Archives for category: Charter Schools
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Massachusetts: N.E. NAACP and Lawyers’ Committee Intervene to Stop Lifting of Charter Cap

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2016 //
15

In a hotly contested lawsuit about whether to lift the cap on charter schools, the New England NAACP and the Lawyers’ Committee of Massachusetts intervened to oppose lifting of the cap.

The groups are getting involved because they say charter schools divert millions of dollars from traditional public schools each year, but serve far fewer students with disabilities and who are English language learners, as well as impose harsher discipline on students of color….

Juan Cofield, president of the New England Area Conference of the NAACP, said the organization wants to see students provided with the greatest education that our resources will allow.

“We firmly believe that setting up a separate system is destructive to the notion of providing the best education for all students,’’ he said.

We had two separate systems of education in this country until the Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954. It took years of struggle to uproot that dual school system, but it is being revived under a new name today: public schools and charter schools.

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

Florida: Charters in Duval County Get Lower Test Scores than Public Schools

By dianeravitch
June 29, 2016 //
3

Despite the best efforts of the Florida legislature to give every possible financial and regulatory break to charter school operators, the charter industry is having many problems.

Charters in Duval County are not doing well at all. The legislators and former Governor Jeb Bush have promised again and again that the move to private control would unleash a new era of excellence and innovation, but it hasn’t happened.

Duval’s charter schools performed worse than the district’s public schools on state tests.

Recently released results from the annual Florida Standards Assessments and from state end-of-course exams reveal that in 17 out of 22 tests on reading, math, science, history and civics, charter schools averaged fewer students passing the tests than those in district schools.

In some tests and subjects, far fewer. The biggest differences were in science.

Nearly three out of four Duval students taking biology last year passed its end-of-course exam, compared to less than half, 48.4 percent, of charter school students. Fifty-two percent of Duval’s fifth-graders passed that grade’s science test, compared to 41 percent of their charter school peers.

In every tested grade except sixth, Duval students’ English language arts passing rates and math passing rates exceeded charters.’

“You can see that our schools are improving at a faster clip,” said Duval Superintendent Nikolai Vitti.

There were exceptions, where charters decisively outperformed district schools.

In sixth grade, 48 percent of charter school students passed math, compared to nearly 40 percent at district schools.

In algebra 1, charter schools passed 53 percent of students, 5 percentage points more than the district’s 48 percent. In Florida, high school students need to pass algebra 1 to graduate.

Also, in geometry, the difference between charter and district schools was about 19 percentage points; nearly 56 percent of charter school students passed compared to 37 percent of district students.

(The comparisons are estimates, because Florida obscures scores in grades with few students to protect their identities. That affects charter schools more than district school data.)

Charter schools are independently operated schools that compete with the district for students as well as state and federal tax dollars. Charter school students take the same tests as students in traditional public schools.

Charter advocates will leap to celebrate the grades and subjects where charters got higher scores than public schools, but it should be remembered that charters (unlike public schools) are free to choose the students they want and free to throw out the students they don’t want. They should be superior across the board, but they are not.

This is one of the few articles I have read that acknowledges that charters “compete with the district for students as well as state and federal tax dollars.” Many people do not realize that charters–even low-performing charters–drain money from the public schools.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Florida, Privatization, Testing

Georgia: Charter Schools Perform About the Same as Public Schools

By dianeravitch
June 29, 2016 //
32

Georgia’s elected officials have chosen charter schools as their way to improve education. Thus far, their bet has not paid off.

A new report from the State Charter Schools Commission finds that charter schools perform about the same as public schools. This is similar to the conclusions of many states and districts and studies. Charter schools are free to choose their students and free to push out the ones they don’t want. They are free from most state regulations and are lightly supervised. But there are few differences in performance between the charter sector and the public schools. Some might argue that test scores should not be used as the yardstick of quality, but low test scores–and the promise of raising them–was the rationale for creating charter schools. So, it is duplicitous to make excuses for their inability to bring every child to high levels of proficiency, as they once claimed they could do.

A new report about the performance of schools authorized by the State Charter Schools Commission finds a mixed bag, with 15 statewide charter schools neither excelling far ahead of nor dragging far behind the traditional public schools against which they’re meant to compete.

At the elementary school level, most of the charter schools performed as well as the average traditional school in 2014-15, says the report by Georgia State University, which provides significant detail about the performance of each school. In general, by middle school, the charters were performing as well as or better than average. High school was a mixed bag.

The Charter Schools Commission was established in 2012 by a state constitutional amendment and began working in 2013. It authorizes a subset of charter schools, with local school districts still the lead authorizer for most (the local districts work with the Georgia Department of Education, a separate entity from the Commission).

As of December, 91,000 Georgia students were attending 441 charter schools, including 97 “start-up” charter schools, 18 “conversion” charter schools, and 326 “charter system” schools in 32 charter systems, which are regular school districts that have signed charters with the state, according to a recent Education Department report. The number of charter systems is growing, though.

Here is a link to the full report, written by Professor Tim Sass of Georgia State University.

Georgia plans to create an “Achievement School District,” based on the failed model in Tennessee. It promised to take over the state’s lowest performing schools (in the bottom 5%) and move them in five years to the top 25% in test scores by turning them over to charter operators. But the schools it has turned into charters have remained mired in the bottom 5-6%.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Georgia, Privatization, Testing

As Detroit’s Schools Collapse, Walton Billionaires Put Another $250 Million into Charter Expansion

By dianeravitch
June 28, 2016 //
27

Irony: on the same day that the New York Times reports that charters and competition have caused an unprecedented collapse of education in Detroit, the Wall Street Journal reports that the Walton Family Foundation (Walmart) will pump another $250 million this year alone into starting more new charters.

The Waltons–who are all billionaires–are doubling down on failure. They are doing to public schools what Walmart does to communities: destroying the competition, disrupting the community, and targeting public education for privatization.

I vow never to set foot in a Walmart. I know that is difficult for people because in many communities, all the mom-and-pop stores folded after Walmart arrived. Now mom and pop are low-wage greeters for Walmart.

Walmart relies heavily on foreign imports for its products, thus contributing to the outsourcing of manufacturing in this country. It has undermined American workers and home-grown businesses. Now it wants to drive public schools out of business with the same predatory techniques. The Waltons are not good neighbors.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Please Join the Save Our Schools March on Washington on July 8

By dianeravitch
June 28, 2016 //
8

Please join me and many others in Washington, D.C., on July 8 to express our support for our nation’s public schools and educators.

If you are fed up with the privatization of public schools and the high-stakes testing that has harmed real education, please join us.

You will meet old friends and make new friends. There are many wonderful activities planned before and after the March.

Join us and raise your voices for better public schools, a respected teaching profession, and a new direction for American education.

I hope you stop and say hello!

Coalition Letterhead

Please Join

Save Our Schools Coalition for Action

People’s March For Public Education & Social Justice

On July 8 a coalition of grassroots groups, union organizations, and activists will rally at the Lincoln Memorial and march in support of education and social justice. We are marching for community-based, equitably-funded schools that are the heart of neighborhoods.

We stand and march for:

 

·         Full, equitable funding for all public schools

·         Safe, racially just schools and communities

·         Community leadership in public school policies

·         Professional, diverse educators for all students

·         Child-centered, culturally appropriate curriculum for all

·         No high-stakes standardized testing

Join us in Washington D.C. on July 8-10th to celebrate democracy by living it.

·         July 8th: Rally & March – Lincoln Memorial

Speakers include:  Diane Ravitch, Rev. William Barber, Jamaal Bowman,  Jonathon Kozol,  Jesse Hagopian, Morna McDermott, the Youth Dreamers, Gus Morales, Detroit Teachers Union members, Denisha Jones, Sam Anderson, Tanaisa Brown, Julian Vasquez Heilig, Barbara Madeloni, Brett Bigham, Ruth Rodriguez, Bishop John Selders, United Opt Out, Yohuru Williams, Lisa Rudley, the Dyett Hunger Strikers and Jitu Brown, Mike Klonsky, Michelle Gunderson.

·         July 9th: Activists Conference: – Howard University

                New & Experienced Organizers Working for Public Education & Communities

            Workshops for individuals and groups so we can return to our communities as leaders, organizers,             participants, artists, and/or performers.   Sessions for families, children & youth.

 

            Keynotes: Jitu Brown and Bishop John L.Selders Jr.

·         July 10th: Coalition Summit Work Session –activists & organizers meet to plan

An action this big requires much collaboration and support, and the Coalition has many involvement opportunities for individuals and organizations alike. Consider helping in the following ways:

1.       Endorse the principles and the 2016 event

2.      Provide active publicity about the 2016 event to your organizations and listserves

3.      Organize in your area and assist people in attending the event

4.      Provide financial support for the 2016 event and/or scholarships to deserving attendees

Free bus July 8  leaves 335 Adams St., Brooklyn at 6:00AM & returns after rally. To sign up email ysiwinski@uft.org; give your name & e-mail.   Only 60 seats

http://saveourschoolsmarch.org/2016/03/sos-coalition-event-lincoln-memorial/.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Resistance, Testing

New York Times: The Expansion of Charters Has Caused a Collapse of Education in Detroit

By dianeravitch
June 28, 2016 //
22

This http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/29/us/for-detroits-children-more-school-choice-but-not-better-schools.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news confirms our worst fears about charters. Its conclusion: Detroit parents have many choices but education in that embattled city is in a state of collapse. The politicians, civic leaders, and big money bet on charters instead of focusing like a laser on improving the public schools and services for children and families. That bet turns out to be a disaster for the children of Detroit.

Detroit schools have long been in decline academically and financially. But over the past five years, divisive politics and educational ideology and a scramble for money have combined to produced a public education fiasco that is perhaps unparalleled in the United States.

While the idea was to foster academic competition, the unchecked growth of charters has created a glut of schools competing for some of the nation’s poorest students, enticing them to enroll with cash bonuses, laptops, raffle tickets for iPads and bicycles. Leaders of charter and traditional schools alike say they are being cannibalized, fighting so hard over students and the limited public dollars that follow them that no one thrives.

Detroit now has more students in charters than any American city except New Orleans, which turned almost all its schools into charters after Hurricane Katrina. But half the charters perform only as well, or worse, than Detroit’s traditional public schools.

“The point was to raise all schools,” said Scott Romney, a lawyer and board member of New Detroit, a civic group formed after the 1967 race riots here. “Instead, we’ve had a total and complete collapse of education in this city.”

Detroit is now the poster child for the failure of charters. Next time a friend asks you why you don’t like competition among schools for students, tell them about Detroit.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Detroit, Education Industry, Privatization

Pennsylvania: Court Dismisses Cyber Charter’s Claims Against 6 Parents Who Accurately Accused It of Fraud

By dianeravitch
June 28, 2016 //
15

This is one of the strangest stories of the week or year. Back in 2008, a group of parents at the Agora Cyber Charter school in Pennsylvania began questioning the financial affairs of the corporation that owned it. Agora was paying rent and management fees to another company, the Cynwyd Group, which June Brown, the founder of Agora, also owned.

In January 2009, the owners of Agora filed suit against the parents:

As parents tried to gather records and sort out the business relationships at Agora, they circulated emails expressing their concerns. They also complained to the state Education Department when the school did not provide information they requested.

In the suit filed in January 2009, Brown and Cynwyd Group charged that the parents had made statements that defamed and libeled Brown.

The complaint also alleged that the parents’ group had tried to interfere with Cynwyd’s contractual relationship with Agora “by spreading untruths about Dr. Brown and by implying that she had improperly used public funds.”

Brown and Cynwyd sought more than $150,000 in damages from the six parents for libel, slander, and civil conspiracy.

The parents denied the allegations and said they had merely sought information about the taxpayer-funded school their children attended.

Brown said the parents had defamed her and she had to defend her reputation. The parents had trouble paying for legal representation.

The suit dragged on, but in 2012, “federal grand jurors indicted Brown and charged her with defrauding Agora and her other charters of $6.7 million.”

The case against the parents remained active, to be addressed after the conclusion of the criminal trial. Brown’s criminal trial ended in a hung jury in 2014, and a retrial was canceled in 2015 after Brown’s lawyer said that she suffered from dementia. So, she escaped legal action, kept the money, but the parents were in limbo, still facing the charges of defamation that Brown had lodged against them.

Earlier this month, the charges were dismissed. The parents were relieved. One had used the family’s mortgage payment to pay a lawyer and lost her home fighting the lawsuit.

It does seem unjust that the parents were dragged through legal proceedings for more than seven years, accused of defaming Brown, even while she was under federal indictment for defrauding her charters of millions of dollars.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Parents, Pennsylvania, Virtual Charter Schools

Bob Braun: Who Pays the Salary of Chris Cerf’s Chief of Staff in Newark?

By dianeravitch
June 27, 2016 //
8

Bob Braun has written an astonishing column about the arrogance of power.

Chris Cerf, who was previously the Commissioner of Education in New Jersey, stepped in to take control of the Newark public schools after the unpopular Cami Anderson stepped down. Cerf is a bona fide reformer, having previously worked for for-profit Edison Schools and as deputy chancellor to Joel Klein in New York City.

Cerf’s chief of staff is De’Shawn Wright, who began his education career in Teach for America, then moved from one policy position to another.

Braun stumbles upon a mystery: Who pays Wright’s salary?

Wright, a champion of charter schools in Washington, DC, New York, and Newark, and past associate of Cerf and Cerf’s protégé and predecessor, Cami Anderson, is Cerf’s chief of staff, according to an organizational chart released at Tuesday night’s board meeting. Wright is paid a six figure salary but exactly how much is a secret–as is the source of his income.

Although Wright is probably the second most powerful figure in the Newark schools, he doesn’t work for the Newark schools.

Got that? Let’s repeat it: Although Wright is probably the second most powerful figure in the Newark schools, he doesn’t work for the Newark schools.

Who does he work for? Probably for the Fund for Newark’s Future–otherwise known as what’s left of the $100 million Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg gave to the Newark schools. But that hasn’t yet been confirmed because the fund is a private organization and not subject to New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act (OPRA). Or some other private foundation devoted to the expansion of charter schools.

Braun began sleuthing:

So how can a school system hire as staff chief someone who doesn’t work for it?

Answer: It doesn’t. Someone else hires him–but you’re not allowed to know.

Only in Newark.

This reporter asked Valerie Wilson, the school’s business administrator, who pays Wright and how much and for whom he really works. She said she didn’t know.

Repeat that: The business administrator of the Newark schools doesn’t know who pays the superintendent’s chief of staff–or how much he is paid.

So then I asked board member Dashay Carter, who, to her credit, is one of the few board members uncomfortable with this unique arrangement.

“We haven’t been told,” she said.

Newark school board members, elected by the city’s residents, are not allowed to know who pays the salary of the superintendent’s chief of staff.

So then this reporter asked Wright who pays his salary. He said I should ask the press officer for Cerf and then he literally ran away. Well, ok, he walked fast away.

Wright refused to say who pays him.

Braun spent 50 years as an investigative reporter for the Newark Star-Ledger. He couldn’t stand not knowing. But no one is talking.

What gives?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Newark

The Fate of Oakland’s Celebrated American Indian Public Charter School, After the Diversion of $3.8 Million to Someone’s Bank Account

By dianeravitch
June 27, 2016 //
21

Once upon a time, the American Indian Public Charter School in Oakland, California, received national attention for its high test scores. In a book by David Whitman, called Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism (2008), the AIPCS was identified as one of the six best no-excuses schools in the nation. (In 2009, Whitman became Arne Duncan’s speech writer.) Its leader, Ben Chavis, was showered with praise by national education writers, TV pundits, and politicians. Based on its stellar data, reformers ranked it the best school in the nation. See here and here , including Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Will, and many more.

Critics charged that Chavis got those astonishingly high scores by pushing out the children who were American Indian and replacing them with children of Asian descent.

Chavis’s style of leadership was brutal. He frequently made remarks demeaning racial and ethnic groups, complained about multiculturalism and unions, and punished children for minor infractions. Read here for a few of his more offensive comments.

He got results! Higher test scores.

But a state audit disclosed that $3.8 million went missing. Apparently much of it went to pay rent to the owner of the buildings, which was Chavis. Chavis resigned. He has since moved to North Carolina, where he is “a coveted speaker” on the free market view of capitalism and education.”

Chavis never received any punishment for the money he paid himself and his wife’s businesses.

Just another story of a great charter school.

Categories California, Charter Schools

Funding Failure in Oakland: Charter Schools Are Floundering

By dianeravitch
June 27, 2016 //
7

In Oakland, California, a grand jury impaneled to investigate the oversight of charter schools reported that the schools were performing poorly and needed better management and more supervision. Despite results like this, the California State Board of Education, the legislature, and Governor Jerry Brown acquiesce to every demand of the California Charter Schools Association. CCSA has a rich PAC which they use to eliminate candidates who don’t support continued expansion of their private sector. They want more and more charter schools, no matter how pathetic their performance. At what point does evidence matter?


Although charter schools were intended to be an educational antidote to the city’s struggling traditional public schools, many of the city’s charter schools aren’t outperforming their district-run counterparts, and on average, performed worse last year in statewide results, according to an Alameda County grand jury report released this week.

The grand jury, which looked into Oakland Unified School District’s oversight of the city’s 37 charter schools, found that 19 scored below district averages for both charter and traditional schools in mathematics in statewide test results. And 17 charter schools scored below the district average in English. The panel reported that 15 charters scored below the district averages in both categories.

Measured against the state, the results are more troubling: 62 percent, or 23 of the city’s charter schools, scored below state averages in math, and 65 percent, 24 schools, scored below the state averages in English, according to results from the 2015 California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, which replaced the API scores of previous years. Many of the schools performed similarly on past API tests, the report stated.

For that reason and a host of others, the panel recommended that Oakland Unified adopt a more rigorous oversight and approval process when authorizing and reauthorizing charter schools in the city. It also urged the district to increase its staffing at the Office of Charter Schools and to increase the number of on-site visits to charter schools and their board meetings to ensure stronger accountability, including fiscal and governance oversight, since they are funded on the taxpayer’s dime.

Here is a link to the Grand Jury report:

Click to access final2015-2016.pdf

Here are highlights:

The Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) is comprised of 95 K-12 schools with an enrollment of approximately 48,000 students. Of the public schools within the city of Oakland, thirty-seven (37) are charter schools with a total enrollment of approximately 12,000 students. This represents nearly 25% of the total enrollment of the district.

However, the autonomy and independence granted to charter schools come at a cost. Charters operate without the same scrutiny as their district counterparts by the tax paying public. For example, a charter may change curricula, teaching methods, and budget allocation without approval from the authorizing district superintendent or the elected school board. They are also able to determine their own achievement standards, accountability, and systems of discipline or transfers between schools.

Using the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress Test Results for English Language Arts/Literacy and Mathematics for 2015, the Grand Jury determined that of the 37 Oakland charter schools that participated, 17 scored below the blended average of all Oakland unified public schools and 24 scored below the statewide average in English. Nineteen scored below OUSD averages and 23 scored below the statewide average in mathematics. Within these results, there were 15 Oakland charter schools that scored below OUSD averages in both categories. Many of these charter schools have been in Oakland for years and scored similarly on the previous API tests that are no longer in use.

The Grand Jury acknowledges that test scores are not the only measure of success, as many other factors such as school culture and non-academic support personnel, must be taken into consideration. Nevertheless, it is a concern that some charters are not achieving expected results and yet may still be re-authorized.

Current legislation requires the authorizer to “monitor fiscal condition” of charters, but beyond an annual financial audit, there is no oversight of charter school’s long term financial planning or budgeting.

This growth in charter schools has altered the original intention of the charter movement from “experimental laboratories” to one that attempts to address the sub-par results in district schools.

Funding for special education services in each region is provided by the state on a per student basis. In 2010, the state allowed charter schools to withdraw from their SELPA district, and join any other such district they chose. Twenty-five of Oakland’s 37 charter schools withdrew from the Oakland SELPA reducing the funds available.

Because a SELPA district is intended to form collaborations and share special needs education resources across many schools, the departure from its SELPA of so many charter schools resulted in fewer funds for OUSD that still must serve the same broad range of special needs students including those with the most severe needs. The Grand Jury heard testimony that individual charter schools have fewer severely disabled students. The Grand Jury views this as creating an inequity for special needs students in Oakland’s district schools.

The OUSD Office of Charter Schools is understaffed and underfunded. Although they are managing to successfully comply with the current laws, it will be increasingly difficult to ensure the future success of the charter school program in the city of Oakland.

The state provides a formula for authorizer staffing levels that would require 13 full time employees to support Oakland’s charter schools. Current staffing was recently raised from five to six people.

There is no reporting or tracking to monitor potential wrongful expulsion or dismissal of “less desirable” students by charter schools.

The Grand Jury heard testimony that some charter schools may counsel a student to leave that school for a variety of reasons including recurrent misbehavior or lack of achievement. Witnesses testified that this procedure would be unknown were it not for “whistleblowers.”
A charter school is governed by a board of directors that is not publicly elected. Members of such a board may have no expertise in education or have any particular qualifications for that role.

There is no requirement that the superintendent of the school district, or any member of the elected school board, attend charter school board meetings. The only oversight is through the current authorization and renewal process that requires some site visits throughout the school year.

There is no plan in place in OUSD to manage the proliferation of charter schools and no policy in place to manage or regulate growth. Such a plan would include facilities management, safety standards, and expected student outcomes.

There is no plan in place in OUSD to manage the proliferation of charter schools and no policy in place to manage or regulate growth. Such a plan would include facilities management, safety standards, and expected student outcomes.

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