Charter school lobbyists have poured out lamentations about the U.S. Department of Education’s proposals to regulate the federal Charter Schools Program, which gives out $440 million to open new charter schools or expand existing charter schools. These lamentations are false, because the regulations have no effect at all on the 7,000+ existing charter schools. They are a good faith effort to clean up a program that has been riddled with waste, fraud and abuse, a program in which nearly 40% of the funding goes to charter schools that either never open or close soon after opening. The CSP under Betsy DeVos was a slush fund for large charter chains, which was far from its original intent in 1994, when it offered a few million to help jump-start mom-and-pop charters or teacher-led charters.
Carol Burris writes here, on Valerie Strauss’s Answer Sheet blog in The Washington Post, about the falsehoods now promulgated by the charter lobby in their desperate effort to protect for-profit charter schools and to avoid the need to analyze the impact of new charters in the community where they intend to locate.
Burris, the executive director of the Network for Public Education, writes:
For the first time since the federal Charter Schools Program was established in 1994, the U.S. Department of Education is setting forth meaningful regulations for its grant applicants. While these proposed rules are aimed at ensuring greater transparency and control on how nearly a half-billion tax dollars are spent each year, charter supporters oppose them. We’ve also seen objections to reform — many of which I believe are misinformed — in op-eds, including those in the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and the New York Post (though these don’t all mention the same concerns). What follows is an explanation of the program and why these regulations are needed to protect taxpayers as well as the families who use charter schools.
Let’s begin with an explanation of the CSP. The program began in 2006. It is a competitive program that, among other things, gives awards to states, charter chains (known as CMOs), and sometimes directly to charter school developers to open or expand a charter school. The CSP program does not determine which charter schools can open and which cannot. The majority of charter schools that have opened over the past few decades never received a penny from the CSP. The average grant to a school is $499,818, although charter chains have received hundreds of millions of dollars.
Congress mandates that the Education Department give away a large proportion of the money appropriated to the program each year. The rush to spend the money helps explain why low-rated schools can get grants and unqualified or deceitful applicants whose schools never open can dip into those federal funds for planning. The mandate to spend the money is a problem only Congress can fix. Nevertheless, the proposed regulations would put in some solid rules of the road to better protect the tax dollars that are spent. What follows is an explanation of what the proposed regulations say and do not say.
*The proposed regulations say charter schools that for-profit operators fully or substantially control would not be eligible to get grants. They do not say that charter schools cannot use for-profit vendors.
The federal definition of a public school under the federal laws IDEA (Individuals With Disabilities Education Act] and ESEA (the Every Student Succeeds Act) is that it must be a nonprofit. When the department challenged for-profit charter schools in Arizona over a decade ago, the for-profits created nonprofit facades to allow the for-profit and its related organizations to run the charter school and still receive federal funds, including CSP dollars.
The present provisions in the CSP are not now strong enough to close this loophole; thus, the proposed regulations say:
Each charter school receiving CSP funding must provide an assurance that it has not and will not enter into a contract with a for-profit management organization, including a nonprofit management organization operated by or on behalf of a for-profit entity, under which the management organization exercises full or substantial administrative control over the charter school and, thereby, the CSP project.
Why is this important? Because for-profits have used CSP dollars to enrich their bottom line at the expense of students for years. I offer as examples the recent CSP expansion grant awarded to Torchlight Academy Charter School of North Carolina, which is now being shut down, as well as a grant to Capital Collegiate Preparatory Academy of Ohio, which has been passed from one for-profit operator to another.
The State Comptroller of New York specifically chided a school run by the for-profit National Heritage Academies (NHA) in New York for letting NHA take oversized fees for its services. NHA uses its schools to acquire and sell real estate and operates them with “sweeps contracts,” requiring the school to pass all or nearly all funding and operational control to NHA.
When taxpayer dollars go into the pockets of owners or corporations, fewer dollars go into the classroom for students.
Some argue that public schools do business with private vendors for books or transportation and that is true. However, the relationship between a for-profit management organization (EMO) is quite different from the relationship between a vendor who works with a district or a charter school to provide a discreet service. A school or district can sever a bus contract and still have a building, desks, curriculum, and teachers. This is not the case when a sweeps contract is in place. In cases where charter schools have attempted to fire the for-profit operator, they find it impossible to do without destroying the schools in the process. And public schools are subject to bidding laws to ensure that nepotism does not drive vendor choice. Charter schools are not.
13 ways charter schools shape their enrollment
The Network for Public Education identified more than 440 charter schools operated by a for-profit that received CSP grants totaling approximately $158 million between 2006 and 2017, including CSP grants to schools managed with for-profit sweeps contracts. It is a way to evade the law, and it must stop. It is remarkable that the IRS has not, to date, stepped in.
*The proposed regulations say an applicant must include an analysis of school enrollment in the area from which it would draw students. Regulations do not say that grants only go to charter schools in districts facing over-enrollment.
More than one in four parents who walk their kindergartners into a new charter school will have to find another school for their children by the time they reach the fifth grade. That is how alarming the charter closure rate is. Over one in four closes during the first five years; by year 10, 40% are gone. Between 1999 and 2017, nearly 1 million children were displaced due to the closure of their schools.
One of the primary reasons charters close is under-enrollment — they cannot attract enough students to their school to keep it going. Sometimes that occurs because of school quality. But often, it happens because a new, shiny charter school with great marketing opens nearby and draws students away.
New Orleans, a district where virtually all nonprivate schools are charter schools, is facing a crisis because they allowed the charter sector to grow out of control; they no longer have sufficient enrollment, and the district cannot force schools to merge because they are charter, not district-run, schools.
The proposed regulations do not preclude applicants who want to open a charter school in a district already saturated with public and charter schools from getting a CSP grant. It simply asks them to provide information on enrollment trends — specifically:
include any over-enrollment of existing public schools or other information that demonstrates demand for the charter school, such as evidence of demand for specialized instructional approaches.
In other words, it is asking the applicant to make their case for why the school is needed. That information will be used by reviewers of applications when they evaluate applications and rank them. Sounds like common sense to me.
*The proposed regulations say that applicants must provide assurances that they would not get in the way of district-mandated or voluntary desegregation efforts. They do not say that you cannot open a charter in a non-diverse or economically disadvantaged neighborhood.
Charter schools have been magnets for white flight from integrated schools in some places. Other charter schools attract high-achieving students while discouraging students with special needs from attending. In this letter submitted to the Department of Education last year, 67 public education advocacy and civil rights groups provided documentation that the North Carolina SE CSP sub-grants were awarded to charter schools that actively exacerbated segregation, serving in some cases as white flight academies.
The proposed regulations clarify that an application from “racially and socio-economically segregated or isolated communities would still be eligible for funding.” Nevertheless, it is repeated over and over in editorials that schools in non-diverse neighborhoods would not apply as well as “schools that don’t prioritize racial diversity,” a polite way to refer to white flight charters.
*The regulations do not say charter schools must engage in a cooperative activity with districts. The regulations state that they may receive some bonus points on their application if they do.
According to the op-ed in the Wall St. Journal: “The administration also plans to require applicants to ‘collaborate’ with a traditional public school or school district on an ‘activity’ such as transportation or curriculum.” It doesn’t, actually.
When deciding which schools get a grant, reviewers rate applications using a point system. Every grant cycle, the department puts forth priorities as a way for applicants to get a few bonus points on their applications. The majority of schools get CSP grants without them.
The regulations propose two priorities. One gives points if the school is commonly referred to as a “community school.” The second provides points to schools that work cooperatively with a district on a transportation plan, curriculum, or another project. Neither priority is required to apply for or to receive a grant.
The 72 pages of proposed regulations are tedious reading. Because they apply to three separate programs in the CSP, there is much repetition. But the details matter. Read the new regulations. You can see the Network for Public Education’s statement of support for them here, and submit your own comments before April 13, 2022.
Rigorous, unbiased ed reform “analysis”:
CEO of national charter school authorizers group says there should be more charter school authorizers.
https://www.the74million.org/article/rausch-high-quality-charter-schools-can-help-drive-student-recovery-from-covid-if-theyre-allowed-to-grow-and-expand/
Why aren’t charter lobbyists treated like all other lobbyists for government contracts?
If this were the head of an advocacy group for public schools and the group said “there should be more public schools” ed reformers would insist it was “self interested”
So what’s the difference?
Charter Schools USA, a huge for profit charter management company, are lobbying against the proposed regulation of federal charter school funding.
This is no different than ANY OTHER for profit government contractor fighting regulation and it shouldn’t be treated any differently. They are the definition of “self interested”.
Watching this full court press to kill regulation of charter schools, ask yourself what it will be like when they replace all public schools with privatized systems. They will lobby against and block all regulation of the privatized systems, and they will be much, much more powerful because public schools will be gone and the privatized systems will be the only game in town.
Privatized, unregulated. It will be a disaster.
I’d really like to know how ed reformers square their public, professed belief that charter schools “should be nonprofits” with their opposition to any regulation designed to limit public funding to for profit management groups.
How can they continue to tell the public they support only “nonprofit” charter schools when they clearly don’t? Shouldn’t the public at least be told that they’ll be trading existing public systems for unregulated, privatized systems that are managed by for profits? Isn’t this information the public needs before they pitch the existing public systems in the trash?
Charter school = legalized theft…..any other ridiculous oxymorons?
Yossarian, AGREE! Charters are indeed LEGALIZED THEFT! Charters are BAD.
Of course the lobbyists and their allies in media and elsewhere will try to prevent any change that stops copious sums of unaccountable money from flowing in their direction. The proposed changes are reasonable, and they are in the best interests of local communities and the young people in them. These changes will help curb the endless profiteering and grifting in the federal charter school program.
Charter schools should only open where is is a demonstrated need as their primary intention should be to help vulnerable students, not create streams of wealth for charter operators. Charter schools should authentically serve local communities without bringing in a assortment for profit sub-contractors. Community schools should be result of community needs, interests and efforts since these types of schools can provide outreach to students and marginalized families. As with the charter money gravy train, Nancy Bailey’s recent post sounds the alarm about community schools that sub-contract with for profit vendors. Any school that needs professional assistance in setting up a community school services should contact an authentic college of education that supports quality public education for assistance, not an organization associated with privatization. Relying on for profit vendors is a way to privatize from the inside out, Bailey warns. She lists five ways community schools can be potential victims of predatory corporations and profiteers. Read this brief list for the details in Bailey’s article.https://nancyebailey.com/2022/03/21/the-end-of-public-schools-5-community-school-concerns/
Beware of public-private partnerships for infrastructure as well. These may be a pitfall of profiteering for private contractors. https://inthepublicinterest.org/wall-street-is-eyeing-the-new-federal-money-for-public-school-facilities/
“the falsehoods now promulgated by the charter lobby”
Yep, those falsehoods have gone unchallenged in the media. The public believes those falsehoods. The Mayor of Washington DC believes those falsehoods.
Because too many times folks are allowed to spew falsehoods and they still have credibility. The media and almost everyone else gives them a pass and still treats them as if they are credible actors with whom one can have an honest discussion about the issues. Too often, those who repeatedly spew falsehoods and false innuendo to demonize public schools are taken serious and the debate is framed on their terms.
Do these regulations put too big a burden on good charter schools just trying to help all the disadvantaged students stuck in failing public schools? How many regulations is it fair to require of these people who are doing so much good for so many poor students? What do you tell the parents desperate for these charters if they can’t open because of these regulations?
Can someone prove that public schools have regulations that are as stringent as these charter regulations? We must have a long discussion about whether regulations governing public schools are less stringent than those governing charter schools while the pro-charter lobby successfully quashes these regulations and the public hears “well public schools don’t have the same regulation so why should charters have these regulations when so many poor families are desperate for more charters to open?”
What if folks spewing falsehoods were marginalized and lost all credibility? Isn’t that what SHOULD happen?
Imagine if the discussion of whether these regulations were good or not was based on TRUTHS, not on the false propaganda spewed by folks who don’t really care what the reality is.
Why would any true conservative question the need for accounting for money the government spends? Of course they would not. True conservatives believe in fiscal responsibility. But today we have false conservatives. They spend time taking the raw meat of social issues their leaders feed them and shaking it about. Meanwhile, their supposedly conservative leaders reach into their pockets and extract money from them. And us.
reach into their pockets and extract money: yes, it is all about the “conserving” the finances