California has one of the worst charter laws in the nation. Anyone can open a charter.districts can authorize charters in other districts. Read Carol Burris report “Charters and Consequence” to learn just how bad things are. It is jaw-dropping.
There is hope for change, as Bill Raden reports in “Capital & Main.
“California’s charter school sector moved one step closer to accountability on Tuesday when Governor Gavin Newsomofficially asked State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond to assemble an expert panel to assess the effect on public school district finances by unregulated charter school expansion. Thurmond’s panel represents the first time California will have conducted any kind of in-depth analysis of charter impacts on public education since the state passed its original charter legislation in 1992. It has until July 1 to deliver its findings.
“Meanwhile, the race for L.A Unified’s March 5 school boardspecial election entered its final stretch this week as candidates vied to fill out the term of pro-charter Board District 5 member Ref Rodriguez, who resigned in July following a felony conviction for campaign money laundering. At stake is the political balance of a split board as L.A. schools superintendent Austin Beutnerprepares to roll out a controversial portfolio district reorganization plan.
“Beutner’s biggest fear has to be an outright March 5 win by former two-time BD 5 representative Jackie Goldberg, a progressive L.A. icon who is fourth in campaign contributions but is expected to benefit from her broad name recognition and the pivotal endorsement (and financial might) of United Teachers Los Angeles. Nipping at her heels as far as labor support goes is money leader Heather Repenning, a former aide to Mayor Eric Garcetti. Repenning comes to the race with the backing of Service Employees International Union Local 99, which represents school cafeteria workers, janitors and teachers’ aides, and has already chipped in over $400K in independent expenditure money. The contest for the charter vote — and the endorsement of California Charter School Association Advocates, which announced it is waiting to see who makes it to a runoff — is between former charter school executive Allison Bajracharya and Huntington Park City Councilmember Graciela Ortiz, who are respectively number two and three in total campaign contributions.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
There are many problems in charter schools across the nation, although California represents one of the worst examples of lack of oversight and accountability. Most charters perform no better than public schools, and many perform worse. Charters represent a free market experiment that has failed to deliver. Charters have become a political entity backed by the 1% and corporations. Their main objective is to gain access to public money by moving money out of public schools.
I hope the people of West Virginia read this study as what has happened in California should be a cautionary tale of waste, fraud and failure. West Virginia should be very wary of opening up their state to the charter lobby. They will spin and market “miracles” that do not exist. Once the charter lobby sets up, it is hard to get them out as they are backed by copious amounts of dark money. West Virginia can ill afford to waste its meager resources on charters while it destroys the public schools, which frankly, are a valuable public asset. Public schools are a much better option for the state. As far as charters go, all that glitters is not gold. Look before you leap.
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(not on topic). Oakland Calif, may be the next teacher strike. see
https://edsource.org/podcast/episode-93-another-teachers-strike-on-the-horizon
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Very much on topic.
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SEIU is competing against UTLA for the board seat? What?
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SEIU has a long history of competing against UTLA.
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We all have a long history of being subjugated by the rich and powerful. United, labor stands. I saw SEIU protesters when I was on strike. We can’t afford to be divided, fighting billionaires.
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The SEIU endorses Monica Garcia because she promised (and got them) a $15 minimum wage. Their overriding concern as a union seems to be wages. They let teachers fight for the important things and then collect their “me too” clause raises.
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Short answer, No. The “accountability” one would get is to shareholders. We accept that fast food joints can sell terrible food and if it sells, so be it. That is not the case with something that is advertised as a public good (public schools in this case).
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“districts can authorize charters in other districts.”
That is just nuts.
Has anyone ever quantified what “authorizers” actually do?
It’s an absolute mystery in Ohio and Michigan, yet they take a cut of every education dollar.
How many people work at this job? What are they paid? Who came up with the various percentages they get? Ed reformers in Michigan can really show that an “authorizer” is worth exactly 2 cents on every charter school dollar that goes out? It doesn’t matter how many charter students they “authorize”? It’s always 2%? If they have 10,000 charter students there’s no volume discount? 30 students or 10,000, it’s always 2%? So it costs 14,000 dollars to authorize 100 charter students but 140,000 dollars to authorize 1000?
Such are the mysteries of charterland. No one knows, and no one is all that interested in finding out, apparently.
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Authorizers collect money and do nothing
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In Wisconsin it is the local school board that authorizes and runs the 170 instrumentality charter schools in the state. The staff of the charter schools are all employees of the local school board.
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Since Wisconsin charter law is not typical of charter laws across the country, why is your comment relevant?
California has the most charter schools in the nation, and there are few regulations and less oversight.
I suggest you read Carol Burris’s “Charters and Consequences.”
Click to access NPE-Report-Charters-and-Consequences.pdf
Arizona has far more charters than Wisconsin, and the laws there are virtually non-existent. Anyone can open a charter; nepotism and conflict of interest are not banned. For-profit charters receiving public money are not audited.
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Dr. Ravitch,
The title of your post is California: Is Charter Accountability Possible?
My answer is yes, my evidence is that it exists in Wisconsin. Existence implies possibility. Surely answering the question you pose in your post is relevant to you post.
The specific comment that I commented upon also asks a different question: what do “authorizers” actually do? The answer clearly differs according to state law, so I answered this question for “authorizers” in the state of Wisconsin. Again, very relevant to the question being asked.
Wisconsin has more instrumentality charter schools than Massachusetts and Rhode Island combined have charter schools. You have often posted about these states with their relatively small number of charter schools, but never about the more numerous charter schools of Wisconsin.
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For an economist, your answers are bizarre. Wisconsin charter laws are an outlier.
Do you read the posts here about the absence of charter regulation in California, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, and Arizona?
What ever you love about Wisconsin, where the laws were written by the Koch brothers, ALEC, and Scott Walker is irrelevant to the national scene.
You are a source of misleading, irrelevant information.
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Dr. Ravitch,
Mine was a simple response to the question in your post “Is Charter Accountability Possible”? My answer is that it is possible and Wisconsin’s charter law shows that it is possible. Do you dispute my claim?
The best and the worst are always going to be outliers. If you only allow posts about unusually bad charter laws and ignore unusually good charter laws, you distort reality.
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I have studied charter laws nationally.
The states with the most Charters (Ca), (Az), (Fla), (Ohio) have the worst laws. They are not outliers. I gave you the link to Carol Burris study of charters—Charters and Consequences—did you read it? Corruption in the charter sector is widespread.
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