Is the air coming out of the charter school bubble?
Are parents tired of seeing their children attend faux schools in shopping malls or schools that open and close like day lilies?
California has been the Golden State for charter schools until now, but the fever is subsiding.
Maybe it was the impact of the scandals, the waste, fraud and abuse.
After a quarter century of steady expansion, the rate of growth for charter schools in California has slowed to a crawl over the past five years.
During the just completed school year, the number of charter schools grew by a mere 1.6 percent — from 1,254 schools in 2016-17 to 1,275 in 2017-18. That was even lower than last year’s 1.9 percent growth, which set a record for the lowest rate of growth in at least two decades.
These sluggish rates of growth, mirrored by similar slowdowns nationally, present a sharp contrast to the double-digit rates of expansion of charter schools for most years since California approved its charter law in 1992.
Far outpacing every other state, California charter schools now enroll over 630,000 students, or 1 in 10 of the state’s public school students. The slowdown in their growth could increase competition among parents and students to get into the most sought-after charter schools and in general limit the choices that they have beyond traditional public schools. It is also stirring concerns among charter school advocates that the slowdown may represent a permanent feature of the California education landscape, not just a temporary pause.
The slowdown is accelerating at precisely the time President Donald Trump and his Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos are trying to expand education options for parents and children, which includes more charter schools, as well as tax-payer subsidies for private school tuition.
What is happening in California is being watched closely by national charter school advocates. “California is a place where you see charter schools in a wide variety of urban communities as well as in rural areas,” said Todd Ziebarth, senior vice president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. “We don’t see that in every state.” A slowdown in California, he said, will have “a big impact on the national numbers (of charter schools), and given its size and diversity it is the place to look for lessons for why it is happening and how to jumpstart growth in California and across the country.”
Maybe the time for “jumpstarting growth” was a quarter century ago. Maybe that time is gone. Maybe parents are sick and tired of seeing their local public schools taken over by corporate chains.
Maybe the Gold Rush has panned out.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Maybe DeVos showed my blue state where the idea of privatization really originated, the extreme right. The reforminess is off the rose, bud.
LikeLike
like that, LCT.
When Bloomberg left the miraculously transformed NYC schools, and the miracle dissolved, we said, “the bloom is off the berg.”
LikeLike
Like that one too, Diane.
LikeLike
See also for California this report about the “facilities” crisis for charters in the bay area.
Click to access crpe-slowdown-bay-area-charter-school-growth.pdf
The charter industry is redefining poverty to justify expansion into rural areas and suburbs. It is also discrediting poverty as an essential justification for choice in favor of “choice” within census tracts, completely ignoring districts and the idea of local school governance. In another move, charter supporters are using choice to expand vouchers and like plans so all states resemble Florida where some parents apply for a state-issued credit card enabling them to make state-approved purchases of educational services and providers of those services. Charter operators see an opportunity to unbundle services, charge for “enrichments” and so on.
LikeLike
“New restrictions like these might make people more reluctant to open charter schools if they knew the state will be exercising more possibly burdensome oversight. It could also make potential board members, especially potential financial backers, think twice about serving on charter boards.”
TRANSLATION:
“What? You mean there’ll no longer be an opportunity for us to steal and get rich? Then to Hell with this charter school sh#%. I’ll stick to my hedge funds, thank you very much.”
LikeLike
Precisely.
LikeLike
“California is a place where you see charter schools in a wide variety of urban communities as well as in rural areas,” said Todd Ziebarth, senior vice president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. “We don’t see that in every state.” A slowdown in California, he said, will have “a big impact on the national numbers (of charter schools), and given its size and diversity it is the place to look for lessons for why it is happening and how to jumpstart growth in California and across the country.”
I’m just constantly struck by how ed reform pays absolutely no attention to public schools.
Look at how this stat is presented:
“California charter schools now enroll over 630,000 students, or 1 in 10 of the state’s public school students. ”
So what that means is 9 out of 10 California students are in traditional public schools, except no one can be bothered with them, because who cares about them? They’re the “status quo” so therefore they have somehow disappeared.
Ed reformers support public education. Except for 90% of students. And they utterly control the federal government and a good chunk of state governments. It’s ludicrous.
LikeLike
“California charter schools now enroll over 630,000 students, or 1 in 10 of the state’s public school students”
Wouldn’t it be amazing if someone in California studied the 9 out of 10 students in California who DO NOT attend charter schools?
90%. Ignored. Not even valuable enough to mention, let alone serve.
LikeLike
Charter schools are here to stay. What percentage of the market will depend on what traditional schools do: respond with customer service, or blame others. The latter course will ensure continued growth of charter schools.
LikeLike
Charter schools must be regulated. In Michigan, 80% of the charter schools operate for profit. Michigan’s scores on NAEP have plummeted over the past 10 years. Do you want more of the same.
For-profit charters and charter management organizations should be banned.
Charter schools must be held to the same standards of accountability and financial transparency as public schools.
The salaries of charter leaders should be capped to be no greater than those of local superintendents or principals.
Until charters become transparent and accountable and stop draining money from public schools, there should be a moratorium on them, as the NAACP proposed in 2016.
LikeLike
Customer service? Did you just call my students customers? You do not understand what education is or how it works.
LikeLike
Dr. Zeile: You sound like someone who is profiting—directly or indirectly—from the growth and expansion of charter “schools.” Is that the case?
Regardless, your words reveal a mindset from the 1990’s when some people were gullible enough—or avaricious enough—to actually believe that our public schools can and should be run like for-profit enterprises.
Such nonsense, regardless of the true beliefs and motivations of those who worship the false god of charters.
I went to public schools for 13 years. I then graduated from a private college and completed my graduate studies at a major state university. I then started a career in corporate marketing, working for a number of well-known tech companies.
What have I learned over the years? It comes down to this: anyone who thinks that the mission and purpose of a school for children should be identical to that of a privately owned, for profit enterprise apparently knows little about one or the other—or both.
No acrimony is intended here, but schools are not “businesses” and anyone who argues otherwise is either uninformed, confused or blinded by their own dreams of “making it rich” off of education dollars and intentionally oblivious to anything that might impede that dream.
LikeLike
Not just in California although I’d guess the CA # is a large percentage of the overall national # in year over year openings.
I did quick post on this national trend last October. Can’t embed the image in the reply field. But can see it here:
LikeLike
The Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education has issued a report which warns that, because of their lack of financial accountability to the public “CHARTER SCHOOLS AND THEIR MANAGEMENT ORGANIZATIONS POSE A POTENTIAL RISK TO FEDERAL FUNDS, EVEN AS THEY FALL SHORT OF MEETING GOALS” because of financial fraud and the artful skimming of tax money into private pockets.
If nothing else is required of charter schools, there is one thing that must be required so that charter schools are accountable to taxpayers and inform taxpayers as to where taxpayer money is actually going when it’s given to charter schools; that one key thing is this: Charter schools must be required to file the SAME detailed, public domain financial reports under penalty of perjury that public schools file.
Charter schools will cry that this is “too burdensome” — yet public schools file such reports. What would the outcry be if public schools were “freed” of this “burden”? Why, the outcry would rattle the very heavens! So, why is it that private charter schools are allowed to get away with taking public tax money and not have to tell the public on an annual basis how those public tax dollars are spent?
Charter schools bill themselves as “public schools”, but Supreme Courts in states like New York, Washington and elsewhere are catching on to the scam and have ruled that charter schools are really private schools because they aren’t accountable to the public because they are run by private boards that aren’t elected by voters and don’t even have to file detailed reports to the public about what they’re doing with the public’s tax money…especially since genuine, unbiased data that’s not paid for by the charter school industry shows that they perform no better than less expensive truly public schools.
The California Teachers Association, the ACLU, MALDEF, and the California Taxpayers Association should immediately join together in a public information/action campaign to require charter schools to file the same, exact public domain financial reports that genuine public schools file. Compelling charter schools to file comprehensive public domain financial reports will end the charter school scam.
LikeLike
Perhaps not that many people want to start-up and run schools. A friend of mine running a small independent charter was diagnosed with PTSD. She retired after 12 years of managing the school, the students, the staff, and particularly, the parents. It is not as easy as it looks. Unless you are willing to be corrupt, there is no money to be made relatively to your education.
How many so-called reformers start their own schools? How many prefer to be consultants? Why didn’t the Deasy’s open their own charters to show a school ought to be run? Hmmm?
LikeLike
A massive demand for private “public schools” exists in the State’s metropolitan regions. We have millions of Chicano Catholics, Chicano Pentacosts, Chicano Evangelists, Salvadoran Catholics, Salvadoran Pentacosts, Salvadoran Evangelists, Guatemalan/Oaxacan Catholics, Guatemalan/Oaxacan Pentacosts, African American Baptists, African American Methodists, African American Episcopalians and racist caucasians and asians who are quite willing to use their pre-existing religious organizations to create a wide spectrum of boutique (100-200 student) charter schools. Church-going minorities do not want their children mixing with the kids down the street, while suburban whites and asians don’t want their kids mingling with underrepresented minority students who enroll in their neighborhood schools.
Inner cities have become saturated with charters and the California Charter School Association is now focussing its efforts on spreading its influence into suburban and rural districts by playing upon suburbanites’ fears that the charter schools they have already established are now going to be curtailed. The CCSA has essentially filled the vacuum left by the disappearance of the State’s GOP.
We have a nasty mixture of racism, bigotry and religious intolerance brewing here in California and I don’t see how to stop the CCSA (it straddles both political parties).
LikeLike