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Arizona: The Death of Public Schools?

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2022 //
22

Doug Ducey, the Governor of Arizona, has been funded by the Koch machine. One of his goals is to destroy public schools. Arizona voted vouchers down, by 65-35%. No matter. Kathryn Joyce wrote in Salon about Ducey’s latest effort to eliminate public schools, disregarding the referendum.

She writes:

Last Friday, while the country reeled from the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade, Arizona made history of a different sort. Legislators in the Grand Canyon State passed a universal school voucher bill that, once signed by Gov. Doug Ducey, will become the most wide-reaching school privatization plan in the country.

In his January State of the State address, Ducey called on Arizona lawmakers to send him bills that would “expand school choice any way we can,” and the Republican-dominated legislature obliged, delivering last Friday’s bill, which will open a preexisting program for Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESAs) up to the entire state. In practice, the law will now give parents who opt out of public schools a debit card for roughly $7,000 per child that can be used to pay for private school tuition, but also for much more: for religious schools, homeschool expenses, tutoring, online classes, education supplies and fees associated with “microschools,” in which small groups of parents pool resources to hire teachers.

Ducey said the law had “set the gold standard in educational freedom” in the country, and right-wing politicians and education activists quickly agreed. Corey DeAngelis, the research director of Betsy DeVos’ school privatization lobby group American Federation for Children, declared on Twitter that Arizona “just took first place” when it comes to school choice. Anti-critical race theory activist Christopher Rufo — the Manhattan Institute fellow who this spring called for fostering “universal public school distrust” in order to build support for “universal school choice” — tweeted, “Every red state in the country should follow [Ducey’s] lead,” since the law “gives every family a right to exit any public school that fails to educate their children or reflect their values.”

RELATED: Salon investigates: The war on public schools is being fought from Hillsdale College

From the American Enterprise Institute, education researcher Max Eden happily concluded that “Arizona now funds students, not systems,” deploying a formulation that has become common among conservative education activists, as when last week the Moms for Liberty network chastised Arizona public school advocates who opposed the bill as “system advocates” rather than “education advocates.” From Rhode Island, anti-CRT activist Nicole Solas, a fellow with the right-wing Independent Women’s Forum, tweeted, “You know what happens when you abuse people? People leave you. Bye, public school.”

And back in Arizona, the Goldwater Institute, a libertarian think tank founded in honor of former senator and right-wing icon Barry Goldwater, celebrated the law it had done much to create as a “major victory for families wary of a one-size-fits-all approach to education,” plus a cost-saving measure to boot, since the total funding parents would receive through ESA vouchers is $4,000 less than Arizona’s already paltry per-pupil funding for public schools.

By contrast, Democratic politicians and public education advocates described the law as the potential “nail in the coffin” for public schools in Arizona, as Beth Lewis, director of Save Our Schools Arizona (SOS Arizona) put it.

“The Republican universal voucher system is designed to kill public education,” tweeted former Arizona House Rep. Diego Rodriguez. “OUR nation’s greatness is built on free Public schools. The GOP goal is to recreate segregation, expand the opportunity gap, and destroy the foundation of our democracy.”

“I think it’s a very serious mistake and the result will be that, within a decade, Arizona will have a very, very poorly educated adult population,” added Carol Corbett Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education. “Maybe that’s the game…”

“It’s very easy to set up a one-room shop in a strip mall, give every kid a Chromebook and a plaid skirt, tell parents they’re on an accelerated curriculum and take that $7,000,” said Lewis. But it’s equally easy for those schools to “close up shop whenever they want,” as numerous low-quality voucher schools have been known to do, leaving students stranded partway through the school year. When that happens, said Lewis, “There’s no recourse to claw those funds back.”

Unfortunately, said Carol Corbett Burris, ESA programs have already demonstrated problems with that approach, through numerous cases of fraud, in which parents used the funds for things other than their children’s education.

“It’s like an insurance company giving parents of a sick child $7,000 and saying, ‘We don’t care if you go to a physician or a dentist — take that money and do what you believe is best,” Burris continued. “Parents may know best about many things, but they’re not professional educators any more than they are doctors, dentists or nurses.”

What’s more, SOS Arizona pointed out, the ESA funds could also be used to send taxpayer funding to the sort of private school being established by Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, who recently announced plans to start a network of anti-“woke” Turning Point Academies, first in Arizona, then around the country. The first such school, with more than 600 students, is set to open in Glendale this fall, as the result of a partnership between Kirk and Phoenix megachurch Dream City. According to Newsweek, the academy will ban CRT, the New York Times’ “1619 Project” and what it calls “radical LGBT agendas.” Those 600-plus students, Lewis notes, will add up to some “4 million taxpayer dollars that go straight into Kirk’s academy.”

On a larger level, the new law also speeds up the same sort of death spiral that has afflicted public schools across the country, by steadily draining funds away from public education. While the immediate cost of ESA expansion — for students already outside the public school system — will draw on Arizona’s general funds, the money to cover children who leave public schools in coming years will be deducted from public school budgets. ..

“I think we’re witnessing the dismantling of public education in our state,” said Lewis. “Will it happen overnight? No. But the effects will be felt quickly and the blow to public schools will be unsustainable.” If even a few kids leave a neighborhood school, the difference in funding is noticeable. If six or seven do, “that’s a whole teacher [salary] down.” In her own school, where Lewis teaches third grade, that sort of downsizing would mean the immediate increase of her class size of 27 students to more than 40. “Or do you make the cuts elsewhere? Do you cut special education, which has already been cut to the bone? Or music, arts and after-school programs, which have already been cut to the bone? Do you not have an assistant principal? Then how many students don’t get what they need?”

“We are going to stop this by any means necessary,” Lewis said, including electoral work, public education, and possibly another ballot initiative, even if that means risking the “poison pill” cancellation of the state’s newly increased public school funds. “All options are on the table.”

Read more on the right’s systematic assault on public education:

Kathryn Joyce is an investigative reporter at Salon, and the author of two books: “The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking and the New Gospel of Adoption” and “Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement.”MORE FROM KATHRYN JOYCE

Categories Arizona, Corporate Reform, Dark Money, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers

Texas: Hillsdale Supporter Buys Control of Texas State Board of Education

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2022 //
24

I wrote about the purchase of the Texas State Board of Education by the chairman of the board of Hillsdale in a previous post.

The state board rejected an application for a Hillsdale charter school, and the rejection was supported by three Republicans on the board.

In retaliation, the chairman of the Hillsdale College board contributed $250,000 to a PAC to punish the errant Republicans. The PAC replaced two of them with privatizers, and the third was redistricted out of his seat.

Now, it’s smooth sailing for the theocratic, 1776-themed Hillsdale charters, which cater to white students.

The Hillsdale website lists its current charter schools.

What it does not mention is that the Hillsdale Classical Academies have collected millions of dollars in federal funding from the federal Charter Schools Program.

Here is a sampling of Hillsdale-Barney charter schools that have applied for and received federal funding:

Ascent Classical Academy of Northern Colorado $671,000

Treasure Valley Classical Academy Idaho  $1.25 million

Ivywood Classical Academy Michigan 1 million and managed by a for-profit

Seven Oaks Classical School, Indiana $899,962

St. Johns Classical Academy, Florida $513,000

Pineapple Cove Classical Academy at West Melbourne Florida  $612,363.00

Golden View Classical Academy Colorado $215,000

Atlanta Classical Academy $650,000

Estancia Valley Classical, New Mexico, $647,349

Doesn’t it make you furious to know that our tax dollars are supporting this Trump -Christian charter chain?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Industry, Privatization, Propaganda, Religion, Texas

Tennessee: Hillsdale President Says Teachers are Dumb and Dumber

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2022 //
21

Peter Greene tells the story caught on tape when Larry Arnn, president of rightwing Christian Hillsdale College, tells Tennessee Governor Bill Lee that teachers are the dumbest, trained by the dumbest, and you don’t need to know anything to be a teacher.

Governor Lee listens abjectly. He invited Hillsdale to open 100 charter schools across Tennessee. Hillsdale agreed to open 50.

Greene writes about Arnn’s tirade, which was taped:

“The teachers are trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country.”


“They are taught that they are going to go and do something to those kids…. Do they ever talk about anything except what they are going to do to these kids?”


“In colleges, what you hire now is administrators…. Now, because they are appointing all these diversity officers, what are their degrees in? Education. It’s easy. You don’t have to know anything.”


“The philosophic understanding at the heart of modern education is enslavement…. They’re messing with people’s children, and they feel entitled to do anything to them.”


“You will see how education destroys generations of people. It’s devastating. It’s like the plague.”

“Here’s a key thing that we’re going to try to do. We are going to try to demonstrate that you don’t have to be an expert to educate a child because basically anybody can do it.”

Someone should have told Arnn that America was built by people who attended public schools, not by graduates of Hillsdale.

Governor Lee didn’t have the guts to stand up for the teachers of Tennessee. Probably he thinks the people who voted for him are the dumbest of the dumb.

Anne Thomas-Abbott, a teacher in Knoxville, did respond to Larry Arnn, whose contempt for teachers is abhorrent and ignorant.

Greene adds:

If you are shaking your head at Tennessee, I suggest you look around your own state first, because these public education-hating faux Christian right wingers are all over the country, and when he’s selling his product in public, Arnn is rarely as blunt as he was before the Tennessee crowd. Make sure everyone gets to hear what he really thinks.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Education Industry, Extremism, Ignorance, Republicans, Scandal, Shame, Stupid, Teachers, Tennessee

Florida: Hillsdale College Puts Its Brand and Charter Schools in Red States

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2022 //
14

Hillsdale College is one of the most conservative colleges in the nation. It describes itself as nonsectarian Christian. It sets itself up as the font of moral, patriotic education, whose students emerge as militant carriers of the Hillsdale message. Hypocrisy is occasionally exposed, as when it turned out that the former president of Hillsdale, an expert in high morality, was having an affair with his daughter-in-law. She committed suicide; he resigned with a golden parachute. Undaunted, Hillsdale continues to present itself to the world as the ultimate defender of faith, morality, patriotism, etc.

Now Hillsdale has a new shtick: it has created a curriculum for the Barney chain of charter schools. The curriculum is based on Trump’s “1776 Curriculum,” a time when men were men, women wore petticoats, and many Black people were enslaved. .

Today’s three posts delve into Hillsdale’s ties to three states where rightwing extremists are in charge.

First is Florida, where Hillsdale’s president Larry Arnn has developed a close relationship with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

The Tampa Bay Times reported on Hillsdale’s influence in Florida:

TALLAHASSEE — The spotlight was on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, as it so often has been over the past three years.

“Our speaker tonight is one of the most important people living,” Larry P. Arnn said as he introduced DeSantis as the keynote speaker at the Hillsdale National Leadership Seminar on Feb. 23 in Naples. Arnn is the president of Hillsdale College, a politically influential private Christian college in southern Michigan.

“This person’s most important work is before him — and we need him.”

The introduction highlights the relationship between DeSantis and the conservative college, which 12 years ago set out to reshape public education through the growth of charter schools and in recent years has expanded its reach in Florida’s education system.

The college’s influence has been seen in the state’s rejection of math textbooks over what DeSantis called “indoctrinating concepts,” the state’s push to renew the importance of civics education in public schools, and the rapid growth of Hillsdale’s network of affiliated public charter schools in Florida.

Hillsdale also has had sway over the Republican-led Legislature. In 2019, lawmakers approved a law that allowed the college and three other groups to help the state revise its civics standards. Three years later, those guidelines are part of a DeSantis-led civics initiative that has concerned several educatorsabout an infusion of Christianity and conservative ideologies…

DeSantis talked about how since becoming governor, he has banned so-called sanctuary cities, fought lockdown policies during the pandemic, rejected “corporate media” pressures, and reshaped the Florida Supreme Court to what he referred to as “the most conservative Supreme Court of any state in the country.”

The governor also highlighted his push to reform the state’s education system by continuing the two-decades-long push by Republicans to expand school vouchers and charter schools. He also touted Hillsdale’s “flourishing” network of classical schools in Florida.

“I mean how many places, other than Hillsdale, are actually standing for truth, excellence and to produce people who will be leaders?” DeSantis said, after arguing that “woke-ism” is embedded in academic institutions.

A few months after DeSantis’ speech, two state-led efforts further highlighted the relationship between the governor and the college.

In April, the Department of Education made national headlines for its decision to reject dozens of math textbooks because they included references to critical race theory and other “prohibited topics” and “unsolicited strategies,” officials said at the time.

A Times/Herald review of nearly 6,000 pages of textbook examination showed only three of the 125 reviewers found objectionable content. Two of the three were affiliated with Hillsdale College. One was Jonah Apel, a sophomore student majoring in political science, and the other was Jordan Adams, a civics education specialist at the college.

The college declined the opportunity to review the math textbooks but suggested two consultants, neither of whom is a math educator.

Apel and Adams were invited by the state to review “prohibited topics,” though Florida Department of Education officials have not responded to questions inquiring why they specifically invited people to scour for contentious issues like critical race theory. The state paid “prohibited topic” reviewers $500 per review, $170 more than they paid others who reviewed books to ensure the books matched the rest of the state’s math standards, state records show.

Hillsdale has been actively involved in shaping DeSantis’s civics initiative, which is closely aligned with Trump’s 1776 Commission, as a project to glorify American history and minimize unpleasant episodes, like slavery and brutality towards Black and indigenous people.

Hillsdale’s approach to teaching history has drawn praise from DeSantis and former Florida Secretary of Education Richard Corcoran, as well as national conservative figures like former President Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and former U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy Devos.

Arnn, the college’s president, was appointed by Trump to be the chairperson of the president’s Advisory 1776 Commission, which was formed to “advise the president about the core principles of the American founding and to protect those principles by promoting patriotic education,” according to Matthew Spalding, who Trump appointed as the commission’s executive director. Spalding is the vice president for Washington operations and the dean of the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale’s Washington, D.C., extension.

Hillsdale’s digital digest, Imprimis, features the writing of conservative thinkers like Christopher Rufo, who has worked with DeSantis to combat issues like critical race theory and gender identity.

Florida has seven Hillsdale-affiliated charter schools, with more on the way.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Extremism, Florida

Good News from West Virginia: Court Strikes Down Voucher Law!

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2022 //
10

The courts are still dispensing justice! In West Virginia, if not in DC.

WEST VIRGINIA CIRCUIT COURT STRIKES DOWN UNCONSTITUTIONAL PRIVATE SCHOOL VOUCHER LAW

 

Press Contact:

Sharon Krengel

skrengel@edlawcenter.org

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

Charleston, WV – This morning, Judge Joanna Tabit of the Circuit Court of Kanawha County granted West Virginia parents’ request to halt implementation of the state’s expansive new private school voucher law. The hearing this morning in Beaver v. Moore resulted in Judge Tabit granting a preliminary injunction and permanently enjoining the program, which would have siphoned millions of public dollars from the state’s underfunded public schools to subsidize private education.

 

The Beaver plaintiffs are public school parents challenging the private school voucher law under the West Virginia Constitution. The President of West Virginia’s Board of Education and the State Superintendent are courageously standing with the parents in support of their request.

 

The state defendants and pro-voucher lawyers from the Institute for Justice had asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit. Judge Tabit denied their motions.

 

“The judge clearly understood that the West Virginia Constitution does not allow for this voucher program,” said Tamerlin Godley, partner at Paul Hastings LLP, co-founder of Public Funds Public Schools, and lead lawyer for the case. “Stopping the voucher program was absolutely essential to protect the state’s students and their public schools.”

 

West Virginia’s 2021 voucher law authorizes the broadest voucher program in the nation, with eligibility for any student who attends public school for 45 days or is entering kindergarten, regardless of family income. Under the voucher law, the State deposits public funds in private accounts for use on a wide range of private education expenses. There are no accountability or quality safeguards. Over time, the law will force West Virginia taxpayers to subsidize all private and homeschooling in the state, totaling over $120 million a year.

 

“West Virginia has a proud history of prioritizing quality public schools for all the state’s children, and that commitment is enshrined in our constitution,” said Jack Tinney, co-counsel for the parent plaintiffs and a partner at Hendrickson & Long in Charleston. “We could not stand by and allow the voucher law to undermine West Virginia students’ constitutional rights.”

 

In the Beaver lawsuit, the parent plaintiffs highlight the numerous ways the voucher law violates the Education Clause of the West Virginia Constitution. The Legislature has no authority to fund a separate system of private schooling that infringes on its ability to provide a “thorough and efficient system of public schools.” The voucher law also violates the State Constitution’s prohibition against “special laws” that treat similar people differently because it excludes voucher students from critical protections afforded public school students against discrimination based on disability, religion, or LGBTQ status.

 

“In my view, the Legislature has violated its constitutional level obligations regarding public education and funding by enacting House Bill 2013 for the Hope scholarship fund,” Judge Tabit stated in explaining her decision.

 

The plaintiff families in Beaver v. Moore are represented pro bono by the law firm Paul Hastings LLP, Education Law Center, and the West Virginia office of the firm Hendrickson & Long. Education Law Center co-leads the Public Funds Public Schools campaign, which works to ensure public funds are spent on public education and not diverted to private schools. Paul Hastings partner Tamerlin Godley has spearheaded other successful PFPS efforts, including NAACP v. DeVos, which stopped former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos from diverting hundreds of millions of dollars in pandemic relief funds to private schools, and a 2016 lawsuit that permanently enjoined a similarly expansive voucher law in Nevada.

 

For more information, visit the Beaver v. Moore page on the PFPS website.

Categories Education Industry, Equity, Justice, School Choice, Vouchers, West Virginia

Carol Burris Explains the Changes to the Federal Charter Schools Program

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2022 //
19

Make no mistake: the changes to the federal Charter Schools Program a few days ago was a big win for supporters of public schools and a major defeat for the charter lobby, led by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

The Network for Public Education was proud to lead the fight to reform the Charter Schools Program, which started in 1994 as a tiny program to help jumpstart new charters but turned into a slush fund to pump federal money into giant charter chains like KIPP, IDEA, and Success Academy, all of which are very well funded by their billionaire board members and friends.

The charter lobby, overflowing with cash, bought ads on major television programs to fight the Department’s effort to regulate the federal funding of charters, especially the proposed exclusion of for-profit charter operators. The Network for Public Education did not have millions or even hundreds of thousands to lobby on behalf of public schools. It did not buy any TV or radio time. NPE is funded by the 350,000 friends who contribute small amounts of money to fight privatization. Contrary to the claims of the charter lobby, NPE is not funded by the teachers’ unions. It is funded by parents, teachers, principals, and other citizens who don’t want to lose their public schools.

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, has worked tirelessly to persuade the U.S. Department of Education and members of Congress to require accountability and set rules for the federal Charter Schools Program. She wrote numerous reports, based on government data, to demonstrate the need for oversight. The program receives $440 million a year with no scrutiny, and its waste, fraud, and abuse are legion. Unlike the charter lobby, NPE has a small staff. Carol is the only full-time employee. Her hard work paid off. Despite the millions of dollars spent by the charter lobby to keep the federal dollars flowing without accountability, transparency or oversight, the Department ignored them.

Carol Burris explained the new regulations in a post on Valerie Strauss’s blog “The Answer Sheet” at The Washington Post.

Strauss begins:

The Biden administration is moving to overhaul the federal Charter School Program with new rules finalized last week that make it harder for for-profit organizations to win taxpayer money and require greater transparency and accountability for grant applicants.

The program has awarded billions of dollars in grants over the past several decades for the expansion or opening of charters, which are publicly funded but privately operated, often with little or no public oversight. President Biden said during the 2020 election campaign that he wanted to end federal funding for for-profit charter schools, but the final regulations don’t go that far.

Charter school supporters strongly objected to a draft set of rules released earlier this year, saying they seemed intended to kill the program outright, which the Education Department denied. Nina Rees, president and chief executive officer of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, said in a statement that the final regulations appear to be “less harmful than the original proposal,” but added that more analysis of the details was needed.

Critics of the federal Charter School Program said both the draft set of regulation changes and the final versions were important moves to stop waste and fraud in the federal program and provide more transparency to the operation of charters.

Charter advocates say these schools offer necessary choices to families that want alternatives to troubled schools in traditional public school districts. Critics say charter schools drain funding from public school districts that educate the vast majority of children in the United States, and are part of a movement to privatize public education.

The Network for Public Education, an advocacy organization that opposes charter schools, has published several reports since 2019 on the federal program, revealing the waste of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on charter schools that did not open or were shut down. The reports also showed that the Education Department did not adequately monitor federal grants to these schools. You can read about two of those reports here and here. A third report details how many for-profit management companies evade state laws banning for-profit charters.

This post analyzes the final rules that the Education Department released last week — though more details are yet to come. The following was written by Carol Burris, an award-winning New York school principal who is now executive director of the Network for Public Education and who wrote or co-wrote the reports mentioned above. Burris has written extensively about charter schools and other school reform efforts for more than a decade on The Answer Sheet.

By Carol Burris

Last week, efforts to clean up the wasteful federal Charter School Program (CSP) made remarkable progress. First, the fiscal year 2023 House Appropriations bill report not only made cuts to the CSP program budget, it demanded improvements. Then the day after the passage of the bill by the House Appropriations Committee, the long-awaited final regulations for the Charter School Program were published by the Education Department. Although a few concessions were made to the charter lobby, nearly all proposed regulations remained intact from a draft version released earlier this year.

Let’s start with the fiscal year 2023 House Appropriations bill. It reduced the Charter School Program budget by $40 million from President Biden’s request to keep funding for next year the same as this, at $440 million. The bill also called on Congress and the U.S. Education Department to phase out for-profit management organizations, and encouraged further investigations and reforms. In short, it supported the proposed CSP regulations.

During a June 30 hearing on the bill, two amendments — the first to defund the Department of Education’s regulation efforts and the second to restore the $40 million budget cut — were defeated in committee votes.

When Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) offered his amendment to kill the new regulations by defunding them, (watch beginning at 3:20:37), Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.), chairman of the committee, expressed her “strong opposition.” She accused the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools of “peddling un-credible exaggerations” and “misrepresentations” to defeat what she characterized as modest reforms. She further stated that they had been “willing to take desperate measures to block accountability and transparency” to protect for-profit education management organizations. She voiced her strong support for reform of the CSP to address long-standing concerns. Moolenaar’s amendment was defeated 32 to 22.

The following day, on July 1, the department held an informational briefing on the final new regulations, the priorities, and the assurances applicants must provide to secure a grant from the Charter School Program (CSP). Following the meeting, three documents were posted here. The first describes the submitted comments and the department’s response to them as well as the new requirements for the three grant programs within the overall CSP (SE, or State Entity; CMO, or charter management organization; and Developer, or charter school developers).

The department received 26,580 comments on the proposed regulations, most of which were generated from letter-writing campaigns. Of all of the comments, 5,770 were unique. According to the department, “the majority [of comments] expressed general support for the regulations and the priorities.”

For those who have long advocated for overhauling the CSP program, here are the significant gains.

Schools managed by for-profits will have a difficult time securing CSP grants and, in some cases, will be excluded from funding.

If an applicant has or will have a contract with a for-profit management company (or a “nonprofit management organization operated by or on behalf of a for-profit entity”), they must provide extensive information, including a copy or description of the contract, comprehensive leadership personnel reporting and the identification of possible related party transactions. Real estate contracts must be reported, and “evergreen contracts” in which there is automatic contract renewal are prohibited. The school cannot share legal, accounting or auditing services with the for-profit. The state entity that awards the grant must publish the for-profit management contract between the awardee and the school.

The final regulations also include the reporting and exposure of the for-profit’s related entities. The Network for Public Education recommended the addition of “related entities” in its comments to the department. Our report, “Chartered for Profit,” explains how for-profit owners create separate corporations with different names to mask the complete control of the for-profit over operations of the school.

Finally, the applicant must assure that “the [for-profit] management company does not exercise full or substantial control over the charter school,” thereby barring any charter school operated by a for-profit with a “sweeps contract” from obtaining CSP funds.

There will be greater transparency and accountability for charter schools, State Entities, and CMOs that apply for grants.

This is probably the most underreported win for those who support charter school reform.

Transparency gains include:

  • An assurance that the grantee holds a public hearing on the proposed or expanded charter school. These hearings must be well advertised and include information on how the school will increase diversity and not promote segregation. Schools are obligated to reach out to the community to encourage attendance and then provide a summary of the hearing as part of the application. These public hearings are required of direct grantees and subgrantees — both SE and CMO.
  • The publication of for-profit management contracts.
  • The publication of the names of awardee schools and their peer-reviewed applications by states and CMOs.
  • A requirement that the school publish information for prospective parents, including fees, uniform requirements, disciplinary practices, transportation plans, and whether the school participates in the national free or reduced-price lunch program.

Accountability gains include:

  • More substantial supervision by state entities of the schools that are awarded grants, including in-depth descriptions of how they will review applications, the peer review process they will use, and how they will select grantees for in-depth monitoring.
  • Restrictions regarding the spending of grants by unauthorized schools. Charter schools not yet approved by an authorizer will be eligible to use planning grant funds; however, they cannot dip into any implementation funds until they are approved and have secured a facility. This new regulation will limit, though not prevent, all funding that goes to charter schools that never open.

Regulations to stop White-flight charters from receiving CSP funding and ensure the charter is needed in the community.

The final regulations are good, but not as strong as initially proposed.

One of the more controversial aspects of the new regulations was the need for the school to conduct a community impact analysis. The charter lobby focused on one example by which a school could show need (district over-enrollment) and used it as a rallying cry to garner opposition to the regulations. In the new regulations, the department clarifies that there are other ways to demonstrate need, including wait lists and offering a unique program. It also eliminated the need for the applicant to provide a district enrollment projection.

The community impact analysis is now called a needs analysis. That analysis must include evidence of community desire for the school; documentation of the school’s enrollment projection and how it was derived; a comparison of the demographics of the school with the area where the students are likely to be drawn; the projected impact of the school on racial and socio-economic district diversity; and an assurance that the school would not “hamper, delay or negatively affect” district desegregation efforts. Applicants would also have to submit their plan to ensure that the charter school does not increase racial segregation and isolation in the school district from which the charter would draw its students.

The department went to great pains to reassure applicants that schools in racially isolated districts would not need to show diversity (this straw man argument had been used by the charter lobby and even some editorial boards to fight the regulations, although the original rules had made that clear). Those schools that are unlikely to be diverse due to the school’s special mission would also have to submit an explanation.

Still, there are some concerns about unintended consequences of the regulations.

With the additional caveat regarding “special mission,” the department is trying to preserve grants to schools that are themed to promote, for example, Native American culture in an area where Native American students are a minority population in the district. That is understandable.

However, White-flight charter schools could skirt the regulation by arguing that their mission is to provide a Eurocentric, classical curriculum.

For example, charter schools opened by Hillsdale College — a small Christian college in Michigan that promotes a “classical” curriculum — are disproportionately White. These schools could claim that their mission appeals to students with European backgrounds and that the strong “anti-CRT” message in their “1776 curriculum” does not appeal to Black families. Although Hillsdale College does not take federal funds, Hillsdale charter schools do. We have identified nearly $7 million awarded to Hillsdale member charter schools up to April 2021. Newer schools have likely secured CSP grants as well.

Priority 2 — which encouraged charter/public school cooperation — was retained but categorized as “invitational” for the 2022 cycle.

The second straw man argument the National Alliance for Public Charters used to fuel their #backoff campaign on the regulations was the claim that charter/public school district cooperative projects were required. They were not. They were a priority, and priorities can be mandated, competitive (assigned a few points), or invitational (looked up favorably but no point value).

As I explained here, it is rare for a priority to be mandated. For example, of the six priorities for the 2022 State Entities grants, only one is required, which is that authorizers use best practices. The department now makes it clear that it is unlikely that charter/district cooperative activity will ever be a mandated priority while leaving the door open to it becoming a competitive priority after the 2022 award cycle.

All regulations, priorities and assurances go into effect for this 2022 grant cycle with one exception: Developer grant applicants, a small program in which individual schools apply, do not have to submit a needs analysis in 2022 only. That is because applications are due shortly.

Summary

Since 2019 when the Network for Public Education issued its reports on the federal Charter School Program, the program has come under increased congressional scrutiny. We have followed up by submitting letters to the department, often co-signed by other groups, demanding reform and exposing abuses of the program.

These new regulations are an essential first step in making sure that fewer tax dollars go to schools that never open, schools that quickly close, and for-profit operators. Unscrupulous individuals who used the program for their enrichment will find it more difficult to do so. State Entities that have pushed money out the door will now be forced to provide more oversight and supervision. And so they should. State Entities get 10 percent of every grant, representing millions of federal dollars, to use for such supervision.

We do not doubt that some applicants will still provide false information, as we found time and time again, but now as all peer-reviewed applications go online, groups such as ours will serve as watchdogs and report falsehoods and misrepresentations to the Office of the Inspector General.

And for all of the charter schools that are fronts for for-profit organizations, the Education Department just put a big sign on the door that says “you need not apply.”

Categories Accountability, Cardona, Miguel, Charter Schools, Corruption, Courage, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud

The Koch Libertarian Project vs. America

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2022 //
56

What is happening to the America that we swore allegiance to every day in public school? what happened to the America that was “indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”? How did we get a rogue Supreme Court that recklessly demolishes women’s rights, the separation of church and state, gun control, public safety, and efforts by government to prevent climate disasters? Who kidnapped the conservative Republican Party that believed in stability and tradition? From whence came the people who scorn the commonweal and ridicule Constitutional norms?

Former state legislator Jeanne Dietsch has an answer. Connect the dots by looking at what has happened to New Hampshire. The coup failed in Washington, D.C. on January 6, she writes. But it is moving forward in New Hampshire, with many of the same characters and all of the same goals.

If you read one post today, read this.

She writes:

During the last few weeks, US House leaders documented the nearly successful January 6 coup piece by piece, before our eyes. That personal power grab failed. Meanwhile, the steps clinching takeover of our government by radical reactionaries have nearly triumphed. A plan decades in the making. A plan nearly invisible to the ordinary public.


I can barely believe myself how this story weaves from Kansas to Concord to DC to the fields of southern Michigan over the course of six decades. It starts in Witchita. Koch Industries is the largest privately held company in the US, with over $115 billion in revenues, mostly fossil-fuel related. For many years, two of the founders’ sons, Charles and David Koch, each owned 42% of the company.


The younger, David, studied in the engineering department of MIT for 5 years, simultaneous with young John H. Sununu. Both finished their Master’s degrees in 1963.

1980: THE KOCHS SET THEIR GOALS


Seventeen years later, David Koch ran for Vice President of the US on the Libertarian ticket. The campaign was largely funded by Koch interests. The Libertarian platform of 1980, shown below, may look disturbingly familiar to those following news today.

Open her post to read the Koch Libertarian platform of 1980.

Libertarians demanded the abolition of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, public schools, aid to children, the Post Office, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, and more.

The infrastructure for achieving that platform was founded two years later. It was called the Federalist Society. It was a plan by a “small but influential group of law professors, lawyers, and judges.” Its goal?

To train members of their professions to believe in “originalism.” Originalists “strictly construe” the Constitution as they believed the Framers designed it way back in 1787. This matched David Koch’s 1980 platform. It would leave corporations free to do whatever profited them most without regard for social costs or regulations. Older Federalist Society members used their influence to advance their followers to higher judgeships.

SUNUNU FAMILY ROLES


Meanwhile, John Sununu became governor of New Hampshire, then Chief of Staff for President George W. Bush. In that role, John thwarted a plan for the US to join the international conference to address climate change in 1989. Actions like this, that benefitted Koch and the rest of the fossil-fuel industry, would become a hallmark of the Sununu family.


In 1993, an executive of Charles and David’s Koch Industries Michigan subsidiary, Guardian Industries, became a founding trustee of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy [JBC] in NH. Its mission was to advance many of the policies listed on David Koch’s platform of 1980. John Sununu, and later his son James, would chair the JBC board through today. Another of Sununu’s sons, Michael, would become a vocal climate denier and industry consultant. Still another, Senator John E. Sununu, would oppose the Climate Stewardship Act of 2003. But the Sununus were not coup leaders, just complicit.

BUILDING INFRASTRUCTURE FOR THE COUP


But let’s jump back to the Federalist Society. Its mission was succeeding. They were stacking the lower courts.?..Those justices hired young lawyers as clerks. From 1996-97, Thomas employed a Federalist Society clerk named John Eastman.


Twenty-three years later, Eastman would meet secretly with President Donald Trump. He would convince him that Vice President Pence could refuse to accept electoral college ballots on January 6. But back in 1999, Eastman became a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute. “The mission of the Claremont Institute is to restore the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life.”


Now we’re almost at the secret clubhouse of the coup. The Claremont Institute was run by a fellow regressive named Larry Arnn.(Photo below) In late 1999, Arnn was in the process of replacing the president of Hillsdale College because of a scandal that made national news. Hillsdale promotes conservative family values. Yet its leader was having an affair with his daughter-in-law. She committed suicide. Hillsdale was the central hub for Libertarian radicals so they needed a strong leader to pull them out of the mud.

Please read the rest of this fascinating post. There is one blatant error: she refers to “Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer” as Koch justices, but Breyer was a liberal justice appointed by Clinton. She must have meant the crackpot Alito.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Bigotry, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Charter Schools, Citizenship, Civil Rights, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Environment, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, For-Profit, Fraud, Funding, History, Injustice, Koch Brothers, New Hampshire, Privatization, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Steve Hinnefeld: Indiana’s Fraudulent Voucher Program

By dianeravitch
July 3, 2022 //
8

Steve Hinnefeld writes about the very expensive and ineffectual voucher program in Indiana, which is based on a lie. On several lies, actually. The promoters of vouchers claimed that vouchers would save poor kids from failing public schools. He shows in this post that most vouchers are used by students who never attended a public school, who are not poor, and who are not getting a better education than students in public schools. The advocates said it would save money, but the cost this year is nearly a quarter billion dollars.

He writes:

Indiana awarded $241.4 million in the 2021-22 school year to pay tuition and fees for students to attend private schools. That’s 44% more than the state spent on vouchers the previous year.

The increase, detailed in a Department of Education report, isn’t surprising. The Indiana General Assembly in 2021 vastly expanded the voucher program, opening it to families near the top of the state’s income scale and making the vouchers significantly more generous.

Nearly all the 330 private schools that received voucher funding are religious schools. Some discriminate against students, families and employees because of their religion, disability status, sexual orientation or gender identity. Indiana is bankrolling bigotry.

And many of the families receiving vouchers could pay private school tuition without public assistance. Some 20% of voucher households last year had an income of $100,000 or more, well above Indiana’s median household income of about $58,000.

The voucher program, created in 2011, was sold as a way to help children from poor families opt out of “failing” public schools. Mitch Daniels, Indiana’s governor at the time and a leading voucher advocate, said students should attend a public school for two semesters to qualify, giving public schools a chance to show what they could do.

But the two-semester requirement fell by the wayside. Students now have nine pathways by which they can qualify. If a family meets the income requirement, which is laughably lax, a private school can find a way to get them vouchers.

When the program started, supporters said it wouldn’t cost anything, because, if the students didn’t have vouchers, the state would be paying for them to attend public schools. They don’t even pretend to believe that anymore. In 2021-22, 70% of voucher students had no record of having attended a public school in the state. Most voucher funding is going to families that intended all along to send their kids to private schools — and often had the means to do so.

The program initially served both low- and middle-income families. Last year, the legislature threw the door open to high-income families. Now, a family of five making $172,000 can receive vouchers worth over $5,400 on average per child. For about half of all voucher students, the award covers the full cost of tuition and fees at their private school.

Voucher participation had stalled, but with last year’s expansion, the number of voucher students exploded: 44,376 students had vouchers in 2021-22, up 24.3% from the previous year.

Over the years, Indiana’s voucher population has grown whiter and markedly less poor. Nearly 60% of voucher students are white, an overrepresentation considering the program is most pervasive in urban areas, where there are many Black and Hispanic students. Only 10.5% of voucher students are Black, compared to 13.5% of Indiana public and charter school students.

The program might still seem justifiable if Indiana private schools were academically superior. They aren’t. Researchers at the universities of Kentucky and Notre Dame found that students who received vouchers fell behind their peers who remained in public schools.

Indiana policymakers no longer care about that either. They’ve embraced the idea that parents should have complete control over their children’s schooling and the public funds that pay for it. In a world of unrestricted school choice, state money will “follow the child,” wherever that may lead. Standards, accountability and academic quality don’t matter.

The point of privatization is not to help needy students but to destroy the public schools.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Failure, Fraud, Hoax, Indiana, Privatization, Religion, Vouchers

Philadelphia Inquirer Editorial Wonders Why New Supe Needs $450,000 Handholding

By dianeravitch
July 2, 2022 //
23

The Philadelphia School Board hired an inexperienced school superintendent, then signed a contract to pay $450,000 to a firm to train the new superintendent. Former Nashville school board member Amy Frogge wrote an open letter to the Philadelphia school board, warning about the track record and failures of the consultant they hired.

The Philadelphia Inquirer published this editorial.

From the start, questions surrounded new Philadelphia School Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr.’s readiness for one of the toughest and most important jobs in the city.

Watlington only had a little over a year of experienceas a superintendent at the Rowan-Salisbury School System, a small suburban district in North Carolina.

With 114,000 students, the Philadelphia School District is more than five times the size of Rowan-Salisbury’s 18,200 students. Philadelphia’s $3.9 billion school budget dwarfs Rowan-Salisbury’s $191 million.

Watlington spent his career in North Carolina, a right-to-work state with nonunion schools. But Philadelphia is an entrenched union city and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers is known for driving hard bargains and challenging major reforms.

Now comes word that the School District hired a group of consultants to essentially help Watlington do a job for which he is paid $340,000 a year. In turn, 10 consultants are getting an eye-popping $450,000 to support Watlington and “ensure a smooth leadership transition as he begins his tenure.”

That’s some high-priced hand-holding. It is also an ominous start for Watlington, which signals he may not be ready for the big time.

More troubling, one of the lead consultants — the Tennessee-based firm Joseph & Associates — comes with a trail of controversy. The firm’s founder, Shawn Joseph, served as the superintendent of the Metro Nashville public school system for less than three years before the school board bought out his contract in 2019.

During Joseph’s tenure in Nashville, questions were raised about costlyno-bid contracts, his use of a school bus driver as his chauffeur, and a school maintenance employee doing work at Joseph’s home. After Joseph left, Tennessee education officials recommended suspending his state license for one year.

After hearing about Joseph’s consulting contract, a former Nashville school board member wrote a letter to Philadelphia school officials saying she was “deeply disturbed” by the contract and warned the district about Joseph.

Joseph’s consulting contract with the Philadelphia School District calls for him to help Watlington execute “a 100-day entry plan,” which will include a listening and learning tour of Philadelphia. So, the guy from Tennessee is going to help the guy from North Carolina find his way around Philly.

Phase two of the contract calls for Joseph’s firm to help Watlington develop and implement “a transition team process informed by the quantitative and qualitative data gathered” during the listening tour.

“So, the guy from Tennessee is going to help the guy from North Carolina find his way around Philly.”

Phase three of the contract calls for Joseph’s firm to help Watlington develop a five-year strategic plan that “will serve as the district’s road map to achieve the goals and guardrails.”

That’s all well and good, but the three-step plan amounts to little more than the basic tasks of any incoming superintendent. The existing staff at the School District should be able to show Watlington around Philadelphia and his executive team can help develop a five-year plan.

Watlington defended the $450,000 consulting contract, but it still sounds like a giant waste of taxpayers’ money. The School District should look to end this contract immediately. If Philadelphia is serious about improving educational outcomes of students, it should look to Washington, D.C., which has made impressive gains in student test scores largely by improving the quality of teachers.

If Watlington wants Joseph’s help, he can read Joseph’s book titled “The Principal’s Guide to the First 100 Days of the School Year: Creating Instructional Momentum.” It’s available on Amazon for $29.95. That’s a better deal than the $450,000 consulting contract.

By all accounts, Watlington comes across as a dedicated educator. But the Philadelphia School District needs a dynamic leader with a track record of success who can hit the ground running. Not one who requires an overpriced consultant to perform on-the-job training.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Education Industry, Nashville, Philadelphia

Texas: State Board Rejects Charters, So Charter Sponsor Buys Seats on State Board

By dianeravitch
July 1, 2022 //
11

This article in The Houston Chronicle is infuriating. The subtitle might well be, “If the state board turns you down, buy it.”

As I read it, I felt my blood was coming to a boil. This is a portrayal of tank corruption, corruption of education and corruption of the democratic process. The elected state board of education in Texas denied the charter application of four out of five charters. The charters struck back by dumping vast sums of money into the election for state board and electing hand-picked candidates to give them the approvals they wanted. As I have shown in previous posts, charter schools in Texas are generally low-performing and compare unfavorably to public schools,

The article begins:

The State Board of Education last month denied, for the third time, efforts to launch Heritage Classical Academy in Northwest Houston, a school designed as a conservative response to anti-racism, LGBT-inclusive sex education and other progressive themes in public schools.

But despite Heritage’s recent failure, its future — and that of other charter schools like it in Texas — looks bright.

The state’s fight over charter schools has bubbled slowly for decades since they were first authorized in the 1990s, with the state board standing as the main political roadblock to their expansion.

Now, as Republican lawmakers fight to restrict how teachers discuss social issues in the classroom and generally shift the education system more toward the right, their alliance with charter schools is stronger than ever.

A MOVEMENT: Trump-era rancor spills into Texas school board politics

So much so that three GOP members of the state board, who have sided with Democrats in voting against Heritage Classical Academy, won’t be therenext time — two were beaten in a primary after the family of Heritage’s board chairman donated $250,000 to a PAC supporting their opponents. The third was redistricted out of his seat by the Texas Senate.

Heritage, and other classical academies to come, can count on a more sympathetic board starting in January.

Matt Robinson, the Republican who lost his seat in redistricting — he says he had decided before then not to run for re-election anyway — called his ouster a testament to the power charter school advocates wield.

“There’s a whole pattern here of them really strongly exerting the influence that they have with our elected officials,” he said.

LIBRARY BACKLASH: Texas GOP’s book hunt mostly targets LGBT issues, not critical race theory

The pitch for classical education

Heritage is part of the Barney Charter School initiative, a national charter school movement to introduce a more conservative ideology in schools. The initiative was founded by Hillsdale College in Michigan.

The college doesn’t fund or govern schools directly, but provides curriculum and consulting. Dozens of schools have been started so far across the nation, including one in Gardendale, Texas. The schools serve nearly 15,000 students and 8,000 more on wait-lists.

Its “1776 Curriculum” for charter schools teaches that “America is an exceptionally good country” and includes comprehensive lessons about American history through a conservative lens, including descriptions of the New Deal as bad public policy and of affirmative action as “counter to the lofty ideals of the Founders.”

The wife of conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Ginni Thomas — who reportedly lobbied to overturn the 2020 presidential election — is a former vice president at the college and ran its Washington programs.

Hillsdale is a nonsectarian Christian university with a mostly white student body that touts its role in the abolition movement of the 1800s, when Black activist Frederick Douglass spoke at the campus.

‘CRITICAL RACE THEORY’ IN SCHOOLS: Abbott signs law forbidding lessons on systemic racism

Across the country, only one Hillsdale-backed charter school serves a majority of economically disadvantaged students, and only two serve a majority of students of color, according to staff at the State Board of Education.

Heritage Classical Academy was voted down for the first time in 2020 by the board, several members said, because of the inclusion of “Brer Rabbit” books in its early grade curricula. The 19th century children’s story has been assailed by critics for promoting racist stereotypes and mimicking dialect used by African-American slaves.

The arguments for and against Heritage over the last few years have added up to more than the sum of their parts. When the board discussed it last month, conversations turned to how racism and slavery are taught, “inappropriate content in public schools,” alleged anti-Islamic Facebook posts made by a Heritage board member, the work experience of the proposed school leadership and more.

Aggressive lobbying from the Heritage board and its supporters also appears to have backfired, becoming a factor in the board’s decision this year to reject the charter.

After the board denied approval for the second time in 2021, Heritage Board Chair Stuart Saunders and his family donated more than $250,000 to a political action committee called Texans for Educational Freedom. That PAC then donate more than $500,000 to local school board races and other candidates who have promoted conservative themes in the schools.

The group donated in four State Board of Education races, including well over $100,000 total in the bids to unseat board members Sue Melton Malone and Jay Johnson, Republicans who opposed Heritage.

In their charter application filed with Texas Education Agency, Heritage reported 17 meetings with public officials ahead of the board’s decision last month, including a July 2021 meeting with TEA Commissioner Mike Morath and state Rep. Steve Toth, who penned the Legislature’s anti-critical race theory law. Signed a year ago by Gov. Greg Abbott, the law limits how public school teachers address systemic racism and the lingering impacts of slavery.

When it convenes in next year after this fall’s elections, the state board will be a more conservative body, with six new members.

“Clearly, (Saunders) was trying to use all his money to remake the SBOE, to buy it,” said Robinson, the board member from Friendswood who is losing his seat in redistricting. “When you really upset wealthy peoplethey don’t take that lightly.”

During an SBOE meeting, Robinson confronted Saunders — who is the chairman of SouthTrust Bank — saying that while Saunders’ donations were legal, they were unethical.

Saunders retorted: “Me and my family have a long history of supporting education initiatives. Part of our involvement includes a history of supporting public policy and education initiatives, and I did give some of my money to a PAC that is involved in education. Their website speaks of wanting to depoliticize the classroom, working to create strong local school boards and to root-out and eliminate sexually explicit materials that have found their way into our schools. And I support those initiatives.”

He said his son was assigned two “inappropriate” books in class, and though he confronted the school’s principal about them, only one of the books was removed from the curriculum.

Texas Ethics Commission records show that the PAC Saunders spoke of donated to SBOE races both before and after he and his family contributed money.

18,000 Texas students in classical schools

Over the last decade, the State Board of Education has generally been a chokepoint to charter school expansion. The board is given final veto power over charter applicants after they are approved by the TEA commissioner. Since 2017, TEA approved 35 schools, but the SBOE only allowed 23 to proceed.

Those who oppose charter schools typically do so because they say it weakens the structure of public education. Charter schools face less accountability than public schools, and when students flee struggling public schools for charters, the school districts lose out on the attendance-based funding they would have received from the state if the child was still a student.

“The idea of 95 percent of kids losing funding and programming and opportunities so that 5 percent can attend a private-light-school and parents aren’t paying a private school bill is just asinine to me,” said state board member Georgina Pérez, a Democrat who votes against all charter applicants.

The Republican-controlled Legislature has been pushing in the opposite direction. The last major change Republicans in Austin made to charter school law was removing the state board’s ability to approve expansions of existing charter schools, in 2013 paving the way for hundreds of new campuses. Charter enrollment has nearly doubled since, to 377,375 students (the state’s K-12 schools serve about 5 million children).

The total number of charter campuses has risen from 588 to 872.

“I always compare charter schools and how they expand to Gremlins if they eat after midnight. Tomorrow morning you’re going to wake up and you don’t know how many of them you’re going to have,” Pérez said.

There’s also an appetite particularly for “Classical” schools such as Heritage, of which there are already a number in Texas, including Aristoi Classical in Katy, the Great Hearts Texas schools, Founders Classical and Houston Classical. Their combined enrollment for the 2016-2017 school year was less than 7,500, and has more than doubled to 18,000, state data shows.

Charter school supporters and several members of the SBOE, they said they expect that another bill will be filed next year with renewed efforts to remove the state board’s authority to approve the schools, leaving the matter up to Education Commissioner Mike Morath, an appointee of Gov. Greg Abbott.

Some members of the state board added that Abbott lobbied their colleagues directly, asking them to approve Heritage’s application and other charter schools over the years.

“Historically it was, (the SBOE wasn’t) approving expansions fast enough, or enough, to keep pace with demand,” said Starlee Coleman, CEO of the Texas Charter Schools Association. “I would not be surprised one bit if a move were made to roll back the board’s authority, even farther.”

Charter school proponents point to a charter school wait-list in the state of more than 58,000 kids. They say families want more options and that public schools aren’t working for everyone. They point to data that show the large majority of charter students are children of color, and that their test scores are better than the public school averages.

“The statute is really clear about legislative intent is that there will be a robust and vibrant charter sector in Texas,” Coleman said. “if the state board can’t agree with that, then I don’t think state legislators feel very compelled to let them continue to be part of the process.”

edward.mckinley@chron.com

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Industry, Privatization, Racism, Religion, Texas
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