Articles tagged with Charter Schools

Follow the money trail in Feb. issue of ASBJ

Hundreds of new charter schools will open this year—clear evidence of the growing momentum behind the charter school movement. But it’s worth noting that today’s support for charters didn’t just happen. It was bought and paid for.

That’s the contention of “Money Talks,” a package of articles in February’s American School Board Journal by Senior Editor Del Stover details an often-overlooked political reality: Advocates for charter schools have poured millions of dollars in private funds to sell the idea of charters to state and federal policymakers, as well as the general public.

With its pages, ASBJ offers up a brief glimpse of how this money is influencing education policymaking today. For example:

  • An Ohio for-profit operator of charter schools donates approximately $4 million over a decade to state politicians—and convinces legislators to introduce controversial legislation on behalf of the charter school industry.
  • The Walton Foundation awards nearly $75 million in school choice and charter-related grants, providing “venture capital” that helps hundreds of charter schools open and supporting the advocacy efforts of state charter school groups.
  • Advocacy groups in Wisconsin spent thousands on ads and fliers against candidates opposed to school choice and charters. These ads blame candidates for a variety of wrongdoing—but never actually talk of charter schools or education in general.

 

As ASBJ makes clear, it’s important for school board members to understand that this money is being spent—because, in politics, money talks.

And since up-to-date information and insight is a public servant’s best weapon, read the companion piece from respected planning consultant, Kelley Carey, on how to address charter school growth before it happens.

Read these features and more in the latest issue of ASBJ.

Naomi Dillon|February 2nd, 2012|Categories: Leading Source|Tags: , , |

The week in blogs

At the more popular charter schools operating within the Los Angeles Unified School District, there are lotteries to see who gets to attend and waiting lists that are very long – 500 children long, in the case Larchmont Charter elementary school. But if you’ve got the money and the time, according to a revealing story in LA Weekly, you can go to the front of the line as “founding parents” — even though the school opened in 2004.

“Add something called a ‘founding parent’ to the long list of ways that charter schools are accused of manipulating which children get to enroll and who doesn’t,” writes Alexander Russo, who cites the story in his This Week in Education blog. But “before you go crazy…” he adds later, “remember that district schools also have all sorts of ways of letting students in through the back door …”

True …but, the scale of the Larchmont “program” and the amount of money involved – and how it bridges the increasingly blurry line between public and private schools – is truly amazing. And it backs up what charter skeptics have long said about charters tailoring their admission policies in various ways (for example, not accepting near as  many special needs children) but claiming a universal benefit for an area’s students.

Need something lighter? When I do, I turn to the Principal’s Page and Superintendent Michael Smith’s often amusing view of his job and life. This short piece is on his junior high school daughter’s unusual level of self-esteem, which is uncannily high for someone who has every right to be the brooding teenager.

My favorite line: “Her worst day ever was great.”

It reminds me of those brilliantly funny Dos Equis beer ads – yes, brilliant beer ads – featuring “The Most Interesting Man in the World,” played by the late Jonathan Goldsmith. (I love these two lines, especially: “When he’s in Rome, they do as he does.” And: “His Mother has a tattoo that reads, ‘Son.’” – both uttered with mock gravity by a reader who, in real life, does the ultra-authoritative voiceover for PBS’s Frontline.)

Enough fun. There are serious issues to consider. And Jay Mathews has taken on a weighty one in his Class Struggle blog, namely how well schools are addressing the needs of gifted students. Actually, Mathews is commenting on a much longer article by Rick Hess, of the American Enterprise Institute, who says “not very well at all.” But, like Mathews, I don’t think re-restricting access to Advanced Placement courses, because they’re presumably not as rigorous as in the past, is the way to go.

The final item is not a blog, but a piece Friday on NPR’s All Things Considered about how the recession caused a drop in the U.S. birthrate. (Scroll down to “US  Birthrate Dropped During Recession,” which refers to this Pew Research Center report.)

So what’s so bad about 300,000 or so less babies a year? Well, think of that in terms of the reduced number of parental Babies R Us visits, and you get an idea of the economic impact.

“Then, as we look further down the road, school enrollments will be begin to fall,” said Carl Haub, a demographer with the Population Reference Bureau who was interviewed on the radio show. “We would need fewer teachers….   A school board that looks at 15 percent fewer students has some tough decisions to make down the road.”

Lawrence Hardy|October 14th, 2011|Categories: Charter Schools, Student Achievement, Uncategorized, Week in Blogs|Tags: , , , , , |

KIPP’s a model, but not emblematic

column-chart-mdWhen it comes to KIPP (the Knowledge is Power Program), what’s not to like? Dedicated teachers start their days early and work late.  There are Saturday classes much of the time, as well as summer school for middle school students. All this professional drive and extra class time – exemplified by the winning motto, “Work hard. Be nice” — have helped explain KIPP’s extraordinary success with low-income students.

The problem isn’t holding KIPP up as an example. It should be applauded, and schools should explore many of the policies and practices that have made it a winner. But when KIPP is used to denigrate regular public schools and minimize the challenges they face in educating disadvantaged students — in a kind “They did it; why can’t you?” way  –  the discussion becomes hopelessly distorted and politicized.

The main criticism of this comparison is that it underestimates the degree to which KIPP draws the more motivated students and teachers into its competitive programs. Is it really accurate to equate the challenges facing KIPP’s 82 charter schools with those facing the vast majority of regular public schools serving disadvantaged students? In books like The Charter School Dust-Up: Examining the Evidence on Enrollment and Achievement, Richard Rothstein and other policy experts argue that it is not.
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Naomi Dillon|June 23rd, 2010|Categories: Educational Research, Leading Source, School Reform|Tags: , , |

Scandals in charters bound to bind them in red tape, diminishing their autonomy

A_Man_Stuck_In_Red_Tape_Royalty_Free_Clipart_Picture_091110-053150-778042Incidents of nepotism and conflict of interest recently have been uncovered in some New York City charter schools. Meanwhile, a Philadelphia investigation has found questionable financial practices among some of that city’s charters.

Doesn’t worry me.

Why not? One reason is that such nonsense just happens. There are more than 4,600 charter schools in the nation, so it’s inevitable that some charter organizers are going to be inexperienced, incompetent, or even dishonest in their handling of school finances.

The more cynical reason for my indifference is that charters are doomed.

Oh, I’m not predicting that charter schools are going away. Not a chance. A few financial horror stories are not going to diminish the momentum of the charter school movement or undermine the bipartisan political support that charters enjoy today.

No, I’m saying that charter schools are doomed to lose their independence and flexibility. Their promise of innovation is doomed to slow strangulation in bureaucratic red tape.

As I see it, this is inevitable. A few more years, a few more headlines about financial irregularities, and you’ll see state and federal lawmakers begin to push forward legislation to ensure that tax dollars aren’t misspent.

You’ll see state and federal regulators announce a host of rules on how they handle their money and what they can spend it on.
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Naomi Dillon|April 22nd, 2010|Categories: Governance, Leading Source, School Reform|Tags: , , |

CPE study shows impact of charter schools disproportionate to national debate

They’re touted as the salvation of K-12 education — and criticized as a threat to the viability of traditional public schools. Some studies say they have a positive impact on student achievement; others say their effect is generally negative.

When it comes to debating charter schools,  everyone seems to have an opinion, including Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who is making charter school expansion a key part of the Obama administration’s school reform efforts. But according to a new report from NSBA’s Center for Public Education, what we know about charter schools, their performance, and their role in the future of education is a lot less than we may think we do. And, despite all the debate over their effectiveness, and some dramatic growth in their numbers over the past decade, charters still serve just 3 percent of public school students.

“The debate over charter schools is disproportional to the impact charter schools have on students,” said CPE Policy Analyst Jim Hull. That is, “they are not the silver bullet that proponents sometimes make them out to be, but they do not appear to negatively impact public schools, as some critics claim.”

The report looks at key research to date on charter schools and draws the following conclusions:

  • A majority of studies show that elementary school students in charter schools perform better on reading and math than their counterparts in traditional public schools.
  • Conversely, at the high school level, students perform better in math and reading in regular public schools.
  • Overall, while some charters do better, the majority do the same or worse than traditional public schools. A 2009 study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) found that one-fifth of charters (17 percent) performed significantly better in reading and math than regular public schools, and 37 percent performed significantly worse. The rest (46 percent) did neither better nor worse.
  • Results vary from state to state. CPE said it would be helpful to compare state-by-state achievement data with data on charter school authorizers.
  • There is no conclusive data on how various ethnic or racial groups perform in charters versus regular public schools.

If researchers are operating on incomplete evidence, the public is going on even less, according to CPE’s report. For example, “only 41 percent of voters even know that charter schools are in fact public schools.”

“The incomplete research base behind charters means that many states may be heading into a reform strategy without a clear understanding of how charter schools work best, or how they interact with traditional public schools,” the report said. “Charter schools need more research, oversight and true evaluation to fulfill their purpose of being laboratories that traditional public schools can learn from.”

Most charter schools are found in urban areas. The report noted one study that says that 89 percent of school districts “have no charter schools within their boundaries, perhaps in large measure because so many school districts are so very small.”

Charters enrolled just 3 percent of public school students in 2008; however, that number has grown dramatically in the past decade, the report said. “In 1999, there were 1,542 charter schools with 349,642 students. By 2008, there were 4,618 charter schools with 1,407,817 students,” the report said, quoting data from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

The summary of the report, “Charter Schools: Finding Out the Facts,” is available here, and a full copy of the report can be downloaded here.

-Lawrence Hardy

Lawrence Hardy|March 24th, 2010|Categories: Educational Legislation, Governance, School Board News, School Boards, School Reform|Tags: |
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