When the California Teachers Association and the California Charter School Association stand side-by-side to applaud a law about charters, you have to wonder who wrote the law and whether it will rein in charter corruption.
The latest reform effort was a law to guarantee charter transparency and accountability. Former Governor Jerry Brown vetoed a similar bill twice.
The State Board of Education approved 71% of the charters that appealed to them after being rejected by the local district and county board of education. Almost a third of those it approved have since closed.
Capital & Main says the new law won’t make much difference.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed into law Senate Bill 126, written to hold the state’s charter schools to the same transparency as other public schools. (Charter schools are funded by tax dollars but privately administered.) The bill, among other provisions, clarifies that charter schools are subject to existing state financial disclosure and conflict-of-interest laws. It’s a significant break from Newsom’s charter school-friendly predecessor, Gov. Jerry Brown, who twice vetoed similar legislation.
Still, the California Charter Schools Association, the well-funded charter lobbying group, praised the bill as a “balanced, fair application” of the state’s transparency laws, while preserving charter schools’ autonomy.
Some 31% of charter schools authorized by the state between Jan. 2002 and May 2018 are no longer open.
The fact that the bill sailed through the legislature without opposition strikes Julian Vasquez Heilig, a professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at California State University, Sacramento, as “one small, small step for mankind.”
“[Senate Bill 126] is two pages long,” he says. “The governor and Democrats are using it to say they’re doing something. But we are still spending hundreds of millions to build charters next to failing public schools. And many of those charters are not doing anything innovative that public schools are not already doing.”
And, despite protestations of “failing public schools” voiced by charter school supporters, many more charter schools are failing due to lack of oversight that the new law is not set up to fix. Not only would additional laws to provide rules for and financial scrutiny of charter schools protect district schools, they might shore up charter schools as well.
My suggestion to the editors: Please delete the word “other” from the first sentence. Charter schools are publicly financed but they are not public schools. They are private contractors.
New Oversight Law Won’t Prevent Charter School Financial Difficulties
These toothless laws only legitimate the publicly-funded, vampire-virus, con of a charter school industry.
Instead, any legislation that deals with the vampire industry must ban all private sector K-12 (no matter what they call themselves) schools from receiving any public money ever.
AMEN, Lloyd. The word “Public” should not be put in front of the words “Charter School.”
Only thing PUBLIC is using PUBLIC funds for our Public Schools.
Jim Crow is alive and well.
toothless laws. That’s the essential problem all the way around.
You gotta start somewhere. This is just the first baby step. Perhaps Thurmond’s Commission will propose other reforms.
Ray,
If Thurmond’s task force did not consist of 7 people tied to the charter industry of 11 members, I would agree with you.
My expectations are very low.
I don’t expect much either, though I hope people are protesting the makeup of the charter task force. But having followed the charter sector and its public image closely for 20 years, I see just the notion that anyone could acknowledge that it needs some limits as at least a bit of progress. And the charter sector itself knows it needs to act like it accepts that, because it’s no longer universally hailed as a miracle run by saints, raising students to soaring success because it’s blissfully free of burdensome bureaucratic regulation. So at least that’s something. Let’s hope for more.
I agree with you Diane that we do have to wonder who is making these laws that are allowing charter schools to compete with public schools. Many charter schools have large corporate investors who will spend millions of dollars to get politicians elected who will push the charter school agenda. Charter schools are taking public funding and using it for their private schools while public schools are left to suffer.
I agree that this will most likely not fix the Charter School probably solely because they are not held to the same standards as public school making them more likely to fail. We should be focusing on how to improve our public school system rather than making the push for more private schools.
Exactly. No one can explain the logic of having two public school systems.
Charter schools are not public schools, and they should not be publicly funded unless they serve a purpose that public schools need served.
Finland does publicly fund private schools …
BUT, those private schools must comply with the same rules and laws that manage/regulate public schools in Finland with total transparency.
That’s why less than 1-percent of Finland’s schools are publicly funded private schools.
In Finland, all teachers belong to teachers’ unions
In Finland, an organization like TFA does not exist because ALL teachers must, by law, be “highly” trained professionals even if they teach in one of the few publicly funded private schools.
Yes, SB 126 is a “small, small step for mankind.” If it gets combined soon, though, with AB 1505, 1506, 1507, 1508, and SB 756, California will be much closer to the “giant leap for mankind” public education so badly needs. I think SB 756 has real teeth. A four year moratorium on approval of new charter petitions; complete discretion for approval of charters to local school districts; allow districts to consider financial impact on public schools as part of the approval process; and prohibit charters from locating outside the approving district. Also, at the end of four years, an analysis and public report reviewing the practices and impact of charters in areas such as co-location, ELLs, and students with disabilities.
Eventually, there needs to be a firm cap and then a ban on charters. We’ll get there. Steps, then leaps and bounds. Teacher strikes are now on the table. Keep fighting.
LCT,
IF the charter reform bills pass, let’s see if Newsom signs them.