempt to stop this information from “coming to light”. Therefore, it’s DESPITE Principal Kim and his Summit Charter superiors, that the truth DID, in fact, “come to light,’ NOT BECAUSE of them.)
“The District Attorney’s Office said Friday that Kim’s decision not to notify police or Child Protective Services was not a violation of the mandated reporter law because the rumor alone did not create a level of ‘reasonable suspicion’ abuse had occurred, as the state penal code requires.
(NOTE: Now, this bit gets me really steamed.
I don’t know if the Summit charter folks are plugged in with, or have clout with the police in San Jose, so much so that they able to elicit such a statement and treatment from the local police, but I can say with absolute certainty:
THIS NEVER WOULD HAVE BEEN ACCEPTABLE WITH EITHER LAPD, or WITH LAUSD management. (especially in the wake of the Miramonte fiasco a few years back.)
ALL HELL WOULD HAVE RAINED DOWN ON ANY LAUSD PRINCIPAL — or teacher or administrator or other mandated reporter working in an LAUSD school — WHO ACTED THUSLY — both from the police, and from LAUSD administration. He or she would have been canned, banned from education for life, and probably prosecuted and fined, if not imprisoned.
What’s wrong you guys up in San Jose?
Once again, you see the difference between what goes on in a traditional public school setting, and in a deregulated charter setting.)
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SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS:
“The code reads, in part:
” ‘Reasonable suspicion’ does not require certainty that child abuse or neglect has occurred nor does it require a specific medical indication of child abuse or neglect; any ‘reasonable suspicion’ is sufficient.”
” ‘Where we see administrators making mistakes is when they have a victim telling them that some abuse occurred and then the administrator does their own investigation to see if it’s accurate, to see if it’s true,’ Assistant District Attorney Terry Harman said.
” ‘If you have a situation where what you’re hearing is a rumor and you’re not hearing from someone who saw something or someone who experienced something, then can you have a reasonable suspicion from what appears to be a rumor?’ ”
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Here’s more coverage of this:
http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/San-Jose-teacher-arrested-for-allegedly-having-6855398.php
As I reflect on this charter school abomination, I wonder how Campbell Brown — that simultaneous privately-managed-deregulated-charter-lover, and crusader against teacher-child-abusers — and her crack team of reporters at The 74 would handle this story, had it happened …
… at a traditional public school
VS.
… at a charter school … as it most certainly did in this case.
The former would have rated a sizzling expose article on Campbell’s The74 website, proving once again how horrible traditional public schools are … “Unionized teachers are pedophiles!!! And their administrators protect them!!! We need to close ’em all down, and convert them to privately-managed charters, where these horrible things NEVER happen.”
The latter? … Ehhh … not so much… as in … “Oh no. We need to bury this one folks. We can’t make charters look bad.”
On that score, here’s a piece about how reporters at The 74 are allegedly barred from reporting anything negative on charter schools. (NOTE: since last fall, the Success Academy charter chain has faced on public relations disaster after another, and not a word from The 74 about any of them. Campbell Brown, naturally, serves of the Board of Directors of Success Academy charter schools)
———————————————-
DIANE RAVITCH:
“Jennifer Berkshire, aka EduShyster, got a tip about a journalist who applied for a job with The 74. She was told that the 74 news service needed investigative journalists but they would not cover the subject of charter school scandals. She shared her story with EduShyster but insisted on anonymity as revealing her name would be “career suicide.” EduShyster repeatedly reached out to a high-level official at The 74. Eventually he responded and insisted that he could not comment based on a report from an anonymous source.
“And of course, the site will be ‘fair and balanced.’ Where have we heard THAT before?”
Here’s the Edushyster story to which Dr. Ravitch refers:
http://edushyster.com/will-the-74-investigate-charter-scandals/
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Indeed, this whole Summit Tahoma Charter School story goes to the heart of why it’s such a danger to allow charter school operators to be so free of regulation — as they so often demand in order to … in their words … “be free to innovate” or whatever.
I’ll say it again: regarding this situation at Summit Tahoma Charter School, these same events would NEVER have played out this way in a traditional public school, at least not without serious consequences for the administrators or any adults who acted the way Principal Kim and the Summit Charter School management did.
Here’s how it works in California, in a traditional public school:
Both teachers and administrators in traditional public schools are “mandated reporters.” They have to attend “mandated reporter” training twice every school year (I’ve taken it over 20 times), in which it is made loud and clear that once you have knowledge or suspicion that abuse has taken place, a 36-hour clock starts from that very moment. If you don’t report it immediately, or within 36 hours at the latest,
1) the teacher or administrator will be fired;
2) the teacher or administrator will lose his/her credentials, and be banned from education for life;
and possibly …
3) be prosecuted as an accessory, if you collude with the perpetrator in covering up or destroying evidence.
In contrast to the way it works in LAUSD, with the adult administrators and teachers at a California charter … they apparently can get away with a lot … even if it puts children at risk of sexual predators.
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“A superintendent can expand his tiny rural district of 300 students to 4,000 by running “independent study” charters in storefronts in cities miles away, netting millions in revenue for his district, while draining the sometimes unsuspecting host district of students and funds.”
THAT is amazing.
You can’t even do that in Ohio and you can do just about anything with a charter school in Ohio.
The “authorizer” payments need way more scrutiny.
How much are CA authorizers/sponsors paid per student? What do they do to earn the payments?
You would need a really big news operation with a lot of resources to track all this money. It’d be great if people knew where it lands and all the stops along the way.
Donald Trump visited a Cleveland charter and actually CALLED OUT the for-profit operator in his speech. I think that’s a first. Ed reformers usually pretend the operator of the school doesn’t exist. The for-profit operators are never mentioned because Ohio charters are technically nonprofits.
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That is the real story here, no one realizes that the most lax charter laws are probably in California. Anyone can open a charter school. Much of this boils down to the fact that even if the local district AND the county board of ed denies the charter, the state Board of Education (unelected and appointed by the Governor) approves nearly 100% of charter schools denied by local authorizers no matter what the reasons were for being denied. It is truly the Wild West out here in California for charter schools.
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And that is exactly what is happening in Glendale right now with the ISLA charter. It was turned down by the GUSD and the CBE and was then approved by the SBE. The charter was unable to find a site in time and is now going through the SBE process again. We are fairly confident that they’ll get approved yet again in spite of the fact that they have no idea what they’re doing. It’s a shame and we are really over it. And we also have a Glendale resident Laura Friedman running for State Assembly whose campaign is being funded by Charters!! It’s a no win situation and it’s got to end.
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Here’s another wrinkle to this story about Summit Tahoma Charter School sexual molestation scandal (just ABOVE).
The inexperienced principal who acted so outrageously, Nicholas Kim, was the same age as the alleged pedophile teacher, Zachary Drew, whom he hired to work at Summit, and whom he supervised during Drew’s alleged predations.
Here’s Nicholas Kim’s LinkedIn page:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholas-kim-14638b90
Kim graduated college the same year, 2009, as as Zachary Drew, the alleged pedophile teacher, which makes them both around 29-30.
For a visual, here’s the goa-tee-less Zachary Drew:
http://calpoly.classfaqs.com/listings/view/Zachary-Drew#.V8weQIUVP-U
It’s from page identifying Drew as a professor at California Polytechnic (Wait! Did Cal Poly hire him after being arrested for sex with a minor? What’s up with THAT?!)
In short, both Principal Kim and Drew are contemporaries, or buddies. While the motive of the charter chain’s brass and legal team was in suppressing this information was to protect the school’s and the Summit charter chain’s reputation, Kim’s motives may have been different or more personal. As a contemporary of Drew’s, as well as a fellow graduate of the California university system, Kim may have identified with Drew to the point where he put his friend Drew’s best interest — avoiding jail time for jail bait — against the well-being of the “jail bait” whom Drew was victimizing.
This points out one of the dangers of promoting teachers so young, so untrained, and so inexperienced in a position of high authority at a school site, and not mandating any kind Child Abuse Awareness Training.(CAAT, as it’s abbreviated in LAUSD.)
If Kim had been properly trained on child abuse protocols — as he would have been had he worked in a regulated traditional public school under the oversight of a district… and not in an unregulated charter school — Kim never would have barged into a police interview of an alleged victim, then ridiculously ordered the police to cease questioning and leave the building. (Sweet Jesus! You gotta have big cojones to try and pull that off! Either that, or you’re a complete idiot!)
Once more, had Principal Nicholas Kim obstructed justice like that in LAUSD, he would have been immediately put on leave, then fired soon after.
Here’s another story relevant to the Summit Charter School molestation scandal.
In late May of this year, there was a protest of African-American students against the racist school discipline policies, and the lack of African-American teachers at their privately-managed charter school — Achievement First Amistad (a better-named school there never was… look up Amistad) in Connecticut.
I noticed the same thing about the principal in the Amistad situation. Her name is Claire Polcrack. From the newspaper accounts, Polcrack was bungling the whole situation, and seemed to be way in over her head. Like Nicholas Kim, she was way young for the job …. just 28. I called this the Doogie-Howser-ization of school administration (That’s for you Gen-X-ers out there. For the Boomers, you can call it the Bugsy-Malone-ization of school administration).
The charter chains are so desperate to expand as quickly as possible that they put people in charge who have neither the experience, training, nor the innate ability to pull off performing on the job.
Dr. Ravitch covered Amistad situation here:
Again, in the article, the school’s principal in the picture is Claire Polcrack, who has a Linked-in page:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/claire-polcrack-37340411b
According to this, Principal Polcrack’s career trajectory was the following:
Age 22, TFA teacher for two years, (right out of college in 2009 same year as Kim and Drew … hmmm … coincidence?)
Age 24, TFA aluma and staff teacher (2011)
Age 26, Academic Dean (2013)
Age 28, Principal (June 2015)
Age 29 (today), 1st-year Principal facing a public relations disaster
Wow, that was fast!
Actually, this is nothing. In Los Angeles, I’ve heard of charter school principals as young as 24 (!!!). WTF?!
Chew on that for a while.
Mark my words, if and when Eli Broad commences his program of adding 260 more corporate ed. reform charter schools to the LAUSD landscape, this “Doogie-Howser-ization” of school site management will become a routine and a widespread practice. The charter folks will be forced to do so, as there simply isn’t enough seasoned, trained talent with years of experience to fill those administrative positions.
Nobody will ever be able to tell me that this will be good for the kids being educated in those schools, or for the teachers working under the amateur principals — as is evidenced in the cases of Summit-San Jose’s Nicholas Kim, and Achievement First Amistad’s Claire Polcrack.
Indeed, this is very common in corporate Charter World. That child-abusing Charlotte Dial, the Success Academy teacher from the infamous “rip-and-redo” video …
… is only in her 20’s, and instead of being fired for the above abomination, has been put charge of training Success Academy teachers system-wide. Again, WTF?
Contrast this with LAUSD, where the process of becoming a principal is not so rushed. There’s more of a dues paying process, with greater requirements and demands for those who are aspiring to achieve the role of principal. A future principal usually teaches at least 10 years, before moving up to the position of Coordinator, a sort of hybrid administrator/teacher position, where he or she remains part of UTLA. A Coordinator has one foot in management’s camp, and one foot in labor’s.
After a few years — at least two — as a coordinator, they may move up to serve as Assistant Principal for a few more years. They attend a district training program while serving as coordinator to prep for the move to A.P. Only the most select move up to be an A.P. After several years as an A.P. — sometimes more than a decade — they finally achieve the role of principal.
In short, one attains a principal-ship (Is that a real word?😉 ), at the very earliest, in your late 30’s at the absolute earliest. Throughout the entire decade-and-a-half-plus process, one is mentored by principals, seasoned pros with decades of experience. Prospective prinicals are followed and monitored closely to see if they can cut it, or have what it takes. I’ve seen many Assistant Principals — wanna-be principals — who get moved permanently back to a teaching position, after being deemed not up to snuff.
Anyway, by the time one survives this and becomes a principal, they know what they’re doing, or should. (with the rarest exceptions… another story or stories)
This is not a slight on Ms. Polcrack’s teaching ability, who appears to have been a top-notch Math teacher (TFA ain’t all bad😉 ). It’s just that she seemed to be way in over her head as principal, at least moreso than she would have in a program run like LAUSD’s. (UPDATE: she was removed as principal at the end of the school year, around June 2016.)
What’s the origin of the “Bugsy-Malone-ization” of charter school administration?
For a little late Baby Boomer nostalgia, here’s Bugsy Malone (which first put Scott “Chachi-from-HAPPY-DAYS” Baio on the map):
For the “Doogie Howser-ization” reference, here’s a trailer or commercial for that show which makes my point — the front office of so many charter schools are staffed by far too many unqualified Doogie Howser’s running the show:
However, Doogie is eminently qualified for his profession … albeit he’s a fictional character.😉
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Ron Packard seems to have landed on his feet in edreformworld:
“In 2011, The New York Times described K12 as “a company that tries to squeeze profits from public school dollars by raising enrollment, increasing teacher workload and lowering standards.”
Since Packard’s departure, the company also reached a $168.5 million settlement with the State of California over claims that K12 and its affiliated schools violated false advertising and unfair competition laws.
Today Packard serves as CEO of Pansophic and Accel.”
Pansophic and Accel run charter schools in Ohio.
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This isn’t enough. Tell the news. Write a book. Buy a billboard. Name the schools like Opportunities for learning, Options for Youth, Pathways, Learn for Life and all its branches that steal student funding. Writing this article without names and hard evidence is not enough.
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