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Los Angeles: Vote for Scott Schmerelson and Patricia Castellanos for LAUSD School Board

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2020 //
3

Control of the Los Angeles Unified School District is up for grabs in the 2020 election.

You can be sure that the LAUSD prioritizes public schools by voting for incumbent Scott Schmerelson and newcomer Patricia Castellanos.

The issue now is the same issue that has drawn a sharp divide on the school board for the past decade. Will the schools be controlled by a cabal of billionaires who favor privatization by charter schools or will it be controlled by people who are dedicated to the public schools of Los Angeles, which enroll 80 percent of the district’s children?

The charter lobby supports privatization and high-stakes testing for students and teachers.

California state law defines charter schools as “public schools” because the law was written by charter lobbyists. They have private management, private boards, and they are almost entirely free from scrutiny by public agencies; due to lack of oversight, several charter executives in California have been arrested and convicted of embezzlement from school funds. Lack of oversight explains why so many charters felt empowered to apply for and receive federal Paycheck Protection Program money as “small businesses.” They are charter schools when it is time to collect money available only to public schools, then they shape shift into “small businesses” or “non-profits” when it is time to collect money that is not available to public schools. That is called “double dipping.” It is wrong. It is unethical.

The charter industry is powerful in California due to the support of billionaires such as Eli Broad, Reed Hastings (Netflix), the Fischer Family (owners of The Gap and Old Navy), and Republican Bill Bloomfield. The candidates supported by California billionaires enjoy funding from out-of-state billionaires like Michael Bloomberg, former Mayor of New York City. The fact that these billionaires are supporting the privatization agenda of Betsy DeVos and Donald Trump doesn’t seem to bother them at all or make them think twice.

They want more privately managed charter schools, period, even though the vast majority of the district’s charter schools have empty seats (Schmerelson posted on his Facebook page that more than 80% of LA charter schools have vacancies). Once again, the billionaires are pouring money into a school board election. This one will be held on November 3, but early balloting will begin in a matter of weeks.

In the November election, there are two seats on the school board that will determine the near-term destiny of the district: Scott Schmerelson is up for re-election. He has served one term with great distinction. There is also an open seat, and one candidate stands out as a strong supporter of public schools, Patty Castellanos.

Scott is a career educator, who rose through the ranks in LAUSD as a teacher, assistant principal and principal. He has literally devoted his life to the students of LAUSD.

Patricia Castellanos is the parent of a child in the Los Angeles public schools and a community activist.

Both deserve a seat on the board of the second largest school district in the nation.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Privatization

Peter Greene: Rhode Island is a Henhouse Controlled by Foxes

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2020 //
6

Peter Greene turns his attention to Rhode Island and finds that it has been subject to a corporate education reform takeover.
Not only is the governor a former venture capitalist who made her reputation by taking an axe to teachers’ pensions, but her husband Andy Moffitt is a TFA alum who moved on to McKinsey. Not only that, he co-authored a book with Michael Barber of Pearson about “Deliverology,” a philosophy that turns education into data analytics.

Governor Gina Raimondo hired a TFA alum to lead the State Education Department; the new Commissioner immediately joined Jen Bush’s far-rightwing Chiefs for Change and led a state takeover of Providence schools. There is no template for a successful state takeover, so we will see how that goes. Think Tennessee’s failed Achievement School District, funded with $100 million from Duncan’s Race to the Top. Think Michigan’s Education Achievement Authority, which closed after six of boasts but consistent failure.

Read Greene’s incisive review of the First Couple of Rhode Island and remember that Governor Gina Raimondo is a Democrat, though it’s hard to differentiate her views from those of Betsy DeVos.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Michigan, Pearson, Pensions, Privatization, Rhode Island, Teach for America, Teachers, Tennessee

Darcie Cimarusti: How Charters in New Jersey Double-Dipped into Federal CARES Funding

By dianeravitch
August 18, 2020 //
9

Darcie Cimarusti is a school board member in New Jersey and Communications Director of the Network for Public Education. Her telling of charter school greed in New Jersey reminded me of the song called “On That Great Come and Get It Day” from “Finian’s Rainbow.” No “Come and Get It Day” for public schools, onLy for politically connected charter schools. And for those who believe that charters play by the same rules as public schools, take a look at those salaries for charter principal. A sweet deal.

She writes here with meticulous documentation about how some charters in New Jersey took a generous portion of Paycheck Protection Program funds, whose ostensible purpose was to help small businesses survive the economic shutdown caused by the pandemic. The charters that grabbed big bucks were never in danger of losing their funding. Thirty years ago, the original goal of charter schools was to demonstrate that they could achieve better results at less cost and be more accountable. Their new goal seems to be to scoop up as much money as they can.

New Jersey’s charter schools walk a constant tightrope. Although publicly funded by state and local tax dollars reallocated from under-funded public school districts, charters are privately managed by appointed boards and are often less accountable to the public.

In recent years, there has been no more striking example of this tenuous balancing act than the charter sector’s “double dip” into Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act funding. The charter sector flexed their lobbying muscle and ensured charter schools were eligible both for 100% forgivable loans as nonprofit entities through the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and for grants as Local Education Agencies (LEA) through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund that also funded local public schools. PPP forgivable loans, which were meant to help struggling small businesses pay their employees, were slyly used by charter schools and their management organizations, even though the charters had maintained their dedicated funding stream of tax dollars.

Although the Trump Administration originally refused to reveal where and how the PPP funds were distributed, once the list of recipients was released, The Network for Public Education (NPE) began working to ascertain how much funding was given to charter schools and the management organizations that run them.

NPE compared ProPublica’s database, which provides loan amounts in ranges, with lists of charter schools provided by individual states and identified between $925 million and $2.2 billion in PPP loans to charters and CMOs.

As part of NPE’s investigation, I compared New Jersey’s list of charter schools with ProPublica’s database of loans and created a list of New Jersey charter schools and charter management organizations (CMOs) that received PPP forgivable loans.

The New Jersey Double Dippers

In total, between $25.6 and $61.8 million in PPP forgivable loans were awarded to New Jersey charter schools and their CMOS. Thirty-seven New Jersey charters schools received between $27.9 and $65.1 million, and four CMOs received an additional $2.65 to $6.7 million.

Charter schools also received an additional $10,084,128 in ESSER grant funds, with amounts as low as $4,410 to Ridge and Valley Charter School and as high as $1,229,935 to Mastery Schools of Camden, a group of Renaissance charter schools.

Many of New Jersey’s CMOs Took a Triple Dip Out of CARES Funding

Four Charter Management Organizations that run nine charter schools that took PPP forgivable loans, also accessed forgivable loans for themselves.

iLearn is a CMO that operates a chain of charter schools alleged to be affiliated with the Turkish Gulen movement. The CMO received a forgivable loan of between $350,000 and $1 million and the four New Jersey schools received PPP forgivable loans totalling $6 to $14 million. Only three charter schools in New Jersey received PPP forgivable loans worth $2 to $4 million, and two were iLearn schools. With the addition of just over $1.4 million in ESSER grants, the iLearn chain brought in between $7.4 and $15.4 million in federal subsidies – more than any other chain in the state. According to the most recently available 990s, iLearn had a healthy fund balance of $1.3 million and individual iLearn schools had fund balances as high as $1.3 million as well.

KIPP New Jersey, the CMO that oversees KIPP schools in Camden and Newark, received a $2 to $5 million forgivable loan – the largest of any CMO in the state. According to their 2017 form 990, the organization had an almost $12 million fund balance and CEO Ryan Hill earned a handsome $265,341 salary. KIPP Cooper Norcross also received a $2 to $5 million PPP forgivable loan, in addition to over $1 million in ESSER grant funds.

College Achieve Public Schools, a small CMO managing three locations, received $150,000 to $350,000 in forgivable loans. Additionally, the Asbury Park and Paterson charter school locations each received $350,000 to $1 million, and the Plainfield location received $1 to $2 million in forgivable loans. In total, College Achieve received $1.85 to $4.35 million in PPP forgivable loans, and the three schools banked another $751,735 in ESSER grant funds. College Achieve served less than 1,300 students in the 2017-18 school year, yet CEO Mike Piscal took home over $251,000 in compensation. Two other employees made over $200,000 as well, with one earning $265,397 and the other $230,998. An NJ Advance Media analysis of state data found that in 2017-18 the average superintendent salary was $155,631 and only 30 superintendents in the state earned over $200,000.

Philip’s Education Partners, a CMO that manages two charters – one in Newark and one in Paterson – received a $150,000 to $350,000 forgivable loan. The Paterson location got $350,000 to $1 million, and another $147,251 in ESSER grant funds. The Newark location didn’t receive PPP money, but did get $187,343 in ESSER grants. In total Philip’s Education Partners and its schools took in $500,000 to $1.35 million in PPP forgivable loans and another $334,594 in ESSER grants. The two schools served just over 500 students in the 2017-18 school year but CEO Miguel Brito made a staggering $410,205, over $100,000 more than any other school leader in the state.

Philip’s Academy Newark was the first private to charter school conversion in New Jersey and in many ways seems to continue to operate more like a private school than a public school. The former St. Phillips Academy, founded by an Episcopal church, was flush with $5 million in gifts and grants when it was awarded charter status. With the new-found steady stream of tax dollars, Brito said the cash on hand would “go into capital projects rather than operating expenses.” The CMO ended the 2017-18 fiscal year with over $21 million in net assets, and employed a “Chief Philanthropy Officer” earning a six-figure salary.

Charters Have a Dedicated Funding Stream, So Why Accept PPP Loans?

The examples above demonstrate that PPP forgivable loans went to CMOs and schools with healthy fund balances and enough cash on hand to pay exorbitant salaries.

Investigations in other states have uncovered recordings of board discussions related to the acceptance of PPP loans. For example, a Utah Military Academy charter school board member stated that the PPP money could supplant funds budgeted to pay salaries, and the already allocated dollars could “go into our accounts to help flush up our funds.”

One board member objected, stating that the money was meant for businesses struggling to keep their employees, and that the charter’s “funding wasn’t cut at all,” but her colleagues shot back “We’re a business,” and, “We’re a nonprofit.”

A review of New Jersey charter school minutes led to a frustrating discovery. New Jersey regulations state that charter schools must post board minutes on their websites to comply with the Open Public Meetings Act, yet only fourteen of the thirty-seven schools that received PPP loans had up-to-date minutes that were detailed enough to contain resolutions accepting the PPP loans. Many websites have no minutes at all, and the majority of the minutes that are accessible are, by and large, sparse on details. This leaves the public mostly in the dark regarding how and why most New Jersey charter schools decided to apply for and accept PPP loans.

Minutes of the May 20 meeting of the Achieve Community Charter School show that the board of trustees voted unanimously to accept a PPP loan, and the board resolution explained that the charter would “not be able to conduct its annual gala” which could lead to a reduction in staff.

A handful of other charter schools, all under contract with School Business Office LLC, a for-profit provider of school business management services that took its own $150,000 to $350,000 forgivable loan, passed virtually identical resolutions that cited a list of “examples of economic uncertainty” impacting K-12 districts as a whole, as the reason to accept the loans.

The resolutions also cited a possible “reduction in State Charter Aid.” As a result of COVID-19 Governor Murphy reduced state aid to schools by $335 million, which will likely result in a decrease in per-pupil charter funding next year. However, charter schools suffered no uncertainty or reduction in aid that school districts didn’t also suffer, and school districts weren’t eligible for PPP loans to fill their budget gaps.

Paterson superintendent Eileen Shafer has been clear that district students “get scraps” after state funds allotted to the district are redirected to charters. The perpetually beleaguered school district, facing a $16.4 million reduction in state funding due to the coronavirus pandemic, resorted to asking the public for donations to provide students with laptops to bridge the digital divide.

It seems the simplest answer as to why charter schools and their CMOs applied for and accepted PPP loans is that they could. The national charter lobby ensured that charters were eligible both as nonprofits and as LEAs, and many of New Jersey’s charter schools were willing to take the funds meant to save small businesses and nonprofits from the ravages of the COVID-19 economy.

Now that this information is public, charters and their CMOs should return PPP loans, so that the money can be redistributed to New Jersey’s small businesses that have truly been harmed by the pandemic. For those that don’t, the state should deduct the amount they received from any future relief provided to schools through the CARES Act.

Either charters are public schools or private entities – they can’t have it both ways.

Categories Charter Schools, Funding, New Jersey

Maurice Cunningham: Koch $$ for “National Parents Union”

By dianeravitch
August 18, 2020 //
25

Maurice Cunningham is a dogged researcher into Dark Money and its role in the pursuit of privatizing public education. Cunningham is a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts. Open the link and read in full.

In his latest post, he reports that Koch money as well as Walton money, Zuckerberg money, Gates money, and Dell money, is supporting the “National Parents Union,” a front for the billionaires.

He writes:

There’s millions of dollars sloshing around Massachusetts Parents United and National Parents Union these days. Some of it is from Charles Koch…

The Koch connection was apparent when Charles Koch put a proxy on the board of National Parents Union. Now we know for sure Koch has money invested in NPU. Others holding stakes in NPU (housed in the same shop as Massachusetts Parents Union and run by the same team) include Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Michael Dell, Reed Hoffman, John Arnold, Eli Broad, etc.

It’s not just Koch, the Waltons are tossing even more money at NPU.

NPU is also feasting on big bucks from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s philanthropic arm.

Cunningham reminds us to “follow the noney. Dark Money never sleeps.”

And he adds:

We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” – Louis Brandeis

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Dark Money, Education Industry, Hoax, Koch Brothers, Massachusetts, Parents, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Leonie Haimson: More on Success Academy Settlement: SA Has Not Paid Attorney Fees, As Ordered

By dianeravitch
August 16, 2020 //
19

This morning I posted Gary Rubenstein’s post revealing that Success Academy agreed—after five years of litigation—to pay $1.1 million to parents whose children with disabilities were on the SA “got to go” list.

Leonie Haimson has more on the story.

SA never produced the documents demanded by parents. They never paid the attorneys’ fees.

Here is the August 2018 decision by the US District Court Judge, Fredrick Block, who refused Success’ request to dismiss the case, and instead described the horrific treatment that these five children with disabilities were subjected to starting at the age of four and five, including repeatedly being removed from class early, dismissed, suspended and denied their mandated services.

Here is the February 2020 acceptance by the families of Success’ Offer of Judgement of $1.1 million plus reasonable attorney fees; which the charter chain chose to provide before going to trial, rather than release the full documentation ordered by the Court, which would further detail the abusive treatment of these children.

To this day, Success has refused to pay the attorneys’ reasonable fees, so here is the most recent court filing by the families’ attorneys from Advocates for Justice, NY Lawyers for Public Interest, and Stroock Stroock and Lavan, detailing all the hours and work they put into the case over nearly five years, along with fees for the various experts who validated the fact that these children’s civil rights were repeatedly violated.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, Privatization, Special Education

New Orleans: Why Some Charter Teachers Want to Join a Union

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2020 //
15

The Education Research Alliance of New Orleans just released a study of why some charter teachers in the nation’s only all-charter district want to join a union. Their reasons sound very much like the reasons that teachers in public schools want a union. No one told them that the Waltons, charter lobbyists, and other supporters of the charter movement don’t like unions. Immediately after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the teachers’ union was eliminated, and all the teachers were fired. Getting rid of the union and removing teacher voice was part of the plan.

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA – The Education Research Alliance for New Orleans has released a study on teacher unions in charter schools in New Orleans and Detroit. Drawing on detailed interviews with 21 teachers, the report offers insight what motivates teachers in charter schools to form a union and what barriers may stand in their way.

This report gives readers the rare opportunity to hear teachers’ perspectives on the process of organizing in charter schools. All the teachers interviewed came from schools where there was an attempt, successful or unsuccessful, to form a union.

“Understanding the role of unions is particularly important now, when schools are both facing the COVID pandemic and in a time when there are calls to address racism in our institutions,” said Huriya Jabbar, lead author of the report. “Schools need to listen to teachers and develop a shared understanding about the best way forward in these difficult times. In some schools, unions play a big role in those conversations.”

Researchers Huriya Jabbar (University of Texas at Austin), Jesse Chanin (Tulane University), Jamie Haynes (University of Texas at Austin), and Sara Slaughter (Tulane University) uncovered the following insights about union organizing in charter schools:

The most common motivation for organizing was improving teacher retention and job security. Lack of pay transparency and equity (e.g. men and women being paid unequally), unsustainable workloads, teacher burnout, and arbitrary firings were also major underlying concerns.

Teachers also often brought up the desire to advocate for their students, hoping to ensure that school policies were culturally responsive and that vulnerable students were supported.

Teachers who were in favor of unionization efforts reported shock at the severity of school administrators’ responses. Many alleged that administrators fired teachers who attempted to unionize or accused them of destroying the school “family.”

High teacher turnover and fear of being fired were major challenges that stymied attempts at union organizing.
There were notable differences between Detroit, where many charters are for-profit, and New Orleans, where they are all non-profit. Detroit teachers saw low salary as a major issue and complained that they were lacking basic resources like textbooks. Teachers in New Orleans did not emphasize salary levels as a major issue but were concerned about pay transparency.

“As more charter schools open in the U.S., it is becoming increasingly important to understand the needs and motivations of teachers who choose to work in these schools,” said co-author Sara Slaughter, Associate Director at the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans.

Read the study here.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, New Orleans, Privatization, Unions

Gary Rubinstein Reviews Thomas Sowell’s Book About Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2020 //
23

Gary Rubinstein reviews Thomas Sowell’s recent book about charter schools and their enemies.

Thomas Sowell is an economist and a senior fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution. He is African American and has long been highly critical of affirmative action and anything that smacks of lowered standards for black students. He is a hard-right libertarian. Many years ago, we were friends, and I invited him to lecture at Teachers College, where his views were not well received. He is 90 years old and still fighting, which I respect.

Rubinstein writes that the first four chapters of his six chapter book are a rehash of “Waiting for ‘Superman’” myths, such as the long discredited claim that the children in charters are precisely the same as those who are not in a charter. He loathes teachers’ unions and thinks that their opposition to charters is purely greed and self-interest. He identifies Mayor Bill DeBlasio as a fierce enemy of charters, which is absurd, since he gave up fighting them in 2014, after Governor Cuomo and the hedge funders defeated DeBlasio’s efforts to limit their expansion.

I gather from Gary’s review that Sowell singles me out as a critic, appropriately, but I have no idea what motive he attributes to me since I have no financial interest or self-interest in opposing charter growth.

After the first four chapters, he segues into a different mode, acknowledging that students who enter charters are more motivated than those who are not.

Gary concludes:

Chapter 6, the final chapter, is called ‘Dangers’ and it is about other ways that politicians and teacher’s unions undermine charter school growth. There are unfair charter caps. There are people who want charters to teach social justice to their students which he calls ‘indoctrination.’ He also does not like charters having to teach ‘sex education’ or ‘ethnic studies.’ Finally, he resents that some charter critics want the charters to have their meetings open to the public and to have their records open to public scrutiny. He says that this will make the board members targets of smear campaigns and have their homes vandalized.

All in all, this was quite a strange read. I don’t imagine that many reformers want to be identified with his arguments from the last two chapters and since the first four chapters have already been done in 2010 with “Waiting For Superman”, this book is not one that I imagine will be remembered for being very relevant.

Still it is interesting to see how little is left in the reform defender’s arsenal.

It is interesting too that this most recent defense of charter schools comes from an economist who has long been recognized as a hard-edged rightwinger.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, New York City, Privatization

Tom Ultican: John Deasy Resigns Again, Under a Cloud

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2020 //
14

Thomas Ultican continues his investigation of the tentacles of billionaire reformers, this time focusing on the tumultuous career of John Deasy, who resigned as superintendent of the Stockton, California, school district.

Ultican shows how Deasy rose to become superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, how Justin tenure there was marked by controversy as he walked in lockstep with the Eli Broad-Bill Gates agenda of charter school expansion, high-stakes testing, and huge investments in technology. His controversial decision to spend $1.3 billion on iPads and tech curriculum led to the end of his tenure in L.A.

On to Stockton, where the Mayor and three school board members were closely allied with the billionaire agenda.

A sad and cautionary tale about the destructive billionaire-funded movement to gut public schools.

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Los Angeles, Privatization, Teachers and Teaching, Technology, Testing

Carl J. Petersen: LAUSD Stood by While Charter Executive Embezzled $3.1 Million

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2020 //
12

Carl J. Petersen, a parent advocate for students with special needs in the public schools of Los Angeles, wrote here about the failure of the LAUSD school board to monitor graft in the charter sector.

He writes about the deliberate negligence of board members supported by the charter industry:

As Community Preparatory Academy (CPA) approached the end of its charter, it was $820,303 in debt. The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) was a major creditor, with invoices that were about two years old totaling $82,240. The school had not resolved the majority of the Notices to Cure that the LAUSD Charter School Division (CSD) had issued, some of which involved health and safety violations. “Since CPA [had] opened in 2014, the school [had] not earned a rating higher than a ‘2’ (Developing) in the area of governance” on its annual oversight visits. Despite all of these problems, CPA requested that the LAUSD renew its charter.

Speaking in favor of rejecting CPA’s charter renewal, I noted some of the financial irregularities in the school’s governance and asked: “Was this school [Executive Director Janis] Bucknor’s personal piggy bank?” Yesterday, Bucknor herself provided the answer when she “agreed to plead guilty to embezzling $3.1 million in school funds that she spent on her personal use”. These funds were stolen from students “to pay for personal travel, restaurants, Amazon and Etsy purchases and private school tuition for her children” along with “more than $220,000…spent on Disney-related expenses, including cruise line vacations and theme park admissions.”
Central to my comments before the LAUSD board was the assertion that CPA’s charter should have been revoked long before it was up for renewal. This opinion is now strengthened the serious corruption that has been exposed by Bucknor’s guilty plea. How much of the $3.1 million could have been saved for use in the education of students if CPA had been shut down from the moment the school refused to resolve the concerns brought forward by the district? Instead, the LAUSD allowed the charter to continue operating with Bucknor having unfettered access to public funds.

Ignoring the almost five years of misbehavior by the charter that was allowed to continue without interruption, Board Member Nick Melvoin mocked my concerns by claiming that “we need to point out and be consistent of [sic] people who are saying that this board doesn’t hold charters accountable at a meeting where we are closing two schools”. He also said the board should “look at themselves in the mirror” and they should “be thinking [about] how are we holding ourselves accountable both academically at the school level and fiscally.” A good start would be to ensure that scarce funds are not taken from students in order to finance a charter school administrator’s Disney vacations.

Melvoin stated that he thought that the LAUSD would not “be comfortable with [a] conversation” that compared public schools to privately run charter schools. This is an easy position to take when he and other charter industry-financed board members like Monica Garcia, Caprice Young, and Ref Rodriguez have ensured that this competition does not take place on a level playing field. Instead of demanding accountability as they allowed public funds to flow into private hands, they built a bureaucracy that ensures that charter schools do not have to follow the same rules as their public school counterparts. The charter school industry will spend millions more this year on the campaigns of Marilyn Koziatek and Tanya Ortiz Franklin to ensure that their underregulated operations continue without interference.

The charter school industry would like you to believe that the corruption that occurred at CPA is an isolated incident. They said the same thing when Vielka McFarlane of the Celerity Educational Group “agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to misappropriate and embezzle public funds” and when El Camino’s former Executive Director David Fehte was caught charging personal expenses to his school credit card. Even after these cases of misconduct became public, the CCSA fought against measures that would make charter schools accountable. This makes them complicit when the corruption continues. The same can be said for politicians like Melvoin who have stood in the way of reforms.

Don’t board members have a duty to represent the people who elected them, rather than the California Charter School Association that funded their campaigns?

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Fraud, Los Angeles

Peter Greene: The Risk That Families Take When They Choose a Charter School

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2020 //
81

In this article that appeared in Forbes, Peter Greene reviews the implications of the Network for Public Education’s report of charter school closures.

When parents choose a charter school for their child, they are gambling that the school will be around for another three or four years or longer. The odds are not good.

He writes:

Within the first three years, 18% of charters had closed, with many of those closures occurring within the first year. By the end of five years, 25% of charters had closed. By the ten year mark, 40% of charters had closed. Of the 17 cohorts, five had been around for fifteen years; within those, roughly half of all charter schools had closed (anywhere from 47% to 54%). Looked at side by side, the cohort results are fairly steady; the failure rates have not been increasing or decreasing over the years.

Charter advocates have often argued that charter churn is a feature, not a bug, simply a sign that market forces are working and that weaker schools are being sloughed off. But the NPE report notes that these closures represent at least 867,000 students who “found themselves emptying their lockers for the last time—sometimes in the middle of a school year—as their school shutters its door for good…

Charter supporters may argue that this is all just the market working itself out, but that’s hardly a comfort to parents who must go through shopping, application, enrollment and adjustment to the new school yet again. As the report acknowledges, there are charter schools doing some excellent work out there, but for parents, enrolling a child in a charter school—particularly a new one—is a bit of a risk. It’s one thing to see market forces work in a sector such as restaurants, where new businesses come and go and very few go the distance; if you discover that your new favorite eatery has suddenly closed, it’s a minor inconvenience. It’s another things to see such instability in a sector that is supposed to provide stability and education for our youngest and most vulnerable citizens.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization
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