The North Carolina State Board of Education unanimously approved the opening of a for-profit charter school that will enroll more than 2,000 students in Cary. The school will be operated by Charter Schools, USA, a Florida corporation owned by Jonathan Hage, a friend of Jeb Bush. Not an educator, Hage has built a very large business by owning for-profit charters.
The State Board of Education unanimously approved Cardinal Charter Academy West Campus, which plans to educate up to 2,180 students in kindergarten through 12th grade. The new school, modeled after the existing Cardinal Charter Academy in Cary, represents the latest effort by charter school operators to target the fast-growing western Wake County area…
Critics say charter schools are targeting the more-affluent families who live in western Wake, where test scores are higher and the percentage of low-income students is lower than the Wake County school district average. Charters are taxpayer-funded public schools that are exempt from some of the regulations that traditional public schools must follow.
But supporters say they’re meeting the need for school choice, citing the long waiting lists for Cardinal Charter and packed parent information sessions.
Cardinal Charter West would be managed by Charter Schools USA, a Florida-based for-profit company that could receive more than $2 million a year from the new school.
Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article182268141.html#storylink=cpy
At the same meeting of the state board, a charter school in rural Bertie County was closed because of its low enrollment and poor academic standing.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/10/26/1709596/-Report:-Koch,-Goldwater-and-ALEC-are-behind-anti-Title-IX-attacks-to-destroy-the-Education-Dept
There are links to the original in there.
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Ed reformers have not been very effective ‘fighting’ for-profit charter schools.
Why is that? If they spent as much time regulating charters as they do busting labor unions maybe “the charter sector” wouldn’t be opening more and more for-profits.
They appear on television when they’re selling charter schools and claim these contractors will be “non profits” and then it looks much different in reality.
What is Charter Schools USA national revenue? How many people do they employ? What do they pay their employees?
Hundreds of ed reform orgs and mysteriously NONE of this is ever researched or revealed. Instead we get 200 studies on KIPP.
You know, it isn’t “science” to focus exclusively on the best charters and completely ignore vast stretches of the country where ed reform has been a disaster. That’s not “research” or analysis. It’s marketing.
Let’s see a list of states with for-profit charters and the market share the for-profits have captured.
The “Reinventing Schools” team is marketing privatization all over the country. Why do they omit the failures of ed reform? Is that fair to the public?
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Did any of the ed reformers in North Carolina try to bar for-profit charters?
Many of them say they oppose for-profit charters. Strange that they never actually oppose them in these states.
We were told these schools would be regulated, transparent and non-profit. None of that is true in many states. Is this a failure on the part of ed reform, or are they deliberately misleading the public?
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Texas apparently cannot regulate this school or even ask who is in charge of the place:
“Efforts to reach Hicks and the school’s two other board members were unsuccessful. In response to emailed questions, the Chronicle instead received three lengthy messages from the school’s primary email address. The messages were unsigned and the sender refused to identify himself or herself.”
Ed reform lobbyists write the charter laws in these states. If they wanted regulated transparent private contractors why did they write laws that forbid states from regulating them?
That Texas charter is 100% publicly funded They refuse to release the name of the person who is (supposedly) accountable for it- the law was drafted to keep this information under wraps, and that law was written by the same people who claim they want these schools regulated.
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/education/article/Small-Houston-charter-school-pays-top-dollar-to-12332395.php?utm_campaign=twitter-premium&utm_source=CMS%20Sharing%20Bu
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Since North Carolina has been taken over by right wing extremists, there has been deliberate maneuvering to disinvest in public schools. In 1999 the state ranked 19th for public school teacher pay, and today it ranks 47th. North Carolina has been on a downward spiral since .
This new charter has nothing to do with “poor children trapped in failing schools.” This new project is mostly about mass privatization of middle class students with the assurance that the school will be segregated. This is an unethical “choice” because the troubled and poor minority students will be left behind in under funded crumbling schools with large classes. Cardinal Charter West will get to use public funds to create a separate and unequal school, and public funds will be used to enrich cronies of Jeb Bush.
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Do you have specific information that this school, will be segregated?
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Charter schools in North Carolina are highly segregated, according to studies done by Professor Helen Ladd at Duke University. They have become the new “White flight Academies.”
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The school will be segregated. I know you’re here to troll, but as someone who knows RDU well, the school will be a good bit more white than the typical Wake school. That’s why Charters USA is targeting West Wake. Odds are good they are to a significant extent targeting familes currently enrolled in private, and generally very white, Christian schools. That’s been their strategy in counties with similar demographics in Georgia.
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This charter is going after middle class students. It will likely be a selective, white charter school.
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Is this a new paradigm?
In the suburbs of Buffalo there are traditions which are upheld. One is the sanctity of the local public school district which has been attended by parent, siblings, even grandparents over the years. Rivalries between high school sports teams dominate the news. Tradition usually also dictates those who choose the parochial or private schools in the region.
So what is the draw of an upstart school which would make families decide on a different path for their children? Could it be the after effects of the failed common core which has affected the psyche of their kids – making them feel like failures when they can’t reach that mystical roaming cut score?
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More news about the plundering of our N.C. public schools:
Controversial virtual charter school seeks funding boost, permanent status (11/7/17)
http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2017/11/07/controversial-virtual-charter-school-seeks-funding-boost-permanent-status/#sthash.9N4B9QEV.s79RmwAG.dpbs
Survey Monkeys and publicly funded private school basketball teams – [NC superintendent] Mark Johnson’s search for wasteful spending (11/6/17)
The war over the Innovative School District (11/7/17)
https://www.ednc.org/2017/11/07/war-innovative-school-district/
We are in this together
[Op-Ed by N.C. Innovative School District superintendent Eric Hall in local newspaper of school slated for takeover] (11/3/17)
http://www.robesonian.com/opinion/104380/hall-we-are-in-this-together
With Robeson Elementary mulling closure, NC’s Innovative School District left with no schools to take over? (11/3/17)
http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2017/11/03/robeson-elementary-mulling-closure-n-c-s-innovative-school-district-left-no-schools-take/#sthash.f82p7GyL.X6oB22vs.dpbs
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