Roxana Marachi, professor at San Jose State University, writes here that KIPP refuses to abide by the state’s conflict of interest law (that’s for the little people in public schools) but won approval of new charters by the state board anyway to open two new charters, despite public opposition.
Her post contains a wealth of documents showing the failure of KIPP to enroll the same proportions of ELLs and students with disabilities as nearby public schools, as well as documents about the damage that charters are doing to public schools in California.
This is great news for Betsy DeVos!
But bad news for public schools in California, where the state board rubber-stamps every charter proposal that comes before them, regardless of the views of elected local boards.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
There’s a HUGE billboard about 1.5 miles from my house next to the freeway advertising Rocketship charters as PUBLIC SCHOOLS. Even its website says Rocketship Public Schools.
Why isn’t anyone taking them to court for false advertising?
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Rocketship is yesterday’s news. They stopped exaggerating that success. Now they exaggerate the success of Summit.
The schools move in and out of fashion rapidly. By the time those Rocketship kids graduate the chain will no longer exist.
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Not so. Rocketship got an exansion grant from Betsy DeVos. We’ll be seeing more of them. http://progressive.org/public-school-shakedown/betsy-devos-just-gave-12-6-million-grant-to-rocketship-chart/
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The charter lobby is pushing for legislation that would exempt all charters from complying with the conflict of interest law. According to my sources, they have told legislators that they need to be exempt for fundraising purposes. In reality, they are seeking legislation that allows board members to profit from leasing the school space—a scam featured in “Killing Ed”—and from loaning the school money.
http://www.ccsa.org/advocacy/statewide/ab360.html
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It’s so funny because ed reformers regularly write outraged articles about the lack of transparency at public schools.
While keeping everything about charters under seal.
The newest thing is they want disciplinary records on public school teachers. Does anyone have any idea about how many charter teachers have been let go for inappropriate behavior? Who keeps those records? Are there records? They didn’t even know KIPP had made a settlement on a complaint.
They demand all kinds of disclosure from public schools but exempt themselves from any accountability. They’re outraged if anyone in the public even asks.
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Maybe KIPP feels they don’t have to follow state law because they are a national charter chain.
No one has ever actually seen KIPP’s national books, correct? We don’t even know if they transfer state funds out of state to new schools.
Can Charter Schools USA take public school funds collected from Indiana taxpayers and open a new charter franchise in Pennsylvania? No one knows. It will remain forever a mystery.
These are private entities. It’s outrageous to call them “public”. They’re “public” only as far as funding.
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If I want to expand my local public school into, oh, say, Indiana, can I do that?
Can I open an Ohio public school in another state?
Why not? Charter chains can. I should be able to expand my public school chain anywhere. I’m at a competitive disadvantage with privatized charter chains if I can’t.
Chicago Public Schools should open a grade school in NYC, or Lansing. It’ll add revenue for them and they’ll benefit from economies of scale. If charter chains can compete nationwide it’s only fair we allow the unfashionable public schools the same advantage.
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Hop skipping and jumping across a state to create a new “district” or network” of districts into a mega district is one the preferred strategies of the Gates Foundation. Gates has announced that he will invest in these schemes. The prototype he admires has been rolled out in California”S CORE Districts serving over one million students.
The CORE Districts have been conjured as a collaborative initiative by the “California Office for Reform in Education (CORE). CORE is a non-governmental organization, privately funded, commonly known as a NGO. The initial districts were Long Beach, Los Angeles, Santa Ana, Sanger, Oakland, Garden Grove, Clovis, San Francisco, Sacramento, and Fresno.
CORE districts received a belated RTT waiver so they could collaborate and gather “partners” in creating a new accountability system: the “School Quality Improvement Index.” Every district became a participant when the Superintendent signed a memorandum of understanding–citizen and other professional judgment by-passed.
The Index converts almost all accountability measures into a ten-interval scale so that year-to-year increments in performance can resemble “continuous improvement.” The index includes metrics for school climate and social emotional learning. Most of those measures come from (unreliable) surveys of students in grades 5-12, staff, and parents/caregivers.
The performances of schools on this Index are posted on the GreatSchools.org website, where the data can be leased and used for “push marketing,” with Zillow among others doing that. The GreatSchool.org website is funded by the Gates Foundation among others who have done damage to public schools.
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