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California: How Did Charters Gain Control Of Gavin Newsom’s Task Force to Reform Charter Law?

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2019 //
28

 

Bill Raden of Capital & Main presents us with this puzzle: how did it happen that seven of the 11 members of Gavin Newsom’s Task Force in charter school reform are part of the charter industry? 

The Fox is in charge of the henhouse.

Since the Task Force is supposed to examine the fiscal impact of charters on public schools, why is the industry judging itself?

Shouldn’t the Task Force have been composed of public finance experts and others who are not tied to the industry?

Or, if the Task Force was supposed to be representative, shouldn’t the majority represent the almost 90% of families whose children attend public schools, not the 10% in charters?

Why are two members drawn directly from the lobby for the charter industry?

This Task Force is a blatant example of “capture” by the industry. It is akin to the tobacco industry taking control of a commission charged with examining the link between smoking and cancer.

it is an insult to public school parents and teachers, who wrongly assumed that Governor Newsom was not indebted to billionaires like Reed Hastings.

Who did the dirty deed? After talking to Tony Thurmond, I’m convinced he did not give the Task Force to the charter industry.

I’m betting that Gavin Newsom did it to placate the billionaires who love charters.

Does he need them for future campaigns?

The teachers and public school parents of California should be outraged.

If Tony Thurmond manages to get consensus from this Task Force That leads to reform, he deserves credit.

As the series published this past week in the Los Angeles Times showed, the Charter law enables corruption, prevents reasonable regulation, and encourages small districts to poach resources from other districts. The charter industry has fought any genuine accountability and transparency. It heedlessly collapses the efforts of a district like Oakland to recover a sound financial footing. Under the current law, charters in California are parasites, crippling their host.

The answer is not to remove the ability of local districts to control charter growth inside their boundaries but to empower them to make decisions about whether charters should open or close. The role of the state should be to police the fidelity and integrity of districts and charters, not to overrule districts when they reject a charter.

 

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

California: The Charter Law is Broken and Adversaries Don’t Agree on How to Fix It

By dianeravitch
March 30, 2019 //
32

 

 

This is part 3 of the Los Angeles Times’ series about charter school dysfunction in California, written by Anna Phillips. 

Phillips traces many of the problems, especially lack of oversight, to state law.

She explains that the billionaires who fund the rapid expansion of charter schools have squared off against the powerful California Teachers Association, andthe two never agree.

The resultis That a badly flawed lawremains in place.

Phillips quotes several charter school advocates who want to eliminate the role of local school boardsin authorizing charter schools and transfer that power to a single state charter board.

What the advocates never mention is that the school boards have been rendered toothless by the law, which allows charters to appeal their rejection at the local level to the county board. If the county board rejects them, they can appeal to the state board, which has been extremely friendly to charters due to appointments by Governors Schwarzenegger and Brown, both very charter-friendly.

Phillips quotes one charter advocate who points to New York as a model. New York hastwo charter authorizing Boards: the State Board of Regents and the SUNY Charter Institute. Neither supervises the charters they authorize. The SUNY committee consists of appointees of Governor Cuomo, who loves charters and receives big campaign contributions from the charter billionaires and Wall Street charter lobby. When billionaire Merryl Tisch was chair of the Board of Regents, it too was an ally of charters. She is now on the SUNY board. Even now, the Regents continue to endorse charter expansion,despite local objections.

The Network for Public Education, which is not funded by teachers unions, believes that charters should be authorized ONLY by local school districts to meet their needs, not because an entrepreneur wants a school of his own or because a corporate chain sees a chance to grow.

The irony is that the charter billionaires seem already to have captured Governor Gavin Newsom, even though they supported another candidate. Newsom promised charter reform, and he signed a bill requiring accountability and transparency and forbidding conflicts of interest and nepotism. But he may have shackled the charter reform agenda by appointing charter allies to a majority of places on the new state task force to recommend changes to the charter law. Phillips ends her article by mentioning the task force but fails to mention that charter allies were given seven of 11 seats, surely by Newsom.

So this otherwise great series ends for me on a disappointing note. It is far easier for billionaires to capture a single state board or two state boards than to deal with hundreds of local school districts. There is a limit to the number of elections and seats they can buy, even with their deep pockets. One thing has become clear about “Reformers.” They don’t like democracy. They like mayoral control and state control. Local school boards get in their way.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, California, Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

California: Small Districts Make Money by Authorizing Charters in Big Districts with No Oversight

By dianeravitch
March 29, 2019 //
7

 

This article is the second of three written by Los Angeles Times education reporter Anna Phillips. The first told the story of charter operators who were making millions of dollars opening subpar charters.

This story is about California’s broken system for authorizing charter schools. Small rural districts with small budgets can collect millions by authorizing charters that open outside their district. Charters that have been rejected elsewhere can go shopping for a friendly authorizer who gladly takes a commission of millions and conducts no oversight.

Its a win-win-lose-lose. The rural district gets money, the charter gets authorized. And no one checks on its quality. The only losers are the public schools in districts where the new charters drain away students and resources, and students who sign up for charters of unknown quality and unpredictable sustainability. Here today, gone tomorrow.

“State law allows school districts to charge charters fees that are meant to cover the cost of monitoring the schools, but it does not restrict how districts use the money. As a result, districts have spent charter oversight fees on sports coaches, textbooks and computers for their own schools.”

”When the California Legislature passed the Charter Schools Act in 1992, it was intended to introduce competition into public education as well as an incentive for districts to experiment. There was supposed to be a marketplace of ideas about new ways of teaching and learning. But what has evolved in some parts of the state resembles an actual marketplace in which charter schools can shop for lenient authorizers and school districts can rake in much-needed cash.

”Before he was elected to the school board for Acton-Agua Dulce, Pfalzgraf recalls attending meetings and watching with growing concern as a line of charter operators sought approval to open new schools. He remembers those meetings as breezy, friendly affairs in which the answer was nearly always yes and district officials asked few questions, even of schools known to have been rejected previously by other districts.

“You’re telling people they’re supposed to vet charters. But they also know that if there’s no charter revenue, they don’t have a job,” Pfalzgraf said. “I think staff was looking at this and going, ‘If I recommend no, what’s going to happen to me?’

The district’s income from charter fees has more than doubled in the past five years, surpassing $3 million last school year. Roughly 25% of its operating budget now comes from those fees, according to its current superintendent.

”Students attending the out-of-town charter schools have not always benefited. Last school year, most of the charters Acton-Agua Dulce oversaw posted lower passing rates on state exams than its own district schools. In four of the charters, more than 95% of students failed the math test…”

“Many of the charters approved by small districts are classified as non-classroom-based, meaning their students receive much of their instruction off campus. Schools in that category typically aren’t a threat to district enrollment numbers because they draw from different markets — home-schooled children, students who work full time and others who have dropped out.

”In Shasta County, for example, a one-school district with 35 students and one part-time administrator has approved three non-classroom-based charters.

”In Kern County, a district with about 300 students has authorized five charters — all but one conducts most of its classes online.

”In one small San Diego County district, charter oversight fees made up nearly a third of its operating budget last school year.”

The districts collect about 3% of the charter’s revenue, a hefty sum. It can add on thousands more for fees of various kinds.

This loophole in the law encourages corruption. It is corrupt for a small district to balance its budget by opening a charter in another district, poaching its students without oversight or acccountability.

This is an invitation to small districts to make money by harming other districts.

The law incentivized greed and malfeasance, not educational improvement.

The law must change!

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

California: Now Is the Time to Reform Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
March 28, 2019 //
9

California has more charter schools and students than any other state, due to its size and its notoriously weak charter law. Add to that a progressive Governor with a blind spot for charters (Jerry Brown opened two when he was mayor of Oakland) and to a gaggle of billionaires in both parties who favor privatization.

in the new report by the Network for Public Education, Asleep At the Wheel, California was home to a large proportion of phantom charters. An amazing 39% of federally funded charters in California either never opened or closed soon after opening.

A new organization has been founded in California to encourage charter school reform, which can happen only by revising the state charter law.

The organization is “Reform Charter Schools.”

What a difference two California strikes make — Reform Charter Schools started in 2016 when the environment for demanding that charter schools function under the same rules as neighborhood public schools was much more hostile. Some brave activists in Orange County were among the first to call out charter corruption. Now the group has rebooted to spread the message that even ordinary well-run charters defund and depopulate public schools by virtue of their business model.
Reform Charter Schools has developed a place for people to read about and learn what the bills say as they go through the committee process, and a petition calling for strong charter accountability here: http://reformcharterschools.org/.
The site has resources for those who want to launch their own school board resolution to call for a moratorium on charters, and is starting to offer the petition in multiple languages. (The simplified Chinese version to sign is here.) Some pro-public ed grassroots groups have already started meeting with their Assembly representatives.
Californians, go to Reform Charter Schools and get the ball rolling.
=========
Links for all of the above in case they don’t copy over, in the order they appear:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/ReformCharterSchools1505.1508/learning_content/
http://reformcharterschools.org/school-board-charter-moratorium-resolution-templates/
http://reformcharterschools.org/simplified-chinese-strong-charter-school-accountability-with-ab-1505-1508/
http://reformcharterschools.org
Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Fraud, Privatization

BREAKING: Los Angeles Times Exposes Charter School Fraud and Profiteering

By dianeravitch
March 27, 2019 //
37

 

Anna Phillips of the Los Angeles Times has written a powerful expose of California’s “Wild West” charter industry. This is the first of three articles.

The article is titled:

“How a couple worked charter school regulations to make millions”

The article begins:

“The warning signs appeared soon after Denise Kawamoto accepted a job at Today’s Fresh Start Charter School in South Los Angeles.

“Though she was fresh out of college, she was pretty sure it wasn’t normal for the school to churn so quickly through teachers or to mount surveillance cameras in each classroom. Old computers were lying around, but the campus had no internet access. Pay was low and supplies scarce — she wasn’t given books for her students.

“She struggled to reconcile the school’s conditions with what little she knew about its wealthy founders, Clark and Jeanette Parker of Beverly Hills.

When Kawamoto saw their late-model Mercedes-Benz outside the school, she would think: “Look at your school, then look at what you drive.”

“That didn’t sit well with us teachers,” she said.

“The Parkers have cast themselves as selfless philanthropists, telling the California Board of Education that they have “devoted all of our lives to the education of other people’s children, committed many millions of our own dollars directly to that particular purpose, with no gain directly to us.”

“But the couple have, in fact, made millions from their charter schools. Financial records show the Parkers’ schools have paid more than $800,000 annually to rent buildings the couple own. The charters have contracted out services to the Parkers’ nonprofits and companies and paid Clark Parker generous consulting fees, all with taxpayer money, a Times investigation found.

”Presented with The Times’ findings, the Parkers did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

“How the Parkers have stayed in business, surviving years of allegations of financial and academic wrongdoing, illustrates glaring flaws in the way California oversees its growing number of charter schools.

“Many of the people responsible for regulating the couple’s schools, including school board members and state elected officials, had accepted thousands of dollars from the Parkers in campaign contributions.

“Like other charter operators who have run into trouble, the Parkers were able to appeal to the state Board of Education when they faced the threat of being shut down; the panel is known for overturning local regulators’ decisions. A Times analysis of the state board’s decisions has found that, over the last five years, it has sided with charters over local school districts or county offices of education in about 70% of appeals.

“California law also enables troubled charter operators to escape sanction or scrutiny by moving to school districts more willing to accept them. The Parkers have used this to their advantage, keeping one step ahead of the regulators.”

The Parkers live in a 7,700 foot mansion in Beverley Hills, valued at more than $15 million.

The city and county have repeatedly tried to close down their charter schools, only to be overridden by the state. Their scores swing wildly from the lowest in the state to among the highest, then down again. The Parkers contributed to the then superintendent’s campaign fund. He recommended renewal. The state board agreed. Soon after the renewal, a teacher at the school wrote county and state officials to complain about malfeasance and neglect at the school, so bad that students were endangered. Children were sometimes served food that was spoiled or undercooked. Supplies were scarce.He was fired.

Mrs. Parker, who receives a salary of $285,000 as superintendent of her charter chain, gave Mr. Parker a contract for $575,000 to manage construction of their new school in Inglewood.

Last year, Governor Jerry Brown reluctantly signed legislation banning for-profit charters (reluctantly, because he had previously vetoed similar legislation), but that has no effect on this charter chain, which is technically not for profit.

Phillips describes the law, how it was written to “unleash creativity” by deregulating charters and by requiring them to get approvals by local, then county, then state officials. California has 330 different authorizers, compared to only 18 in Texas. Oversight is patchy, slipshod, sometimes nonexistent. As the Parkers realized, campaign contributions to school board members can ease the way to approval.

The Parkers are adept at shopping for friendly authorizers. They opened a charter in distressed Compton and generously contributed to the campaign funds of board members, including the board President.

When the school came up for renewal, district staff warned of deficiencies, noting that “Jeanette Parker had not disclosed who was on her organization’s board or whom her charter was doing business with.”

“Please note that the petition is generally vague and inconsistent regarding the details of the programs outlined in the petition,” the report said.

“Still, district officials recommended renewal. They had been assured, Brawley said, “that the deficiencies identified in the petition would be rectified.”

“When the charter’s renewal came up in December, Compton school board members did not discuss the charter’s academic performance. They did not question the Parkers, who sat before them in the audience.

“What they did was a foregone conclusion.

“The board took less than a minute to vote unanimously to renew Today’s Fresh Start until June 2023.”

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, For-Profit

California: An Alert for Supporters of Public Schools!

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2019 //
5

 

A reader in California asks for help to fix one of the charter reform bill that has a big loophole.

He writes:

“Thank you for all you do for public education. In California right now are 4 assembly Bills – AB-1505 – AB-1508.

“AB-1508 in particular is intended to enable local school districts to consider the financial, program and facilities impacts when approving/denying new charter petitions. This leaves a huge gap for districts to have a say in renewing charters that were imposed on the districts by the California State Board of Education despite denial at the local and county levels.

“Would you be able to alert your readers in California to contact the bill’s authors before it goes to the floor for a vote to add language to AB-1508 to apply to charter renewals as well as new petitions?

“If enough Californians can respond, we may be able to make this proposed law even stronger to bring back local control over the 1323 charter schools in operation in the state.

“AB-1508 sponsors are CA Assembly Members Kalra (author), Bonta, McCarty, O’Donnell, Smith and CA Senators Beall and Skinner.”

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Privatization

Tony Thurmond: “Without Public Schools, I Might Not Be State Superintendent Today”

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2019 //
44

 

TonyThurmond, elected as California’s State Superintendent of Public Instruction last fall, spoke out strongly on behalf of public schools at a recent public event. He also insisted that the state must fund its pension promises and invest more in education. Competition doesn’t work in education, he said.

The goal of education must be to help every student must develop his talents, not to spur competition that creates winners and losers.

”In a conversation with CALmatters’ education reporter Ricardo Cano at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club, Thurmond talked about how his mother, an immigrant from Panama, died when he was 6, leaving him to be raised by a cousin he never met. He says his family benefited from many government programs to get by, but that “a great public education” was the most vital.

“If it were not for the education, my cousin who took me in, countless mentors, I would easily have ended up in California state prison instead of serving as California’s superintendent of public instruction,” he said. “We owe this to all the students in our state.”

“That philosophy, he said, informs his fairly dim view of charter schools, which he characterized as benefiting certain students as the possible expense of others.

“I think there’s a role for all schools,” Thurmond said, including charters—publicly funded but privately managed schools that supporters say offer valuable educational alternatives to children, but which critics say undermine traditional public education. “But I do not believe that the state should ever open new schools without providing resources for those schools. I do not believe that education is an environment for competition.

“Here’s my concern: you cannot open charter schools and new schools to serve every single student in our state,” he continued. “If you take the competition approach, that means some students, a lot of students, will be left behind. And again, I don’t believe that that’s what our mission is. I believe that the promise that we make to each other in society is to provide opportunity to get an education, to live a better life, to be able to acquire what you want through your hard work for yourself and your family. So for me that means that competition is OK in some environments, but when it comes to education we’ve got a responsibility to make sure that every single student gets an education.”

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Competition, Education Industry, Privatization

California: Parent Opposes Berkeley’s Choice of Wendy Kopp as Commencement Speaker

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2019 //
13

 

Jane Nylund is a Parent Activist in Oakland who has fought the privatization machine. She wrote an open public letter opposing Berkeley’s selection of Wendy Kopp as its commencement speaker.

 

 

UC Berkeley should not support and condone school privatization: Rescind your offer to TFA Wendy Kopp as commencement speaker

As a public school advocate, and a product of California public schools (father and grandmother both attended UC Berkeley), I was outraged and saddened to find that UC Berkeley had extended an invitation to Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach For America, to be featured as the commencement speaker at UC Berkeley this year.

Oakland and other urban school districts have, for years, suffered under the constant threat of privatization. Teach for America is just one of many cogs in the privatization machine; there are many others, but TFA’s influence is not just felt at the school site level, but has also infiltrated higher levels of administration (such as the Oakland mayor’s office), as well as TFA acting as lobbyists for legislation favoring privately managed charter schools and ed reform groups.

TFA has a potent mixture of idealism and practicality; the concept of having the opportunity to “teach” in a high needs district such as Oakland is tantalizing for many young people eager to give something back to the community. According to TFArecruiting manager Jessica Rossoni, whose credentials included a stint at the Daily Californian, “UC Berkeley is one of the largest contributors to the organization in its number of students who join TFA, according to Rossoni. She said UC Berkeley students apply in high rates because of UC Berkeley’s values of equity and students’ desires to tie those values to a career.” Notice that she doesn’t mention the type of career. Could be anything but teaching, and usually is. But, here’s what TFA is really about:
1) Installing low-paid, unqualified, uncertified, non-union teaching labor into the most challenging schools. Leafy suburban schools would never accept a core group of teachers that enter their schools in significant numbers with only 5 weeks of experience. Charter schools actively employ non-union TFA teaching labor; charters’ teacher retention record is abysmal, typically 2 years. Not surprising, since this corresponds with the 2-year TFA teaching commitment.
2) Creating  a “teacher pipeline” to fill teaching positions is secondary to TFA’s true mission mentioned above. Despite TFA’s assertions, there isn’t a teacher shortage; that narrative is trotted out by TFA and is accepted as gospel by the ed reform echo chamber; teachers as a whole are woefully underpaid and unsupported, particularly in high needs districts (was everyone at UC Berkeley asleep during the Oakland strike?). TFA solves none of this; its existence exacerbates the problem by undermining the professionalism, credentials, and experience of authentic teachers committed to the job as a profession, and not just a career stepping stone or resume padding on the part of corps members.
3) TFA charges school districts a fee for hiring TFA members. This fee causes a significant burden for cash-strapped districts already grappling with expenses associated with supporting high needs students. There is no guarantee that these teachers will remain with the district, and in fact, collectively, TFA has a poor track record of teacher retention within the host district in which they serve. This disruptive model of teacher churn caused in part by hiring TFA is damaging to our students, who deserve highly-trained, certified teachers with a long-term commitment to the profession.
4) TFA is a privatization group that is actively supported by the Walton Family Foundation.  Why UC Berkeley would ever align itself with the worst of corporate school privatization supporters completely escapes rational thought. UC Berkeley is one of the most important assets and symbols of public education in California. Support for groups like TFA flies in the face of the core values that UC Berkeley represents. Its mission to serve public students and to serve in the public interest will forever be tainted by this ill-advised invitation to a group that undermines all we value as democratically represented public institutions.
Read here for the unflinching reality of what TFA truly represents, and ask yourself if this narrative aligns with the values of UC Berkeley. I was disheartened to note that UCBerkeley has been a part of what has become the education misery in Oakland and elsewhere by supplying a large pool of students as corps members. Again, while the Berkeley students may find this kind of service admirable, this model is actively undermining the teaching profession. Not surprising that it is our mostly black and brown students that are suffering the consequences because of it. There is nothing admirable or equitable about that.
While I understand that this decision was based in part by student input, it is sometimes advisable for other adults in the room to step up and explain the symbolism behind this TFA invitation. This generation of college students hasn’t been around long enough to understand what has happened regarding school privatization in this country, but someone (besides TFAer Ms. Rossoni) needs to explain it to them. The students’ wish to give back to their community has been hijacked by the very people like the Waltons that want publicly supported institutions like UC Berkeley to go away. The irony is not lost on those of us who have witnessed this calamity for far too long. Please do the right thing and rescind your decision to Ms. Kopp, offer her your sincerest apologies, and find someone like Diane Ravitch or Jitu Brown, both true champions of authentic public education in this country. Thank you for your consideration. .
Regards,
Jane Nylund
Categories California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Oakland, Privatization, Teach for America

Campbell Brown’s Attack on Teacher Tenure and Unions Fails in Minnesota

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2019 //
20

 

Remember the Vergara case in California?

A stray Silicon Valley billionaire (or multimillionaire) named David Welch on behalf of a newly minted group called “Students Matter” filed a lawsuit against teacher tenure and seniority, claiming that these practices caused low-income children of color to fail, thus depriving them of their civil rights. At the lowest trial Level, a judge named Rolf Treu agreed with them, setting off a frenzy among Deformers and their admirers in the media.

The Vergara decision was hailed as the new “Brown” decision and even netted a cover in Time magazine (“Rotten Apples,” referring to teachers). Teachers endured a plethora of discussions about the great moment coming when all teachers would have no job protections, no due process rights, and all teachers would be great and no child would have low test scores. But higher courts in California overturned the decision, then dismissed the case. Cooler heads pointed out that the poorest kids had fewer tenured teachers than the districts with high scores, and the whole Vergara episode was illogical.

Ex-CNN commentator Campbell Brown, the then-new face of deform, glommed on to the legal strategy and her organization, the Partnership for Educational Justice (in partnership with hedge fund managers and billionaires) filed Vergara-style lawsuits in several state courts.  So far, PEJ has a perfect record of failing everywhere. Its lawsuit was tossed out in New Jersey and was just dismissed in Minnesota. It’s lingering in the New York court system but no one expects it to go anywhere.

Meanwhile as its legal strategy waswithering on the vine, PEJ expired. It was absorbed by 50CAN, the organization founded by Opioid King Jonathan Sackler. Brown decided to join Facebook to handle media relations. Vergara is no longer even a footnote.

Who will be the next face of Deform, now that Michelle Rhee and Campbell Brown have moved on? When last heard from, Rhee had joined the board of fertilizer company Scott’s, which makes Miracle-Gro.

Categories California, Education Reform, Teacher Tenure, Teachers and Teaching

California: Charter Advocates Rally to Fight Accountability and Regulation

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2019 //
34

 

While the State Board of Education was deliberating the fate of the low-performing Thrive Charter Schools, which they voted to close down,  the charter lobby rallied thousands of allies in front of the State Capitol in Sacramento to fight any new laws. 

One of the speakers was Margaret Fortune, who is president of the powerful California Charter Schools Association and also a member of the state’s task force that is supposed to decide whether to reform the state’s weak charter law and whether charter schools have a negative fiscal impact on public schools.

The charter industry sees any effort to restrict its actions or regulate its policies as a mortal threat to its existence.

“Dubbed the “Stand for All Students Rally,” it was hosted by the California Charter Schools Association and was a highlight of the organization’s annual four-day conference that ends in Sacramento on Thursday. Speakers included Arne Duncan, the U.S. secretary of education during the Obama administration.

“At the rally were charter school administrators, teachers, parents and students, many of whom came by bus from schools across the state. They held signs that said “#kidsnotpolitics” and “Defend Great Schools” and were led in chants by adults on a stage flanked by giant screens projecting their images across the park.”

Since charters enroll about 10% of the students in the state, they should have had a slogan “Stand for 10% of Students,” since they have no concern for non-charter students, who are the vast majority of students in the state.

In addition to Arne Duncan, the CCSA had Steve Perry as a keynote speaker. Perry, who has one or two charter schools, is noted for his vehement hatred of teachers’ unions, whom he has likened to cockroaches.

The rally was a response to four proposed bills that would establish regulations for charters.

“The introduction last week of four new pieces of charter school legislation has aroused passions among charter school advocates. It has raised fears among advocates that California’s charter school sector will face the greatest restrictions on its growth since the state’s first charter law was enacted a quarter century ago.

“If approved, the bills would eliminate the right to appeal to the county or the state if a district denies a charter application; place an unspecified cap on charter schools; allow charter applications to be rejected based on their financial impact on a district; and prevent charter schools approved in one district from setting up in another.”

Charter advocates claim that these reasonable restrictions would “eliminate” charter schools.

Why should a district in the mountains have the power to open a charter in another district hundreds of miles away?

Why shouldn’t the fiscal impact on public schools limit where charters are allowed to open?

Last week, they said that a law banning nepotism and conflicts of interest was a “scorched earth” policy.

How many public school districts are they allowed to destroy before they are reined in?

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Privatization
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