Tennessee Charter Schools Association Statement Regarding House Bill 702/Senate Bill 830

Tennessee charter schools has a long way to go.  This latest legislative struggle reminds it us once more that the statistics will not improve unless until a bi-partisan support can be formed on the ground.

Friday, April 19, 2013

The Tennessee Charter Schools Association (TCSA) released the following statement upon the Senate’s refusal to hear HB 702/SB 830, the charter school authorizer reform bill:

“Along with our partners in education reform, TCSA is disappointed that the Senate refused to vote on SB 830 (HB 702) today. Unfortunately, the concept of broadening educational options for Tennessee students has once again become the victim of politics, despite thoughtful consideration over the bill through ten committees and passage in the House yesterday with a vote of 62 to 30. This legislation, which earlier in April received funding in the Governor’s budget, has been championed throughout the legislative session by education reform  stakeholders including the Tennessee Charter Schools Association, Students First – Tennessee, Stand for Children – Tennessee, and  Democrats for Education Reform – Tennessee.

“Strong public charter schools are leading successful education reform in our state, with many delivering the best results of all Tennessee public schools. This bill sought to strengthen the charter school authorization process, drawing the focus of decisions toward merit and expanding the possibility of excellent public charter schools throughout the state.

“TCSA is grateful for the strong leadership of House Speaker Beth Harwell, Representative Mark White, Representative Harry Brooks and Nashville Mayor Karl Dean in supporting this bill and working tirelessly to improve educational options in Tennessee. We will continue to work with community and state leadership toward improvements in the law that will make great public charter schools a possibility for Tennessee families in need of options.”

The Tennessee Charter Schools Association, founded in 1998, serves quality public charter schools by educating communities, empowering supporters, and promoting legislation to create an educational landscape of excellent options for all students.

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Senate Education Committee Chairman Dan Patrick, R-Houston, had initially called for unlimited expansion of charter schools. Photo by Deborah Cannon

By Kate Alexander

American-Statesman Staff

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Gulen charter schools allegations answered

INDEX

A Response to Philadelphia Inquirer

Gulen Charter Schools

Gulen Charter Schools Attackers (video)

A Response to Philadelphia Inquirer

Dr. Pahl and Dr. Raines examine the allegations made about so called Gulen Charter Schools, a term coined by the some bloggers.

A number of people talk about charter schools these days. Most of them are unfortunately either ignorant ones or the ill-intentioned ones. The latest trend about some successful charter schools is to label them with weird tags such as Gulen Charter Schools, Gulen Muslim Schools, Gulen Turkish Schools etc. What those people do not know is that by adding strange labels, you cannot make those schools something else. Charter school, in this nation, is a sort of public school with certain independence.

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Gulen-Inspired Schools Promote Learning and Service

by Dr. Jon Pahl and Dr. John Raines

The recent article “U.S. Charter School Network Draws Federal Attention” by Martha Woodall and Claudio Gatti can shed light on the existence of schools around the globe founded and led by individuals inspired by Muslim public intellectual Fethullah Gulen. Unfortunately, the article also accepts unfounded allegations, if not smears, of Gulen and the informal Hizmet (service) movement. Our own research, based on years of familiarity with the writings of Gulen, and associations with Turkish businessmen, scientists, and civic leaders, suggests a very different story. These schools have consistently promoted good learning and citizenship, and the Hizmet movement is to date an evidently admirable civil society organization to build bridges between religious communities and to provide direct service on behalf of the common good.

In the first line of their article, Woodall and Gatti claim that “the FBI is investigating” Hizmet schools, “sources say.” This leads the reader to believe the FBI would be these “sources” and these charter schools were run by Fethullah Gulen. In fact, as the article later clarifies, “federal officials declined to comment.” So who are these “sources?” A simple web search by Woodall and Gotti, or actual visits to the schools, might have led them to discover the good the schools are doing and these schools had no official contact with Fethullah Gulen. And as the article admits, here in the U.S. they “meet federal standards.”

Gulen inspired schools (LCSA Editor: Writers refer to private schools here. Gulen charter schools, the term coined by charter school adversaries however refers to certain successful charter schools in US)  some are often located in the poorest and most conflict-laden regions of the globe with higher percentage of scholarship students and tuition waivers. They graduate students. They are gender-inclusive (although some are boys’ or girls’ schools). In Northern Iraq, the schools have especially promoted girls’ learning, as studied by sociologist Martha Ann Kirk. In our experience—we’ve visited or studied Hizmet schools in Indonesia, Pakistan, Uganda, Kenya, and in the U.S—the schools generally exceed local standards by considerable margins. The stories of these schools have not received the attention of the Afghani schools profiled in Greg Mortensen’s Three Cups of Tea, but they are very much in the same vein. The schools welcome students of all (and no) religious backgrounds, and they promote critical study of the sciences—something the U.S. (and the world) sorely needs!

A simple web-search by Woodall and Gotti would also have taken them to Fethullah Gulen’s website: http://www.fethullahgulen.org/. The banner there reads: “understanding and respect.” Gulen’s most widely read book carries the title Toward a Global Civilization of Love and Tolerance. It is a counter to Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” argument. Gulen advocates in the book for scientific education, inter-religious dialogue, and democracy. Far from “not being linked to terrorism,” as Woodall and Gatti’s article damns-with-faint-praise, Gulen immediately and forcefully condemned the 9/11 attacks, calling Osama bin Laden “a monster.” Gulen has been described, not without reason, as a Muslim Gandhi. Recent events in Egypt carry more than a hint of influence from the kind of Sufi Islam that Mr. Gulen encourages. A Conference in Cairo in 2009 that was convened to study Gulen’s thought was packed with young people and civic leaders. It took as its theme the Arabic term “islah,” or “reform.”

Finally, what makes Woodall and Gatti’s article particularly troubling is its conspiratorial tone. In fact, their story originated in the August 17, 2010 USA Today. Woodall and Gotti appear to have recycled an old story without much research of their own, adding to it instead vague allegations and suspicions.

Hizmet simply means “service” in Turkish. The term refers to thespirit of the civil society movement inspired by this modest imam, and does not refer to some grand effort to “push for an authoritarian Islamic state,” as Woodall and Gotti imply. University of Houston Sociologist Helen Rose Ebaugh has published the best general book on the movement, entitled The Gulen Movement: A Sociological Analysis of a Civic Movement Rooted in Moderate Islam, and Georgetown Professor John Esposito (a Temple University graduate) has published with Ihsan Yilmaz a book entitled Islam and Peacebuilding: Gulen Movement Initiatives.

All in all, a little research by journalists, and readers, will lead to a more nuanced appreciation of this complex and fascinating global movement. The Hizmet movement has already done much to promote inter-religious understanding, respect, and civil service–not to mention good learning–whatever the possible failures of some particular individuals, which we trust any investigation will discover. In this era when Turkey might play a vital role as a bridge for peace between the West and the Muslim world (as a Turkish ambassador recently did in securing the release of four New York Times correspondents detained in Tripoli), it is important that journalists do their homework and report accurately and fairly on events and movements, and not circulate unsubstantiated allegations and stereotypes.

Jon Pahl, Ph.D.

Professor of the History of Christianity in North America
The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia

John Raines, Ph.D.

Professor of Religion
Temple University
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Gulen Charter Schools Attackers: West Texas Patriots (video)

Gulen charter schools concept is invented by vicious bloggers full of hatred and it is aimed to scare people.  CBS 7 made a story that shows how ignorant they can be.

Gulen Charter Schools Attackers: West Texas Patriots (video)

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Richmond Leadership Public High School Principal Shawn Benjamin picks tickets with names of new students. ( Ray Chavez / Bay Area News Group)

RICHMOND — Parents and their eighth graders lined up down a street in this city’s economically depressed Iron Triangle neighborhood Thursday evening for a chance to attend a high-performing charter school.

About 180 students were competing in a lottery for 71 places in a freshman class of 120 at Leadership Public High School.

Leadership students averaged an 800 score on the statewide Academic Performance Index, the state benchmark for proficiency, in 2012, and the school has a goal of sending all of its 120-member senior class to college every year, said Principal Shawn Benjamin.

Leadership has a mostly Hispanic student population, most of whom qualify as economically disadvantaged, and has recently been trying to attract more African-American students.

“I’ve heard it’s a great school, with high test scores,” said Victoria Flores, an eighth-grader at Helms Middle School in San Pablo, as she waited in line on 12th Street with her father Pedro for the school’s doors to open.

Once in the building, students and parents were routed to individual classrooms where they entered their names on lottery tickets. The tickets were then taken to Benjamin’s office, and she and her assistants mixed them in a spinner and drew them one by one, announcing the names over the school’s public address system.

Forty-nine places were reserved for the brothers and sisters of current Leadership students who expressed interest in joining their siblings at the school

Flores ended up in the top spot on the list because her sister Alejandera is an 11th grader at the school, but other applicants waited in suspense as positions 50 through 120 were filled by the random drawing.

There were cries of joy and lots of high-fiving in the classrooms as the 71 winners heard their names called.

Angel Turner, an eighth grader at Arlington Christian School in Richmond, and her mother Tammy Turner leapt out of their seats in joy when Angel’s name was drawn at No. 57.

Tammy Turner said Angel visited the Leadership campus with a friend who is in the current freshman class and liked what she saw.

“I think I was more nervous than my daughter,” said Turner, a Richmond resident. “She’s going to have more opportunity here (than at Arlington Christian).”

After the 120-member class, the rest of the names were drawn in order for places on a waiting list.

Many participants drifted away as the wait list grew longer.

Jasmine Perez, an eighth grader at DeJean Middle School in Richmond, looked forlorn as she waited in vain to hear her name called in one nearly empty classroom.

Tears rolled slowly down her cheeks when she was picked for the 103rd spot out of 104 on the waiting list.

“I’m feeling disappointed,” said Perez, who has a friend in Leadership’s current freshman class. “I would do my best here, get the best education here.”

Benjamin said this year’s turnout was a record. She began the lottery four years ago when applications rose above the 120 slots available in the freshman class.

Transfers are accepted as space becomes available in the upper grades, she said.

“We’re having success,” Benjamin said. “Word has gotten around.”

Leadership is housed on a temporary site using part of an old elementary school combined with portable classrooms. The charter will join Gompers Continuation High School in a new building now under construction in about two years, Benjamin said.

Leadership also has campuses in Oakland, Hayward and San Jose, she said.

Gabriela Cervantes, a member of this year’s senior class, was checking in students and parents in one classroom, speaking to them in both Spanish and English.

She attended Peres Elementary, a high-performing West Contra Costa primary school, before moving on to DeJean Middle School.

Cervantes said she had applied to several public and private colleges for next year, including UC Irvine and the University of San Francisco.

“I want to become a math teacher after I graduate, perhaps (at Leadership),” she said.

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By Kate Alexander of Austin Statesman

Harmony Public Schools appears to have cracked the code.

The charter school system, with 38 campuses across Texas and more than 23,000 students, regularly produces students who excel at math, science and engineering. And they do it on a shoestring.

Harmony’s five schools in Austin spent $7,923 per student in 2010-11 on operating expenses, almost $1,600 less than the Austin school district and about $800 less than the statewide average.

Harmony’s schools have also consistently beat the rest of the state on standardized test scores even while educating about the same proportion of students considered at risk of dropping out.

Few other charter schools operate as efficiently and effectively as Harmony. But the ability of some charter schools to seemingly do more with less could become a key issue in the mammoth school finance lawsuit that is set for trial in October.

Two-thirds of Texas school districts, which together serve about 75 percent of the public school students in the state, have claimed the state’s school finance system is unconstitutional, in part, they say, because the Legislature has not provided adequate resources to schools to match the rising academic standards lawmakers have imposed.

For the first time in the two-decade history of repeated school finance lawsuits, charter school advocates have joined the fray.

And one group, called Texans for Real Efficiency and Equity in Education, argues that more money might not be necessary if schools were wiser with their money.

The group has called on the court to strip out large portions of the state education code in order to improve efficiency, lift the current cap on new charter schools to increase competition and enact other remedies. A court hearing is scheduled this week to determine whether the group can stay in the lawsuit.

“Traditional public schools could realize enormous savings to the system if allowed to operate under the same rules and regulations as charter schools,” according to a legal brief filed by the group, referred to as TREE. “The waste caused by special interest-driven regulatory burdens on traditional public schools has rendered the entire system inefficient.”

Those burdens include a minimum pay scale for teachers as well as contractual protections and certification requirements.

A 2011 study done for the Texas Education Agency found that charter schools spent 15 percent less on operations than did comparable schools in traditional districts. Most of that difference came from hiring less experienced teachers and paying them less.

Lindsay Gustafson of the Texas Classroom Teachers Association said paying teachers less and stripping them of job protections would drive good teachers out of the classroom. Teacher turnover was twice as high in charter schools as in traditional public schools, according to the 2011 TEA study.

“We’re interested in quality, not just what’s cheap,” Gustafson said.

Kent Grusendorf, leader of TREE and a former chairman of the House Public Education Committee, declined to comment last week when contacted by the American-Statesman. The Texas Association of Business, a major force at the state Capitol that represents mostly large employers, has also signed on to the TREE case.

Soner Tarim, Harmony’s chief executive officer, said his schools are methodical about getting the most out of every employee, giving each person multiple jobs to ensure a leaner administrative operation.

Read more here.

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by Gary Miron, Jessica Urschel

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In a recent Morning Call article, “School chiefs blast charters,” superintendents from several local school districts complained of the archaic funding processes used by the state for charter schools and a lack of quality charter schools within the region. While there are some charters that may use their limited resources less efficiently than traditional systems, there are clearly many that provide quality alternatives in many areas, including curriculum, missions and financial efficiencies.As a case in point, let me describe one of the successful programs in this area, Lehigh Valley Academy Regional Charter School , which is a K-12 school that incorporates the International Baccalaureate curriculum. The academy also adheres to state standards and has consistently attained annual yearly progress as assessed by PSSAs (the same tests administered in traditional school systems). Additionally, we are financially solvent and annually audited by certified public accountants. These qualities have frequently been praised by Bethlehem and Saucon Valley (our sponsoring school districts) administrators and board members, alike.

Lehigh Valley Academy, on Valley Center Parkway in Hanover Township, Northampton County, serves students from 18 school districts around the Valley. Students are enrolled by participating in our annual lottery. Our population now includes more than 1,000 students in classes of no more than 25 students. All teachers, teacher aides, specialists, substitute teachers and principals are certified by Pennsylvania and work at a high level of professionalism to provide a high-quality program.

What differentiates charter schools from traditional school systems is what makes each one unique. By definition charters have to provide programs that are not offered elsewhere, thereby giving families a choice of where their child should attend. Lehigh Valley Academy has high expectations for its students, parents and teachers that are not often embraced in traditional schools.

The International Baccalaureate curriculum emphasizes that we create lifelong learners who will be comfortable anywhere in the world because we emphasize many character traits. We encourage students to be well-balanced, caring, reflective, tolerant, risk-taking (outside the proverbial box) individuals who ask questions and relish the search for their answers. Parents pledge to be involved with their children’s education through volunteer efforts at the school, and the board of trustees, administration, staff and educators focus on the success of every child.

All students learn a second language (either Mandarin Chinese, Spanish or French). They must adhere to a strict dress code, start school two weeks before the rest of the districts and attend almost an hour more each day, while the faculty works for 20 more days than in most other school districts. We know that hard work produces positive results, so we all strive for excellence. For example, there are weekly specialist classes at the elementary school in physical education, art, drama and music, and cutting-edge technology is embraced.

Lehigh Valley Academy comprises dedicated, highly trained education professionals who all go the extra mile for the students. We are a school that runs in a spirit of cooperation between employees and volunteers alike, and negotiate with the administration and board without being part of a union. We earn less than teachers in surrounding districts, but also have a merit pay system that rewards excellence in a variety of domains. We are given great latitude in curriculum planning, identifying and obtaining resources, and integrating core values across many subjects.

Do we have all the extracurricular activities that traditional systems have? We have after-school activities (yearbook, student council, Science Club, Scholastic Club, etc.), and have a few athletic club teams. We are not the right fit for all students. We set the bar high and expect great effort from our students, parents and each other. We do this with only 80 percent of the funds provided to traditional schools.

There are a new set of laws and regulations being proposed at the state level, some of which aim to make changes critical to the way we and the home systems are reimbursed (for instance, we now are paid by each district, rather than directly from the state). Hopefully, the future will continue to have the best interests of students, and not disrupt charter schools that are fulfilling their mission for the community.

Larry Lang, a resident of Bethlehem, is in his ninth year of teaching fifth grade at Lehigh Valley Academy Regional Charter School in Hanover Township, Northampton County.

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Wednesday, December 07, 2011

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools

Washington, DC – The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS) announced today that the number of students attending public charter schools across the nation has surpassed two million. Over 500 new public charter schools opened their doors in the 2011-12 school year, an estimated increase of 200,000 students. This year marks the largest single–year increase ever recorded in terms of the number of additional students attending charters.

There are now approximately 5,600 public charter schools enrolling what is estimated to be more than two million students nationwide. The numbers equate to a 13 percent growth in students in just one year, while more than 400,000 students remain on wait lists to attend the public school of their choice. This significant milestone demonstrates increased demand from families who want more high-quality educational options for their children.

“We are very encouraged to see the active role parents are playing to ensure their children receive a high-quality education,” said Ursula Wright, interim CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. “The results that charter schools are demonstrating are not only a testament to the hard work of thousands of teachers and charter leaders, but to families demanding more in terms of what a high-quality education means for their individual children.”

California leads the nation in total number of charter schools with 983 schools

The top states that added the greatest number of students over the past year include: California with 47,000 new students; Florida with 23,500 additional students; Texas with 22,000 additional students; and Ohio with more than 12,000 additional students.

California leads the nation in total number of charter schools with 983 schools in
operation, followed by Arizona with 524, Florida with 520, Ohio with 360, and Texas with
284.

In addition to the more than 500 new schools nationwide, roughly 150 public charter schools did not re-open their doors this fall. These schools closed for a variety of reasons, including low enrollment, financial challenges and low academic performance. The closures provide further evidence that the charter school intent works—schools that do not meet the needs of their students should close.

The states with the largest number of school closures include: California (34), Arizona (22), Florida (18), Ohio (14), and Wisconsin (11).

Charter schools are tuition-free public schools that are allowed to be more innovative while being held for accountable for improved student achievement. These figures were compiled based on data from state departments of education and state charter school support organizations and resource centers.

National and statewide public charter school data can be found on the Public Charter School Dashboard:

http://dashboard.publiccharters.org/dashboard/home

Source: http://www.publiccharters.org/pressreleasepublic/default.aspx?id=643

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New Zealand adopted charter school idea

Charter schools won’t change schooling

Thw formation of a new Government under MMP is a time of horse trading and when the small parties have their best opportunity to influence Government policies. Often, this can feel like the “tail wagging the dog”, but the strength of National’s electoral position means it can be more selective about the policies it adopts from its minor partners.

Irrespective of the underlying motive, the proposal announced in National’s supply and confidence agreement with ACT to introduce charter schools should be considered a positive development for the education system.

Charter schools are a relatively recent American innovation, with the first school opening in 1992. Today, there are more than 5000 charter schools in the United States. Yet it remains a minority form of schooling, teaching fewer than 2 per cent of US students.

This minority aspect may explain why the proposal is to focus on South Auckland and Christchurch; one needs a reasonable population base to justify the creation of any new schools. New Zealand’s population base may yet prove too small and widely distributed to support charter schools.

But charter schools potentially offer an alternative for students or segments of society whose needs are not well catered for by the public school system.

In general, the New Zealand public school system performs very well. New Zealand students do well in international studies, not only relative to the performance of top and average students, but also in terms of the ability demonstrated by low achievers. Yet any national system will not meet the needs of everyone.

For many, particularly the more wealthy, the private school system provides viable alternatives to the public system.

Indeed, school enrolment data suggest an increasing proportion of New Zealanders prefer to send their children to private schools, despite the presence of a strongly performing public school system.

Charter schools potentially offer an extension of choice for families that do not have enough money to send their children to private schools. US evidence is that charter schools tend to locate in disadvantaged neighbourhoods and serve students who are substantially poorer than the average public school student.

So how do they work in the US? Like regular schools, they are supported by public funds and do not charge for tuition. Unlike public schools, they receive fees per student, but usually at a rate less generous than that provided for public schools.

Charter schools in the US cannot choose students based on admission tests or similar criteria. Students wishing to go to an oversubscribed charter school are chosen by lottery.

Although there is debate about the academic performance of charter schools, the fact that 65 per cent of charter schools in the US were oversubscribed in 2010 (up from 59 per cent in 2008) indicates they are meeting a need that is not being met by the public system.

The Annual Survey of America’s Charter Schools in 2010 showed an average of 239 children are waiting to enter each charter school in the US. With an average charter school size of 372 students, it is estimated that the number of students on waiting lists would fill another 5000 charter schools.

Charter schools have achieved their popularity, not through big budgets, as they typically receive lower levels of public funding than the public school system, but by offering programmes, services and teaching formulas that parents want but cannot find in traditional public schools.

Charter schools generate a lot of controversy. One point of contention revolves around the exemption from regulation about teacher certification.

Debate about charter schools quickly polarises into a turf war that is perhaps more about the merits of unionisation than it is about the merits of charter schools to children and their families. Yet the language of the debate centres on whether students perform better or worse in the different systems.

Ascertaining the relative performance of the different systems is a complex task, and people are able to find evidence to support their prior beliefs. Ultimately, my view on the value of charter schools is coloured by the obvious popularity of the schools for many American families. In the US there is a wide variety of charter schools, and hence a wide range of aims and abilities.

Their introduction here will bring failures as well as successes, but they will provide a positive alternative for many children. The US experience should also temper expectations; charter schools are unlikely to herald a revolution in the public school system. It is a small step towards increasing education choice, which should be welcomed but should not be expected to create major changes to the mainstream system.

Dave Grimmond is a senior economist at Infometrics.

- The Dominion Post

Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/comment/6124150/Charter-schools-won-t-change-schooling

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Nearly 20 years after the country’s first public charter school opened, charter schools in Colorado are enrolling more students than ever.

This year, charter schools nationwide logged their largest enrollment increase, with a population of more than 2 million students — including about 82,206 in Colorado — according to data released Wednesday by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

“I think charters have become part of the mainstream of America’s public education system,” said Ursula Wright, the alliance’s interim president and chief executive. “Though it’s certainly a small percentage, at 5 percent of the total student population in 20 years, no one can continue to think of us as a marginalized phenomenon.”

Charter schools are free, public schools operated by an independent board. They can be granted autonomy from various state laws, most commonly around hiring and firing practices.

Charters are also free to offer different curricula and services than traditional public schools.

Colorado’s charter-school enrollment increased this year by 8,500 students, or 11.9 percent, ranking the state eighth in the country. The state also added 13 new charter schools.

California, the top state in the country for charter student growth, had an increase of about 47,000 students.

“I believe it’s twofold,” Wright said. “It’s an increased public understanding of charters that has increased demand but also a stronger, more favorable environment that has been a benefit.”

Among the 13 new Colorado charter schools, four are in Denver Public Schools, and two each in Douglas County and the Adams 12 school district.

Nationwide, more than 500 new charter schools opened, concentrated in a few states where recently enacted laws eased new charter-school creation.

In Colorado, the environment has been good and the demand high, said Jim Griffin, president of the Colorado League of Charter Schools.

“The demand has been there since the beginning,” Griffin said. “What you continue to see is building and increasing political support for charters. We have all gotten collectively smarter about how to deal with barriers.”

According to data from the Colorado Department of Education, the enrollment jump may be the second-largest for Colorado.

In 2009, charter-school enrollment increased by 8,713 pupils to 66,556, up from 57,843 in 2008.

The data archived online goes as far back as 1995, when Colorado had 22 charter schools and 4,107 students enrolled.

Overall student achievement at charter schools has been mixed, but recently, charter schools have been at the top of the best-performing public schools in the state.

Wright said autonomy helps charters succeed, but it’s not the only factor for success.

“We don’t have a target for charter schools that we’re reaching for at all, because it’s about reaching unprecedented levels of high academic achievement,” Wright said. “Sometimes it will mean charter schools, or sometimes it will mean traditional schools adopting certain elements of autonomy or flexibility.”

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools report noted that about 150 charter schools were closed this year nationwide.

Since 1997, 26 Colorado charters have closed.

“There’s always going to be a mix. Some will do well; some won’t. We absolutely know that,” Griffin said. “When charters get the right combination of people, program and leadership, they can do really well. That’s not something we can say for centrally managed school districts.”

Source: http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_19493642?source=bb

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By Chelsea Hagger

Momentum for a proposal to allow more university-sponsored charter schools in Michigan appears to have slowed in the state Legislature.

Some lawmakers and schools lobbyists said that’s because the measure does not require charter schools to prove their success.

Democratic state Representative Lisa Brown said the measure should include a requirement that charter schools meet performance standards before opening in Michigan.

“I’m for quality education and every child should have a right to high quality education. There’s nothing in this bill that provides that,” said Brown.

Ari Adler, a spokesman for state House Speaker Jase Bolger, disagreed. Adler said the majority of charter schools in Michigan have long waiting lists for student enrollment. And he said that’s a reflection of high performance.

“So obviously they’re doing something right or parents wouldn’t be lining up to take their kids there,” said Adler. “But we are going to be looking at — this year and well into next year — quality education in Michigan and how that quality can be improved. And that would be at charter public schools, traditional public schools and all forms of education.”

Opponents of eliminating the state’s charter school cap say a third of existing charters have poor performance records.

It’s unclear if the charter school bill will be approved before the end of the year.

Source: http://www.michiganradio.org/post/plan-lift-cap-charter-schools-stalls-michigan-house

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LCSA:  This grant has come at a time when the attacks on Harmony Public Schools were in its peak. People attacking Harmony Public Schools and some other top-notch charter schools are doing this together with their own newly-coined jargon: Gulen Charter Schools. Instead of launching separate attacks on all successful charter schools, they combine their sorties under one category which makes the life easy for these anti-charter groups.

The question is how influential are these anti-charter groups? Looks like not much. Considering that Harmony Charter Schools are the recipient of the highest level of federal grant as well as being nominated by the Broad Foundation as one of the candidates of the Most Outstanding Academic Progress among Charters, we see that the recent surge of the anti-charter groups has not succeeded much. People probably see these groups as “some bloggers” let alone being “influential groups”.

http://www.broadeducation.org/asset/612-111101charterprizereleasefinal.pdf

Federal grant spurs charter school expansion in Austin

By Kate Alexander

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Some of Texas’ most in-demand charter schools will open new Austin campuses in coming years with the help of a federal grant aimed at extending the reach of high-performing charter schools.

Harmony Public Schools and KIPP-Austin last week each received a sizable chunk of a $25 million expansion grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

To win the competitive grant, the charter school operators had to have a proven record of improving the academic performance of low-income students.

“This is a validation of our model that we’ve built carefully over the past 10 years,” said Soner Tarim , Harmony’s superintendent.

Harmony has 36 campuses across the state, five of which are in the Austin area.

The $5 million grant will allow Harmony to open seven more schools in Texas — including one in Austin — and beef up its science, math and engineering curricula, particularly its robotics program, Tarim said.

Harmony’s new Austin school would open in the fall of 2013 at the earliest. Its location has not been determined.

With its $1 million grant, KIPP-Austin plans to open two new middle schools in East Austin next fall to complement its five existing schools, spokeswoman Evelyn Nazro said. The additional schools will expand to locations away from KIPP’s sprawling facility on FM 969 .

KIPP schools in San Antonio and Houston also received the grant money.

Texas has made it easier for proven, high-performing charter schools to expand operations by streamlining the administrative process.

But the state doesn’t provide the startup money for those new campuses that it gives to nascent charter operations, Nazro said.

“That policy is a barrier to growth for charter schools,” Nazro said. “The federal government is helping resolve that problem by giving us what the state isn’t. It has a transformative ability for high-performing charter schools to grow and replicate.”

Charter schools are privately managed public schools that receive state dollars but are not subject to many of the constraints of traditional public schools. They are intended to function as laboratories of innovation for improving the academic performance of students at risk of failure.

For instance, more than 90 percent of the students at KIPP-Austin are from low-income families, and almost all are minorities.

Nazro said KIPP’s fifth-graders come in far behind their peers across the state. By eighth grade, they are performing on par with wealthy, suburban school districts.

“We have consistently proven that ZIP code does not define destiny,” Nazro said. “The population that we serve is just as capable of learning and going on to higher education as any other population.

Source: http://www.statesman.com/news/texas-politics/federal-grant-spurs-charter-school-expansion-in-austin-1890290.html

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THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON — Enrollment is up in District of Columbia public schools, with public charter schools driving the increase.

Unaudited data released Monday by Education officials show overall enrollment is up 4 percent this school year, to 78,200 students in the district.

Mayor Vincent Gray says the numbers show the district has “turned the corner” after a decade of declining enrollment.

Enrollment in traditional public schools was up just 1 percent to 46,191. Enrollment in charter schools jumped 9 percent, to 32,009.

Overall, the schools gained just over 3,200 students, and more than 2,600 of those — 83 percent — enrolled in charter schools.

The district has 53 public charter schools on 98 campuses, and chatter school enrollment accounts for 41 percent of overall enrollment.

Mayor Vincent Gray says the numbers show the district has “turned the corner” after a decade of declining enrollment.

Source: http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/4e04bbbc648c4d199feccff8a772dc16/DC–Public-School-Enrollment/

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California charter schools are significantly contributing to closing the performance gap between low-income and affluent communities, according to a report from the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA). The inaugural Portrait of the Movement report reviews the academic performance of charter schools across the state, details their strengths and weaknesses, and provides a framework of minimum performance criteria to press for greater accountability of low-performing charter schools.

The report includes performance data for 720 charter schools compared against 7,454 non-charter schools. The study indicates high-achieving charter schools serve a disproportionate number of students from low-income populations than traditional public schools in the state.

According to the report, 42.2 percent of low-income charter school students attend schools in the top 10th percentile of California schools, compared to just 10.6 percent of low-income students attending non-charter schools in the top 10th percentile. That gap appears particularly significant considering the percentage of low-income students attending schools in the bottom 10th percentile are relatively equal between charter schools (9.7 percent of low-income students) and non-charters (11.3 percent).

In its analysis of the data, the CCSA believes charter schools “serving low-income populations are generating significantly better academic results than traditional public schools serving the same populations, thus demonstrating that charter schools are weakening the link between poverty and underperformance that is so prevalent in the traditional system.”

Part of the reason for this is the impact of family income on charter schools’ performance is four times less than the impact of family income on the performance of non-charter schools, according to the CCSA.

The report examines school performance in part by using the Similar Students Measure (SSM), a metric developed by CCSA in 2008 and vetted by an advisory panel of external research and evaluation experts. Using public data, the SSM provides an approximation of the added value a school provides to its students, allowing researchers to identify schools that significantly exceed or underperform a prediction based on their students’ background.

According to the report, charter schools (16 percent) are four times as likely as non-charters (3.9 percent) to be in the top 5 percent of California schools that exceed predicted performance. In addition, more than twice as many students are served by charter schools performing above their prediction than those underperforming, according to the CCSA.

While the state’s charter schools appear to be exceeding at the top end of public education, the report also indicates charters are more concentrated than non-charters among underperforming schools. In fact, California charter schools (11.5 percent) are more than twice as likely to be among the state’s bottom 5 percent of schools compared to non-charters (4.4 percent).

“The concentration of charter schools in the bottom 5th and 10th percentiles gives us reason to look more deeply at their academic records and ensure that appropriate accountability is upheld,” officials wrote in their analysis.

The good news for the state’s charter school movement is trending data indicates there is some evidence the concentration of over-performing charter schools is increasing, while the concentration of underperforming charters is decreasing.

Between 2008 and 2010, the concentration of charters in the bottom 5th percentile decreased from 16 percent to 11.5 percent, while the concentration of charters in the top 5th percentile increased from 14.8 percent to 16 percent.

“While these data constitute a small change, this is evidence of a promising trend that we will continue to monitor and analyze more deeply,” officials wrote.

“Charters have built tremendous momentum during the past decade, especially in California, but growth alone is not enough,” said Jed Wallace, CCSA president and CEO. “This report shows that a strikingly large number of California’s charter schools are among the very best public schools in the state, and that charters are serving low-income students more effectively than traditional public schools.”

Source: http://www.charterschoolsinsider.com/news/2011/03/california-charter-schools-closing-achievement-gap.aspx

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Michael Shank, US Vice President

Institute for Economics and Peace

This September, I was interviewed by a communications firm on the topic of Islamophobia. The firm is planning a campaign to counteract Islamophobia in America and was conducting interviews with Washington policymakers who have addressed this topic. The interview came on the heels of a Center for American Progress (CAP) report published last month, called “Fear Inc: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America,” which found a well-financed, well-organized network of advocates, experts and media partners conducting a strategic campaign throughout America and “spreading hate and misinformation,” as CAP put it.

Islamophobia is on the rise in America, but this is hardly surprising. Scan recent American history to witness the consistent creation of an “other”, whether it was anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism in the 19th century (and beyond), the first Red Scare in the early 1900s, the Japanese-American scare and second Red Scare in the mid-1900s, or the Muslim American scare in the early 2000s. There is purpose here. When entire races, religions or regions are dehumanized, it is easier to wage war, expel immigrants, and forge new, discriminatory (or oppressive) domestic and foreign policies to deal with these vilified populations.

Turkish-Americans are the latest to feel the heat. Despite serving as NATO’s number two troop supplier and recently agreeing to host a NATO radar defense system, Turkey is often accused by Washington for contradicting US foreign policy aims and objectives when negotiating with Iran, Syria, Israel and Libya. Additionally, Turkey’s market-friendly version of political Islam has often rubbed the West the wrong way.

Now, targeted discrimination aimed at the Turkish American community is centering on a Turkish educational effort, which was identified in CAP’s “Fear Inc” report. The new supposed Turkish threat to America: “Muslim Gulen schools, which [members of the Islamophobia network] claim would educate children through the lens of Islam and teach them to hate Americans”. The authors of the CAP report flatly reject this assertion, however, saying that the schools started by Turkish-American Fethullah Gulen are “nothing of the sort” and that “they are a product of moderate Turkish Muslim educators who want a ‘blend of religious faith and largely western curriculum’.”

CAP is on to something. Two Gulen charter schools ranked 5th and 6th on Newsweek’s 2011 Top Ten Miracle High Schools and two Gulen schools ranked 144th and 165th on Newsweek’s 2011 list of America’s 500 Best High Schools. So what is going on here? Gulen talks of peace and tolerance and was compared by Georgetown professor John Esposito to the Dalai Lama and praised by Madeleine Albright and James Baker III for his advocacy of democracy and dialogue. You would think this is the type of Muslim that America wants. While I recognize that there are legitimate concerns regarding the use of public funds for these charter schools, and concerns about the Gulen movement’s democratic proclivities in Turkey, it seems that at the heart of this is an undercurrent of phobia about Islamic teaching in America.

Having received my high school diploma from a Christian school and my master’s degree at a Mennonite university, which received funding from the US State Department, I know how comfortable this country is with Christian education. Islamic education, however, remains new. The Khalil Gibran International Academy in New York, for example, which aimed to teach Arabic and train students to become “ambassadors of peace and hope”, was vilified as having a “jihadist” agenda. Teachers were termed “terrorists” and founders were called “9/11 deniers,” to which Georgetown’s Esposito responded: “It’s an agenda to paint Islam, not just extremists, as a major problem.”

All of this is new to many Americans, and it is likely scary, especially since the prevailing association vis-à-vis Islam is violence. We have few notions of Islam and nonviolence, in large part because our fear has focused on the extreme outliers and because our largely Christian nation has not yet fully embraced — in media, policy, education or law — religious diversity, no matter how nonviolent, peaceful and tolerant the religion’s majority. It is time we do so. There is much to embrace — if only we open our eyes to it.

Michael Shank is a doctoral candidate at George Mason University’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, a board member of the National Peace Academy and an associate at the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-shank/islamophobia-network-targets-top-performing-american-schools_b_975946.html

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Updated on Oct 25, 2011

Ruling could affect Asheville City Schools

ASHEVILLE — In a legal battle over charter school funding, a North Carolina court ruled Tuesday that school systems can place certain restricted funds into a special account, and they don’t have to share that money with charter schools.

But the court ruled that school systems can’t move money into the restricted account retroactively, as some have done.

The ruling from the N.C. Court of Appeals came in the case of a Rutherford County charter school that had sued the county school system over funding.

The case will likely have implications in a separate case involving Asheville City Schools and a lawsuit filed by three Buncombe County charter schools.

“We will be taking a look at the (appeals court) order and seeing how we proceed in our own case,” said Cynthia Grady, attorney for Asheville City Schools.

Charter schools are tuition-free public schools, funded through tax dollars but with more freedom than traditional public schools.

Funding is based on a per-pupil share a school system’s local current expense appropriation.

But much of the debate has centered on whether charter schools should get a share of money that is restricted for things like preschool programs for at-risk children — programs the charter schools may not provide.

The N.C. Appeals Court, in its unanimous ruling, upheld a lower court ruling in a case involving charter school Thomas Jefferson Classical Academy and Rutherford County schools.

“What it means is if a traditional public school gets restricted dollars, just like a charter school, they don’t have to share that with anyone,” said Chris Campbell, an attorney who represented Rutherford County schools. Campbell is also handling the Asheville City Schools case.

Campbell said the ruling is “in line with the current law.”

But for school systems that tried to retroactively restrict certain funds, the court agreed with the lower court that retroactive budget amendments made for previous years and involving money that was already spent was “without legal effect.”

“They (the court) basically said you put these funds where they are supposed to be put in prior years, and you can’t go back and change that,” said Richard Vinroot, attorney for the Rutherford charter school.

The lower court had previously ruled that Rutherford County schools owed Thomas Jefferson Classical Academy about $731,000 for three fiscal years beginning in 2006-07.

In a statement, David Faunce, chairman of the charter school’s legal affairs committee, said the school “is pleased that the N.C. Court of Appeals has issued an opinion reaffirming and supporting the right of all public school students, charter and district, to be equally funded.”

As for Asheville City Schools and that lawsuit, schoo officials will await a written ruling from Superior Court Judge Phillip Ginn.

Source: http://www.citizen-times.com/article/20110921/NEWS01/309210037/Court-limits-charter-school-funds?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|Frontpage|p

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PHOTO: Lawrence Melrose, 16, and his great uncle, Shelton Joseph, in their New Orleans home. Photographer: John Hechinger.)

Sept. 21 (Bloomberg) — When talk-show host Oprah Winfrey handed a $1 million check last September to the principal of New Orleans Charter Science and Math Academy, 200 students watched the broadcast from a church and celebrated with a brass band.

Lawrence Melrose, a ninth-grader with learning and emotional disabilities, sat next door in a school office. The staff was concerned his fighting and cursing could be an embarrassment, said Shelton Joseph, his great uncle. Because he has trouble communicating, Lawrence needed intensive counseling and speech therapy, which the school didn’t provide, Joseph said. He was repeatedly suspended and told he couldn’t take the school bus with other kids, according to his lawyer.

The education of 16-year-old Lawrence represents a common complaint about privately run, taxpayer-financed charter schools: They often exclude children with serious disabilities or deny them the help they need, violating federal laws.

“They left me,” Joseph recalled the boy telling him on the day of the Winfrey celebration. “They left me out.”

Along with the academy supported by Oprah’s Angel Network — which the entertainer used to raise money from the public –New Orleans charter schools accused of discrimination include those that are favored charities of Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s Walton family and New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees.

Shunning special-education students helps school budgets since the average disabled child costs twice as much to serve as a nondisabled one, said Thomas Hehir, who oversaw federal special-education programs under President Bill Clinton.

“There’s no incentive to take these kids,” Hehir, now a Harvard University professor, said in an interview. “If you can avoid educating them, there are other things you can do with the money. You can pay people more or reduce class size.”

Under federal law, all public schools — including charters — must educate students with disabilities. Charters and other public schools must come up with an individual plan for every child with a disability. They are expected, when appropriate, to place special-needs students in regular classrooms with extra support, such as an aide.

If a child needs more help, the school can set up a separate class or send the child elsewhere, including a private school. The school pays the bill, and parents have a legal right to challenge each decision. Students with disabilities also have special protection when they are disciplined if the behaviors are related to their condition.

Charter schools, which tend to be small and receive less tax money than traditional districts, can’t afford to take on children who may cost tens of thousands of dollars to educate, said Andrew Coulson, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute, a Washington-based nonprofit research group. The children need to stay in better-funded districts, he said.

“It’s just not practical and feasible” for charter schools to educate severely disabled children, said Coulson, whose organization favors free markets and limited government. Parents “know that every school can’t serve every child.”

Charters on average receive $9,460 per student in local, state and federal money, 19 percent less than traditional districts, in part because many don’t get money for buildings under state laws, according to a 2010 Ball State University study.

About 1.8 million children — or 4 percent of public school students — attend charters, five times the number in 1999-2000, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Washington.

Charters last year received $14.8 billion in local, state and federal money, up from $4.5 billion in 2003, estimated Larry Maloney, president of Washington-based Aspire Consulting LLC, which analyzes public-education finances.

New Orleans, Los Angeles and Washington, three districts that rely on charter schools, face claims of systemic discrimination in special-education court cases, including allegations that charters aren’t open to children with serious disabilities.

While federal data show that charters and traditional districts have similar percentages of kids in special education, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation found that charters in Louisiana, California, New York and Texas had fewer with more severe disabilities.

Only 1 percent of the students in Los Angeles charter schools have serious disabilities, such as autism, compared with 3.5 percent at district-operated schools, according to the system’s court-appointed monitor. Twenty-nine out of 186 charters didn’t have a single child with serious disabilities.

Charter enrollment practices may screen out children who are hard to educate, according to reports by monitors in Los Angeles and Washington. The Gates foundation disagrees. Parents are often leery of leaving established district programs, where they are well served, said Don Shalvey, who oversees the group’s charter- school philanthropy of $475 million in the past decade.

After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, New Orleans turned to charters as a way to rebuild schools and overhaul public education. Its charter schools now enroll more than 70 percent of students, a larger share than in any other U.S. district.

Last October, 10 families, including Lawrence’s, filed a federal special-education discrimination suit against the state of Louisiana. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil-rights group in Montgomery, Alabama, represents the families. Charter schools aren’t named as defendants, and the allegations include complaints about services at conventional schools, as well.

A lanky teenager who dreams of joining the Army, Lawrence reads and does math at roughly the third-grade level. Along with attention deficit disorder, he has language-related disabilities that make his speech difficult to understand.

Rather than provide all the services he needed, New Orleans Charter Science and Math excluded him by suspending him repeatedly and keeping him from going to the Oprah celebration, according to the lawsuit.

Some other students also didn’t attend the ceremony to protect children’s safety, Benjamin Marcovitz, the school’s founder and principal, said in a phone interview. Angela De Paul, an Oprah Winfrey spokeswoman, declined to comment.

Lawrence struggles because of failings of his previous schools, and the academy did everything it could to help him, including paying for a mentor, Marcovitz said.

“Lawrence is a pretty beloved member of our school community” and returned to school this year, Marcovitz said. After the lawsuit was filed and repeated meetings with the family, the school shifted its approach last December, providing the mentor, speech therapy and instituting a plan that rewarded him for good behavior, according to Eden Heilman, a Southern Poverty Law Center senior staff attorney.

Kelly Fischer, another plaintiff, toured New Orleans charter schools in March 2010 to find a spot in fourth grade for her son Noah, who is blind, autistic and eats from a tube.

Administrators from three charter schools told her they couldn’t handle Noah, according to her notes.

“You do not want your son to come here,” Laura Todaro, a counselor at Samuel J. Green Charter School, told Fischer, according to her notes.

“When people within the educational field, professionals, tell me that he’s too much for them, it’s kind of like telling me there’s no hope for him,” Fischer said.

The Samuel Green school, run by FirstLine Schools, received a $279,000 donation from the foundation of NFL quarterback Brees. Chris Stuart, Brees’s agent, declined to comment.

Todaro, FirstLine’s director of counseling services, said she remembers her conversation with Fischer differently. She told Fischer and another parent with her that the schools educated children with disabilities in regular classrooms — a philosophy of “complete and total inclusion” — and didn’t have anything already in place to serve Noah, Todaro said.

“I’m sorry if she took away that he couldn’t come here,” Todaro said in a telephone interview. “We always try to accommodate the needs of the kids.”

The family of another child in the lawsuit said he was shortchanged at KIPP schools — a charter network that operates across the U.S. San Francisco-based KIPP is featured in “Waiting for Superman,” the documentary directed by Academy Award winner Davis Guggenheim that lauds charter schools. The Gates and Walton foundations support KIPP, which stands for Knowledge Is Power Program.

In the New Orleans lawsuit, the mother of a 16-year-old said he didn’t get the help he needed from KIPP Believe College Prep. Because of his attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, the boy, identified in the suit only as L.W., reads at the second-grade level and had failing grades and scores on state standardized tests.

The school’s special-education plan included no social work, counseling or psychological services, according to the complaint. At KIPP Renaissance High School last year, the boy received only 30 minutes of counseling a week, the suit said.

“We are deeply committed to serving all students,” including the 9 percent last year who had disabilities, Rhonda Kalifey-Aluise, executive director of KIPP New Orleans Schools, said in a statement.

Source: http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1376-LRVP690D9L3501-3E9Q9723I5Q1L37E4KD703IQ6V

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National Alliance for Public Charter Schools provides a very user friendly dashboard where you can access detailed statistical information about each charter school in U.S.

http://www.publiccharters.org/dashboard/select/year/2011

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Gulen charter schools, a fictitious phenomenon

By Dr. Kurt

Gulen and Charter Schools

In the last two years, a new trend has been started by some mysterious bloggers later joined by a few self-identified scholars with PhDs. They came up with a brand-new term, a totally new coinage, for the charter school world: Gulen Charter Schools. While the early-bird alarmist bloggers tried to attract people’s attention to those so-called Gulen Charter Schools by claiming that Fethullah Gulen involved in the foundation and administration of some US charter schools, others – specifically the academics – based their arguments on these blogs as if the latter were highly credible sources. Moreover, in an effort to make their claims look authentic alarmist bloggers employed charter schools’ open-to-public data, such as tax returns and H1B visa applications which indeed have been scrutinized by local and federal government agencies many times for various procedural reasons.

The question here is what charter schools are and in what sense they could be compared with the schools founded throughout the world by the people inspired by Fethullah Gulen.

According to uscharterschools.org;

Charter schools are nonsectarian public schools of choice that operate with freedom from many of the regulations that apply to traditional public schools. The “charter” establishing each such school is a performance contract detailing the school’s mission, program, goals, students served, methods of assessment, and ways to measure success. The length of time for which charters are granted varies but most are granted for 3-5 years. At the end of the term, the entity granting the charter may renew the school’s contract. Charter schools are accountable to their sponsor– usually a state or local school board– to produce positive academic results and adhere to the charter contract. The basic concept of charter schools is that they exercise increased autonomy in return for this accountability. They are accountable for both academic results and fiscal practices to several groups: the sponsor that grants them, the parents who choose them and the public that funds them.

Uscharterschools.org also provides some other definitions of charter schools from various independent sources such as this one:

Charter schools are semi-autonomous public schools, founded by educators, parents, community groups or private organizations that operate under a written contract with a state, district or other entity. This contract, or charter, details how the school will be organized and managed, what students will be taught and expected to achieve, and how success will be measured. Many charter schools enjoy freedom from rules and regulations affecting other public schools, as long as they continue to meet the terms of their charters. Charter schools can be closed for failing to satisfy these terms. (“Charter Schools Description”, Education Commission of the States, 2005)

These definitions clearly state that charter schools are public institutions owned by the public, operated for the sake of public by using public money, and responsible to the institutions representing the public. They have to be transparent – as dictated by the laws in the US – open to public by providing equal opportunity of enrollment to anyone legally eligible for the application to the school, cannot discriminate even by requiring certain test scores as a requirement for enrollment. Charter schools are operated by contractors for a specified term and the contract could be renewed based on the schools’ performance. They are accountable for their academic and fiscal performances to the institution (state, local school board etc) who granted them this privilege in the name of public. This means the contractors do not really own the schools but operate them for a pre-arranged time period. Then, if the contract is renewed they are good to go; but if not, it turns into a regular, government operated public school overnight.

Academics studying Gulen-inspired schools founded throughout the world by the people who were inspired by Fethullah Gulen’s teachings have coined the term Gulen Schools (or Gulen-inspired schools/institutions) for convenience purposes (see Ebaugh, 2010, p. 96). Although Fethullah Gulen does not accept any affiliation to his name, whether it is people or institutions, it has been useful to call them Gulen Schools. Dr. Thomas Michel describes Gulen Schools as follows:

[T]he schools inspired by Gülen’s educational understanding are not religious or Islamic. Instead, they are secular private schools inspected by state authorities and sponsored by parents and entrepreneurs. They follow secular, state-prescribed curricula and internationally recognized programs. (Michel, 2006, p. 111)

Gulen-inspired schools, unlike charter schools, are private schools financed by tuition fees and donations of local businessmen who pledged their support at school fundraisers that are held on yearly basis. They are open to public as long as students could pay the tuition and at the same time pass a certain qualification test held either by the school itself or – in Turkish case – by the state. For those who are well qualified without proper financial support, there are scholarships such as tuition waivers and even stipends. Moreover, these private schools are predominantly boarding schools where there usually is no option other than living in the dormitories under the tutelage of school administration.

The business circles of the movement are the main sponsors of these schools, supporting them financially until they are able to raise their own revenues through school fees. In each country, the community works in co-operation with the local authorities, who often provide logistical assistance and supervise the curriculum:

Some schools are completely built and funded by businessmen and industrialists, while some are joint ventures between the state and the trusts. The state provides the building, electricity, water, etc., and the trusts provide teaching, the teaching staff, and all educational materials and resources.

Some are eventually completely funded by student fees. They work as non-profitable companies or trusts, that is, all the income incurred goes back to the students again as educational investment (new teaching materials and resources such as books, computers, software; and facilities such as labs, gyms, hostels, residence halls, etc).

Ruth Woodhall says, “Every school has its own independent accountants and accountancy system. They are all accountable to the local authorities (the state) and the trust’s inspectors, and comply with the state and international law.”[1] Ian G. Williams adds that the schools do receive summary and unpredicted inspections.[2] On the other hand, a qualitative field research about Kenya’s Gülen-inspired schools suggests that the schools have been functioning not only as a secular alternative to religious, Christian missionary schools and Islamic schools, but also as barriers to potential ethno-religious conflict between Kenya’s local Christian tribes and its politically empowering Muslim minority.[3]

Charter schools allegedly affiliated to Fethullah Gulen and mistakenly called Gulen Charter Schools have none of the abovementioned characteristics that Gulen-inspired schools display. They are neither founded as private institutions, nor funded by private entrepreneurs and they are not allowed to charge any sort of tuition fee let alone putting enrollment requirements to select students that have promising academic potential. They don’t administer any entrance or qualification test. Unlike Gulen-inspired schools, charter schools have almost no donations from generous businessmen. If there is any donation, it probably comes from certain foundations like Dell Foundation or Gates Foundation within the scope of a larger project or initiative such as T-STEM. The budget of a charter school largely consists of the state money that is paid annually to each and every charter school in the nation. Charter schools also may not make zip code distinction as public schools and more than half of their students, statistics show that, come from disadvantaged areas. There is also no boarding school option as in the example of Gulen-inspired schools. Charter schools are day schools; therefore there are no dormitories that students can stay overnight.

Here remains a question: Is there any Gulen-inspired school in the sense that I have described above? I can say “Yes,” this question. There are indeed handful Gulen-inspired private schools in the United States. One of them is the Pinnacle Academy of Northern Virginia (DC metropolitan area). Lately they have attracted the attention of the national and international media after President Obama hosted Inaugural White House Science Fair. Pinnacle team developed a digital and three-dimensional model of “Yeshilist,” an imaginary city that anticipates the accommodation needs of citizens who lose their homes during an earthquake and they introduced their project to President Obama at the White House.

Another Gulen-inspired school is Brooklyn Amity School, a well-known school by its achievements at some of the top academic competitions such as Science Olympiad, Math Contests, Robotics Competitions, Art Contests, and Future City Engineering competition.

I guess there are five or six Gulen-inspired schools in the US and those schools have no connection with some other charter schools called mistakenly Gulen Charter Schools. As I stated in my article entitled Gulen Charter Schools, the fact that some people inspired by Fethullah Gulen work for a charter school does not necessarily make this school a Gulen Charter School.

Finally, I need to reiterate the fact that we should definitely make a distinction and put some space between Gulen-inspired schools and the non-existent concept of Gulen Charter Schools mistakenly claimed by some alarmist bloggers. I have described the nature of Gulen-inspired schools and their main differences from US charter schools. I hope self-proclaimed academics won’t fall into the trap of mistakenly-coined Gulen Charter Schools concept again.

[1] Ruth Woodhall, “Organizing the Organization, Educating the Educators: An Examination of Fethullah Gulen’s Teaching and the Membership of the Movement, delivered during “Islam in the Contemporary World: The Fethullah Gulen Movement in Thought and Practice” conference, Rice University, 12-13 November, 2005, pp.3-4

[2] Ian G. Williams, “An Absent Influence? The Nurcu/Fetullah Gulen Movements in Turkish Islam and Their Potential Influence upon European Islam and Global Education”, delivered during “Islam in the Contemporary World: The Fethullah Gulen Movement in Thought and Practice” conference, Rice University, 12-13 November, 2005, pp.8.

[3] Mehmet Kalyoncu, “Gulen-inspired Schools in the East Africa: Secular Alternative in Kenya and Pragmatist Approach to Development in Uganda”, delivered during “Islam in the Age of Global Challenges: Alternative Perspectives of the Gulen Movement” conference on November 14-15, 2008, Georgetown University, p.1

SOURCE: Gulen and Charter Schools Blog http://gulenandcharterschools.blogspot.com/p/new-fictitious-phenomenon-gulen-charter.html

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LCA: Local districts in FL wants more too. This could be a game changing move for charter schools movement as well as for teacher unions if it is taken as a model by rest of the nation.  Let’s wait and see.

Regular schools push for same freedoms as charters

School-district officials across Central Florida and the state say they are tired of charter schools getting all of the breaks, and they want the Legislature to give them more freedoms, too.

With a budget crisis hampering many school districts, officials in Seminole, Orange and other districts are eager to unload costly provisions of state law, such as requirements to bus students to school.

While regular public schools are struggling to provide teachers and classrooms to meet Florida’s class-size limits, for example, charters are permitted to exceed the restrictions by using a schoolwide average.

The Renaissance Charter School that hopes to open in Seminole next fall plans from the start to routinely exceed limits in many of its kindergarten-through-eighth-grade classes and aim for a schoolwide average.

In addition to class-size requirements and busing, school officials point to a slew of costly requirements that state lawmakers have written into law through the years while not providing adequate funds for compliance.

End-of-course exams, physical-education courses, strict school-construction codes, online instruction and virtual textbooks are among items on the growing list.

Seminole and Orange school boards will ask the Legislature to at least allow school districts that the state has designated Academically High Performing to have the same exemptions from law as the charters. Seminole has the designation, based largely on student FCAT performance, and Orange hopes to attain it.

“If we are performing at a high level, give us some freedom to do what we want to do,” said Bill Sublette, chairman of the Orange School Board.

dweber@tribune.com or 407-883-7885

Source: http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2011-09-08/features/os-districts-want-charter-rights-20110905_1_charter-schools-school-districts-florida-school-boards-association

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The House is expected to pass a bill next week that would expand the number and quality of charter schools nationwide.

The House on Thursday began considering eight amendments to the Empowering Parents Through Quality Charter Schools Act, but lawmakers were unable to finish debate before President Obama delivered his jobs speech.

The bill, which aims to provide students with a high-quality alternative to traditional public schools, is expected to pass the Republican-controlled House sometime next week.

Read more at http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/charter-school-bill-expected-to-pass-house-20110909

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The Strategic Management of Charter Schools Frameworks and Tools for Educational Entrepreneurs

Peter Frumkin, Bruno V. Manno, and Nell Edgington, foreword by Frederick M. Hess

The Strategic Management of Charter Schools addresses the challenges facing such schools by mapping out, in straightforward and highly pragmatic terms, a management framework for them.

The first charter school law in the United States was enacted in Minnesota in 1991. In the twenty years since that modest beginning, the movement has burgeoned and spread across the country: there are now more than five thousand charter schools attended by nearly two million students. Yet due to this rapid growth in the number of charter schools and to their generally independent character, the nature and quality of these institutions vary greatly. The promise of charter schools is great, but so are the organizational and educational challenges they face.

Organized around three crucial challenges to charter school leaders—managing mission, managing internal operations, and managing the larger stakeholder environment—the book provides charter school leaders with indispensable tools and insights for achieving educational and organizational success. In its elucidation of these managerial challenges, and in its equally helpful and detailed examinations of particular schools, the book offers a clear, credible approach to the efficient and sustainable management of what are still young and experimental educational institutions.

The Strategic Management of Charter Schools is a volume in the Educational Innovations series.

About the Authors

Peter Frumkin is professor of public affairs and director of the RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Bruno V. Manno is senior advisor for K–12 Education Reform with the Walton Family Foundation. Nell Edgington is president of Social Velocity.

Source: http://www.hepg.org/hep/book/143

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By Robert Swift (Harrisburg Bureau Chief)

HARRISBURG – Under the banner of offering more school choice, Republican lawmakers plan a major push this fall to greatly expand the number of charter schools in Pennsylvania that provide students and families an alternative to traditional public schools.

The charter school expansion legislation goes hand-in-hand with bills in the GOP-controlled statehouse to give students vouchers or scholarships to attend the private, parochial or public school of their choice and expand the amount of tax credits available in the state Educational Improvement Tax Credit program.

While establishing a school choice program would be a new venture for Pennsylvania, the bills to expand charter schools and the EOTC program seek to build on already established programs.

First authorized under a 1997 state law, more than 90,000 students, or 5 percent of school-age students, are now enrolled in nearly 175 charter schools. Of these, 159 schools are in physical locations while 12 are cyber schools with an Internet-based instruction.

Charter schools are designed to be self-managed public schools that operate free of many state rules and mandates and often offer a special curriculum.

A Senate bill sponsored by Education Committee Chairman Jeff Piccola, R-15, Harrisburg, that has some bipartisan support seeks to make charter schools available to more students by creating a statewide commission with the authority to approve charter school applications, allow colleges and universities to sponsor charter schools, allow a charter school to have multiple campuses and give parents more options to convert an existing public school into a charter school.

Similar bills have been introduced in the House.

The Corbett administration supports the basic concepts in these bill.

“Innovative solutions that modify some of the current barriers to charter school growth, such as establishing a strong statewide authorizer, can facilitate family access to more public school choices in the coming years,” said Amy Morton, a deputy Education Department secretary, at a recent Senate committee hearing.

This statement addresses the contentious issue of approving charter school applications.

Under current law, a public school district has authority to approve applications for physical charter schools in its jurisdiction.

If a charter is denied, the applicant can appeal the decision to the state Charter School Appeal Board. Meanwhile, the education department has sole power to authorize cyber school applications.

The appeal board is scheduled Sept. 27 to hear the appeal of the planned Howard Gardner School for Discovery in Lackawanna County. Both the Scranton and Abington Heights school districts have rejected a charter for the school.

Piccola’s bill would create an independent state commission with power to authorize charter schools across the state and hear appeals of disputes between charter schools and a local school district. The measure would still allow a school district to authorize a local charter school if it wants.

At the hearing, Piccola said school districts have done a poor job fostering charter schools.

Thomas Gentzel, executive director of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, said the bill is troubling because school districts would face the financial burden of paying to operate charters schools authorized by a state commission without local input.

“The legislation would permit the expansion of charter schools without involvement from local communities, yet school districts would still be responsible for funding them since payments for charters would be taken from school district subsidies,” he added.

Gentzel said the top priority for lawmakers should be creating a less costly and more predictable funding formula for charter schools.

Piccola’s bill would set up a statewide advisory committee to make recommendations on charter school funding issues.

rswift@timesshamrock.com

Source: http://standardspeaker.com/news/gop-plans-push-for-charter-schools-1.1198338#axzz1XHywJwrh

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Source: http://www.chron.com/news/article/Charter-school-advocates-seek-independent-board-2157124.php

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By Staff (AccessNorthGa.com)

DAHLONEGA – North Georgia College & State University and three area school systems will work together to create a regional technology charter school that serves students in Hall, Lumpkin and White counties.

A $50,000 grant from the Race to the Top Innovation Fund, which was awarded earlier this month, will fund the costs of planning and designing a high-impact regional charter school with specific focus on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). Planning will include drafting a charter petition for the academy, which will target 400-600 students a year.

Expenses related to planning the Regional Charter STEM Academy could include travel to other STEM academies, consultant fees and supplies. North Georgia serves on the planning leadership team for the academy and will assist in curriculum development. Other members of the leadership team include the superintendents of the three school systems. The academy will be located at North Hall High School and accept students from Lumpkin and White counties as well. The opening of the school will be scheduled for August 2014.

Because of the influx of high-tech industry in the region, one goal of the academy is to create an “engineering pipeline” in northeast Georgia to prepare to pursue additional education, internships and careers in technology, according to the grant proposal. A second goal of the academy is to make new opportunities available for economically disadvantaged students in the area, many of whom will be first-generation college students.

The Regional Charter STEM Academy isn’t the first collaboration between North Georgia and area school systems, according to Dr. Bob Michael, dean of the School of Education.

“Our science education faculty members have been working closely over the past two years with several Hall County elementary schools in support of their science programs,” Michael said. “This work includes providing professional development workshops for teachers and placing North Georgia’s early childhood and special education majors in these schools with special focus on science, integrating science education course work with the curricula of the schools.”

Hall County already has eight charter schools and White County is a charter system; Lumpkin began the process of becoming a charter system a year ago. Michael called the creation of a multi-county partnership like the Regional Charter STEM Academy “very rare” and wasn’t aware of another in existence.

Through the Innovation Fund, the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget awards grants to partnerships between schools, institutions of higher education, businesses and nonprofit organizations. Five grants were announced earlier this month, out of more than 70 proposals that were received.

The Race to the Top Fund is a $4 billion federal grant opportunity to support new approaches to improve schools, encouraging states that are concentrating on reform and innovation.

Source: http://www.accessnorthga.com/detail.php?n=241426

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As interest spreads in TN, Rutherford group targets at-risk kids and dropouts

Written  by Julie Hubbard | The Tennessean

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NJ Spotlight: Lawsuit could increase tensions between charters and traditional schools in suburban enclaves statewide.  By John Mooney, NJSpotlight.com, August 15, 2011

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A revolutionary school in Detroit that lets young mothers bring their kids was almost closed despite its outstanding graduation rate. Jesse Ellison on an education worth fighting for.

Samith, 17, bounced from foot to foot as she waited to enter the theater, and confessed that she had hardly slept the night before. “I didn’t eat this morning either,” she said. “I was too excited!”

“I don’t think I would have finished the two classes I needed to graduate” if not for Ferguson’s policies, said Oates. She recalled just how close the school had come to being shut down, and what that would have meant for her and her infant son. For Oates, finding affordable childcare that would allow her to attend classes might have proved impossible.

It’s not just Oates who believes that her success is directly connected to her enrollment at Ferguson. In 2004, the school was recognized by the National Association of Secondary School Principals for outstanding achievement among schools with high poverty rates, and it boasts an astounding 90 percent graduation rate. For nine years straight, every graduate of Ferguson has been accepted into college.

But despite the school’s tremendous success—it was recently the subject of an award-winning documentary called Grown in Detroit—the city announced in April that because of a $327 million district deficit, it would close Ferguson Academy along with two other alternative schools. The students, who numbered about 250 in the 2010-2011 school year, were devastated. During spring break, more than a dozen of them, accompanied by a teacher, staged a sit-in to protest the closure. They were arrested within hours. Outside the school, police turned on their sirens, seemingly to drown out the sound of the students’ chants.

The resulting video, showing pregnant teenagers handcuffed and shoved into waiting police cars for the crime of sitting in peaceful protest, drew nationwide attention; MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow devoted significant coverage. In late June, Ferguson was given a reprieve when the city announced that rather than close altogether, the school would be operated as a charter, outside the umbrella of the Detroit Public School system.

For principal Asenath Andrews, a Detroit native who has been a principal at Ferguson for 24 years, the clemency was welcome, but its arrival at the 11th hour was more than a little unnerving. Her office is still filled with boxes of books and supplies that she’d started to pack up in anticipation of the school’s closure. And she gave away so many Post-Its and pens that there are barely any left. “It was a crazy time,” she says, shaking her head. Still, now that all’s said and done, Andrews says she wouldn’t have it any other way. As a charter school, she’ll have both more money and more autonomy. “It’s like moving out of your parents’ house,” she laughs. “I wouldn’t go back, even if I could.”

But while charter schools are being treated as a potential panacea for America’s educational ailments, thanks in part to last year’s Obama-endorsed documentary Waiting for “Superman,” when it comes to their effectiveness, the jury is still out. A 2009 Stanford University study found that nationwide, just 17 percent of charter schools were doing any better than public schools at educating students—and meanwhile, the study found, more than a third did worse. The stats are even more dismal in Detroit. Last year, city charters performed worse than public schools in math, science, reading, and writing.

Whether becoming a charter school is a blessing or a curse remains to be seen. But either way, Wednesday’s commencement ceremony was the last time that Ferguson graduates will be included among those matriculating from Detroit public schools. And despite the morning’s jubilant spirit, the ceremony took place under the long shadow of the city’s persistent economic struggles. Pastor Anthony Houston, who gave the invocation, referred to the “murky and turbulent waters of urban education,” and prayed not just for the students, but for the city itself.

“God, we pray your blessings on our city,” he said. “On our schools, and on our principals who have been charged with turning those schools around.” The students and their families assembled in the auditorium that morning bowed their heads along with him, but they knew full well that solving the challenges their city is facing will probably take a great deal more than prayer alone.

Source: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/07/29/ferguson-academy-teen-mom-high-school-almost-closed-survives.html

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Anyone who is serious about improving the quality of public education should support the incredible contributions of public charter schools, which are proving in community after community that all kids can learn and achieve.

Some of the most vocal critics of charter schools don’t seem to understand what public charters actually are or how they work. Charter schools — which are disproportionately located in low-income communities — are public schools where all of the students have proactively made a choice to enroll. Similarly, teachers at charters proactively choose to teach in these schools, which often have far less red tape and more freedom to innovate.

Many charter schools are focused on closing the achievement gap between students in low-income communities and those in affluent suburbs. This is one reason that charter schools enroll more than 350,000 children in major urban centers and nearly two million students nationwide. School leaders report that another 420,000 students want the chance to enroll in a charter school.

One of the great contributions of the public charter school movement to education reform is that charters are proving every day that kids in poverty can succeed. Schools like Harlem Village Academies, Amino Leadership High in Los Angeles and Urban Prep in Chicago are making college acceptance a reality for children who are often first generation college students.

As President and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, I’ve traveled more than 84,000 miles over the past year, visited 25 states, and talked with teachers, students and parents from hundreds of schools.

In Texas, I heard from a student who told me that his charter school had literally saved his life. Without it he knew he would have faced a future of violence and had no way out. Today, that student is on a path toward college, and every day his parents are grateful for his chance at success.

I also have heard from teachers about what drives them to work in charter schools. Charters are designed to combine creativity, innovation and a nurturing school culture to deliver academic success for all students.

Lauren Whitehead, a lead teacher at North Star Academy Charter School in Newark said, “What makes working in a charter school unique and rewarding: Mission, culture and support. Teachers receive constant support from one another and from school leaders. The support that is given through observation, feedback and professional development, helps create and maintain a strong culture centered wholly on student achievement.”

In Sheridan, Oregon where a charter school has been developed to include a Japanese language immersion program, Andrew Scott says, “We are given immense freedom to explore our creativity and provide the learning environment our students deserve: nurturing, personalized and differentiated and rigorous. I have the responsibility to design and coordinate eight multi-grade, proficiency-based levels of Japanese while also teaching full-time. I design my own materials and organize the levels in the way I see fit.”

Educators from Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Colorado, Illinois and many other states have reported to me that high expectations for students and teachers is critical to academic achievement. Charter school leaders also have the freedom to adopt structures and processes that are often discouraged in non-charters, like extended learning time for students and performance pay to reward teachers for outstanding results.

Charter schools are unique public schools that serve a whole community as a partnership between teachers, parents and students. These schools are always free and never have special entry requirements. We often say that families are voting with their feet when they choose to enroll a student at a charter school, because charters are always “opt-in” opportunities. Students and teachers elect charter schools, they are never forced to attend one.

Every child deserves the opportunity to attend a great public school. The charter school model is designed to make sure all charter schools are schools of excellence. To that end, the NAPCS supports closing any school — charter or otherwise — that isn’t delivering academic results for students. We are active in all states with charter laws, helping to create an environment where school closure is handled responsibly and with as little disruption as possible for students.

Public education advocates need to act with haste on behalf of the thousands of parents who want a better opportunity for their children. The NAPCS is dedicated to ensuring the public charter school sector continues to grow, continuously improve in quality, and share its innovative practices broadly so they can benefit all students. On behalf of the 1.8 million students enrolled in more than 5,000 public charter schools, we invite all Americans who support public education to join our efforts.

Source:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-groff/were-in-step-with-the-sav_b_912087.html

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A charter school operated by Arizona State University in downtown Phoenix started its third year and welcomed its first ninth-grade class on Monday.

Sharon Osorno was among an estimated 150 freshmen who have joined the 550 elementary- and middle-school students already attending the charter school, ASU Preparatory Academy-Phoenix, at Seventh and Fillmore streets.

Osorno, 14, is attending the school because her parents heard it had strong academics, she said.

“They thought it was a good school because of ASU,” she said.

She will have the chance to go to the prep academy all four years of high school: ASU Preparatory officials said they will add 10th, 11th and 12th grades gradually, so it will be a K-12 charter school by 2014.

The ASU charter school is part of a trend. From California to Texas, colleges and universities began getting into the business of running K-12 schools a little more than a decade ago. The higher-education institutions use these schools to put into practice new teaching techniques and approaches developed by education experts that are meant to help students of varying academic abilities prepare for college.

But the universities also hope to snag a few college recruits.

ASU’s marketing efforts resonate with parents who imagine their children at college.

“ASU Preparatory Academy distinguishes itself from other schools because it aims to prepare students to graduate from college, while most public school systems are designed to graduate from high school,” Deborah Gonzalez, the academy’s chief academic officer, said in a statement Monday.

The downtown prep school is the second of its kind run by ASU. It also has a charter operated through its Polytechnic campus in Mesa.

At ASU Preparatory Academy-Polytechnic, more students are passing math, reading, writing and science portions of the AIMS test than those at the downtown academy.

The downtown academy has struggled on the Arizona’s Instrument to Measure Standards. No grade scored higher than 60 percent on any of the AIMS tests last year.

But a look at demographic differences between the students at each school reveals that ASU Preparatory in downtown Phoenix is working with students who come with challenges often cited by education experts as hindrances to academic success, such as poverty.

All but 13 percent of the downtown school’s families are low-income and their lunches are subsidized by the National School Lunch Program, but Polytechnic elementary had no children who qualified for the free and reduced-price lunch program, according to Arizona Department of Education data from last school year.

Gonzalez said the downtown school, which is a partnership with Phoenix Elementary School District, is a neighborhood school, serving mostly students from the low-income Garfield neighborhood on the eastern side of downtown Phoenix.

Gonzalez said her administration is aware of the lagging test scores at the school, and it is taking steps to address the problem, focusing on the addition of literacy programs that encourage parents to work with their students on practicing reading and math together. The school hired a family liaison to build relationships with families and encourage more parental involvement. It also involves parents and students in college planning throughout the children’s years at the school, she said.
Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2011/08/02/20110802arizona-state-university-charter-school-phoenix.html#ixzz1U5JOCLHi

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BY LINDA TRIMBLE AND ANNIE MARTIN, STAFF WRITERS

Parents of school-age children in Volusia and Flagler counties may be able to choose from a greater pool of schools in the 2012-2013 school year.

The districts received applications this week from three new charter schools that would serve students with a range of needs and interests.

Charter schools are public schools that perform under contracts with local school districts. This frees them from some of the regulations for traditional schools but charter schools are responsible for their academic and financial performance.

Applications were due Monday for charter schools that intend to open for the 2012-2013 school year. Volusia received applications from Richard Milburn Academy of Florida, which caters to struggling students, and Florida Virtual Academy, which would offer online courses.

Richard Milburn Academy of Florida, which already operates high school programs in Daytona Beach and DeLand, applied to add a middle school program to its East Volusia site.

Like the high school programs, the middle school would serve students who have struggled to succeed in traditional schools.

“We don’t want their ‘A’ students. We want those kids who need a little extra help getting out (of middle school),” said Sam Smith, director of Milburn’s Daytona Beach program. “We could save a lot of kids.”

If approved, the charter middle school would share the Daytona Beach campus. The proposal calls for it to serve up to 100 students in the 2012-13 year and grow to 300 students within four years.

Richard Milburn Academy operates four other Florida charter schools outside Volusia County and has graduated more than 1,425 students since 2001. It has eight schools in Texas.

Florida Virtual Academy already operates online schools in Louisiana, Arizona and Idaho, according to its Volusia application. It proposes to serve 500 students in kindergarten through ninth grade and then add a grade a year in Volusia, growing to more than 1,000 students by the fifth year.

Flagler received an application from Global Outreach Charter Academy of Palm Coast, which would offer Russian language instruction to students in kindergarten through eighth grade.

Paul Bratulin is helping a group of parents in Palm Coast, where there is a relatively large Russian population, start the school. Bratulin is one of the founders of Global Outreach Charter Academy in Jacksonville, which follows a similar model.

Students would receive core instruction in English and would not need prior Russian language knowledge. Most of the Jacksonville students are not native Russian speakers, he said.

The school “will provide a unique choice for parents within the Flagler public school system, giving students access to a comprehensive educational program that emphasizes early foreign language acquisition,” according to the application.

The application estimates the school will enroll as many as 364 students the first year and up to 728 by the third year. About 20 percent could be English language learners and 80 percent would be eligible for free or reduced-price lunches.

The school boards in the two counties have 60 days to decide whether to approve the charters.

Source: http://www.news-journalonline.com/news/local/east-volusia/2011/08/03/new-charter-schools-submit-applications-in-volusia-flagler.html

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Watch Video 1

Charter School Issues: Part 1

The recent problems with charter school Abramson Science and Technology in New Orleans are covered WDSU TV.

Watch Video 2

Charter School Issues: Part 2

The second part of covering the recent problems with charter school Abramson Science and Technology in New Orleans are covered WDSU TV.

Watch Video 3

Harmony Public Schools

Harmony Public Schools celebrate 10th year anniversary.

Watch Video 4

The Barack Obama Green Charter High School

This video gives a sweet overview of The Barack Obama Green Charter High School, located in Plainfield, New Jersey. Obama Green opened their doors in September, ’10. Guerilla Educators is honored to have played a part in ObamaGreen receiving their charter and now delivering world-class education in a safe, nurturing environment.

Watch Video 5

President Obama on Education at TechBoston

President Obama Speaks on winning the future through education at TechBoston Academy in Massachusetts.

Watch Video 6

President Bush at the Harlem Village Academy Charter School

President Bush spoke at the Harlem Village Academy Charter School on April 24, 2007, supporting charter schools and No Child Left Behind. Part 1 of 3.

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Dr. Tevfik Eski, chief executive officer of the Pelican Educational Foundation in New Orleans, has firmly rejected allegations relating to the Abramson Science and Technology Charter School that appeared in The Times-Picayune daily on Friday July 15.

Saying that the allegations in the story by Andrew Vanacore were presented as if they were facts, Eski stated that it was a bad example of journalism and extrajudicial execution. Eski remarked that the sources of the allegations were some former Abramson teachers who had to leave the school for various reasons and that the newspaper did not fully publish all the responses given by Abramson officials. Eski also added that they have fears of a racist terrorist attack against their school following unsubstantiated allegations presented in the article.

Eski also rejects the claims that Inci Akpinar, presented as an executive at Atlas Texas Construction, offered a bribe to Folwell Dunbar, the state’s academic advisor, last year. Eski maintains that Akpinar has no relationship with Abramson and the police could not find any proof to support these claims and had therefore closed the case, but this was not evident in the newspaper article.

The newspaper also claimed that certain math and science teachers at Abramson lacked English competency and had language barriers with the students. Eski, on the other hand, said that the newspaper could not explain how Abramson could have achieved such measurable success if there was language barrier between students and teachers. Eski believes these claims were made by a couple of expelled students.

Eski went on to state that the newspaper confused two separate incidents relating to 5-year-old kindergarten students: “The incident that the newspaper refers to happened between two 5-year-old male students in the restroom, which was the part of the classroom and the teacher had full responsibility for the restroom as well as the classroom. The incident was a fight and the school administration took the necessary action.”

“On the other hand, another incident also took place between two 5-year-old male students in a room that had to be constantly monitored by a teacher. We determined the inappropriate behavior, handled the process professionally and informed the parents and the police. You can easily find out more about the incident in police reports and from parents. The school administration was not indifferent to the incident and we followed the appropriate procedures,” he added.

Eski maintained that the newspaper claimed that the academic performance of Abramson was low and this claim was not based on any scientific criteria. “Taking over the school in 2007, we increased the SPS (school performance scores) from 33 to 78, but this fact was ignored by the newspaper. Our graduation rates also increased and dropouts dramatically diminished. Our neighborhood schools are struggling with drug problems, teen pregnancy and violence, but we don’t have any of these problems. Recently, Congressman Bill Cassidy visited another Pelican Educational Foundation operated school, Kenilworth Science and Technology, in Baton Rouge. A female student rushed out to the congressman and uttered these words in tears: ‘If I had gone another school, I would be pregnant now’.”

Stating that their school had demonstrated remarkable academic growth in 2009-2010, Eski concluded: “We are proud of these achievements and our students’ success. We will strive to provide a better future to our students.”

Source: http://www.todayszaman.com/columnistMenuDetail.action?sectionId=6

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She had just answered a phone call last fall and on the other end was a man claiming to be from the White House.

“I really thought it was a joke,” said Gama, the 36-year-old chief schools officer of IDEA Public Schools, which has grown from one campus in 2001 when she helped found the charter district to 24 campuses serving over 12,000 students today.

“Someone had to be playing a very late April Fools’ Day prank on me,” she said. “But no, it really was Juan Sepúlveda,” director of the newly established White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans.

“I was a little thrown back when he said he had heard good things about me. I asked from whom, but he wouldn’t say.”

Several months — and a long vetting process — later, President Barack Obama selected the Houston native and longtime Rio Grande Valley resident to sit on a 15-member advisory commission. The panel will assist in crafting the nation’s policy for improving educational opportunities and outcomes for Hispanics.

In April, Obama outlined the goals to which the commission will devote itself, including increasing access to early learning programs, reducing dropout rates, preparing more Latinos for college and more.

Gama thinks South Texas has many of the keys to turn those goals into reality.

“You can’t create a commission like this and not have Texas’s Rio Grande Valley (represented),” Gama said. “There are a lot of people in the Valley doing great things in terms of Hispanic education and getting great results.

“What holds us back is two things: one, expectations and two, a one-size-fits-all approach to the problem,” she said. “Our students will rise to the level of expectations we set for them, and I think more often than not, we don’t have very high expectation for students, particularly Hispanic students.”

And, “the moment we realize there’s no one solution to this very diverse community’s problems, then we will begin to help,” Gama said.

U.S. Rep. Rubén Hinojosa agreed.

The Mercedes Democrat gave the keynote speech at the swearing-in ceremony late last month when Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor administered the oath of office to Gama.

“The responsibility (Gama) has in helping Latinos and Latinas throughout the country be able to get them college-ready and helping them get into colleges of their choice,” Hinojosa said at a recent news conference, “it made me feel so proud that one of us from down (in) South Texas, JoAnn, would be raising her hand and taking that pledge.”

‘IT MUST HAVE BEEN THE TEACHERS’

The nation’s 12.4 million Latinos account for 1 in every 5 students enrolled in the country’s elementary, middle and high schools, according to the White House, yet their lifelong gains drastically trail the general population’s.

Fewer than half of Latino children enroll in an early learning program, only half earn a high school diploma on time, just 13 percent of Hispanics complete a bachelor’s degree, and even fewer — 4 percent — obtain a graduate degree.

“Hispanics are the largest minority group in our public schools but have the lowest educational attainment level overall,” Sepúlveda said at the swearing-in ceremony. “We have a shared responsibility to deliver a world-class education to all our children.

“This can’t be done by parents and students alone,” he added. “We must all come together — governors and school boards, principals and teachers, businesses and nonprofits — to make sure we succeed as a nation.”

The advisory commission brings together CEOs, a media mogul, university officials, lawyers and entrepreneurs. But Gama believes her successful background in charter schools — 100 percent of IDEA’s graduates now attend college, with 93 percent of them staying on track — earned her a spot on the president’s advisory panel.

“I do think so, at least in terms of proving results with the Hispanic population,” she said. “Good educators borrow. Great educators steal ideas, (meaning) a lot of components IDEA already implements are garnering national attention.”

Her charter district extends the class day for all students, mandates after-school tutoring for struggling students, hosts constant Saturday academies and much more – all efforts that most traditional districts pick and choose from but often do not use at each campus.

“It’s not like we’re challenging the system but (we do what we can) to catch up our students and just to get our students as advanced as they deserve to be,” Gama said.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said options like those could help close the nation’s achievement gap. He also has suggested charters could take over — or “turn around” — low-performing public schools, something IDEA may soon attempt to accomplish.

“We have been asked to (do so) a few times, though we never felt it was the right time,” Gama said. “As we launch and expand IDEA outside of the Valley, it’s definitely something we’re exploring.

“We haven’t been approached by any schools in the Valley,” she added, “but you’ll see that in the next three or four years.”

Gama did not name specific locations for such a project, but she and other IDEA officials have suggested creating partnerships in areas where they are looking to expand their own campuses, like San Antonio and Austin.

Admitting she has years of hard work ahead of her, Gama humbly recalled her childhood.

Armed with a master’s degree from the University of Texas-Pan American and co-founder of one of the Valley’s most successful school districts, she still can’t figure out the disparity found in her own home.

“Neither my older brother and younger brother made it past ninth grade,” Gama said. “We have the same parents, went to the same schools.

“I don’t know what is different for me (but) it must have been the teachers I had,” she said. “Honestly, if I could figure that out, I would be doing a much better job now.”

Source:http://www.themonitor.com/news/founder-52172-claiming-leg.html

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Source: http://bangordailynews.com/2011/06/14/politics/senate-approves-allowing-public-charter-schools-in-maine/

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Concept intrigues many, but logistics, opposition lead states to go slow

Numerous states this year have introduced parent-trigger proposals, which would allow parents the opportunity to restructure or close academically struggling traditional public schools or convert them to charters.

Most of those proposals, which have drawn varying levels of bipartisan support, have stalled or died, while others have been scaled back significantly. And an effort by parents in California to use the state’s landmark parent-trigger law to convert their school to a charter has met with legal and political obstacles. (“Parent ‘Trigger’ Law Draws Attention, Controversy” Jan. 12, 2011.)

Yet backers of the various state initiatives are hopeful that some of this year’s proposals eventually could become law, and they are confident that support for the concept—which is still in its infancy—will grow as the public and policymakers become more familiar with it.

“It’s such a novel idea. It’s a bottom-up, not a top-down school reform,” said Marc Oestreich of the Heartland Institute, a conservative, Chicago-based think tank that supports the proposals. The challenge is “to get people up to speed on what these are all about,” he said. “You have to quell those fears before you can move forward.”

Statehouse Battleground

At least three states currently have some form of parent-trigger law: California, Mississippi, and Connecticut, the last of which gives parents a seat on councils that advise school boards on reorganizing struggling schools and other issues. During this year’s legislative sessions, at least a dozen states introduced some form of a parent-trigger measure, according to the Heartland Institute, which has advised legislators on the issue. Measures in Arkansas, Colorado, Maryland, and other states failed to advance.

Lawmakers and outside observers offer a variety of explanations for the slow pace.

Some cite the resistance of teachers’ unions, which have raised objections toCalifornia’s law. Others say unresolved controversies in California have made lawmakers in other states cautious. Still others, like Mr. Oestreich, offer a more straightforward explanation: that it often takes several legislative forays until political support solidifies around new or controversial proposals.

Many parent-trigger proposals have been sponsored by Republicans. The Heartland Institute backed the development of model legislation by the American Legislative Exchange Council, an officially nonpartisan organization that supports conservative principles, which ALEC put forward for its 2,000 members who are state lawmakers.

But parent triggers have also drawn the backing of Democrats. In Texas, state Rep. Mike Villarreal, a San Antonio Democrat, is a sponsor of one of the few such measuresaround the country that have cleared both legislative chambers. It is heading to the desk of Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican. The bill would allow a majority of parents to set in motion a restructuring, closure, or charter conversion at an academically struggling school, with a majority vote—though local school boards are also given a say.

“I was trying to create an opportunity for parents to get involved in turning around a failing school,” Rep. Villarreal said. “Too often, parents in these schools feel trapped.”

In Ohio, Republican Gov. John Kasich backed a parent-trigger option for academically struggling schools around the state, but lawmakers instead included a scaled-down provision in the state’s budget proposal to create a pilot trigger program in the 51,000-student Columbus school system.

Managing Expectations

Gene T. Harris, the superintendent of the Columbus district, argued that Ohio is not ready for a statewide program, given the unresolved questions about parent-trigger proposals. Chief among those, she said: How would parents know if the available options for overhauling an academically struggling school, such as converting it to a charter, are feasible or represent an improvement over their current situation?

“I don’t want parents to get duped or fooled,” Ms. Harris said. If parents opt to convert a school to a charter, and “an outside organization says they can perform a miracle,” she said, will “they understand that might not happen?”

Despite those reservations, Ms. Harris said she supports the pilot in her district. She said she hopes it will lead to parents, teachers, and others working collaboratively in remaking schools, which would build parent confidence in them.

Ms. Harris, like some state legislators, traced her concerns about parent-trigger laws in part to California’s experience, which convinced her that state officials hadn’t considered obstacles to making the law work. “It absolutely gives me pause,” Ms. Harris said.

California’s parent-trigger measure, signed into law by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last year, says that if 51 percent of parents in a persistently failing school sign a petition, they can force a change in the school’s structure through one of four actions: converting it to a charter school; replacing the principal and staff, overhauling the budget; or closing the school. Just 75 academically struggling schools in the state can participate.

In December, a group of parents at McKinley Elementary School, in the 25,000-student Compton Unified School District, turned in a petition to their school board asking that their school be converted to a charter. But that petition soon met with opposition and controversy. Critics questioned the validity of some of the signatures; and backers of the charter conversion accused school employees of trying to pressure those who had signed to change their minds. In February, the district rejected the petition, citing concerns over whether it met state laws for petitions, among other reasons.

The parents, who were from a majority Latino and African-American community, sued the district in Los Angeles Superior Court. That case is ongoing, but the judge overseeing it tentatively upheld the district’s rejection of the petition because of its lack of a valid date. As an alternative, the parents have moved to support the creation of a new charter school near the site of McKinley Elementary.

Proper Role

Some critics of parent-trigger proposals say that they would allow mothers and fathers who have a gripe with school administrators or teachers to organize an overhaul of the schools that has nothing to do with academic improvement.

But Linda Serrato, a spokeswoman for Parent Revolution, an organization that supported the Compton petition, disputed that idea, noting that California’s law focuses on consistently poor-performing schools. When a majority of parents agree on an academic makeover of a school, she argued, it reflects their depth of commitment.

“Parents don’t just sign petitions” without thinking it through, Ms. Serrato said. Critics wrongly assume that “parents aren’t doing what’s in the best interest of their kids. Parents want to see their kids go to college and to a good career.”

That drama has played out as California’s state board of education has sought to craft regulations that its members say are aimed at clarifying how the law should be implemented. Draft regulations address issues ranging from how to determine if petition signatures are valid to the extent to which parent-backed efforts are subject to existing state charter regulations.

Some activists say the law needs more specifics to avoid lawsuits and other disputes, while others have said they want few regulations, said state board President Michael W. Kirst, a professor emeritus of education at Stanford University. Given other states’ interest in parent-trigger proposals, he said, the regulations will be closely scrutinized.

The law, as written, is very short and leaves a lot for the board to “flesh out,” Mr. Kirst said. For other states, “it really provides a test case of the specifics that arise.”

Vol. 30, Issue 35, Pages 20-21

Source:http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/06/15/35trigger_ep.h30.html

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The 32 Westlake Academy Seniors Have Been Offered Over $4.2 Million in Scholarships/Grants and Acceptances into Many Top Universities

Each of Westlake Academy’s 32 graduates have been accepted into one or more four-year colleges, with a grand total of $4.2 million in scholarships and grants. They will walk across the stage to receive their diplomas at the Academy’s second graduation ceremony on Saturday, June 4, 2011, 2 p.m., at Hurst Conference Center, 1601 Campus Drive, Hurst, Texas 76054. Motivational speaker and author Dr. Rick Rigsby, known for encouraging and empowering audience members to become great people to do great things around the globe, will address the graduates.
Identical twins have been named valedictorian and salutatorian. Valedictorian Casey Timmerman and Salutatorian Corey Timmerman will both attend The University of Texas at Austin, Women in Natural Sciences Residential Honors Program. Additional graduates have been accepted into such colleges as New York University, Tulane University, United States Air Force Academy, and University of Notre Dame, among others. The graduating class has one National Merit Semi Finalist and five National Merit Commended Scholars.

Westlake Academy, a community-owned International Baccalaureate (IB) public charter school founded in 2003, is the first and only municipality in Texas to receive a charter designation. Westlake Academy was recently ranked in the top 20 in The Washington Post nationwide ranking that measures college-level tests administered, illustrating that students are exposed to high level academics.

The International Baccalaureate curriculum has a hard-earned reputation for quality, high standards, and pedagogical leadership. It promotes intercultural understanding and respect, not as an alternative to sense of culture and national identity, but as an essential part of life in the 21st century. By promoting independent thinkers, the IB curriculum helps students see how the world around them works, preparing them to become active participants as well as agents of positive change. Its challenging programs of international education and rigorous assessment are recognized by universities around the world.

“High student achievement is one of the five desired outcomes identified in Westlake Academy’s Strategic Plan, and we couldn’t be more proud of the Class of 2011 and what they have accomplished,” added Brymer. “As we close in on the end of another successful school year, we can’t help but reflect back to the many ways our students have not only excelled academically, but also how they have reached out to help others in need. From a student organized effort which raised $10,000 for UNICEF to an event that raised $15,000 to purchase a diabetic alert dog for a young girl in need, to a student body effort resulting in over $6,000 for Susan G. Komen for the Cure, our students, led by our seniors, have made a difference.”

Both Casey and Corey were members of the National Honor Society and the National Art Honor Society and won various awards at the Southlake Youth Art in the Square competition. Both have served as writers for the UIL award winning student newspaper “The Black Cow,” and excelled in athletics from cross country, to basketball and softball, holding leadership roles on their teams throughout the years and a couple of State championships. The twins each have more than 180 hours of community service, were involved in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and have played the piano since they were four.

“Casey and Corey are wonderful representatives of Westlake Academy and part of an outstanding senior class,” added Tom Brymer, Superintendent, Westlake Academy. “We congratulate the Class of 2011, wish them well and know they will all have very bright futures! Our hats are off to you!”

# # #

Westlake Academy is a public charter school offering the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum. Founded in 2003, with a mission to achieve academic excellence and to develop life-long learners who become well-balanced, responsible global citizens, Westlake is the first and only municipality in the state to receive a charter designation. Westlake Academy is the fifth school of only ten schools in the United States – and the only public school – to offer the full IB curriculum for grades K-12. The school graduated its first class in May 2010. For 2009-10, the Academy received an ‘Exemplary’ rating from TEA for the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) tests, the fourth time it has achieved this.

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DALLAS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Texans Can! Academy, an open enrollment tuition-free charter school district, today announced they are opening each of their ten campuses across Texas to provide tutoring at no-charge to 12^th graders who failed to graduate because they did not pass one or two areas of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) tests. Tutoring will be offered June 13^th through July 8^th, Monday through Thursday, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. at each campus in Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio.

Earlier this week, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) reported that 22,578 Texas seniors failed one or more of the required tests used to determine graduation eligibility. That translates to one in 12 high school seniors in Texas who will not be able to graduate with their class in June.

The TAKS subjects students fail most often are math and science, so Texans Can! will predominately have teacher specialists in those two core subjects in each school during this initiative they are calling “Operation Success.” Students must be committed to attend the tutoring at least four hours a day between the seven hours the schools will be open during this four-week intensive tutoring period. A complimentary meal will also be served to every student.

“Helping kids graduate from high school is what we do at Texans Can! This is just an extension of what we have been doing for 25 years,” said Richard Marquez, president and CEO of Texans Can! “Thanks to the generosity of our donors this past year we are able to offer this opportunity and help these kids graduate.”

TEA offers retesting of all four TAKS tests July 11-18 at students’ home campuses. Students return to the schools they last attended to retake the tests, and their completion statistics will be credited to their home campus.

“An organization providing a second chance to all the students who did not graduate because of failing the TAKS test is nothing short of a miracle,” said Bill Hammond, president of Texas Association of Business. “And offering it at no cost during this economy is a miracle. The Texas economy can not continue to grow without an educated population.”

A 2010 study from the Bush School projects that more than 73,000 students will drop out of high school in 2012. The study also states that the students who fail to graduate from high school are projected to cost the state and its economy $6 billion to $10.7 billion over their lifetimes.

Registration for the individualized teaching begins June 3 at every campus. Students will need a current student identification and social security number. Teachers are also being recruited who are specialists in the four TAKS subject areas: math, science, English and social studies.

Students who would like more information regarding where to register and what the requirements are, please call             888-250-4315       or visit www.texanscan.org. Teachers who are interested in applying to teach during this eight-week period please call             888-250-4315       or visit www.texanscan.org.

TEXANS CAN! ACADEMIES

Celebrating more than 25 years of serving academically at-risk youth, Texans Can! is a unique network of 10 public schools of choice located in Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, Houston and San Antonio. Serving more than 4,700 students a year, each campus provides an academically rich curriculum where the focus is always on the individual student.

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Source: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2011/06/01/2041148/california-school-is-named-academic.html#ixzz1OPu2Zoq3

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Harmony Public School has completed a $65 million fourth bond offering that will fund its campus expansion plans.

Harmony is a college preparatory charter school that serves kindergarten through high school students from 33 campuses statewide, including at least four in Central Texas. The bond issue was completed May 26. In total, the charter school system has raised $215 million through bond offerings during the last 10 years.

“At Harmony Public Schools excellence is our standard, as evidenced by the fact that we have more than 21,000 students on our waiting list,” Harmony Superintendent Dr. Soner Tarim. “Today’s bond issue was extraordinary and we believe it is a demonstration of the confidence the markets have in the Harmony Public Schools’ business model, and our ability to continue serving even more Texas students.”

This latest bond will fund Harmony’s plan to open five additional campuses for the upcoming 2011-2012 school year. The schools have a waiting list of 21,000 students.

Charter schools have taken advantage of tax-exempt bond financing to fund capital improvements and expansion projects, Harmony said. Bond financing can be used for land acquisition, refinancing of capital debt, furnishings, equipment and many other education-related expenses.

Harmony is the state’s largest network of charter schools, serving more than 16,000 Texas students.

Read more: Harmony School closes $65M bond issue | Austin Business Journal

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HARTFORD, Conn. — More than 600 additional children could get to enroll in Connecticut charter schools next fall under a proposal being considered by state education officials.

The State Board of Education is scheduled to vote Wednesday on a measure to add 622 seats in charter schools statewide this fall. It would bring their total enrollment to 6,071.

Connecticut’s first charter schools opened in 1997 as nonprofit public schools funded with state and private money.

Students must still take Connecticut’s standardized tests, but teachers have flexibility in presenting material. Enrollments are limited to keep classes small.

The proposal to add more seats is funded in Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s new state budget, but the enrollments might need to be changed if his administration doesn’t get the labor concession savings it anticipated.

Source: http://www.greenfieldreporter.com/view/story/8cdfa06932654d268da581633d169b4c/CT–Charter-Schools/

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NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Demonstrators gathered outside the state office building on 125th Street in Harlem to demand the NAACP withdraw from a lawsuit filed by the United Federation of Teachers.

The UFT, NAACP, and other groups filed suit on May 18 in Manhattan Supreme Court to stop the closing of 22 New York City public schools and block 17 charter schools from opening or expanding.

Chanting “Don’t divide us, unite us,” over 1,000 said they were fighting for their children.

“I am here for him to have the opportunity and the option of a charter school – the opportunity and the option of a higher education,” one mother said.

“The Department of Education has not learned its lesson. We cannot continue with policies that allow inequality,” Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, said.

Mulgrew added that the new suit claims the city broke its promises to give thefailing schools the support needed to improve while also targeting several charter schools that share a building with public schools.

Critics argue the arrangement takes away space from public school students. Many of those charter schools are equipped with upgraded facilities and greater gym access.

“What are we teaching our children if they’re entering a building everyday and one school has brand new facilities and the other school has no new facilities,” Mulgrew said. “That’s just wrong. It’s just wrong.”

The NAACP released a statement in response, saying “We are seeking fair and equal quality education for all children of New York City.”

Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott said the union was trying to keep students in failing schools.

Do you side with the demonstrators or the NAACP and UFT? Sound off in our comments section below…

Source: http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/05/27/parents-teachers-protest-lawsuit-against-charter-schools-in-nyc/

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Mark and Gina Hill said public school was never an option for them until the Museum School opened in Avondale Estates. That was why they found themselves on the steps of the state Capitol on May 17.

The Hills, along with several hundred parents, teachers, students and education advocates, were gathered to speak out against the recent Georgia Supreme Court vote declaring the Georgia Charter Schools Commission (GCSC) unconstitutional. There are 16 charter schools in the state supported by the GCSC.

The 4-3 ruling struck down HB881, which created GCSC as a state-level commission established to approve and fund charters that were denied by local school boards.

Now, only local boards have the right to create and fund charter schools, which can be publicly funded but privately run. Some parents are worried about what will happen to the existing charter schools funded by the state without local approval.

Currently there are 172 charter schools in the state of Georgia serving approximately 72,000 students. The schools that are impacted by the court decision are the 16 that were approved by the commission, nine of which are currently open and have approximately 6,000 students enrolled; the other seven have plans to open in the fall.

The Hills, who live in Avondale Estates, said they never considered sending their 7-year-old son Dodge to the public schools in Avondale because they just didn’t have a good reputation.

“We sent him to private school for three years before the Museum School opened and he’s done better at Museum School than any of the other private schools,” Gina Hill said.

Gina Hill said that she attended the rally to put pressure on her elected officials to change the constitution, or do whatever needed to be done to keep the state-funded charter schools open.

“I don’t know about the legalities of anything; to me it’s more of a common sense issue. This school does better so it should stay open,” she said.

Rep. Jan Jones (R- Milton), who authored the bill along with Rep. Fran Millar (R-Dunwoody) and several others, told children in the crowd that the fight had only just begun.

“We passed HB881 in 2008 because the legislature realized how important it is to give children and their parents’ different types of public schools; you know, one size doesn’t fit everyone and you are evidence of that,” Jones said.

Jones also told the crowd that she expected the legislature to pass a constitutional amendment to make sure that parents and children will have all the choices they need within the public school system.

“I’m disappointed that these activist judges struck down something that is widely supported by the public, widely supported by the legislature and it was obviously a divided decision. Three out of the seven judges did not agree with what [the majority] decided,” Jones said.

Tony Roberts, president and chief executive officer of the Georgia Charter Schools Association, a non-profit advocacy organization, said that they were not there to complain about the recent Supreme Court decision but to plan for the future.

“I think there’s general agreement by a good majority in the House and the Senate that this is a good idea or they wouldn’t have passed the law [to create] this charter school commission to begin with,” Roberts said.

Roberts said, the Supreme Court’s decision earlier in the week only served to fire up Georgia’s legislators. He said he thinks they will step in and work with the governor to find a solution.

“Right now our immediate concern is to make sure that these schools are serving their students well [and] will be able to continue to operate whether they’re supported by the local school district or with a special appropriation from the state level,” he said.

Anne Marie Eades, president of the parent-teacher organization at the Museum School, said that she has worked with a lot of the parents and one of the beneficial aspects of the model that the school has in place is parental involvement.

“We all dedicate a significant portion of our time to see to it that the school is successful in whatever way we’re able to do that. It’s devastating to me that it could all possibly go away,” Eades said.

Eades sent her two children to private school before the Museum School opened in August 2010. She said that many who spoke at the rally, herself included, indicated that their job was far from over.

“We want our voices heard and we want, more importantly, for the individuals that can make a change from a legislative standpoint, to know the difference that these charter schools are making not only in our kids lives but our community and ultimately society at large,” Eades said.

“Today my children are thriving from an educational standpoint and it’s a result of me being given the opportunity to choose a good public school,” she said.

Source:http://www.championnewspaper.com/news/articles/943dekalb-parents-rally-for-charter-schools-943.html

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Legislation on textbook funding approved by the Senate today breathed new life into left-behind education bills, including three languishing charter school measures.

During debate on HB 6, which changes the way districts purchase instructional materials, members tacked on 13 amendments. Two from state Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, substantially increased the State Board of Education’s authority over the textbooks available for districts to purchase. One would allow board members to remove curriculum materials placed on the approved list by the commissioner of education. The second would lift a requirement that instructional materials approved by the board are “written, complied, or edited primarily by faculty of the eligible institution who specialize in the subject area of the textbook.”

Another amendment, from state Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, the bill’s sponsor in the upper chamber, prohibits the state board or school districts from adopting national “common core curriculum” standards. Shapiro said she aimed to keep Washington, D.C., from “coming down and telling Plano, Texas, or San Antonio ISD” what they should teach their students.

But to get the bill through on third reading, Shapiro pulled down the SBOE amendments and her own on the national common core curriculum standards.

Still attached is SB 597, a bill that extends the Permanent School Fund’s facilities bond backing to charter schools, which would allow them to obtain lower interest rates. Charter advocates have pushed for the measure to help them find adequate buildings — but it failed to make it out of the calendars committee, perhaps because traditional school districts oppose it.

Two more charter school bills — SB 1872, which adjusts the way the state measures dropout and completion rates for charters that serve at-risk students, and SB 127, which lifts the state’s hard cap on the number of charter schools — also remain on HB 6 as amendments.

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Mansfield, TX (PRWEB) May 20, 2011

Ramtech Building Systems has announced that the company has secured a new charter school contract for the design, fabrication, and construction of three 7,424 square foot eight-classroom modular buildings to be delivered and installed in the Dallas, Texas area prior to the start of the 2011-2012 academic school year. This is the company’s sixth charter school project since the beginning of the year, and brings the total square footage under development for all charter school projects to over 56,000 square feet. The new modular buildings, which include two offices along with the individual classrooms, will be built utilizing Ramtech’s traditional modular construction approach. The buildings will each incorporate nine wall-mounted HVAC units zoned for energy efficient heating and cooling, a factory installed 26-gauge R-panel metal siding for the exterior, and VCG walls and carpet flooring on the interior.

The new modular buildings are based upon Ramtech’s standard floor plan designs that have been used by educational institutions since the company began manufacturing its own products in 1984. The Dallas project also adds to Ramtech’s growing resume of charter school clients, which in 2011 alone also includes projects in the other major metropolitan areas of Austin, Houston, and San Antonio. These projects include a mix of Ramtech’s industry standard portable classrooms, restroom facilities and toilet trailers, and cafeteria and other multipurpose buildings. The use of modular and portable buildings have been instrumental in the growth of charter schools by allowing them to quickly meet their charter requirements while providing for a means of financing that would not be available by developing permanent construction projects. According to Gary White, Ramtech’s vice president of sales and estimating, “many of the charter schools need to be able to finance their facilities as personal property to be able to take advantage of various leasing options, so modular construction becomes the perfect vehicle to get these projects financed while also meeting their start date requirements.”

The growth of charter schools has exploded around the country as the slow transformation of public education continues to take place. Beginning in 1995, a revision to the Texas education code established a new type of public school known as the charter school. Their purpose was to improve student learning, increase choice, establish a new form of accountability, and encourage new and innovative learning techniques. Like other states with strong charter school support, the growth in Texas has steadily increased since their introduction. There are now 215 available open-enrollment charters available in Texas, along with an unlimited number of campus charters available to universities and independent school districts. To date, there are 558 charter school campuses that are now in operation, serving over 165,000 students.

Production on all of the modular buildings for the six charter school projects will take place at Ramtech’s Mansfield, Texas manufacturing facility. Located on 20 acres in the southern part of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, Ramtech has convenient access to the major transportation arteries that serve cities throughout the Southwest. Structured as a vertically integrated design-build construction company, Ramtech provides space planning, design services, manufacturing, site construction and finish-out on every project they produce. The company maintains a consistent workforce of production personnel and supervisory staff that have an average of 13 years experience, many with tenures over 20 years. This experience, coupled with Ramtech’s approach to modular manufacturing and construction, allows for greater control at each step in the building process resulting in significant time and money savings for their clients.

About Ramtech Building Systems
Since 1982 Mansfield, Texas-based Ramtech Building Systems has been providing innovative modular buildings for government agencies, healthcare providers, Fortune 500 companies, and educational institutions throughout the Southern United States. As a design-build construction company, Ramtech offers full in-house design, a manufacturer direct product, and complete site construction services all within a single-source solution. By emphasizing a value engineering approach, Ramtech has successfully completed over 2,500 prefabricated buildings for diverse projects of all sizes. For more information, visit the company’s website at http://www.ramtechgroup.com.

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/ramtech_building_systems/modular_buildings/prweb8463056.htm

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/315143#ixzz1NPNhk8dH

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Last December, Community Board 12’s executive committee was discussing charter schools when committee members realized something: There were almost as many different perceptions of  charter schools as there were people in the room.

This epiphany, recalled board chair Pamela Palanque-North, was the inspiration for a forum the board held Saturday to give Washington Heights residents the basic facts about charter schools.

“This is an opportunity for us to have something called an educational intervention,” Palanque-North said in her opening remarks at the forum, titled “Our Children, Our Choices: An Informative Discussion on Public and Charter School Options.” About 35 neighborhood residents attended the event, which was organized by the board’s youth and education committee and translated live into Spanish.

The panel included charter school advocates and also critics, such as sociologist Pedro Noguera and the public school teacher who directed a new movie that takes aim at the idea that charter schools can fix all educational ills.

But perhaps as notable as who sat on the panel was who did not: a representative from the city Department of Education. Community Board 12 had advertised that Chancellor Dennis Walcott would speak on the morning’s first panel, although DOE officials said Walcott had never agreed to appear.

“Unfortunately this group claimed the chancellor would be attending this event — and put his name on a flier — without our consent or any confirmation,” said Jack Zarin-Rosenfeld, a DOE spokesman. “When we finally were able to get in touch, we informed Community Board 12 that Chancellor Walcott was already committed to attending a science and math festival in Harlem that day and would be unable to attend.” Indeed, Walcott told state senators today that he attended a science fair on Saturday.

William Stanford Jr. was among those disappointed with the absence of DOE officials.

“He couldn’t make it. OK. Where are his employees?” Stanford asked after the discussion. “One of them should have been here.”

Had department representatives been at the Russ Barrie Pavilion, they would have witnessed a comprehensive and often contentious discussion that touched on issues including the consequences of co-location — in which charter and public schools share space; the degree of accountability for the schools when it comes to serving special-needs students and English Language Learners; the level of parental input in charters; and the relationship between charter schools and their surrounding communities.

James Merriman, CEO of the NYC Charter School Center, said charters existed in order to give parents the choice to send their children to schools that were of a higher quality and less impacted by bureaucracy and unions than the public school system.

But Julie Cavanaugh, a public school teacher in Red Hook, Brooklyn and director of the film “The Inconvenient Truth About Waiting for Superman,” said charter schools often leave public school students with no choice. She said the practice of charter schools moving into existing public school buildings had forced public school students into unequal, inadequate, and even hazardous learning conditions.

In fact, concerns over inequities was one theme of Saturday’s forum. Noguera, executive director of NYU’s Metropolitan Center for Urban education, alluded in his remarks to GothamSchools’ recent exclusive about illegal admissions practices at Academic Leadership, a charter school in the South Bronx: Noguera said some charter schools are illegally screening students, then mentioned an “interesting article” he had read about the practice at a charter school in the Bronx.

When I asked him to elaborate on these remarks after his presentation, Noguera said he was unfamiliar with the specifics of Academic Leadership but called for more scrutiny of charter schools’ admission practices.

“It really concerns me when I see that there’s some evidence that some of the charters are screening kids and have adopted measures to either screen or to push out students that are more challenging to serve,” Noguera said. “Because it’s creating this very unequal playing field between the charters and the public schools. So I think that the authorizers and the state need to be more vigilant in holding those schools accountable.”

Merriman expressed support for parent involvement but suggested it was less important than the quality of education children receive.  He also argued that parents did not have a great deal of ability to impact public school policies.

But Mona Davids, executive director of the New York Charter Parents Association, argued parent input in charter schools was essential.

“How can any school not have a parent association?” she asked.

Raybblin Vargas, assistant chair of Community Board 12’s Youth and Education Committee, expressed enthusiasm for the discussion.

“I am very very very happy with the panelists that did show up and did speak,” she said. “I think that we were able to have a broad spectrum of perspectives.”

Audience members, too, seemed to come to the forum with a variety of viewpoints, questions, and concerns.

Ronnette Summers is a parent whose daughter attends KIPP NYC College Prep High School in the Bronx and her son attends KIPP STAR Middle School in Harlem, both charter schools. Summers said she thinks the public harbors many misconceptions about charter schools.

“They don’t have parent associations, they don’t have ELL students, they don’t care about parents, they don’t want parents in the building,” Summers said, characterizing what she felt were unfair generalizations about charters. “I know for a fact that in my school that is not the case. I could walk in my school at any time and sit in the classroom without making an appointment.”

But Andrea Lieske, the parent of a kindergartener at P.S. 125 in Harlem, said she was worried about the proliferation of charter schools in District 5.

“There are a lot — a lot — of charter schools, and I am afraid that the charter schools are sort of taking over and there is not much choice in terms of other public schools,” she said.

Lieske said she was specifically concerned about charter schools’ approach to education.

“Seemingly most of the charter schools — at least in District 5 — are not very much into the progressive approach of teaching,” she said. “They are more, ‘they have to know this,’ and the long school day, things like that.”

Questions from the audience — many of which were addressed to Susan Miller Barker, interim executive director of the SUNY Charter Schools Institute — touched on topics including the sharing of best practices between charter and traditional public schools and the ways charter schools are held accountable for serving special-needs and students who are learning English.

In her closing remarks, Palanque-North said she hoped to make the discussion an annual occurrence.

The post In Washington Heights, a basic education on charter schools appeared first on Leave Charter Schools Alone.

Editor’s note: Patch recently published a series of articles examining the role of charter schools in suburban school districts, including Unity Charter School in the Morris School District. Parker Block, a co- founder of the Princeton International Academy Charter School (www.piacs.org), sent us the following
response:

As the current debate about charter schools in urban and suburban districts unfolds, it is important to recognize that charter schools are intended to be laboratories of innovation that provide, according  to the Charter School Program Act, “a mechanism for the implementation of a variety of educational approaches which may not be available in the traditional public school classroom.”

It is common and understandable for school districts to find innovation too difficult to implement in the face of institutional inertia and entrenched parochial interests. In so-called “top-performing” suburban school districts, the bureaucratic instinct to defend the status quo is buttressed by data which seemingly justifies intransigence.

Compared to state averages, suburban schools are not under-performing; they are “humming along.” As long as the “local achievement gap” exists, suburban school districts are under no pressure to innovate and improve.

Despite the fact that the most tragic situations in public education capture media attention, business leaders, policy makers, progressive educators and parents are increasingly aware that in the 21st Century, our students are not going to be judged in comparison to local standards, but by international benchmarks.

To that end, New Jersey became one of the lead states in the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (www.p21.org), an organization working to infuse 21st Century skills into public K-12. The Partnership was a key resource in the development of New Jersey’s revised Core Curriculum Standards in 2009.

One of the reasons for the increased focus on 21st Century skills, according to the Partnership, is the fact that “for the past decade, the United States has focused nationally on closing achievement gaps between the lowest- and highest-performing students–a legitimate and useful agenda–but one that skirts the competitive demand for advanced skills. Equally important is the global achievement gap between U.S. students—even our top-performing students—and their international peers in competitor nations”.

The comparison to local standards may serve suburban school administrators well, but not suburban students. Nonetheless, those who propose innovative, ambitious programs are often summarily dismissed by local school officials with phrases like “nice to have, but not necessary” or “wait until the economy improves.”

President Obama consistently reminds us, however, that continuous innovation, even in times of budget constraints, is necessary if we are to remain economically competitive. Yet, even in Princeton, the president of the school board equates programs that will increase proficiency in math with learning to play bagpipes, and says that fluency in a strategic world language like Mandarin is like learning Gaelic. This exemplifies the complacency, arrogance and protect-the-status quo mentality which has plagued public education for decades and gave rise to the need for charter schools in the first place.

Critics deride schools such as those offering dual-language immersion programs as “themed, boutique schools,” implying that the scope of the education is somehow limited. The intent of a charter school is, according to the law, to offer programs which are differentiated from the program already available in the traditional public schools. If these points of differentiation are considered “themes,” then there is no such thing as a “non-themed” charter school.

Some believe that charter schools only serve a small number of private school families who simply want to have their tuition paid by tax dollars. First, in the case of the charter school of which I am a co-founder, three out of four applicants are already attending a public school within the respective school districts. These are public school parents who simply want forward-thinking programs that better prepare their children to compete in the 21st Century.

Second, if the school is successful on a smaller scale, these innovative programs can and should be replicated in traditional schools for the benefit of the larger community. In her endorsement of high quality charter schools, New Jersey Education Association President Barbara Keshishian states that “it is critical that successful schools of all types share their successes so that other students can benefit from the best practices in all of New Jersey’s public schools.”

Innovative programs always require first-adopters before the larger populace is ready to endorse them. Yet public school officials are reluctant to acknowledge charter school successes out of fear of a domino effect;: if one succeeds, there will be others. This Cold War-era paranoia greatly underestimates the difficulty of getting a charter school authorized and established. If parents in the community don’t believe in the school, it won’t survive.

In smaller municipalities like Princeton, the school districts are the most powerful political force in the community, controlling huge budgets, payrolls, and a bully-pulpit from which the politics of fear can be employed to get initiatives passed or killed. This is why the charter school law established “a new form of accountability for schools” by providing parents and educators the opportunity to apply directly to the state Department of Education for the authorization to open a charter school. The same body, which is ultimately responsible for the curriculum standards and public education throughout state, oversees the evaluation and authorization of innovative, high-quality charter schools and holds them accountable to agreed upon targets.

Students in New Jersey who happen to be on the right side of the “local achievement gap” will find themselves on the wrong side of the “global achievement gap” unless the innovation provided by high-quality charters is available throughout the state. President Obama chastises the complacent official who puts parochial interests ahead of progress: “China is not waiting. Germany is not  waiting. India is not waiting. These nations — they’re not standing still. These nations aren’t playing for second place.” The competition our children will face is not just “humming along.” They are pushing ahead. So should we.

Source: http://morris.patch.com/articles/column-charter-schools-do-what-public-schools-cant

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After the Monday ruling handed down by the Georgia Supreme Court that the state charter school commission is unconstitutional, hundreds turned out for the Georgia Charter Schools Association rally on the Capitol steps. No charter schools in Cobb County will be affected by the ruling.

Rep. Alisha Morgan (D-Austell) was a speaker at the event. Here is a transcript of what she said:

“Thank you and good morning. When I first heard the decision that this (the Georgia Supreme Court decision overturning HB 881) was happening yesterday I was heartbroken and I was angry; I was sad and I was frustrated.

I was disappointed with the majority of the Supreme Court but grateful for the few that understood what this commission was about. It was about ensuring parents in this state have options and weren’t dependent upon the status quo or the school district to decide the quality of their child’s education.

I noticed even in some of the articles yesterday those who prevailed consistently commented about the money they lost. They never talked about the test scores at Ivy Preparatory Academy. They never talked about the level of parental engagement. They didn’t make any real comments about the quality of children’s education in this state – they only talked about money, power and control.

And there, my friends, in lies the crux of what is the crisis of education in Georgia and in this country because we have too many adults, too many districts and bureaucrats who are focused on money and jobs – not nearly enough focus on kids, student achievement, preparing students for life, and doing what’s in the best interests of kids.

But this decision is taking the adults back to school. It’s giving us a test, and this is test of wills. Do we have the will to fight the naysayers and those who are money and power hungry? Do we have the will to say ‘enough is enough?’ Do we have the will to stand up again even though we’ve been knocked down? Do we have the will to lobby our legislature and our state to change our constitution? Do we want to decide today that districts are not the sole deciders of a child’s education in Georgia?

How long are we going to sit idly by and allow the uncertainty of a child’s future? How long are we going to wait for a system to fix itself? How long are we going to allow just 50% of boys to graduate from high school in the state of Georgia? How long are we going to wait? We’re not!

And so although I was distraught yesterday, I have hope today because I see this crowd, I see my colleagues in the legislature who are Democrat, who are Republican, who are black, who are white, who are focused on children. Because I see other elected officials in this state who are coming together to make our schools a reality. I am hopeful because what I see is a possibility that we can focus on kids and not adults. I am hopeful because I know we will keep fighting until every child in this state has access to an excellent education and is prepared for life.

And lastly I want to say to the parents and the students, especially my sisters at Ivy Preparatory Academy, that we may have been knocked down yesterday but we’re going to get back up. And while the adults work to make your schools work for you, you cannot be discouraged, students. You’ve got to continue to work hard, to do your very best, to slam dunk every test they put in front of you, to keep knocking down all the obstacles that get in your way. And all of the adults will continue to keep fighting for you until all parents have the freedom of choice of schools for their kids until every child graduates from high school in Georgia ready for college, ready for your careers, and ready for your bright futures.

And so I say to you that we’re going to keep fighting, Tony (Roberts). We’re going to keep fighting, students. We’re going to keep fighting, parents. We’re going to continue to fight until we get the kind of schools, the kind of education that every child out here and across this state deserves. So let’s keep fighting – my school, my choice!”

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The Center for Education Reform provides a simple search feature that lets you find a charter school nearby your home.

http://www.edreform.com/in-the-states/find-a-charter-school/

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Laura Leppert accepts an award for support of education, on behalf of her husband Tom Leppert, from Harmony Superintendent Soner Tarim. Photos by Patrick Michels

Harmony Public Schools, Texas’ largest chain of charter schools, packed all but the uppermost tier of the Winspear last night for a celebration of its 10th anniversary. The 33-school chain is built on a math, science and engineering curriculum — a popular talking point among a series of lawmakers who, in taped remarks or through staff members sent in their place, said Harmony’s helping to address the shortage of engineers graduating from U.S. schools.

Texas Sen. Royce West and U.S. Rep Kay Granger offered their support for the chain in recorded videos, and Laura Leppert, wife of U.S. Senate candidate Tom, turned up in person to accept an award for her husband’s support of public education.

“Education changed my husband’s life, and enabled him to live the American dream,” Leppert said, adding that her husband tried to pay it forward too, by donating his mayor’s salary to help kids graduate.

Surrounded by light-up columns and red, white and blue draperies, Harmony superintendent and co-founder Soner Tarim recalled the school’s first days for parents. “On paper, there was no reason to trust us. And yet, our parents did,” he said. “We will continue to grow, one classroom at a time.”

Sure enough, Tarim told Unfair Park over the phone this morning, they’ve got plans to add to the two schools they’ve already got in Dallas next year with a new high school focused on business and marketing.

Tarim says they’re planning to open two or three new schools each year in major Texas markets, with a focus on serving their K-8 students as they enter high school. Their goal, Tarim says, is to grow while maintaining a couple of impressive stats they touted heavily at last night’s ceremony: a zero percent dropout rate, and a 100 percent college acceptance rate.

That last number applies to around 300 high school seniors in the chain this year, but will grow, Tarim says, to about 600 next year and more than 1,000 by 2016. Tarim says in the midst of shrinking teaching staffs, Harmony’s one of the few public education outfits that’s hiring now. “We know how to run our schools based on a limited budget,” Tarim says, “and we are used to budget cuts. It’s the nature of charter schools, we have to be inventive.”

Harmony, the subject of a fair-sized Texas Monthly feature last fall, operates on a business plan built with help from the Gates Foundation, and has enlisted P.R. firm Burson-Marsteller — whose global vice chairwoman is Karen Hughes, a familiar face from the Bush Adminstration — to help with publicity and to lobby the Texas Legislature. (Update at 6:39: Harmony’s publicist at Burson-Marsteller, Megan Whitley, just called to clarify: Hughes “is not a registered lobbyist and she does not lobby,” she says.)

While some of the chain’s critics seem more concerned about transparency and accountability, others have latched onto conspiracy theories about its founders’ Turkish and Muslim backgrounds, and supposed tied to scholar Fetullah Gulen.

A Q&A page distributed by Harmony says, though, “there are no ties of any kind to the Gulen Movement or Fetullah Gulen,” and the 21,000-strong wait list for Harmony schools suggests most parents aren’t too convinced by the race- and religion-based attacks.

Even with huge budget cuts coming for public education, Tarim says Harmony’s still going to be hiring around Dallas in the next few years — especially, of course, if DISD trustees decide to throw their support behind expanding charters’ presence in the district.

Source: Dallas Observer Website

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SAN ANTONIO —  More than a dozen local parents lent  their voices to a rally in Austin Wednesday.

They joined hundreds of other parents from across the state who are calling for an expansion of successful charter schools.

The was rally  part of National Charter Schools Week, and it’s being called the largest charter school parent rally in state history.

“With the big budget cuts they’re doing on the public school funding, we would like our representatives to know we are already getting less than public schools as it is. So if we get cut back it will really make it hard on us,” says parent Silvia Miller.

Supporters say charter schools offer students a more hands-on education and provide a safer environment for the kids.

Source: http://www.kens5.com/news/SA-parents-rally-forat-Texas-Capitol–121284759.html

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/us/06ttdropout.html

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OAKLAND — The role of charter schools in public education was a hot topic Thursday at the Oakland Education Forum, which drew more than 50 educators, parents and concerned residents at the newly built 81st Avenue Branch Library.

The daylong forum, hosted by the Oakland Tribune, the Bay Area Business Roundtable and the Prescott Joseph Center, centered around four distinct areas: the role of charter schools in K-12 education, the future of regional higher education, and with a crippling $26 billion budget shortfall looming, the role of the private sector and philanthropic organizations in continued education funding across the state.

An afternoon session focused on the question of what is working.

A lively panel discussion on the role of Oakland’s more than 30 charter schools dominated the morning session. Charter schools use public funds, are non-unionized and have fewer rules. Some have gained national recognition for their success in producing quality education and high numbers of university-bound graduates. But their prevalence in Oakland has also caused concern among many who see their growth as unfair competition to a poorly funded and overstressed public school system.

“Charter schools are like people. Some are good, some are great and some are bad and should be closed,” said James Willcox, CEO of Aspire, a California network of charter schools. “We look at ourselves as a small player on a big team.”

But Betty

Source: http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_17952543

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AUSTIN

Some Texas Republicans want to get around the U.S. Department of Justice during the redistricting process.

A House committee on Monday heard a bill that would send any redistricting or Voter ID bills straight to a three-judge panel in Washington, D.C. for “pre-clearance” under the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The law requires Texas and other states to get federal approval before making major election law changes.

AUSTIN

Efforts to allow concealed handguns in college classrooms stalled in the Texas Senate for a second time Monday, leaving a measure that seemed headed for approval now struggling to survive.

The measure’s Republican sponsor, Sen. Jeff Wentworth of San Antonio, said he didn’t have the necessary support to call the bill for a vote.

DUMAS

A firefighter has been burned critically while fighting a Panhandle wildfire.

Moore County officials said Cactus firefighter Elias Jacquez suffered third-degree burns over 60 percent of his body Saturday while fighting a fire that charred 60,000 acres about 40 miles north of Amarillo.

AUSTIN

The Texas Senate’s Education Committee has approved a plan to expand charter schools in Texas. The measure would allow the State Board of Education to authorize 10 new open-enrollment charter schools a year. The new law would also allow existing schools to add new campuses without requesting approval.

Compiled from wire reports

Source: http://lubbockonline.com/texas/2011-04-12/texas-and-region

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AUSTIN — The Senate voted Wednesday to license more independent charter schools, giving the State Board of Education authority to grant up to 10 new charters a year.

If the legislation is approved by the House, the measure would lift a cap on charter school operators — now set at 215 — that has been in place for several years. The bill was approved, 24-7.

Charter schools receive public funds but are privately managed and aren’t subject to numerous state requirements for regular public schools such as class size limits.

The bill by Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, also would give the state education commissioner greater authority in dealing with charter schools that have persistent academic or financial troubles.

One change in the law provides for a three-year provisional charter for new schools. Those schools would have to receive academically acceptable ratings from the state during two of those three years to retain their state license.

“Charter schools are meeting a critical need in Texas,” Patrick said. “The legislation will encourage the growth of good charters while increasing the accountability of poor-performing charters.”

The bill also would allow two additional charters per year for schools that serve students with disabilities and allow current charter school operators to establish new campuses without applying for state authorization.

A state report on charter schools last fall indicated there were 207 active open-enrollment charter operators educating nearly 120,000 students at 511 campuses. The first charter schools in Texas opened in 1997.

The track record for charter schools in the state has been mixed, with a small number of schools doing very well academically, while many charter schools have trailed regular public schools in student test scores. In addition, at least 15 charters have been revoked, rescinded or denied renewal by the state — mostly for financial reasons.

Charter schools receive about $1,200 a year less per student than regular public schools because they get no state aid for their facilities. Bills are pending that would help charter schools with their facility needs.

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As the school-choice debate escalates at the national level, more Southwest Valley families are choosing charter schools.

The number of Southwest Valley charter schools has nearly doubled in the past five years, from seven schools to 13, and some municipalities continue to see growth, according to Arizona Charter Schools Association.

Odyssey Preparatory Academy parent, Tarah Woods said school choice was the reason her family stayed in Arizona. Her fourth-grade daughter attended Verrado Elementary School in Buckeye last year.

“District schools weren’t offering us what we needed as a family,” she said. “School choice is everything. I think it’s critical to communities. I love where I live and didn’t want to leave.”

Charter school attendance across the state has increased over the past five years to 119,954 students from 85,683 students, a 40 percent increase. About 12 percent of the state’s students chose charter schools this year, according to data from the charter-schools association.

Goodyear is the only city in the Southwest Valley without a charter school, but that will change this fall as Trivium Preparatory Academy and its feeder school, Archway Classical Academy, open their doors to 424 students in kindergarten through seventh grade.

Haley Petersen, 15, of Buckeye gives the horse, Boomer, a bath during her equine course at Dale Creek Stables provided by AAEC Charter school.

Arizona charter schools are publicly funded on a per-pupil basis like school districts but do not receive local property taxes. Charter-school funding is not designated for specific areas, allowing school leaders to spend state funding as they see fit, said Eileen Sigmund, Arizona Charter Schools Association president and chief executive officer.

Arizona School Boards Association President-elect Mike Hughes said the benefits of local districts are having support staff like librarians and counselors, mandatory state-certification requirements for teachers and administrators and a publicly elected governing board.

But as charter schools expand, local districts’ student population decreases, along with funding.

Hughes said the funding issue is a problem for local districts but added that charter schools have helped “enhance” districts.

“One size does not fit all,” he said. “Public schools have offered many more individual programs to compete with the charter-school movement. I think that has been good for parents and for kids.”

Competition forces local schools to think outside the box and allows parents to choose a school based on their child’s individual needs said Holly Johnson, Odyssey Preparatory Academy co-founder. The Buckeye-based school opened in 2009.

“Parents obviously want to do the very best for their kids,” she said. “They want to see that their kids are learning the things that they need to learn in order to be successful. Having options is part of that success.”

Source: http://www.azcentral.com/community/swvalley/articles/2011/04/21/20110421southwest-valley-now-counts-13-charter-schools.html#ixzz1KGhik3Lj

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“Charter schools” was one of the topics discussed at our “Kentucky Governor Candidates Political Forum” last night.

Kentucky currently doesn’t have any.

Both Louisville businessman Phil Moffett and State Senate Leader David Williams are in favor of charter schools.

Moffett says Kentucky’s charter school bills have been fatally flawed, compared to other states that have passed them with fewer restrictions than Kentucky’s version.

“…and they’re free of the regulation and the domination of the school system as well as they teachers’ union, and if they have the flexibility necessary to adapt their school year, to adapt their curriculum, to adapt their teaching staff as they see fit, to be able to manage kids, then charter schools can be very effective.”

Williams agreed,

“…a charter bill school did pass the Kentucky State Senate and it was an effective piece of legislation. We worked with Commissioner Holliday to pass that legislation, and the failure of the Kentucky House of Representatives, who are controlled primarily by the teachers’ unions in Jefferson County, caused them not to address that issue.”

Source:http://www.wbko.com/news/headlines/Governor_Candidates_Discuss_Charter_Schools_in_Political_Forum_120420384.html?ref=384

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By Geoff Dornan
February 25, 2011
Nevada Appeal

Democrats say over the coming week they will roll out a multipronged package of bills to reform public education in Nevada.

Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-Las Vegas, said Democrats intend to involve both the minority members of the Legislature as well as Gov. Brian Sandoval in the process, which will range from strengthening charter schools to teacher development to making it easier to remove bad teachers from the classroom.

Assemblyman David Bobzien, D-Reno, said education is critical to economic development in Nevada and that the key is a highly effective teacher in the classroom. He said he will present legislation to “make it less onerous to dismiss the bad teachers.”

“Good teachers’ efforts are too often overshadowed by the actions of the bad ones,” he said.

Speaker John Oceguera, D-Las Vegas, said legislation will create a pay for performance program to reward good teachers for their efforts.

“We’ve got many great educators that deserve to be rewarded for their success,” he said. “We’ve got some who don’t belong in the classroom.”

He said his plan will extend probationary status for new teachers from one year to three years and those who get negative evaluations “will receive notice they might not have their contracts renewed.” He said contracts also will get a gross misconduct clause “so we can dismiss the teachers who do really bad things now.”

Assemblywoman Debbie Smith, D-Sparks, said the process of evaluating teachers and administrators will also be strengthened dramatically. One part of her plan, she said, would put tenured teachers who get two consecutive annual unsatisfactory evaluations back on probationary status.

Sen. Mo Denis, D-Las Vegas, said his plan will create a Nevada Reading Skills Development Center to help teachers learn how to better teach elementary students to read. Another, he said, will encourage development of science, technology, engineering and math education.

Horsford said he would create a separate state board with seven members to manage charter schools. Those schools still would have to follow and meet state standards but he said they need more flexibility to encourage creative approaches to education.

He said all the bills will be introduced soon with hearings as early as next week on some of them.

SOURCE: Nevada Appeal, http://www.nevadaappeal.com/article/20110225/NEWS/110229788/1001&parentprofile=1058

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February 25, 2011
CNN

Madison, Wisconsin (CNN) — The Wisconsin state Assembly passed a Republican bill Friday that would strip most state workers of the bulk of their collective bargaining rights.

Among other things, the measure would require workers — with the exception of police and firefighters — to cover more of their health care premiums and pension contributions.

Collective bargaining would be limited to wages, though any pay increases beyond the inflation rate would be subject to voter approval.

The fight over the bill appears far from over. It still must clear the Wisconsin Senate, a step which is likely to prove far more contentious.

Fourteen Democratic Senators have fled to neighboring Illinois to prevent a quorum from voting on the issue and they remained absent early Friday.

“The vote we took wasn’t the easy thing to do, but it was the right thing to do,” said Assembly Majority Leader Scott Suder early Friday. “I continue to urge my Democrat colleagues in the Senate to come back to Madison so that they can debate this bill and do their job for the taxpayers of Wisconsin.”

Thousand have protested the bill in recent days.

On Thursday, Republican Gov. Scott Walker also called on Democrats to come back to Madison “and do their job.”

At a Thursday night news conference, Walker warned that if the Wisconsin legislature does not pass his budget bill, state aid to local governments could be cut by $1 billion. He also discounted critics who said the legislation will destroy public employee unions in the state.

“Wisconsin state employees have the strongest civil protections in the country. That’s not going to change in this bill,” Walker said. “It’s not about the union boss coming in from other parts of the country. It’s about whether we protect the taxpayers and the workers.”

One of the lawmakers who left the state, Senate Minority Leader Mark Miller, said in a response from Rockford, Illinois, that Walker should “recognize that he got what he wants” in concessions on pension and health insurance contributions and relent on curbing collective-bargaining rights.

The confrontation reached a fever pitch after Walker was recorded during a prank phone call discussing the idea of duping absentee Democrats by luring them back to the assembly to “talk, not negotiate,” allow them to recess, and then have the 19 Republican senators declare a quorum.

The Republican-led Senate would then, presumably, be able to move forward on the controversial legislation.

The state faces a Friday deadline to balance the budget. Wisconsin is confronted with a $137 million budget shortfall by June 30 and a $3.6 billion gap by 2013.

SOURCE: CNN, http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/02/25/wisconsin.budget.bill/

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Read more on extended Wisconsin coverage…

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Read more…

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By Andrew J. Rotherham
February 24, 2011
Time

Given their place as the most powerful public employee union, teachers unions are front and center in the debate going on in Wisconsin. But underneath the high-decibel clashes between tea partiers and public employees unions are some contentious education policy issues reformers, teachers unions, and analysts have debated (and sometimes even collaborated to fix) for years.

Although teachers contracts are often singled out, in practice the rules and regulations most commonly cited as problems by school superintendents, school reformers, and not infrequently teachers themselves, are often found in state law as well. That’s why schools in states without teachers unions tend to operate pretty much like schools in places with powerful unions. In Virginia, for instance, where I served on the state board of education, it would be difficult to tell the difference between most of our schools and schools in heavily unionized Maryland. It’s also why teachers unions are not the only culprit here. They did not unilaterally create these rules and regulations — someone signed those contracts or passed those laws. (See TIME’s photoessay Showdown in Wisconsin.)

So forget the theatrics in Wisconsin, reform doesn’t have to mean abolishing collective bargaining. But, if we’re serious about having school systems that put student learning first and creating a genuine profession for teachers here are five common practices that must change.

Restrictions on evaluation.
Provisions in teachers contracts limit who can do evaluations, how often, and even specify how much notice a teacher must be given prior to being observed. In most professional workplaces, by contrast, evaluation is ongoing and both formal and informal. It’s the same way in many high-performing schools where evaluation is a regular and continuous part of the improving process. Classroom “visits are not just more numerous but dramatically so” in the best schools says Tim Daly, President of The New Teacher Project, a non-profit that recruits teachers and analyzes education policy. In those schools, instead of “zero one or two [visits] it’s 30-40 per year,” according to Daly. (See “Super Bowl School: What the NFL Can Teach Teachers.”)

Last in, first out.
With layoffs looming policies that require “last in, first out” are hotly debated around the country. These rules, which can be found in both state law and union teachers’ contracts, require that teachers be laid-off according to seniority only, without attention to classroom effectiveness. In other words, when layoffs happen newer teachers—who in some cases still have several years of experience—are let go first even if they’re more effective than the veteran displacing them. These policies would make sense if veterans were always better than newer teachers but abundant research shows clearly that longevity alone is not a great predictor of effectiveness. Last month civil rights groups won a landmark court decision in Los Angeles changing how layoffs and seniority rulers work there but just this week an arbitrator in Hartford Connecticut—a city lauded by national leaders including Arne Duncan as a model for labor-management collaboration—ruled in favor of using “last in, first out” there. Bottom line: In any organization that is serious about effectiveness quality-blind layoffs are nothing short of insane.

Forced transfers and “bumping.”
Every organization recognizes seniority in different ways. But frequently in education seniority confers a set of powerful rights when it comes to transferring to new schools. In practice this means veterans can bump teachers with less seniority when jobs open up or that principals are limited in who they can choose from when filling positions. In other words teachers can force their way in to a school. When The New Teacher Project analyzed this practice, they found that the policy contributed to newer teachers leaving teaching. But parents don’t need a wonky report to get the basic problem here: Shouldn’t individual schools get to decide who teaches in them? (See how to fix teacher tenure without the pass-fail grade.)

Tenure and due process rules.
Earlier this month an arbitrator in Washington, D.C. gave 75 teachers—including chronically absent and demonstrably low-performing ones—their jobs back over a technical due process issue. Reformers groaned but union leaders applauded. Long considered a “third rail” of education policy tenure is now under attack in a number of states where various rules are found as part of both state law and in collective bargaining agreements. It’s hard to find someone who doesn’t think teachers, and other workers, should have due process before losing their job. What actually constitutes “due process” is a more contentious issue but even teachers union leaders agree that in many cases the rules are out of hand. (See who’s to blame in the Wisconsin teachers’ crisis.)

Inflexible Salary Schedules.
Today teachers are overwhelmingly paid based on two factors, length of service and degrees. Salaries are based on master schedules with columns for degrees and rows for years of service so a teacher moves across lanes and up the steps as their career progresses. Most professions pay more for experience but there is little evidence that most additional degrees improve teaching. More problematic is what’s missing: differentiation based on how challenging teaching assignments are, hard-to-fill subjects like math, science, special education or foreign languages, and how effective teachers are in the classroom. The rules of economics don’t stop at the schoolhouse door and school superintendents privately complain about having to pay physical education teachers and physics teachers the same amount even though it’s easier to find coaches than physicists. Hard to find a better example of something that works great for the adults in the system but not so well for the kids schools are supposed to serve. (Comment on this story.)

Andrew J. Rotherham, who writes the blog Eduwonk, is a co-founder and partner at Bellwether Education, a nonprofit working to improve educational outcomes for low-income students. School of Thought, his education column for TIME.com, appears every Thursday.

SOURCE: Time, http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2053465,00.html

Read more…As Goes Wisconsin… So Goes the Nation

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By Joe Klein
February 24, 2011
Time

Randall Wentz works for the University of Wisconsin, vetting scholarship applications. He is a public employee, a union member. He makes $30,000 per year. We are sitting in a Madison, Wis., tavern with five of Randall’s friends. All have 6-year-olds; they became friends through their children. All are public employees. Several are computer techies who make $60,000 a year. One is a middle school music teacher. These are educated, decent people, open and friendly in the Wisconsin way. They seem in equal parts flummoxed and infuriated by Governor Scott Walker’s effort to limit the powers of their unions, his attempt to end collective bargaining for anything but wages and to restrict the unions’ ability to collect dues. An essential fact of their lives — the security that has traditionally been attached to public employment —has suddenly been shattered. Most can handle the increases in pension and health care co-pays the governor has proposed. But Wentz is in a different category. He shows me his finances on a carefully folded piece of paper. “If this passes,” he says, “I go off a cliff.” (Watch TIME’s video “Joe Klein in Madison: Budgets, Unions and the Middle Class.”)

It is good to remember that, in the end, the prairie fire over the rights of public employees is about people like Randall Wentz — and many who are less fortunate than he is: the school-bus drivers, home health care workers and cafeteria workers who, even with union protection, barely make enough to keep their families afloat. It is also good to remember that America’s most prosperous time — the period from the 1950s to the ’70s — was also when its trade-union movement and its middle class were strongest. That was not a coincidence: the rights and wages won by workers in the industrial turmoil of the 1930s created a consumer class eager to buy every product, from homes to hula hoops, American capitalism could produce. (Who’s to blame in Wisconsin?)

But there are some very good reasons governors of both parties are trying to limit the power of public employees’ unions. “I’ve spent years pleading for modest concessions from the unions,” says Bob Ziegelbauer, a Wisconsin state representative and the chief executive of Manitowoc County. “The reaction is, ‘You can’t make me.” Ziegelbauer used to be a Democrat and now calls himself an independent, but he caucuses with the state Republicans. He says when he was able to negotiate a settlement with local union representatives, their leaders often would veto it. “There’s a ruthlessness in attitude at the union headquarters. The leaders would rather take layoffs than make concessions.” Sometimes the union intransigence is downright ridiculous. “We spend $650,000 a year to keep our county juvenile-detention facility open. In recent years, we’ve had as few as one or two juveniles incarcerated there at a time,” Ziegelbauer tells me. “I wanted to close down the place and use the facility in a neighboring county. But the union blocked it on the grounds that it was outside contracting.” (See the top 10 mad as hell moments.)

Such horror stories are especially common in the biggest cities, where unions have the strength of numbers and a tradition of dealing with, and helping to elect, liberal, pro-union politicians. This is a major advantage that public employees’ unions have: unlike construction workers and miners, they can vote their bosses in or out. Their unions make political contributions, mount advertising campaigns and run phone banks. Public employees tend to be ferocious campaigners and assiduous voters, the sort of constituents politicians find panderworthy. And this power has enabled them to distort the system, especially when it comes to work rules, health benefits and pensions — concessions politicians are more likely to grant, since they are future promises that, until recently, have had little immediate impact on the bottom line.

Another advantage has to do with the nature of public work. “There is a fundamental dysfunction here,” says former New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein. “It isn’t the same as, say, General Motors dealing with the United Auto Workers. The UAW understands, ultimately, that if it doesn’t get real about health and pension benefits, GM could close, and all their jobs will be lost. When I sat across the table from the teachers’ union, their negotiators knew we weren’t going to close down the schools.” In New York, as in other big cities, the unions routinely won concessions that were quite astounding. (Union disputes spread to Indiana, Ohio.)

The teachers, especially, became a reactionary force when it came to school reform — opposing charter schools (in Detroit, the union blocked a $125 million private contribution to build five new charter schools) and merit pay; they lashed themselves to strict seniority rules more appropriate to assembly-line workers than would-be professionals. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been trying to negotiate a deal whereby layoffs, if necessary, would not be made on a last-hired, first-fired basis. “So you’d rather have them lay off the more experienced teachers?” a Wisconsin teacher asked me. No: teachers should be hired and fired and paid according to their ability. “But who judges that?” the teacher asked. Their employers do, I replied. The teacher scoffed; the idea that school principals should be able to decide who should be part of their workforce seems incomprehensible to most teachers — and yet that sort of accountability is at the heart of any system that aspires to excellence. (Comment on this story.)

The strongest arguments against public employees’ unions lie there: in their power to block reform and strangle good governance. Clearly, there needs to be a rebalancing of pension and health care benefits that puts public employees more in line with the conditions that prevail in the private sector. But those changes must be accompanied by the recognition that a great many public employees are severely underpaid. This is especially true at the federal level, where the scientists testing drugs at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or the bank regulators at the SEC could probably double their salaries by sliding into the private sector. And it’s also true at the very bottom of the wage scale, for the school-bus drivers and home health care workers.

The best rationale for the continued existence of public employees’ unions is to create wage floors for such workers. But the unions have set about, largely unimpeded, to build walls (work rules) that constrict government innovation and ceilings (like opposition to merit pay) that make it less likely that the most talented professionals will remain in public service. (Comment on this story.)

“You’re arguing this from a good-government standpoint,” says Scott Gletty-Syoen, one of the union members who is meeting with me at the Madison tavern. “But do you really think that’s what Scott Walker wants? Do you really think that’s where we’re headed in Wisconsin?”

Fair point. And no, I don’t. I think Scott Walker is a reflexive conservative who would probably be trying to bust his public employees’ unions even if there were a budget surplus. His views are, in part, a reflection of the antitax fetishism that has become something of a mania in the U.S. If you want first-class public services — especially those, like education, that require real skills — you have to pay for them. (The idea, floated recently by Michigan’s governor, that Detroit’s schools can function with 60 students in a classroom seems a recipe for continued social disaster in that benighted city.) The existing arrangements between government and its employees clearly need a profound overhaul, but the idea that America can return to the mythic stability and prosperity of 40 years ago without a well-paid middle class, including public employees, seems a very dangerous experiment to undertake.

SOURCE: Time, http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2053510,00.html

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By Travis Andersen
February 17, 2011
The Boston Globe

Massachusetts education commissioner Mitchell Chester today endorsed 17 out 23 applications to launch new charter schools, including 10 in Boston.

“I have every expectation that these 17 charter schools, if granted a charter by the Board later this month, are well positioned to succeed academically and become high performing organizations,” Chester said in a statement. “This year’s group of applicants was impressive in terms of the volume of interested parties; the quality of the proposals; and the potential to provide students with a strong academic program.”

If the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education approves Chester’s recommendations on Feb. 28, some schools could open as soon as this fall.

Following is the list of winning schools as provided by the state:

· Alma del Mar Charter School (New Bedford)
· Bridge Boston Charter School (Boston)
· Community Day Charter Public School – Riverside (Lawrence)
· Community Day Charter Public School – South (Lawrence)
· Dorchester Preparatory Charter School (Boston)
· Edward W. Brooke Charter School 2 (Boston)
· Edward W. Brooke Charter School 3 (Regional school serving Boston and Chelsea)
· Excel Academy Charter School – Boston II (Boston)
· Excel Academy Charter School – Chelsea (Chelsea)
· Grove Hall Preparatory Charter School (Boston)
· KIPP Academy Boston Charter School (Boston)
· Lynn Preparatory Charter School (Lynn)
· MATCH Community Day Charter Public School (Boston)
· Veritas Preparatory Charter School (Springfield).

The commissioner also backed three in-district schools:

· Boston Green Academy Horace Mann Charter School (Boston)
· Salem Community Charter School (Salem)
· UP Academy Charter School of Boston (Boston).

Boston emerged as the hottest location for new charter schools under a state law, enacted last year and pushed by Governor Deval Patrick, that encourages the doubling of charter school seats in school districts with the lowest state standardized test scores.

Charter schools, created under the 1993 federal Education Reform Act, are independent public institutions that are supposed to provide innovative educational alternatives to traditional public schools.

They operate with fewer restrictions from the state and almost never have teachers’ unions, enabling charter schools to run extended school days and experiment with new, promising programs.

The additional campuses should be a boon for parents who are dissatisfied with their local school systems — thousands of Bay State students are on charter school waiting lists.

But the expansion is likely to come at the expense of local school districts, which lose thousands of dollars in state aid for each student who leaves for a charter school.

SOURCE: The Boston Globe, http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2011/02/state_education_1.html

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By Laura Leslie
February 24, 2010
WRAL, CBS Channel 5

Raleigh, N.C. — The state Senate gave final approval Thursday to big changes to North Carolina’s charter school system.

Senate Bill 8 would remove the cap on the number of charters that can operate in the state. That limit is currently set at 100. It would also allow counties to use public money and lottery funds to help pay for charter school construction.

The measure would also set up a new commission to approve, oversee and revoke charter school licenses. The commission would function independently of the State Board of Education, though the Board could overturn its decisions by a three-fourths vote.

The Senate approved the bill by a 33-17 vote. The measure next goes to the state House of Representatives.

Republican supporters said the changes would offer more options to more students who aren’t being served well in existing schools, and bill sponsor Senator Richard Stevens, R-Wake, said Wednesday that the funding changes will give charters a chance at a more equitable share of education spending than they currently get.

Senate Democrats, however, said the bill doesn’t do enough to make sure the new charters are equally accessible to all students. They argued the schools should be required to offer the same busing and subsidized food programs as traditional schools.

SOURCE: WRAL, CBS Channel 5, http://www.wral.com/news/state/nccapitol/story/9166891/

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By Yoav Gonen
February 23, 2011
New York Post

Charter-school kids continued to outperform their traditional public-school classmates in three of the four categories tested in social studies and science, new data obtained by The Post show.

But the numbers also show that public-school kids made slightly larger strides in performance in 2010 compared to 2009 than did charter-school students.

Two-thirds of charter-school kids were proficient in eighth-grade social studies in 2010 — more than 18 percentage points above the proficiency rate in traditional public schools.

The gap was nearly as large in eighth-grade science, where 68.4 percent of charter-school kids score proficiently, compared to 54.4 percent of public-school students.

In fourth-grade science, nearly 90 percent of charter-schoolers scored proficiently, compared with 82 percent of traditional public-school kids.

But traditional public-school kids managed to best the charter-school average in fifth-grade social studies. with a passing rate of 78.6 percent — 4.9 percentage points higher than the charter-school students.

“Unlike the traditional schools, [my kids] are getting science and social studies five days a week,” said Jeff Litt, superintendent of the Carl Icahn charter schools in The Bronx.

All 28 eighth-graders at the Icahn Charter School 1 scored proficiently in both social studies and science, as did all the eighth-graders at the two unrelated Harlem Village Academies schools.

“Most schools have social studies twice a week or science twice a week because they’re so focused on [reading] and math,” said Litt. “But we’re not going to neglect one subject to put emphasis on another, because that’s shortchanging the child.”

Charter-school advocates have often credited the longer school day and school year as reasons why their kids can get extra lessons in social studies and science — subjects that don’t get nearly the amount of attention as math and reading.

Much of the city’s grading system of elementary and middle schools depends on math and reading scores, while science plays a small role in the state and federal government’s accountability systems.

But the state has even gone as far as eliminating its annual testing in social studies this year because of a shortage of funds to administer them — worrying some educators that the subject will get even shorter shrift in coming years.

The high performance in the two subjects was good news to charter-school operators, whose students took a bigger hit on math and reading scores last year than did their counterparts in traditional schools after changes to the scoring.

After the state reset the passing bar on its annual reading tests, charter-school proficiency rates bombed from 77 percent in 2009 to 43 percent proficiency last year.

Traditional schools also fell considerably, but not as far, from a passing rate of 69 percent to 42 percent.

SOURCE: New York Post, http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/charters_charting_course_in_excellence_RKq4mXMzGPj4d6goI1bc3J#ixzz1EmRaLRva

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By The Dallas Morning News

Comprehensive coverage on Texas’ charter schools

More than most states, Texas takes pride in its deregulated system of charter schools. They’re publicly funded, but anyone with a license can run a school, pretty much as they please. That freedom has produced some remarkably good schools and some lamentably bad ones. A Dallas Morning News investigation found schools at the top demanded great things from faculty and students alike. Schools at the bottom, however, showed pathetic results, and some suffered from nepotism, insider dealing, and misuse of funds.

Click to see the whole coverage.

SOURCE: By The Dallas Morning News, http://www.dallasnews.com/investigations/headlines/20101227-uncharted-territory-texas-charter-schools.ece

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By Matthew Haag
February 21, 2011
The Dallas Morning News

While public school districts grapple with possibly severe state-funding cuts, North Texas charter schools also are trying to gauge how the state’s budget shortfall could affect them.

As the Texas Legislature weighs cutting $5 billion from public education next year, school districts have made attention-grabbing proposals about possible layoffs and school closures. But charter school administrators, who already operate with less state funding, hope to avoid those drastic measures.

Whether that’s possible for Texas’s 500 charter schools isn’t clear yet.

“These cuts of this magnitude would have a significant impact on charter schools,” said David Dunn, executive director of the Texas Charter Schools Association. “Charters are typically run on smaller fund balances, so they have less cushion in place to weather the storm.”

Charters are public schools run by private organizations that have more flexibility to adjust curriculum and instruction than traditional schools. They receive per-pupil state funding but don’t receive local tax revenue like public school districts. They try to raise money in other ways, and some receive corporate and nonprofit grants, but in the end they operate on much smaller budgets.

Like public schools throughout the state, charters are trying to outline cuts and funding estimates with limited information. The Legislature has proposed $10 billion in cuts to public education over the next two yearsand has suggested eliminating or reducing state grants for special programs, but that amount and the types of cuts could change in the coming months as lawmakers finalize the reductions.

And while school districts have received guidance from education funding experts in Austin, the much-smaller charter schools are combing through the appropriations bills themselves to figure out where they might have to trim. As a result, charter school officials have come to various conclusions.

Some say the proposed public education budgets would reduce funding by 5 percent. Others suspect double-digit percentage cuts. Either way, school programs would probably be the first to go. Before- and after-school tutoring and Saturday school could be on the chopping block, many said. Fewer teachers might be hired to accommodate student enrollment gains.

“They are talking about making cuts in a very painful general way,” said Rosemary Perlmeter, executive director of Uplift Education, which operates five charter schools in the Dallas area. “We’ve tried to be very careful and have been extremely conservative.”

Perlmeter said her best guess is that Uplift could see a 5 percent funding dip, which could be weathered without laying off teachers. She could make up part of that by reducing professional development training and other areas, she said.

But her biggest worry is that cuts would prevent Uplift from opening two new schools every year as planned.

School officials won’t know for months what the Legislature decides to do, and that uncertainty stresses Tom Wilson, chancellor of Life Schools, which has five campuses in the southern Dallas County area.

Wilson said he has done calculations for various levels of cuts and can work with some scenarios but not all.

If lawmakers base cuts on a school district’s property wealth, charters might be spared because they don’t collect local funds. But if the state makes similar percentage cuts for all schools, that could destroy the charter system, Wilson said.

“We would be tremendously damaged because we get no local money,” said Wilson, who said his state funding would dip from $33 million to $28 million annually. “It would be horrible.”

That scenario could require layoffs of up to 74 employees out of 515.

“We are doing much with little, and they are taking away what we have,” Wilson said.

Charter schools serve various types of students, but many focus on at-risk students, including those from poor families and those who were behind at other schools. Janice Blackmon, administrative services director for Universal Academy in Irving and Coppell, said the cuts could affect those students in particular if Saturday school and after-school programs are eliminated. Still, she said, that would be better than laying off teachers.

“We don’t have fat to trim,” Blackmon said. “You would like to see that we don’t have to do this at all. We are prayerful.”

SOURCE: The Dallas Morning News, http://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/headlines/20110221-texas-charter-schools-plan-for-state-funding-cuts-but-hope-to-avoid-deep-reductions.ece#slcgm_comments_anchor

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February 22, 2011
Education News

Do Charter Schools Crowd Out Private School Enrollment? Evidence from Michigan. Since the introduction of charter public schools in 1991, individuals have debated the effect these new schools will have on the education system. One area of speculation has been student enrollment.

More specifically, will students transfer to charter schools only from public schools or will they also gain students from private schools? If students were to transfer from private schools to public charter schools in large enough numbers, the financial burden for the public school system would increase. Alternatively, by increasing the percentage of the population who utilize public schools, whether traditional or charter, public interest and motivation to improve public schools might increase.These questions have caused concern within the private school sector regarding charter schools, especially among Catholic schools. Chakrabarti and Roy use a sophisticated statistical model to examine enrollment patterns to determine what impact, if any, charter schools have had on private school enrollment and the enrollment of religious private schools.

The authors base their study in Michigan, which has one of the longest standing charter school systems in the nation. Charter schools were initially opened in Michigan in 1994-1995. By the 1995-1996 school year, there were 33 schools in operation serving approximately 4,449 students. These numbers grew to over 200 schools serving over 64,000 students by the 2001-2002 school year. Because most of these schools were elementary schools, this study focuses on elementary enrollment patterns across private and charter schools. The authors find that for each charter school within a two-mile radius of a private school, a private school lost approximately 1.19% of its students per year on average, a modest change. The authors report that the impact of charters grew larger as charter schools were open longer Also, the authors do not find any evidence that Catholic schools lost more students to charter schools than non-religious private schools.

Click here to view the full report.

SOURCE: Education News, http://www.educationnews.org/commentaries/opinions_on_education/108255.html

The post Are Private Schools Losing Their Students to Charter Schools? appeared first on Leave Charter Schools Alone.

December 16, 2010
The Brookings Institution

Susan Dynarski, University of Michigan, Caroline Hoxby, Stanford University, Tom Loveless, Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, Mark Schneider, American Institutes for Research, Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst, The Brookings Institution, John Witte, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Michelle Croft, The Brookings Institution

The Brookings Brown Center Task Group on Charter Schools

Executive Summary

Charter schools offer choice to parents who would otherwise be constrained to having their children attend a residentially assigned traditional public school. The number of charter schools has increased steadily in the last decade, reflecting their popularity with parents and the general public. They vary substantially in their missions, the students they serve, and their effectiveness. Research suggests that charter schools are particularly effective in raising the achievement of low-income and minority students in urban areas. Charter schools are underfunded in comparison to traditional public schools and have particular challenges in finding and paying for school facilities. Authorizers of charter schools decide whether charter schools can enter the market, expand, or close, and they provide ongoing performance oversight. The school districts with which charter schools compete for resources and students are the most frequent authorizers of charter schools. The authorizing function seems very important in determining the quality of charter schools, but very little is known about the relationship between variations in authorizing and school quality.

The federal government’s role in charter schools has expanded of late and is likely to be an important element in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The current federal role is a haphazard collection of laws, rules, funding preferences, and rhetoric that lacks coherence at the policy or action level. In that context, the Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings gathered a group of prominent policymakers, practitioners, and researchers to address what the federal government should do if its policy were to increase the number of effective charter schools in the nation.

The recommendations for federal action advanced by these experts include: a) collecting and using more and better data on the performance of charter schools for purposes of authorizing, research, and informed parental choice; b) requiring states to provide equitable funding for charter schools relative to traditional public schools—including support for facilities; c) supporting higher standards for authorizing; d) revising rules and definitions that unintentionally disadvantage charter schools; e) promoting the growth as well as quality control of virtual charter schools; and f) finally and most importantly articulating and following through on a coherent policy with respect to charter schools.

Introduction

Charter schools are public schools of choice (rather than residential assignment) that are operated autonomously, outside the direct control of local school districts. Since the first charter school was established in 1992, the charter movement has grown to include over 4,900 charter schools in 39 states educating 1.6 million children.[i] In some cities, the penetration of charter schools is pronounced. In the District of Columbia, for example, over a third of public school students are now in the charter sector.[ii] New Orleans has an even higher concentration, with more than sixty percent of students attending a charter school.[iii]

The growth has been insufficient to meet the demand for charter schools. Many charter schools are over-subscribed, and few charter schools close for lack of adequate school enrollment. When the general public is surveyed, twice as many respondents say they favor charters as say they are opposed.[iv]

Charters do not have a single pedagogical identity. The best known chains, such as the Seed School, Uncommon Schools, and Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), create highly structured routines with uniforms, strict rules, and numerous drills. But charters take many other forms, including single sex schools, schools for the performing arts, schools for science and technology, bilingual schools, schools for the disabled, schools for drop-outs, and virtual schools where learning takes place online.

The type of student entering a charter school is different from the traditional public school student. Relative to statewide averages, charter schools tend to attract a disproportionate number of students eligible for free or reduced price lunch as well as minority students, especially African Americans. Initial test scores of students at charter schools are usually well below those of the average public school student in the state in which the charter school is located.[v]

The Effectiveness of Charter Schools

The variety of charter schools is consistent with the original mission to provide new options to families and to promote innovative ways to organize a school and deliver a curriculum. But that same variety makes it difficult to draw conclusions about the instructional effectiveness of charter schools as a sector. Research findings vary widely, depending on the schools studied and the research methodology employed.

Nearly all large-scale studies that have examined the effectiveness of charter schools across many states have relied on statistical controls to handle differences in student background between students attending charter schools vs. regular public schools. Several of these studies find that students attending charter schools do no better than students attending regular public schools.[vi]

Critics of these studies point out that no amount of statistical adjustment for observed differences, such as correcting for divergence in the proportion of minority or low-income students attending regular vs. charter schools or adjusting for students’ prior achievement scores, can handle unobserved differences between parents and children attending the two types of school. For example, parents who enroll their children in charter schools may have different expectations for their children’s academic success than other parents. Or the students themselves may be different, e.g., students who transfer out of a regular public school into a charter school may have had particular problems adjusting to school. These unobserved differences in students and families may affect academic outcomes independent of the type of school students are attending.

Most of the research community agrees that the preferred research strategy for estimating the impact of attending a charter school is a randomized control trial. In such trials, two groups of students are compared. Both groups contain students whose families attempted to enroll the child in a charter school where there were more students applying for a spot than there were seats. For those oversubscribed schools a lottery is used to determine who is offered admission. By chance alone some students win admission and others do not. A comparison of academic outcomes for students who won vs. those who lost the lottery keeps everything about the two groups of students the same, on average, except the offer of admission into a charter school. Thus any difference in the academic outcomes for the two groups of students can only be due to the one thing on which they differ systematically, gaining admission to a charter school.

There are presently five randomized trials that have addressed the performance of charter schools. Four found positive charter school impacts on student achievement[vii] whereas one found no overall effect.[viii] The four studies finding positive impacts each involved charter schools serving minority populations, three in large urban school districts (Chicago, New York City, and Boston, respectively) and one in a smaller, low income city north of Boston. The study that found no overall impact examined charters across multiple states and types of locale. Interestingly, the multi-state study that found no overall impact nevertheless identified subgroup effects, such that students from poor, minority, urban backgrounds did better in charter schools in contrast to students from middle-class, suburban backgrounds, who did worse. Thus all the randomized trials are consistent in pointing to the success of charter schools in large urban areas.

One limitation of these randomized trials is external validity (i.e., the ability to generalize the results to other settings). Because there are few non-urban, sufficiently oversubscribed charter schools, the randomized trials have taken place primarily in large, urban areas with a high percentage of minority students. The results of the randomized trials may not extend to the areas outside of the major urban areas and more research using other methods is needed on the effectiveness of charter schools for non-urban areas.

The results also do not necessarily generalize to students whose families have not tried to gain admission for their children into a charter school. To the extent that the success of some charter schools depends on motivated parents who buy into the school’s approach and make the extra effort that may be required to get their child to measure up to the school’s demands, such schools might not succeed with students whose parents do not have that motivation or are unwilling to make that commitment. To date, this possibility has not been addressed with credible research.

A final limitation of these studies is that they focus on student achievement on reading and mathematics as measured on standardized tests. It is possible to expand the range of student outcomes, including long-term outcomes. For example, a study of charter high schools in Chicago and Florida found positive effects on both high school completion and college attendance.[ix]

In summary, the overall body of research on the academic effectiveness of charter schools suggests considerable variability in impact. Thus knowing that a school is organized as a charter school does not, in and of itself, say much about whether the school is good, bad, or mediocre. Some charter schools are unambiguously providing a more effective education for students than is provided by regular public schools serving similar students. Other charter schools are no better than the public schools with which they compete, and some are worse.

When the focus is on academic achievement, the variability in the success of charter schools raises important issues for researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and parents. For researchers, the challenge is to identify the active ingredients that differentiate more successful charter schools from less successful ones, with the awareness that those ingredients may involve interactions between what is being offered by a school and the characteristics of the students and families being served. For practitioners, the issue is how to use research findings to increase the effectiveness of the best charters and to raise the level of performance of lagging charter and public schools. For parents, the principal issue is how to be an informed consumer when making a choice of schools. A school’s organizational status as a charter school or a regular public school conveys far less information than needed by a parent to make the wisest choice.

Charter School Finance

Charters generally operate on a tighter public budget for current expenditures than traditional district schools, receiving by one estimate only about 80 percent of the per pupil amount received by district schools,[x] and by another only about 60 percent.[xi] The difference in charter school per pupil spending also varies widely from state to state.

Charter schools are also disadvantaged relative to traditional district schools when it comes to facilities. The vast majority of district schools operate in buildings that are publicly owned and were purchased and amortized many years ago. This leaves the district responsible only for expenses for operation and maintenance. In contrast, charter schools typically require new investment in the construction or lease of facilities.

Some but not all states allow or require school districts to make unused public school facilities available to charter schools – in some cases for free but often for rent. Some but not all states provide support for low-cost loans or bonding authority for charter school facilities construction. A few states provide a per-pupil facilities payment to charter schools that is intended to equalize the advantage that district schools have through their legacy of existing school facilities. Some states provide no facilities assistance whatsoever to charter schools. In such cases, facilities must be built, purchased, or leased by charter school operators in current dollars, as well as operated and maintained.[xii]

Issues surrounding facilities are among the most vexing faced by charter school operators. When the additional costs of facilities for charter schools are added to lower levels of reimbursement per pupil compared to traditional schools, charter schools operate at a significant public funding disadvantage.

Authorizing Authority

The authority to establish and operate a charter school varies from locale to locale and state to state. The most recent survey identifies 819 charter school authorizing bodies nationwide.[xiii] School districts authorize more charter schools (55 percent) than any other type of authorizer. Some observers believe this role for school districts involves an inherent conflict of interest since charter schools compete for students and resources with the school district that must authorize them. Other authorizing bodies include state education agencies and independent chartering boards (splitting about 30 percent of charter schools). Higher education institutions, non-profit organizations, and mayors/municipalities are responsible for authorizing the remaining 15 percent of charter schools. In some states, each of these authorizing mechanisms is present, whereas in other states authority resides solely with one entity.

Authorizers have a number of roles, including handling applications for charter school expansion or startup, contracting with charter school operators, providing performance oversight, and making decisions on renewal or closure. Authorizers vary substantially in how they carry out these roles. For example, some authorizers provide direct assistance to schools in meeting performance goals whereas others provide only guidelines and warnings. Some authorizers engage in rigorous application and renewal processes whereas others do not. Some authorizers provide ongoing oversight and evaluation whereas others are engaged in evaluation only at the point of a charter school’s application for renewal.

Most practitioners and policymakers in the field believe that the nature, independence, and operational procedures of authorizing bodies are a significant factor in determining the quality of charter schools. Researchers are only beginning to investigate this relationship. A recent analysis of authorizer types in Minnesota found no statistically significant relationship between the type of authorizer and mean levels of student achievement, although achievement in charter schools authorized by school districts was about 0.15 standard deviations lower than achievement in charter schools authorized by the state.[xiv] This study used statistical controls for the differences in the types of students served by different authorizer types, so the same cautions in interpretation apply to it as we described for the multi-state observational studies of the effect of attending a charter school vs. a regular public school. Much more research addressing the casual impact of differences in the types and practices of charter school authorizers is needed.

The Federal Role

Prior to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, federal involvement in charter schools was minor, with approximately $200 million appropriated annually through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to make charter school grants to state education agencies and charter management organizations. During the 2008-2009 school year, federal involvement was approximately $1.40 per student.[xv] Neither the amount of funding nor the conditions of competition afforded an opportunity at the federal level to have much impact on charter schools.

ARRA provided the Secretary of Education with a $650 million innovation fund from which awards were to be made to education entities that had made significant gains in closing achievement gaps. The purpose of the awards was to expand the work of the award winners and to identify and document best practices that could be shared and taken to scale based on demonstrated success. The KIPP Foundation, a large national charter operator, was one of the big winners under the innovation fund competition, receiving $50 million to scale-up its leadership training model.

ARRA also provided the Secretary with roughly $4 billion to carry out a competition among states (Race to the Top) to support reform and innovation. Under the rules established for the competition, states had to meet a number of requirements for their support of charter schools to have a chance of winning an award. These requirements include lifting caps on the number of charter schools; establishing authorizing practices that hold charter schools accountable for student achievement; ensuring equitable per student funding; and providing facilities assistance.

These actions by the U.S. Department of Education presage the stance towards charter schools that the administration is likely to take in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. We are clearly at the beginning of a new era in federal policy towards charter schools.

Recommendations for Federal Action

In order to inform future actions on charter schools by Congress and the administration, the Brown Center on Education Policy, operating with the advice of its Charter School Task Force, convened a day long advisory meeting of leading charter school researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to address the question of what the federal government should do or refrain from doing to support the growth of effective charter schools.

The purpose of the meeting was to develop and harvest a list of ideas and recommendations that might be useful for federal action. There was no effort or intent to develop consensus recommendations. Rather, each participant was asked to put forward one or more recommendations for comment and discussion by all the participants. The following is a categorized and annotated list of the recommendations that generated interest among the participants and appeared to be actionable at the federal level.

Data Collection and Use

One of the main themes of the advisory meeting was the challenge of obtaining and using charter school data to inform research, policy, practice, and parental choice. One of the forms of data that is difficult to obtain but would be particularly important for research, policy, and practice is lottery results at the level of individual students. To the extent that charters are oversubscribed and have to use lotteries to determine who is admitted, having those lottery results recorded in a state’s longitudinal education data system would allow many important questions to be addressed that are currently challenging. For example, with lottery results and records of student achievement in hand, charter school authorizers could avail themselves of a valid estimate of the impact of a charter school when carrying out their oversight and renewal obligations. Currently authorizers rarely have any data available on student achievement other than the average performance of students in a charter school on end-of-the-year state achievement tests. But as we described previously, charter schools differ among themselves and from traditional public schools in the population of students they serve. A charter school serving a suburban middle-class population very likely looks much better on end-of-the-year state assessments than a charter school serving a population of urban poor and minority families. But what appears to be better performance may reflect little more than the advantaged background of the students being served. The availability of lottery data would allow the effectiveness of each school to be evaluated relative to the other schools serving the same student population.

The availability and accessibility of lottery data in state longitudinal databases would also be a boon to research. Consider, for example, the questions about the effects of authorizers that we raised previously. Examining lottery-based student achievement outcomes by type of authorizer or type of authorizer practice could shed considerable light on which forms of authorizing have impacts on student achievement. Lottery data can also be useful for studying other differences in educational experience for the students selected for the charter schools compared to students not admitted.

Connected with the availability and accessibility of lottery data is the quality of the lottery itself. Allowing charter schools to design and carry out their own admission lotteries is a recipe for undermining random assignment, both through naïveté and self-interest. For example, researchers who have sought lottery data from charter schools have encountered schools that claimed they held a lottery but did not. Further, hidden within what seems to be a fair lottery can be a variety of special admissions decisions, for example the admission of children of staff, or children who for whatever reason were treated as exceptions by school officials.

Even in the case of fair lotteries, it may have been advantageous for a school to conduct a more sophisticated lottery than simply drawing names out of a hat. For example, a lottery might be stratified to assure geographic or demographic balance when the size of the overall pool of applicants and admissions slots is too small for the law of averages to create a high likelihood of such balance.

Flowing from these observations are the following recommendations for the federal government:

• Fair and independent lotteries. Receipt of federal funds to support charter schools at the state and local level should be contingent upon charter schools being subject to lottery rules that require the design and implementation of lotteries by entities that are qualified to carry out the task, operate with clearly documented procedures, and are independent of the charter schools in which the lotteries are being conducted. One way to achieve this goal would be to require states seeking funding for charter schools to have established such rules as a precondition for application for funding.

• Availability of lottery data. Student participation in lotteries for admissions to any public school and the results of such lotteries should be a required student data element in state or district longitudinal data systems supported with federal funds. Competition for future federal statewide longitudinal data system grants or use of Title I funding to support state administrative data systems could be contingent on this condition.

• Use of lottery data for oversight. The use of lottery data by authorizers to carry out their oversight and renewal roles pertaining to the effectiveness of charter schools in raising student achievement should be encouraged. This goal could be achieved using the same contingent-funding mechanism described above, or could be pursued through guidelines and technical assistance in partnership with non-governmental organizations.

• Use of lottery data for research. Since 2005, nearly every state in the nation and the District of Columbia has received a substantial federal grant through the Institute of Education Sciences within the U.S. Department of Education to develop a statewide longitudinal data system. A statutory requirement of these awards is that the resulting data systems be used to facilitate research to increase student achievement and close achievement gaps. Yet many states have made no provision for researcher access to their longitudinal data systems or have allowed access only to those with the persistence and skill to strike a deal with a responsible state official. One of the principal rationales for charter schools is for them to serve as engines of education innovation. It is difficult to identify and reap the rewards of innovation without a serious and sustained research presence. It is time for the federal government to insist that recipients of statewide longitudinal data system grants demonstrate that they have met their obligations to facilitate research.

• Increasing data detail. All parties interested in identifying and scaling-up successful charter school practices would benefit from better information. Currently, most data elements that find their way into statewide longitudinal data systems are driven by federal reporting requirements under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Thus these data systems contain information on student test scores, student race, language, and disability status, student eligibility for free- and reduced-price lunch, and school and district identifiers. Important information is missing, including such things as curriculum in use, teacher characteristics, and as we have previously noted, lottery results. The federal government, working in collaboration with interested states and national charter school organizations, might generate a template for additional data elements that states or charter school authorizers could include in their routine data collections for their statewide longitudinal databases.

Information to Support Choice

Charter schools are by definition schools of choice. The promise of education choice includes improving quality and efficiency through competition among schools, enhancing opportunity for students of low-income families who may otherwise be trapped in ineffective schools, and spurring innovation. But the promise of choice in public education is constrained by the quality and timeliness of information on school performance that is available to parents.

Under current federal law, school districts are required to produce school report cards, but the information they include is incomplete and sometimes misleading. For example, the report cards include the percentage of students in a school who score proficient on state tests, which is strongly correlated with students’ family background, rather than student gains over the course of the year, which better reflect the performance of the school itself. Information about teacher turnover, parental satisfaction, and other important measures of school performance is not included.

In addition, school districts have demonstrated that they cannot be trusted to help parents choose schools based on school performance. As evidence, a federal study found that half of all districts required to offer school choice due to low performance did not notify parents of their right to choose a new school until after the school year had already started, and many used language that was too complicated for parents to understand. Choice cannot work if parents are blindfolded.[xvi]

The federal government has a role to play in providing parents with timely, transparent school data to support choice. This is particularly important for charter schools, which always require parental choice. Specific recommendations for federal action include:

• Report measures of school popularity. Federal requirements for school report cards under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act should be revised to include information on popularity of schools as revealed through the number of applications for admission received by charter schools and other schools of choice.

We recognize that measures of school popularity derived from records of parental preferences expressed through applications for admission may sometimes distort the actual popularity of schools. Distortions arise through choice systems that encourage parents to game the system, for example by ranking their 3rd choice 1st because it has fewer applicants and thus offers a greater chance of admission through a lottery. Further, charter schools that cater to a community of interest that is sufficient to fill their slots may not want to engage in outreach or advertising because it would generate demand that they are not able to meet or interested in meeting. One reflection of this is the increasing prevalence of seats in all grades at popular charter elementary schools “selling out” through the lottery for admission to kindergarten. In other words, there is very low attrition in later grades of children admitted to kindergarten in these popular charter schools, meaning there is only a small chance of parents being able to laterally transfer their child into such schools from lower performing regular public schools.
The first of these distortions can be eliminated by designing choice systems such as those in New York City and Boston that are difficult to game. The second distortion can be addressed in two ways: Providing information on the number of applications and probability of admission by grade rather than simply in aggregate would reveal differences among schools that are most evident at the first point of entry. Finally, we believe that making information on popularity available to the public and thus part of an implicit accountability system would create incentives for schools that are secret jewels to engage in more outreach to a wider community, which would enhance functional choice for parents.

• Report additional school performance data. School districts should be encouraged to report more data on school performance to parents than required under law (or the law should be broadened), with the new data elements being those that are empirically linked to improved student outcomes or valued by parents. Such data might include percentage of inexperienced teachers; truancy rates; availability of extracurricular activities, enrichment programs, and programs for children with special needs; and success of students at the next level of education, such as college enrollment rates for high schools. Encouragement to collect additional data could come in the form of developing and disseminating model reporting templates, recognizing exemplary information systems to support parental choice of schools, and providing support for research and development on the design of school choice information systems.

Facilities

One barrier to charter expansion is the availability of physical space. As one advisory meeting participant highlighted, an enthusiastic educator eager to start a charter school may not have the funding or the expertise in construction to identify, rehabilitate, or build new facilities. Recommendations for federal involvement in facilities include:

• Incentives for facilities access. Provide incentives to districts to allow charters to take advantage of surplus district facilities, for example by giving districts that do so priority preference points in federal discretionary grant competitions around school improvement and reform.

• Federal loans. Provide federal loan guarantees for facilities or providing direct loans for facilities that take advantage of the low Treasury rates.

• Single federal facilities program. Combine the existing federal facilities funding programs into a single coherent and efficient program.

Funding

Charter schools are often provided less funding per pupil for operating expenses than traditional public schools. Further, charter schools are frequently on different schedules for receiving funding compared to traditional public schools. For example, while the principal of a traditional public school typically knows well in advance of a school year what his or her budget will be, the leader of a charter school may not have a clarity on budget until after final enrollment figures are obtained, and may need to spend money on supplies, materials, and personnel before a state allocation of funds is in hand.

Current federal definitions of charter schools and educational programs also adversely affect charter school funding. For example, the longer school days adopted by many charter schools preclude these charters from qualifying for grants for after school programs under the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program because the definition of “after school” excludes a regular school day that lasts until late afternoon.

Another financial hurdle preventing the growth of highly effective charter schools is the financing of charter school authorization. Authorization is important as the authorizers determine which schools can open and provide oversight and accountability to ensure that poor performing charter schools are closed. The authorization process is a complex and expensive process and routinely underfunded.

Recommendations for federal action to create equitable public funding for charter schools financial inequities include:

• Equivalent per pupil expenditures. Make Title I funding contingent on per pupil expenditures that are equivalent across all schools that are eligible for Title I funding, including charter schools.

• Equivalent distribution timetable. Require that Title I funds be available for use by charter schools on the same timetable and with the same predictability as they are available for use by regular district schools.

Authorizing

Charter school authorizers decide whether charter schools can enter the market, expand, or must close; they enter into contracts for charter school services; and they provide ongoing performance oversight of charter schools. How well they do their jobs would seem to be a very important determinant of the quality of charter schools. Yet, very little is known about what works in authorizing, and authorizers typically are underfunded with respect to their responsibilities. Although school districts are the most prevalent authorizers, there is an inherent conflict between actions that support the growth of the charter sector and those that support traditional public schools. Recommendations for federal action include:

• Charter authorizer funding. Set aside a portion of funding for charter schools to allow a separate competition for awards to charter school authorizers who propose to develop and implement rigorous oversight processes, or require states to adequately fund the authorization process through new requirements in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

• Rigorous authorizing process. Make the receipt of federal funding to support charter schools contingent on the presence of authorizing processes that are rigorous and have safeguards to prevent the interests of charter schools from being subverted by the interests of traditional public schools.

• Funding research. Provide funding for research on the design and consequences of authorizing practices.

Unintended Consequences of Federal Definitions

An issue that resonated with the experiences of participants in the advisory meeting is the unintended consequences of the definition of a charter school in federal regulations. To qualify as a charter school under federal rules, a school must admit students on the basis of a single lottery for all applicants if more students apply for admission than can be accommodated.

One unintended consequence of this rule is a significant disincentive for charter school operators to expand, for example, by taking over the operation of a low-performing regular high school. Such a high school would not qualify as a charter school if the charter school operator wanted to give preference in admission to students from its existing middle school. It would only qualify as a charter school if every student applying for admission had the same chance of admission through a lottery regardless of where those students had attended middle school. However, the motive for many charter operators to operate a high school would be to build on the scaffold for student success created in earlier grades through their charter elementary and middle school. Many would not wish to take on a high school population that had not benefitted from that earlier preparation. Thus if a charter operator takes the path it considers educationally best by giving admission preference to its own middle school students in a high school for which it assumes responsibility, it loses any opportunity for federal charter school funding for that high school.

Another unintended consequence of the federal rule requiring a single lottery for a charter school is that it precludes the use of stratified lotteries that could be designed to create schools that have student bodies with more geographic or demographic diversity than would result from a simple lottery.

The recommendations for federal action are:

• Lotteries for vertically integrated campuses. Change the federal definition of a charter school to allow the use of lotteries for vertically integrated campuses in the same way they are presently allowed for single campuses – thus just as a second grader admitted to a charter school in first grade would not be subject to a lottery to continue in third grade in that school, an eighth grader at a charter operator’s middle school would not be subject to a lottery to advance to ninth grade at that charter operator’s high school.

• Stratified lotteries. Consider changing requirements for lotteries to allow stratification on variables that promote wider and more equitable access to schools of choice or that assure greater demographic or geographical balance between lottery winners and lottery losers than the simple flip of a coin.

Virtual Charter Schools

There are presently over 200 virtual charter schools in operation in the U.S.[xvii] Virtual charter schools offer the promise of increasing the productivity of the education system as well as providing more equitable access to advanced and high quality coursework, but simply having coursework online guarantees neither lower costs nor higher quality.

Online education at the college level is proving itself competitive with the classroom experience. According to a survey of colleges and universities, more than a quarter of all students in post-secondary schools were taking at least one course online in the fall of 2008.[xviii] In k-12 education, virtual education is developing more slowly, but policy makers in nearly every state are intrigued by its potential. For one thing, the cost per student of virtual education is, in the long run, almost certainly less than that provided in brick-and-mortar classrooms. According to one survey of 20 such schools in 14 states, the average per pupil cost of online learning in 2008 was roughly half that of traditional public schools.[xix]

Little is known from rigorous research about the quality of virtual charter schools. Studies in Ohio and California comparing home-based virtual charter schools to traditional public schools have found significantly lower student achievement for the virtual school students.[xx] However, the researchers acknowledge that differences in the student population may account for the lower achievement (e.g., students facing significant academic problems in the traditional school leaving to try the virtual school). The remaining available research, which is also observational and does not support causal conclusions, has found similar student achievement outcomes for virtual charter school students and their brick-and-mortar counterparts.[xxi] Overall, quality is likely to vary substantially by course, provider, and instructor, just as it does in traditional settings.

The authorizing function is perhaps even more critical for virtual charter schools than for brick-and-mortar charter schools. Virtual charter schools have low financial barriers to entry because they do not require physical classrooms. This provides a desirable cost advantage but also permits fly-by-night operators to enter the market. Authorizers of virtual charter schools need to have rigorous approval and oversight processes in place to assure that new virtual charter entrants are of acceptable quality and that existing virtual charter operators produce learning outcomes that are on par with what similar students achieve in traditional settings.

The potential for particularly strong conflicts of interest exist when local school districts have authorizing authority over virtual charter schools because traditional public schools are most likely to be disrupted by the efficiencies and conveniences provided by virtual charter schools. These self-interests are likely to manifest themselves through the creation of unreasonable barriers to entry or expansion of virtual charter schools.

The recommendations for federal involvement with virtual charter schools include:

• Funding for research and development. Provide competitive funding for studies that examine the condition and effectiveness of virtual education in k-12, and for the development or improvement of virtual courseware.

• Shared quality standards. Provide incentives to states to work collaboratively to establish shared standards for virtual charter schools and to create funding policies that would allow students to enroll in recognized virtual charter schools that have out-of-state home offices.

Alignment of Resources with Policy

Although the current and previous administrations have supported charter schools and charter school growth, there are sometimes conflicts between broad policy and particular actions. For example, the recent Edujobs legislation, intended to prevent the layoff of teachers, did not extend funding to charter schools. The recommendation for federal action is:

• Alignment. The administration should have a clear policy on charter schools, and examine each piece of law, regulation, and guidance that affects charter schools with the aim of aligning them with its policy. The articulation by the administration of its charter school policy and alignment efforts, including the identification of legislative roadblocks to alignment, could undergird the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, not only with respect to charters but also with respect to broader issues of parental choice in public education.

[i] National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (2010). Public charter school dashboard. Retrieved from http://www.publiccharters.org/dashboard/home
[ii] Turque, B. (2010, October 6). Charter school enrollment up nearly 6 percent. D.C. Schools Insider, The Washington Post.
[iii] Laskow, S. (2010). Necessity is the mother of invention. Newsweek, August 26, 2010.
[iv] Howell, W.G., Peterson, P.E., & West, M.R. (2009). The persuadable public: The 2009 Education Next-PEPG survey asks if information changes minds. Education Next, 9 (4): 20–29.
[v] Zimmer, R., Gill, B., Booker, K., Lavertu, S., Sass, T.R., & Witte, J. (2009). Charter schools in eight states: Effects on achievement, attainment, integration, and competition. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corportation.
[vi] Braun, H., Jenkins, F., & Grigg, W. (2006). A closer look at charter schools using hierarchical linear modeling (NCES 2006-460). U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. CREDO (2009). Multiple choice: Charter school performance in 16 states. Stanford, CA: Stanford University. Zimmer et al., supra, note 5.
[vii] Hoxby, C. & Rockoff, J. (2005). School reassignment and the structure of peer effects. NBER Working Paper. Hoxby, C.M., Murarka, S., & Kang, J. (2009). The New York City charter schools evaluation project. NBER Working Paper. Abdulkadiroglu, A. Angrist, J., Cohodes, S., Dynarski, S., Fullerton, J., Kane, T., & Pathak, P. (2009). Informing the debate: Comparing Boston’s charter, pilot and traditional schools. Boston, MA: The Boston Foundation. Angrist, J.D., Dynarski, S.M., Kane, T.J., Pathak, P.A., & Walters, C.R. (2010). Inputs and impacts in charter schools: KIPP Lynn. American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings 100: 1-5.
[viii] Gleason, P., Clark, M., Clark Tuttle, M., & Dwoyer, E. (2010). The evaluation of charter school impacts. Washington, DC: Mathematica Policy Research.
[ix] Booker, K., Sass, T.R., Gill, B., & Zimmer, R. (2010). The unknown world of charter high schools. Education Next, 10.
[x] Thomas B. Fordham Institute (2005). Charter school funding: Inequity’s next frontier. Washington, DC: Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
[xi] Center for Education Reform (2008). Charter school funding: Follow the money. Washington, DC: Center for Education Reform.
[xii] ECS StateNote (2003). Charter school finance. Denver, CO: Education Commission of the States.
[xiii] National Association of Charter School Authorizers (2010). The state of charter school authorizing 2009. Chicago, IL: National Association of Charter School Authorizers.
[xiv] Witte, J., Carlson, D., & Lavery, L. (in press). Charter school authorizers and student achievement. Economics of Education Review.
[xv] Sable, J. & Plotts, C. (2010). Documentation to the NCES common core of data public elementary/secondary school university survey: School year 2008-09 (NCES 2010-350 rev). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics.
[xvi] Greene, J., Loveless, T., MacLeod, W.B., Nechyba, T., Peterson, P., Rosenthal, M., & Whitehurst, G., (2010). Expanding choice in elementary and secondary education, Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.
[xvii] National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (2010). Public charter school dashboard. Retrieved from http://www.publiccharters.org/dashboard/home
[xviii] Allen, I.E. & Seaman, J. (2010). Learning on demand. Online education in the United States, 2009. The Sloan Consortium.
[xix] U.S. Census Bureau (2008). Public schools spent $9,138 per student in 2006. U.S. Department of Commerce.
[xx] Zimmer et al., supra, note 5. Zimmer, R., Buddin, R., Chau, D., Daley, G.A., Gill, B., Guarino, C.M., Hamilton, L.S., Krop, C., McCaffrey, D.F., Sandler, M., & Brewer, D.J. (2003). Charter school operations and performance: Evidence from California. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.
[xxi] Cavanaugh, C. (2009). Effectiveness of cyber charter schools: A review of research on learnings. TechTrends, 53, 28-31. Zimmer et al., supra, note 5.

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SOURCE: The Brookings Institution, http://www.brookings.edu/reports/2010/1216_charter_schools.aspx

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By Robert Maranto
February 19, 2011
The Houston Chronicle

Former fisheries biologist Soner Tarim played college basketball back in Turkey, point guard, and his easygoing persona masks a fierce competitive streak. “I still play basketball, but I won’t play against my staff,” he admits in an interview in his modest office in the center of Houston. “I take it too seriously.” Tarim runs the 33 high performing Harmony charter schools. Tarim founded Harmony in 2001 in Houston, where he now has 11 campuses.

Mike Feinberg also played some basketball in his time, with just as much determination. As Jay Matthews recounts in Work Hard, Be Nice, Feinberg once fought an epic five-hour one-on-one game with his roommate, fellow Ivy Leaguer David Levin. As young Teach for America (TFA) teachers in inner-city Houston, Levin and Feinberg co-founded the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) charter schools in 1994. The most famed of the nation’s high poverty/high achievement public schools, KIPP now has 18 campuses in Houston, and 99 nationwide.

KIPP and Harmony rank among the best charter schools in the nation, but they might not be the best in Houston. Four years after KIPP was founded, Mike Feinberg’s former roommate, Chris Barbic, founded YES Prep. Overwhelmingly low-income and minority, like KIPP and Harmony, over 80% of YES Prep graduates have either graduated from college or are still enrolled. Barbic describes his friendly rivalry with Feinberg and Tarim as “a force multiplier which has made me work harder and make that extra push to get better. … All of us have a natural competitive streak with each other.”

Houston’s charter school sector, which accounts for a rapidly growing 16 percent of public school enrollment, is among the biggest in the nation, and almost certainly the best. So why does Houston host three great charter chains, along with what may be the best urban school system in the nation? I recently asked Tarim, Feinberg and Barbic, and got answers that would not surprise any student of entrepreneurship. Just like Silicon Valley, Houston’s education miracle shows the importance of entrepreneurs, capital, transparency and political leadership favorable to competition.

To start with, entrepreneurs see a need, and as Soner Tarim points out, with a rapidly growing and increasingly low-income student population, “there was such a need.” But there was also great talent. Houston has attracted entrepreneurial educators from across the globe, many, like Tarim, drawn by the University of Houston, Rice and nearby Texas A&M. Other educational entrepreneurs were not new to the country, but were new to Houston. Feinberg, Levin and Barbic were among an army of young, idealistic TFA corps members from out of state drawn to Houston to save urban schooling. Houston has the nation’s largest TFA chapter. Unlike many cities, Houston welcomed TFA rather than seeing corps members as taking jobs from locals.

So what makes Houston different? First, the Houston Federation of Teachers never had the power to keep out TFA or hamstring KIPP and other charters. But that still left a bureaucracy, which, as Jay Mathews writes, resented KIPP’s notoriety and success. Before KIPP became a charter, the Houston Independent School District central office investigated KIPP, and at one point reassigned its classrooms. Political leadership saved the day. HISD Superintendent Rod Paige publicly praised KIPP and intervened when bureaucrats attacked. Paige also had HISD serve as an incubator for YES Prep. As Barbic recalls, “A lot of superintendents would have seen that innovation and tried to kill it, but Paige did the exact opposite.” Paige’s successors have followed his lead, fashioning a public school system that can compete with the charters.

In many cities opponents manipulate zoning and building rules to keep charter schools from finding sites, but Houston has few regulations. Not coincidentally, it also has low construction costs and cheap land. As Mike Feinberg points out, “Fifteen acres in Houston is about the same cost as one acre in Los Angeles.” That meant that once school leaders like Feinberg, Barbic and Tarim refined their operations at one or two campuses, they could expand cheaply and rapidly.

Houston also boasts an accountability system predating No Child Left Behind by nearly a decade. That meant that when KIPP was threatened in its first years, Feinberg could point to data showing his students making two years’ academic growth in a single year.

As much as anything, the three operators credit Houston’s entrepreneurial philanthropic community. In most cities rich people do charity for social respectability, but Houston’s donors wanted their capital to produce results, and they embraced effective educational entrepreneurs with the same gusto they showed for successful wildcatters. As Barbic states, “Houston is a very entrepreneurial city, and we were a bunch of young guys. There is not a lot of old money here. Everyone is only two generations away from being poor, so you don’t have to be in the country club or have the right last name to get access to people when you are starting out. It is a place where if you are willing to roll up your sleeves, you can get support.”

Feinberg adds, “Unlike the other hot spots for school reform like Washington, New Orleans or Newark, where something hot happened like a big flood or a mayoral election, Houston has never had anything like that: It just has the right conditions.”

Which begs the question, at a time when President Obama is trying to reinvent public schools, how can other cities copy the Houston miracle?

Robert Maranto is the 21st Century Chair in Leadership at the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas.

SOURCE: The Houston Chronicle, http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/7437274.html

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By Morgan Smith
February 19, 2011
The New York Times

It took seven years for Houston-based Harmony Public Schools, the state’s largest charter network and one of its best academically, to secure a bank bond in 2007 to buy and remodel buildings on its 33 campuses. Since then, it has obtained two additional bonds — the most recent for $90 million issued last year — to continue its expansion.

While school officials are pleased to have obtained the bonds, Harmony ends up paying a higher interest rate than a traditional public school with the same kind of loan. The reason? Charter schools cannot access the state’s Permanent School Fund, which guarantees bond issues for public schools, allowing them to borrow at substantially lower rates.

Soner Tarim, Harmony’s superintendent, estimates that his organization will pay an extra $50 million to $60 million in interest over the 20 years of the bonds because of the higher rates — money he would much rather spend on his students. If Harmony had the financial guarantee of the state, Mr. Tarim estimates he would be able to spend an additional $600 to $700 on every student each year.

“That’s a lot of money that we can actually use toward printing costs, laboratory equipment, etc.,” he said. “Otherwise, the interest rate goes to investors, it goes to Wall Street, out of state. That’s the bottom line. If we have the P.S.F. guarantee, that money stays in Texas for Texas children.”

Harmony’s struggle highlights the biggest hurdle for charter schools in Texas, advocates say: finding adequate facilities. Fledgling charter schools, like any other start-up business, have difficulty establishing credit. Because the schools must renew their charter with the state every five years, banks can view them as a risky investment, said Cinnamon Henley, executive director of the Austin Discovery School, a charter that opened in 2005.

Without access to financing for buying or building new facilities, charters are subject to the whims of the rental market, which can make budgetary planning difficult.

Some state lawmakers are pushing to change that with legislation allowing some charter schools to be eligible to access the Permanent School Fund.

Proceeds from several sources — including revenue from taxes and offshore oil-drilling leases — go into the $23 billion fund, which is managed by the State Board of Education. Interest from the fund feeds the Available School Fund, which helps pay for public school textbooks.

The proposal to expand access to the fund has prominent backers, including Senator Florence Shapiro, Republican of Plano and chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee, who introduced the legislation. Her House counterpart, Representative Rob Eissler, Republican of The Woodlands and chairman of the Public Education Committee, filed a companion bill last week.

Not everyone is on board: traditional school districts do not like the idea. The Texas Association of School Boards opposes opening the bond guarantee program to charters, Dax Gonzalez, a spokesman for the association, said, adding that charter schools are generally deemed to be poor credit risks.

“We’ve had around 280 charters awarded over the last few years,” Mr. Gonzalez said. “Out of those, 71 are no longer operating anymore. That’s about a quarter of charters that have been abandoned or closed down. That doesn’t show that they are going to be around for the state to recoup their investment.”

In fact, charter schools, many of them now defunct, currently owe the state $21 million — some since 2001 — mostly because of discrepancies in student enrollment figures.

Traditional districts and charters alike are financed through their estimates of enrollment at the beginning of the year. The state then adjusts the financing — through a process called settle up — for the number of students who actually attend. When a charter closes, the state may be unable to retrieve the money it has advanced the school.

Ms. Henley said some smaller charters cannot afford to hire specialized staff members to navigate the requirements of the Texas Education Agency, leaving charter operators adrift in a muddle of record keeping and state financing rules.

“If you have one person that does all your attendance reports, that’s one salary divided by 200 students, so per student you are paying a lot for that person’s salary,” she said. “If you are in a district and have 20,000 students and you have five or six people only doing that for the whole district, then you end up paying much less per student.”

David Dunn, director of the Texas Charter Schools Association, strongly believes that the proposed legislation is a “win-win-win.” Taxpayers and students benefit, Mr. Dunn said, because money is being spent on education rather than on paying interest — and it comes at no cost to the state’s general revenue fund budget.

Charter schools would be eligible only for their proportionate share of the fund, he said. Since they educate about 119,000 of the state’s 4.8 million public school students, that works out to about 2.5 percent of the fund’s capacity. And only the most reputable of the schools — those that, on their own, could receive an investment-grade rating and demonstrate financial solvency and academic performance over time — could get the fund’s guarantee.

“This should not in any way be detrimental to traditional school districts,” Mr. Dunn said, adding, “There’s really absolutely no reason for anyone to oppose this bill.”

The Texas Charter Schools Association now provides fiscal budget training for charter school staff members and new applicants to make sure they understand the business side of running a school. Before the association formed in 2008, there was never a support system for schools in place, Mr. Dunn said.

The support system, combined with a more rigorous evaluation of charter school applicants on the front end, he said, will help ensure that fewer schools find themselves owing the state money.

“When the problems do arise,” Mr. Dunn said, “we support the state coming in and closing down the school when they become fiscally insolvent.”

“It’s an issue that will very much decline over time,” he said.

SOURCE: The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/20/education/20ttcharter.html?_r=1&ref=education&pagewanted=all

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Charter school movement is growing

Charter school movement is growing fast. Recent numbers from National Charter School and Enrollment Statistics confirms this.

October 2010
The Center for Education Reform

Download report: Charter schools

* The number of schools opening and enrollment in 2010 are estimates. The number of schools includes campuses.

SOURCE: The Center for Education Reform, http://www.edreform.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/CER_charter_numbers.pdf

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April 5,2010
The Center for Education Reform

Another 5,000 Charters Needed: Parental Demand for Charter Schools Surges 21% in One Year

As more low-income and minority parents seek to remove their children from traditional public schools that chronically underperform, waiting lists for America’s public charter schools have grown dramatically, a report released today reveals. According to The Center for Education Reform (CER), an average of 239 children are waiting to enter each charter school in America, demonstrating a 21 percent surge in parental demand for charters over last year.

Because laws in most states either limit the number of students who can enter charters, prohibit multiple authorities from authorizing the creation of charters, or limit the number of schools themselves, demand for charter schools now dramatically outpaces supply, the Annual Survey of America’s Charter Schools 2010 indicates. In fact, 65 percent of U.S. charter schools have waiting lists, up from 59 percent in 2008, and some schools’ waiting lists are more than three times the size of the schools themselves. The average charter school size is 372 students and it is estimated that the number of students on waiting lists would fill another 5,000 charter schools.

In Texas alone, it is estimated that 40,000 children are on waiting lists for charters schools. In Boston, the number is 8,000. As state lawmakers finalize applications this week for a share of the federal government’s $4.3 billion ‘Race to the Top’ education fund, reformers are hoping that legislators will expand access to quality schools for families.

“We frequently talk about the problems plaguing America’s education system,” said Jeanne Allen, president of The Center for Education Reform. “Charter schools and school choice demonstrate what’s working in American education. When provided with good choices, parents make informed decisions and select the best schools for their children. Lawmakers should listen to their constituents and expand access to charter schools by allowing multiple authorities to create schools, ensuring fiscal equity, allowing schools to operate with more freedom, and lifting arbitrary caps on the number of schools permitted to open.”

Data indicates that low-income and minority families make up the bulk of the parents seeking entrance into charters-meaning that new charter schools would primarily benefit low-income children and children of color. Already, more than 54 percent of students in charters are classified as poor, half of America’s charter schools serve student populations where 60+ percent of the children are poor, and children of color comprise 52 percent of charter school attendees.

Surprisingly, charter schools have achieved their popularity not through big budgets that let them spend lavishly (in fact, the average charter school receives $3,468 less in state and federal funds than the traditional public school), but by offering programs, services, and teaching formulas that parents want but can’t find in traditional public schools.

For example, about 54 percent of charter schools allow for the possibility of performance pay programs for teachers, an incentive system that parents favor. Charter schools are also more likely to be smaller than traditional public schools and offer more instruction time-other factors that increase demand. Interestingly, 76 percent of charter schools offer a specific instructional theme-with more than a quarter of the schools specifically designed to prepare students for college.

“Good charter schools offer a refreshing lack of bureaucracy and red tape, allowing these schools to serve students, teachers, and the community in more effective ways,” said Kevin P. Chavous, a distinguished fellow at CER.

In addition to demonstrating the demand for charters, the survey highlights both the operational and financial realities faced by the country’s more than 5,000 charter schools. CER’s Annual Survey of America’s Charter Schools 2010 is the only national overview of the day-to-day operations of charters, as reported directly from the schools themselves. The survey is based on a comprehensive analysis from responses provided by nearly 1,000 out of America’s 5,000 charter schools.

Download CER’s Annual Survey of America’s Charter Schools 2010

SOURCE: The Center for Education Reform, http://www.edreform.com/Resources/Publications/?Annual_Survey_of_Americas_Charter_Schools_2010

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February 17, 2011
Fox News

CHICAGO– A unique Chicago charter school has accomplished an uncommon feat for the second year in a row.

Every member of Urban Prep’s senior class has been accepted into a four-year college or university. The school’s first senior class had the same record last year.

Urban Prep claims to be the nation’s first all-boys public charter high school comprised entirely of black males.

School officials say when this year’s senior class entered as freshmen in 2007, only 11 percent were reading at grade level. Now they’re headed to college.

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley congratulated the seniors at an event Wednesday.

Last year, the mayor’s office said the average college enrollment rate for Chicago Public Schools was just over 54 percent. The average graduation rate for black males was 41 percent.

SOURCE: Fox News, http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/02/17/chicago-school-accomplishes-feat-sending-seniors-college/

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By William McKenzie
February 18, 2011
The Dallas Morning-News

Before this legislative session began, I was kind of skeptical about increasing the number of charter schools in Texas. We have plenty of failing charters around the state, so I had been thinking, why not shut those down and let others come in and take their place?

But David Dunn and other representatives from the Texas charter school movement came in for an editorial board meeting this week, and I thought they gave a persuasive answer about why the state needs to lift the cap on the number of charters the state can grant. Actually, they offered two persuasive points.

First, a number of successful charter networks would like to come here, but can’t. The state has capped the number of charter licenses at 215, and it already has granted 211 licenses. What’s more, there is a waiting list for those final spots. So, there is no room for anyone else to come in.

Dunn, who leads the Texas Charter Schools Association, didn’t offer up any names of charter networks itching to come here. But the Green Dots of the world would be crazy not to eye Texas. We are a big, untapped market for successful charters. And there are plenty of Texas students who could benefit from the kind of education they offer.

Second, the legislation calling for a higher cap doesn’t envision throwing the door open. Instead, it would incrementally increase the numbers. SB 127 by GOP Sen. Dan Patrick would allow for no more than 10 new charter licenses a year.

Managing the growth in that way should help the state keep out the bad operators. Plus, the State Board of Education has done a better job in recent years handing out licenses. They’ve seen the bad ones come in and don’t want to add to their ranks.

So, consider me a convert. I hope SB 127 passes.

SOURCE: The Dallas Morning-News, http://educationfrontblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2011/02/time-to-raise-texas-charter-sc.html

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By Sam Dillon
February 15, 2011
The New York Times

DENVER — Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, convening a two-day labor-management conference here on Tuesday, argued that teachers’ unions can help solve many of the challenges facing public schools.

But as the conference opened, that view was under challenge in a number of state capitals.

Republicans in several states have proposed legislation in recent weeks that would bar teachers’ unions from all policy discussions, except when the time comes to negotiate compensation. In Tennessee and Wisconsin, Republicans have proposed stripping teachers’ unions of collective bargaining rights altogether.

Education historians said the unions were facing the harshest political climate since states began extending legal bargaining rights to schoolteachers decades ago.

The conference, convened by the Department of Education, drew school authorities and teachers’ union leaders from 150 districts across the nation to Denver to discuss ways of working together. To participate, each district’s superintendent, school board president and teachers’ union leader had to sign a pledge to collaborate in good faith to raise student achievement.

Some districts that had hoped to participate could not because relations grew too hostile before the conference.

They included New York, where the schools chancellor, Cathleen P. Black, and the United Federation of Teachers president, Michael Mulgrew, had each signed the pledge. But recent criticism by Ms. Black of the city’s system of seniority-based teacher layoffs angered Mr. Mulgrew, he said, and late last week he pulled out of the conference.

“I wasn’t going to walk into Denver with the chancellor and say, ‘We’re the hypocrites, here for the conference,’ ” Mr. Mulgrew said.

Natalie Ravitz, a spokeswoman for Ms. Black, said the chancellor was disappointed. “We think there are critical issues we need to work together on,” Ms. Ravitz said.

Chicago, Miami-Dade, Philadelphia and eight others among the nation’s 25 largest school systems were at the conference, alongside representatives of 140 smaller districts from 40 states.

In his opening remarks at the conference, called Advancing Student Achievement Through Labor-Management Collaboration, Mr. Duncan commended several districts and their unions.

Among them were Douglas County near Denver, where, he said, the union helped the district pioneer a new teacher evaluation system. In New Haven, a union contract established an innovative mentoring program. And in Los Angeles, the union contract at the Green Dot charter school network details teachers’ instructional responsibilities rather than their working hours.

The conference comes at a time when thousands of districts are facing their most severe budget cuts in a generation, and union contracts calling for layoffs based on seniority could force many districts to dismiss their most energetic young teachers.

But changing these policies could also prompt some districts to remove more experienced, higher paid teachers to balance their budgets.

Mr. Duncan urged participants to search for solutions to the dilemmas posed by mass teacher layoffs.

“We have to learn to problem-solve together,” he said, underscoring his view that school systems can face challenges most effectively by working with the unions.

But in some states an alternate view appeared to be gaining force.

The Idaho schools superintendent, Tom Luna, a Republican, has proposed legislation that would limit collective bargaining to teacher compensation, and exclude unions from deliberations over the design of education policies. Republican lawmakers in Indiana have proposed similar legislation.

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin has gone further, proposing to end collective bargaining rights for nearly all the state’s 175,000 public sector workers, more than half of whom are teachers. That proposal could pass since Republicans command large majorities in the Legislature.

In Tennessee, State Representative Debra Young Maggart, the chairwoman of the Republican caucus, also introduced legislation that would bar teachers’ unions from collective bargaining.

“Teachers’ unions have been blocking education reform, and my bill will deal with the problem,” Ms. Maggart said.

But Sharon Vandagriff, president of the teachers’ union in Hamilton County, Tenn., who came to Denver for the conference, said her union had worked for years with school authorities to overhaul struggling schools in Chattanooga. Across Tennessee, unions made concessions that paved the way last year for the state to win $500 million in federal Race to the Top money, she said, adding that Ms. Maggart’s bill has demoralized many teachers.

“It feels like an attack,” she said.

Some Democrats, too, are adopting a tougher stance toward teachers’ unions.

“We think they have a right to exist and a role to play in education reform,” said Joe Williams, executive director of Democrats for Education Reform, an advocacy group that pushes for charter schools. “But we wish management would be more aggressive. When management tries to appease, we end up with contracts that aren’t good for public education.”

Charles Taylor Kerchner, a professor of education at Claremont Graduate University who studies labor union history, said, “This is the harshest time for teachers’ unions that I’ve seen since the advent of legislatively sanctioned collective bargaining half a century ago.”

SOURCE: The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/education/16education.html?_r=1&ref=education

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By The Center for Education Reform
January 2009

Fixing public education is the most leveraged domestic policy opportunity of our time. Mandate for Change outlines what our leaders must do to improve our nation’s schools. Our goal is to provide actionable recommendations that leaders in government can move today to implement.

Mandate for Change does not spend a lot of time diagnosing the causes of our current afflictions. Instead, it moves immediately to prescribe a five-part cure made all the more compelling by the star power of its authors and their basic insights into the key issues at hand.

Mandate for Change is an effort led by the Center for Education Reform to set a bold agenda for the incoming government. While others propose that the global economic crisis and a matrix of threats to our national security must lead the Obama Administration’s long list of priorities, we argue that fixing public education is hands down the most leveraged domestic policy opportunity of our time.

Click here to download the report.

SOURCE: The Center for Education Reform, http://mandate.edreform.com/

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By The Center for Education Reform

The following are answers to frequently asked questions (FAQ) regarding charter schools and what they mean for students, educators, schools and communities. The answers to these FAQs are intended to provide only an introductory overview of key issues. Links are provided to take you to areas with additional information.

Charter Schools are one part of a five-part cure for fixing public education detailed in Mandate for Change, a bold agenda for the incoming government. More…

What Is A Charter School?

Charter schools are new, innovative public schools that are accountable for student results. They are designed to deliver programs tailored to educational excellence and the needs of the communities they serve.

Charter schools are one of the fastest and most successful growing reforms in the country. The first charter school opened its doors in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1992 and now, almost two decades later, more than 5,000 charter schools are serving over 1.5 million children across 39 states and the District of Columbia.

Based on the belief that America’s public schools should meet standards of excellence and be held accountable, parents are lining up to choose these innovative public schools that are able to meet the individual needs of their children.

Where Can I Find Charter Schools?

Go to www.yourcharterschool.com for school-by-school and state-by-state profiles of operating and approved charters schools around the nation, as well as links to resources, research and statistics.

How Do Charter Schools Differ From Traditional District Public Schools?

Charter schools operate on three basic principles:

• Choice: Charter schools give families an opportunity to pick the school most suitable for their child’s educational well-being. Teachers choose to create and work at schools where they directly shape the best working and learning environment for their students and themselves. Likewise, charter sponsors choose to authorize schools that are likely to best serve the needs of the students in a particular community.

• Accountability: Charter schools are judged on how well they meet the student achievement goals established by their charter contract. Charter schools must also show that they can perform according to rigorous fiscal and managerial standards. If a charter school cannot perform up to the established standards, it will be closed. Check out CER’s Accountability Report: Charter Schools for more.

• Freedom: While charter schools must adhere to the same major laws and regulations as all other public schools, they are freed from the red tape that often diverts a school’s energy and resources away from educational excellence. Instead of constantly jumping through procedural hoops, charter school leaders can focus on setting and reaching high academic standards for their students.

Some charter school programs focus on the basics — reading, writing and the traditional school subjects that some children struggle with. Other schools have special arts or music programs. Some charters look just like other public schools. There also are dropout prevention programs, adult education programs, charters that serve Head Start and day care needs, and charters that work with children who want to go to college.

Why Are Charter Schools So Popular?

Educational quality: The primary reason for charter schools is to make sure every child has access to a quality education. With the freedom and choice to do so, charters set higher standards and must meet them to stay in business. Most other public schools stay in business no matter how poorly they perform. Not so with charter schools. They are your ticket to higher-quality schools.

Focus on the kids: Perhaps most important, a charter school is set up around the needs of children, not around the needs of adults. The focus should always be on the kids, and programs should be designed to help children succeed, no matter what it takes.

Safer, stronger communities: Charter schools typically engage local businesses and other organizations to help provide resources and services to the school and its families. Many charter schools create a community hub, whether it is turning an inner-city ghetto into bustling and safer neighborhood or whether it is bringing families in rural America together, charter schools have a proven effect on the strength and safety of a community.

Link here for more about Americans’ Attitudes Toward Charter Schools. Link here to find out more about bipartisan support for charter schools.

How Do Charter Schools Work?

The Law: Before you can have charter schools, you must have a state law. Forty states and the District of Columbia have enacted charter school laws. (The ten states that do not have charter school laws are Alabama, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington and West Virginia. Click here to find out more.)

As is the case with most education laws, charter schools are born at the state level. Typically a group of concerned lawmakers drafts a bill that allows the creation of any number of charter schools throughout a state. The content of the charter law plays a large role in the relative success or failure of the charter schools that open within that state. CER has identified a number of factors that can work together to create an environment that promotes the growth and expansion of charter schools. Some of them are identified below.

• Number of Schools & Applications: The best charter laws do not limit the number of charter schools that can operate throughout the state. They do not place restrictions on the brand new schools either. A poorly written law would only allow conversion schools to operate but this hinders parents’ ability to choose from among numerous public schools. These laws should also allow many different types of groups to apply to open schools.

• Multiple Charter Authorizers: States that permit a number of entities to authorize charter schools, or provide applicants with a binding appeals process, encourage more activity than those that vest authorizing power in a single entity, particularly if that entity is the local school board. The goal is to give parents the most options and having multiple sponsors helps reach this goal. Click here to learn more.

• Waivers & Legal Autonomy: A good charter law is one that automatically exempts charter schools from most of the school district’s laws and regulations. Of course no charter school is exempt from the most fundamental laws concerning civil rights. These waivers

• Full Funding & Fiscal Autonomy: A charter school needs have control of its own finances to run efficiently. Only the charter school’s operators know the best way to spend funds and the charter law should reflect this need. Similarly charter schools, as public schools, are entitled to receive the same amount of funds as all other conventional public schools. Many states and districts withhold money from individual charter schools due to fees and “administrative costs” but the best laws provide full funding for all public schools.

For additional information and research, visit Charter School Laws.

The Founders: Virtually anyone can submit an application to open and operate a charter school. Parents, educators, museums, civic groups, business leaders, service organizations and teachers have started schools in United States. Charter schools are started when community members see an educational need and decide to actively address it.

The Board: Every charter school is required by law to have a board of directors that is ultimately responsible for what the school does. Legally, the board oversees the operations of the school and makes sure it is financially sound and follows the law. The Board also helps to create the vision for how the school should operate and often is compiled of parents of children attending the charter school.

The Teachers: Teachers choose charter schools because these schools help them avoid the frustrations of constant bureaucracy. In addition to hiring the same certified teachers as traditional public schools, charter schools can hire qualified individuals that often have significant professional experience in their subject area. This makes for education infused with real-world experience.

The Sponsors: The role of the charter school sponsor is to first approve charter applications and then monitor the schools to ensure success. The more organized and active a sponsor is, the more likely problems within individual charter schools will be uncovered and fixed early. Sponsors are ultimately responsible for the operational and educational integrity of each charter school they sponsor and for closing any that fail to function responsibly. Depending on the state charter school law, sponsors are local school boards, state boards of education, state universities, state departments of education, or a separate entity created by law that has the sole duty to sponsor and oversee charter schools in the state.

How Are Charter Schools Funded?

Charter schools are public schools. Like district public schools, they are funded according to enrollment (also called average daily attendance, or ADA), and receive funding from the district and the state according to the number of students attending. The ways and amounts at which charters are funded compared to their district counterparts differ dramatically in an individual state and even in individual communities within a state. Nationwide, on average, charter schools are funded at 61 percent of their district counterparts, averaging $6,585 per pupil compared to $10,771 per pupil at conventional district public schools. For more information and state-by-state funding comparisons, go to Following the Money.

Unlike traditional district schools, most charter schools do not receive funding to cover the cost of securing a facility. Conversion schools begin with established capital, namely the school and its facilities. A few states provide capital funding to start-up schools, and some start-up schools are able to take over available unused district space, but most must rely on other, independent means. Recent federal legislation provides funding to help charters with start-up costs, but the task remains imposing.

How Do Charter Schools Manage if They are Underfunded? Necessity, as the mother of invention, is inspiring innovation in this area.

Facilities and Other Start-Up and Capital Costs: Many charter schools improvise by converting spaces such as rented retail facilities, former churches, lofts and warehouses, into classroom, cafeteria, assembly and gym space, supplemented by the local YMCA, the public library and park, and the diner down the street. Once they are more established they are able to acquire loans and move to more suitable or permanent facilities. State legislation and loan agencies are beginning to tackle this problem by providing start-up funding and providing charter schools with the information needed to obtain favorable loans.

The same is true of capital needs beyond bricks and mortar. School founders have managed on an ad hoc basis with the help of private funds or alternative credit routes, and especially the sweat equity of enthusiastic volunteers, parents and local professionals. The charter concept has become more recognized and successful, banks and corporations have developed ways to provide capital to charter schools at favorable rates.

Operational costs: Charter schools receive a portion of the state and district operating funds generally based on student enrollment counts. The portion is determined by the state legislation, and, in some states, is negotiated in the charter contract. For example, a state’s charter legislation determines that a percentage or up to a percentage of operating funds follows the students. The actual acquisition of that funding however, falls upon the charter school operators – sometimes no small task. For example, soon after Vaughn Next Century Learning Center Charter School (San Fernando, CA) opened, Chan charged that the district had shortchanged the school $811 per pupil. State funding called for $3,111 per pupil, but the district delivered $2,300. LAUSD responded that elementary schools receive less than junior and high schools. Moreover, a legal settlement that equalized funding for suburban and urban schools hampered further funding. Chan felt that violated the intention of the charter contract. She sent back the check and prepared to operate the school with a second mortgage on her house. In the midst of the controversy, Assemblyman Richard Katz drafted a bill requiring the district to give Vaughn 95 percent of the money it received from the state for its pupils and the school board backed down and paid Vaughn an additional $500 per student. The law set a precedent for charters’ per pupil fund allocation. Says Chan: “We got that money because we went to war.”

Categorical aid: Also significant in operational expenses are categorical federal education grant funds. These funds generally follows one of two routes before reaching schools: (1) either distributed directly by the U.S. Department of Education through its own application process, or (2) channeled through state education agencies that then distribute the funds in a variety of ways. Typically, state agencies distribute funds based on whether a charter school is recognized as its own local education authority or not. If it is recognized as such, then charter schools may receive the money directly. The route is ultimately determined by the state legislation.

Do Charter Schools Take Money from Public Schools? Charter schools are public schools. When a child leaves for a charter school the money follows that child. This benefits the public school system by instilling a sense of accountability into the system regarding its services to the student and parents and its fiscal obligations. Fiscally, charter schools have demonstrated efficiency. For example, ABC’s “Prime Time Live” ran a story on Yvonne Chan, the energetic principal of a San Fernando Valley’s Vaughn Next Century Charter School. The local school district, one of the largest and most bureaucratic in the nation, typically took a year to buy computers for its classrooms. Ms. Chan thought that was ridiculous. It took her charter school six days to purchase computers, and for less money. As a result, the Los Angeles Unified School District revised its purchasing system. Overall, in its first year of operation, Vaughn Next Century generated, through operational changes and efficiencies, a $1 million plus surplus, which it used to expand facilities to benefit both students and staff.

For more information on common misconceptions surrounding charter schools, see CHARTER SCHOOLS: Six Common Criticisms from Opponents…and Proof That They are Unfounded.

How Do Charter Schools Impact the Public School System?

The “Ripple” Effect: Conventional public school districts often view charter schools as a threat but time has shown that these new schools can serve a valuable teaching role. Increasingly, members of the traditional public school system are turning to charter schools for examples of “best-practices” regarding everything from curriculum to staffing and teacher retention. The attitudes of leading administrators in the conventional public school system are also changing. Instead of viewing charter schools as nuisances many realize the need for improvement spurred on by charter schools. For more on the “ripple” of improvements charter schools are bringing to their communities see Charter Schools, Still Making Waves.

Do Charter Schools Work? Yes. In addition to the positive pressure they put on the public school system as a whole, charter schools satisfy and serve their primary constituents (teachers, parents, and students) by providing exciting and viable new education in an inclusive, individual manner. Harvard University Professor and Economist Caroline Hoxby recently released a study called “A Straightforward Comparison of Charter Schools and Regular Public Schools in the United States.” The study compared 4th grade students in charter schools with 4th graders in the public schools that the charter students would go to absent the charter option and made several important conclusions:

• Compared to students in the nearest regular public school, charter students are 4 percent more likely to be proficient in reading and 2 percent more likely to be proficient in math, on their state’s exam.

• Compared to students in the nearest regular public school with a similar racial composition, charter students are 5 percent more likely to be proficient in reading and 3 percent more likely to be proficient in math.

• In states where charters are well established, such as Arizona and California the advantage tends to be greater.

For a summary of charter school research findings – overwhelmingly supporting the viability and success of charters – see What the Research Reveals About Charter Schools.

Charter School Resources

• Charter Connection: Recent Developments and Ongoing Research and Analysis

• Charter school laws: Ratings, rankings, recent court developments

• Charter school funding

• Charter school achievement

• Toolkit: How to Start a Charter School

• Some more Quick Facts About Charter Schools.

• Find Your Charter School: Comprehensive National Directory

SOURCE: The Center for Education Reform, http://www.edreform.com/Fast_Facts/Ed_Reform_FAQs/?Just_the_FAQs_Charter_Schools

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February 15, 2011
Greensboro News & Record

Guilford County commissioners intend to delay funding for school capital projects. That’s understandable in view of this year’s budget challenge.

Finding money would be even harder if commissioners had to share capital funds with charter schools — maybe many more charter schools than there are in Guilford County today.

It could happen with proposed state legislation that would revamp the charter school system.

Charter school change is a high priority for House and Senate Republicans. For years, they’ve pushed for two goals: removal of a statewide cap of 100 charter schools, and funding equity. Democrats weren’t interested. Now that Republicans have gained control, they intend to move ahead.

The cap should be lifted. It limits opportunities and stifles innovation. For example, one of the most successful charter organizations in the country is KIPP, the Knowledge is Power Program. There are 18 KIPP schools in Houston alone, but only two in all of North Carolina with few chances to expand under the cap.

A bill in the state Senate goes much further than lifting the cap, however. It would create a Public Charter Schools Commission, largely independent of the State Board of Education or Department of Public Instruction. A new bureaucracy in Raleigh is worrisome. More troubling: It would cut charter schools in on state lottery money for capital expenses (so much for the notion that Republicans would repeal the lottery, which they once strongly opposed). Cities and counties also would be authorized to appropriate capital funds for charter schools, using property tax revenue.

Until now, a strong selling point for charters was their lower cost. They didn’t receive public funds for building schools, and so were forced to rely on private contributions or to lease facilities with proceeds from their per-student state allocations.

They should continue to do that. Successful charters have shown that children can attend school in clean, safe classrooms set up in storefronts, office buildings and other nontraditional locations. They don’t always need state-of-the-art schools that cost tens of millions of dollars. And taxpayers can’t afford to provide more and more expensive facilities.

The bill also would make it clear that charter schools don’t have to furnish transportation for students, would relieve them of the existing requirement that their student bodies reasonably reflect the racial and ethnic composition of the school system as a whole, and allow them to accept students from outside the system and charge them tuition.

These measures could limit access to some children and make charters more like private schools — except that they would tap into much more public money.

While more charters can increase choices for parents seeking alternatives to assigned schools, adding to public expense or vying for scarce existing dollars is not the way to go. Not when county commissioners aren’t able to meet the costs of school projects already on the drawing board and approved by voters. Charters must be a good deal for students and for taxpayers.

SOURCE: Greensboro News & Record, http://www.news-record.com/content/2011/02/14/article/editorial_more_choice_and_less_cost

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By James C. McKinley
February 14, 2011
The New York Times

HUTTO, Tex. — The school superintendent in this rural town outside the state capital has taken steps to trademark the district’s oddly un-Texan school mascot — the Hutto Hippo — in a frantic effort to raise cash. He is also planning to put advertisements on school buses and to let retailers have space on the school Web site.

“I’m doing some weird stuff in the district because we are low on money,” said the superintendent, Douglas Killian, sitting in an office full of Hippo figurines.

He added, “We hope to make our hippo as recognizable as Mickey Mouse.” (The mascot was adopted shortly after a hippopotamus escaped from a circus train in 1915 and took up temporary residence in a local creek.)

But the money expected from the sale of “Hustling Hippos” merchandise would be peanuts compared with the hole expected to open up in the district’s budget, as the Legislature moves to slash about $4.8 billion in state aid to schools over two years to close a budget gap.

So Mr. Killian and the beleaguered school board have agreed to shut down a recently built grade school and to cut a 10th of the staff, among them a principal, 2 assistant principals, 4 librarians and 38 teachers. That round of staff cuts is a just first step, he says, and layoffs will follow if the budget bills proposed in the Legislature are enacted without changes.

All across Texas, school superintendents are bracing for the largest cuts to public education since World War II, and the state is not alone. Schools across the country are in trouble as billions in emergency stimulus grants from the federal government have run out, and state and federal lawmakers have interpreted the victory of fiscal hawks in November’s midterm elections to mean that tax increases are out of the question.

Nowhere has that political trend been more potent than in Texas, where Republicans who ran on a promise to never raise taxes not only retained every statewide office, but also added to their majorities in both houses of the Legislature.

Gov. Rick Perry, easily re-elected in November, made it clear in his annual speech to lawmakers last week that he regarded raising revenue for schools as out of the question, saying Texas families “sent a pretty clear message with their November votes.” He has also refused to consider using $9.4 billion in a reserve fund to bail out the schools.

“They want government to be even leaner and more efficient,” Mr. Perry said, “and they want us to balance the budget without raising taxes on families and employers.”

To balance the budget with cuts alone, the governor and Republican leaders in the Legislature have put forth bills that would reduce the state’s public school budget by at least 13 percent — nearly $3.5 billion a year — and would provide no new money to schools for about 85,000 new students that arrive in Texas every year. School administrators predict that as many as 100,000 school employees would have to be laid off to absorb the cuts.

Not only are the proposed cuts to school aid draconian, but in addition the Legislature in 2006 put strict limits on how much districts can raise local property taxes. That means local school boards find themselves trapped amid rising enrollment, double-digit drops in state aid and frozen local taxes.

Many school administrators attribute the current budget crisis to an overhaul of the school finance system five years ago, which Mr. Perry and Republican leaders pushed through in response to popular anger over high property taxes. The Legislature put a cap on property taxes for schools and promised to make up the difference with a new business tax. But that tax has never produced enough revenue to make the districts’ budgets whole.

The chronic shortfall in money for schools was papered over in the last two-year budget passed in 2009. Mr. Perry and Republican leaders in the Legislature used about $3.3 billion in federal aid under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to plug the hole. That aid has disappeared this year.

“We had a problem before the shortfall ever occurred,” said John M. Folks, the superintendent of Northside Independent School District in San Antonio. “Now we have put this shortfall on top of an already horrible funding situation.”

Mr. Folks said the proposed budget bills would require him to cut about a sixth of his budget, and he sees see no way to avoid laying off teachers and letting classes become larger.

That view was echoed by administrators in districts large and small, from tiny rural districts with one high school and a six-man football team to the giant urban districts in Houston and Dallas.

In Austin, school administrators on Friday recommended in a letter to the school board that 1,000 jobs — roughly 8 percent of the work force — be cut to balance the budget, while in Dallas officials on Thursday proposed cutting about 4,000 positions.

Terry Grier, the superintendent in Houston, said the city stood to lose 15 percent to 20 percent of its total budget. The district could still raise the local property tax rate a few cents and stay under the state-imposed cap, but it would produce nowhere near enough to cover the loss of state money, Mr. Grier said. One way to cushion the blow, he said, would be to lift state rules on class size and to let administrators single out unproductive teachers for layoffs, regardless of their seniority. “Let us get out from under some of these state mandates,” he said.

Even relatively wealthy suburban districts are in trouble. Officials in the Clear Creek Independent School District south of Houston, which serves the communities around NASA, estimate they would have to cut about 975 jobs — about a fifth of the work force. Like most other administrators, Superintendent Greg Smith is urging the Legislature to tap into the Rainy Day Fund instead of making the cuts. “It’s not raining,” he said. “It’s pouring.”

On Thursday night in Hutto, two school board members wept as they read the motion to close Veterans’ Hill Elementary School, a sleek building that opened in 2008 amid wheat fields and horse paddocks.

“In the 10 years I’ve been on this board, this is the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make,” said Sheila Knapp, the board’s vice president. “I’m very angry with the Legislature for putting us in this position and affecting our kids this way.”

Michele Bischoffberger, the principal at Veterans’ Hill, said the school was built just before the economic downturn, when Hutto was growing rapidly as developers built suburbs for workers at high-tech companies around Austin.

“All this land out here was supposed to be houses, but when the crash came, that didn’t happen,” Ms. Bischoffberger said, gesturing at nearby fields.

She recounted wistfully how she helped design the school, insisting on elements like a large gymnasium and a computer lab. “It’s your baby,” she said. “Being a new principal, this is where you get to make your dreams come true. It’s going to be hard to walk away.”

The 475 children at the school will be divided among the district’s other four elementary schools, and the entire fifth grade will be moved to the two middle schools to make room. The shuttered school — with its library, computer lab and state-of-the-art classrooms — will be mothballed or rented out to a community college, Ms. Bischoffberger said.

Plans to start a garden to be used as an outdoor classroom this spring have been scotched, killing a long-held dream for Vanessa Henson, a kindergarten teacher who had raised money from local businesses for the project.

“I don’t know about the politics,” Ms. Henson said, breaking into tears. “I just know something went awry.”

Some young teachers and support staff members said they were uneasy, since it was unclear if they would have jobs in September. Sharon Case, the school librarian, is among those whose job is on the line. She has two children in college and works nights as a cashier at Wal-Mart.

“I’m just doing a lot of praying and depending on God to know where I’m supposed to be,” Ms. Case said.

SOURCE: The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/education/15texas.html?ref=education

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By Sam Dillon and Tamar Lewin
February 14, 2011
The New York Times

President Obama proposed a 2012 Department of Education budget on Monday that would, if approved, significantly increase federal spending for public schools, and maintain the maximum Pell grant — the cornerstone financial-aid program — at $5,550 per college student.

Whether it will be possible to keep that Pell maximum remains uncertain, however, given that House Republicans have proposed cutting the maximum by about $845, or 15 percent, in their proposal to extend the current budget.

The administration’s education proposal asks for $77.4 billion. That includes $48.8 billion for the portion of the education budget that does not include Pell grants, or an increase of about 4 percent above the 2010 budget. Congress has not yet enacted the 2011 budget.

Among education programs that the administration was protecting was Race to the Top, the competitive grant program that the administration has made its centerpiece initiative. Last year the administration used the Race to the Top to channel $4 billion in economic stimulus money to New York and other states that had proposed bold school improvement plans.

The 2012 budget proposal includes $900 million for Race to the Top, which the administration says would be awarded this time not to states but to school districts. That would make it possible, for instance, to channel money to Houston or other districts in Texas that wanted to compete in the Race to the Top initiative but could not because their state declined to participate.

Some House Republicans are skeptical of the program, however, and — like other line items in the education budget — it could face trims or elimination as Congress works on its own budget and the administration’s.

The Republicans also propose to cut $1.1 billion from the Head Start program, which, according to estimates by the National Head Start Association, would eliminate services for more than 200,000 children and the jobs of more than 50,000 Head Start employees.

Reacting to the administration’s budget, Representative John Kline, the Minnesota Republican who is chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, indicated a reluctance to invest more in education.

“Over the last 45 years we have increased our investment in education, but the return on that investment has failed to improve student achievement,” Mr. Kline said. “Throwing more money at our nation’s broken education system ignores reality and does a disservice to students and taxpayers.”

The administration’s education proposal also includes $600 million for School Turnaround Grants, another favorite of the president and of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. This would be a $54 million increase above 2010 levels. The turnaround effort, which the administration hopes will finance makeovers of thousands of the country’s worst schools, was also financed with billions in economic stimulus money.

The vast program known as Title I, which channels money to school districts to help them educate disadvantaged children, would receive $14.8 billion, an increase of $300 million over 2010.

Last year, the president said that, to remain competitive, the nation must increase the number of college graduates. But forced to make deep cuts in many areas of government, the president now proposes to eliminate some provisions of the Pell program, which has doubled in size over five years, and serves nine million low-income students. The administration’s budget would end Pell grants for summer students and end interest subsidies on graduate students’ loans.

“We’re making some tough choices to protect the Pell grant,” Justin Hamilton, a department spokesman, said Monday in an e-mail statement. “We’re cutting where we can so that we can invest where we must.”

Congress passed the legislation providing an extra $36 billion over 10 years for the Pell program, and increasing the maximum grant to $5,550 only last year. But with the new Congress’s emphasis on cost-cutting, Pell grants became a prime focal point for cost-cutting. Beyond the 15 percent cut in this fall’s Pell grants, the House Republicans’ proposal would, over 10 years, cut $56 billion from the program.

Mr. Kline said the Democrats had expanded Pells beyond what taxpayers can afford and put the program on the path to bankruptcy.

But education groups warned that cutting the Pell program would put college out of reach for many low-income students.

“With millions of Americans struggling to make ends meet, cutting Pell grants would pull the rug right out from under students and families who are counting on these crucial grants to help pay for college this fall,” said Lauren Asher of the Project on Student Debt.

SOURCE: The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/us/15education.html?_r=1&ref=education

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February 14, 2011
Wheeling Intelligencer

Ohio public schools have made some improvements during the past several years – but still are lacking in some important measurements of education quality. We hope a new cabinet-level post created by Gov. John Kasich can help address some of the deficiencies.

Kasich has named Robert Sommers as director of the Governor’s Office of 21st Century Education. Sommers has an extensive background in schools, including work with a charter school and in career and technical education.

It is unknown just how much authority Sommers will have. Ohio, like many other states, uses a state board of education to manage public education. It has been pointed out that with five members appointed recently by Kasich, the 19-member board is dominated by his Republican Party.

Our experience with boards of education at both the local and state levels is that party affiliation is not a controlling factor, however, so it cannot be predicted that the board will serve merely as a rubber stamp for Kasich and Sommers. Philosophies about education tend to transcend party labels.

Standardized tests – the results of which have to be used with caution – show some improvements in Ohio public schools during the past several years. They also show that in some respects, the quality of education has remained stagnant – or even decreased.

For example, standardized tests used to determine whether students can graduate from high school have shown decidedly mixed results. During the 2005-06 school year, 93.7 percent of 11th graders in public schools passed the reading portion of the test. Only 91.6 percent of those who took it during the 2009-10 school year passed.

In a related statistic, the state showed a high school graduation rate of 85.9 percent five years ago. It climbed to 86.9 percent for the 2007-08 school year, before dropping to 83 percent for 2009-10.

Clearly, school reform needs to be an ongoing priority – not just a “process” – in the Buckeye State. We encourage Sommers and Kasich to approach it that way.

SOURCE: Wheeling Intelligencer, http://www.theintelligencer.net/page/content.detail/id/551887/Make-School-Reform-Priority.html?nav=511

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By Malcolm Maclachlan
February 14, 2011
Capitol Weekly

What’s the definition of a religion?

It sounds like a term paper assignment. But it’s also central question in lawsuit that seeks to remove public funding from a pair of “Waldorf-inspired” public charter schools that are part of the Sacramento City Unified School District.

The original lawsuit was first filed by a group called People for Legal and Non-Sectarian Schools (PLANS) back in 1998. The San Francisco-based group, which says they are largely made up of former Waldorf parents and students, claims that Waldorf schools teach a religious philosophy and therefore should not be eligible for taxpayer funding.

The original Waldorf schools were inspired by the teachings of philosopher Rudolph Steiner. PLANS claims that the schools teach Steiner’s philosophy of anthroposophy, which they say meets the legal definition of a religion. Anthroposophy does espouse what some would call a spiritual philosophy, emphasizing objectivity and intellectual understanding, but lacks what is many consider to be the normal trappings of a church, such as holding services.

The suit has followed a winding path, being dismissed and then revived multiple times. In November, U.S. District Court Judge Frank C. Damrell Jr. ruled that the group could not show evidence that anthroposophy is a religion in any legal sense.

On Feb. 9, the Pacific Justice Institute filed papers with the court to join PLANS on an appeal. The conservative legal group files lawsuits to defend the rights of Christians, often suing school districts.

“Here we have a set of beliefs, anthroposophy, which addresses the issue of life after death, espousing human-to-human reincarnation,” said the group’s president, Brad Dacus. “It’s a mix of Hinduism, Gnostic Christianity, and medieval occultism.”

The institute is best known for its support of Proposition 8, the 2008 voter initiative to ban same-sex marriage in California, including a suit which attempted to force then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and attorney general Jerry Brown to defend the initiative in court. While speaking at a rally at the state capitol during the Prop. 8 campaign, Dacus compared same-sex marriage to the rise of Adolph Hitler in Germany.

After 13 years of litigation, the lawsuit is older than most of the kids at one of the two schools in question, the Alice Birney Waldorf-Inspired K-8 School in the Pocket neighborhood of Sacramento. In fact, Alice Birney had a different name — Oak Ridge, later John Morse — and location when the suit started. The litigation also names George Washington Carver School of Arts and Science, a Waldorf-inspired high school that’s also part of Sacramento Unified.

Along the way, the litigation has cost the district a good deal of money, said communications director Gabe Ross, though he didn’t not know the exact figure.

“At a time when we’re having to make horrible decisions from a budget standpoint, that we’re having to spent resources on this case is certainly a challenge,” Ross said.

Ross also scoffed the notion that anything taught at either school is “religious at all.”

“This notion that it’s this extreme curriculum is really not accurate,” Ross said. “It completely aligned with California state standards and our district standards.”

Even if PLANS and their allies could show that anthroposophy is a religion, Ross added, it’s also important to note that each school is merely “Waldorf-inspired.” “In a public school model, there are only certain elements that are used.”

Much of the differences revolve around the style of learning and the structure of the school day. Waldorf education has a focus on hands-on learning; students often build objects, keep journals and do other projects in addition to learning about a subject out of a book. Schools often have gardens and other areas where student can experience concepts directly.

There is also a heavy emphasis on the arts, and students are encouraged to play a musical instrument. The school day and school year operate differently, with longer blocks of time for lessons and intensive projects undertaken in three and four week chunks. And teachers often move up grade levels with the same class for three or more years at time.

But PLANS founder Debra Snell has claimed the curriculum often comes with much more. According to the PLANS website, the Grass Valley mom said she was originally a Waldorf supporter. But she said she soon found her local Waldorf school to be “rigid and authoritarian,” that mythology was “taught as history,” and the school had a “missionary” purpose.

Over the years, the group hasn’t had much success in the courtroom; the initial lawsuit was thrown out over a lack of legal standing back in 2001, among other setbacks. But they claim partial credit for blocking a proposed Waldorf-inspired charter school in Chico. They’ve also held rallies and “education campaigns” around the Sacramento Waldorf-inspired schools, hoping to dissuade parents from sending their children there.

The group’s lawsuit failed in November when they called a single witness, Betty Staley, founder of the Rudolf Steiner College in Fair Oaks. Staley is a member of the Anthroposophical Society in America—a group that has long claimed that is has nothing directly to do with Waldorf education—and her college is affiliated a private Waldorf school located nearby.

The Pacific Justice Institute has enlisted John Calvert, an attorney known for his work on church-state issues, in a further attempt to show that anthroposophy is a religion. Calvert said the operative feature is not having worshippers who show up every Sunday and donate money.

“Religion is a broad concept,” as defined by the courts, Calvert said.

In fact, as defined by case law, even atheism is a religion. The definition, he said, is any “organized set of beliefs” around “ultimate questions” such as the meaning and origin of life, and whether or not it continues after death. He said he hopes to show the anthroposophy qualifies.

This, Calvert said, would clear the way for plaintiff attorneys to final introduce evidence around the curriculum taught in Waldorf school: “The question of whether the school is promoting that religion, which is a completely different question.”

SOURCE: Capitol Weekly, http://www.capitolweekly.net/article.php?_c=zhrdf7j4wex7a0&xid=zhrb07wx8ndx31&done=.zhrdf7j4wfj7a0

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By PR Newswire
February 14, 2011

Dual-language immersion expands in public schools across U.S.

PRINCETON, N.J., Feb. 14, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Following the introduction of dual-language immersion programs in a growing number of public schools around the country, New Jersey is opening its first public school with dual-language immersion in Chinese and English in September, 2011. The Princeton International Academy Charter School (PIACS) was approved by the New Jersey Department of Education in January, 2010 and will be the third public school in New Jersey offering dual-language immersion. In September 2010, a Spanish/English immersion school opened in Hoboken and a Hebrew/English immersion school opened in East Brunswick.

PIACS and other public schools (traditional as well as charter) with dual-language immersion programs are part of an important wave of innovation in US education which has developed in the past five years. Traditionally, language immersion programs were reserved for private schools or tailored to students from a specific ethnic group for whom English is a second language. However, since the launch of the National Strategic Language Initiative (NSLI) in 2006, the federal government has been advocating and underwriting a change in perspective. “For the United States to get to where it needs to be will require a national commitment to strengthening America’s foreign language proficiency,” CIA Director Leon Panetta said at a Foreign Language Summit held in December. “A significant cultural change needs to occur. And that requires a transformation in attitude from everyone involved.” Combined with greater awareness of the economic need for global competency in the 21st Century, the increased support for foreign language fluency at the national level is motivating many communities around the country to open K-12 dual-language immersion programs, primarily Spanish/English or Chinese/English, in the public school system. The goal of these programs is to produce students who are better prepared to collaborate and compete in a globalized economy.

One of the first public schools to offer Chinese/English immersion on the East coast is the Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School (PVCICS), which opened in 2007 outside of Amherst, MA. In 2010, the third-graders from PVCICS achieved the highest assessment in the statewide Math and English Language Arts tests (MCAS). Since the PVCICS students receive the majority of their instruction, including Math, in Chinese, these results surprised some observers. However, many national leaders, such as Representative Rush Holt (NJ-12), are well aware that these programs have benefits beyond language fluency. “According to research …children derive cognitive, academic and social benefits from the opportunity to learn another language at an early age”, wrote Rep. Holt in the “Excellence and Innovation in Language Learning Act”, legislation introduced in 2010. Based in part on the success of PVCICS, the Boston and Cambridge, MA school districts have announced plans to open public schools with dual-language Chinese/English immersion programs in 2011.

Massachusetts and New Jersey are not alone. Utah introduced the Chinese Dual Immersion program (UCDI) under the leadership of former Governor Jon Huntsman. Today, Utah has fourteen Chinese/English dual language immersion public elementary schools. According to the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL), immersion schools are defined as those in which at least half of the daily instruction in the school is taught in the targeted foreign language. Other communities which have opened or have plans to open public schools with Chinese-English dual language immersion programs in the near future include both urban and suburban districts in and around Washington, DC; Minneapolis, MN; San Francisco, CA; Chicago, IL; Portland, OR; Palo Alto, CA; Denver, CO; Madison, WI; Detroit, MI and Columbia, SC.

The Princeton International Academy Charter School (PIACS), will serve the residents of three New Jersey school districts: Princeton Regional, South Brunswick, and West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional. But it can also accept up to 10% of its enrolled students from outside these districts. The PIAC’s curriculum will use an inquiry-based framework and will follow the guidelines and practices of the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme (PYP) as PIACS works with the IBO towards formal accreditation as an IB World School. PIACS will also offer an innovative Math program which draws upon Chinese and Singapore Math.

The Obama administration has been very supportive of innovative, internationally-focused education programs which better develop proficiency in foreign languages. These programs are “the currency of the 21st Century”, according to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Likewise, the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) teachers’ union supports high-quality public charters such as PIACS which “play an important role as laboratories for innovation and provide a broad array of choices for parents” according to NJEA President Barbara Keshishian.

For the 2011-2012 school year, PIACS will offer places for 170 students across three grades: Kindergarten (60 students), 1st grade (60) and 2nd grade (50). To date, over 140 places have been filled. PIACS plans to add a grade of instruction each subsequent school year.

SOURCE: PR Newswire, http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-jersey-to-open-first-chinese-immersion-charter-school-116150144.html

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By Kathlless Haughney
February 11, 2011
WCTV

Tallahassee, FL – As Gov. Rick Scott backs away for now from a push for an expanded school voucher program, former Gov. Jeb Bush’s education foundation has begun quietly circulating draft legislation that may serve as the Legislature’s template to massively expand the number of charter schools throughout the state.

Scott’s budget team this week preached the governor’s belief in school choice, saying the Scott wanted to expand virtual school offerings, allow more students to transfer from failing or sub par schools and create more charter school opportunities. Meanwhile, Bush’s Foundation for Florida’s Future has brought forth a plan that would allow colleges and universities to open charter schools without school district approval and set up a system for the per-student funding to follow the student and not be tied to a school district.

The governor and the foundation got a high profile push this week from former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, who made her name by promoting school choice and firing teachers she deemed failures. Rhee, who also serves as an informal adviser to Scott, was in Tallahassee this past week to lobby the Legislature on an education reform issues, particularly expanding school choice and abolishing teacher tenure.

“We have to be putting policies and laws in place that don’t hamstring charters … that create the right environment for them,” Rhee told reporters. “And if Florida can do that, I think you’re going to attract more and more of the high quality charter providers into the state.”

Republican lawmakers have indicated they are open to a number of school choice options, expanding the state’s largest voucher program, the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship. When Scott campaigned and then prepared to take office, his transition advisers, led by Bush foundation executive director Patricia Levesque, championed the idea of education savings accounts.

The concept, championed by the Arizona-based Goldwater Institute, allows parents to create a savings account for their children in which they can request and receive funds equal to 85 percent of what the state earmarks for students in the public system. The money could be used for private school tuition and fees, online “virtual” school, tutoring, books and tuition for dual enrollment programs, textbooks or curriculum for a home schooling program or contributions to a child’s higher education savings plan.

The Foundation for Florida’s Future continues to push for expanding vouchers, but Scott has backed away a bit, at least for this year. Also clouding the voucher debate are unresolved issues about the legality of vouchers in the state of Florida.

The Florida Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that a Bush-created voucher program that allowed students in failing schools to attend private ones using state dollars ran afoul of state law. The high court, however, let the corporate tax credit voucher program stand.

Charter school expansion may be an easier route for Scott to test the waters of school choice expansion.

State Sen. Steve Wise, R-Jacksonville, who chairs the Senate’s Prek-12 Education Committee, has been cool to the idea of the education savings account, creating a major roadblock for backers of the plan. Wise’s committee would likely be one of the stops for a proposal of that nature.

He is, however, open to the idea of charter school expansion, noting that the Kipp Charter School in Jacksonville has been relatively successful.

“Sometimes, they have a little bit more flexibility than the school districts, but I think they’re going to be in this game,” Wise said. “And we’re going to try to work with them as best as possible.”

Union officials aren’t weighing in yet on potential charter school legislation. A Florida Education Association spokesman said the teachers’ union has generally been in favor of charters in theory, but that it would not favor a system where per student funding left a school district to follow the student to a charter school.

A line in the foundation’s draft legislation reads, “Charter school students shall be funded without regard to whether the student’s home address lies within the school district sponsoring the charter school.”

Wise’s committee doesn’t write the budget, but Wise does sit on the Prek-12 Education Appropriations Subcommittee and on the Senate’s overall budget committee. Wise wouldn’t say where he falls on the funding right now, but said the Legislature will likely have to take up the funding formula if it wants to go forward with charter expansion.

SOURCE: WCTV, http://www.wctv.tv/home/headlines/Talk_Begins_on_Charter_School_Expanion_Plans_116001174.html

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February 02, 2011
KYTX, Channel 19

Time Warner Cable kicked off the “Connect A Million Minds” project in the Golden Triangle with check presentations to two local partners.

The ceremony was held at the Wednesday morning at Harmony Science Academy in Beaumont.

The company has pledged $100 million nationwide to the five year project. That money will be used to inspire students to pursue science, technology, engineering and math by connecting them to out of school learning opportunities in their community.

The project also involves a dedicated web site through which students can participate in various activities.

SOURCE: KYTX, Channel 19, http://www.cbs19.tv/Global/story.asp?S=13870614

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Feb. 10, 2011
Indianapolis Star

Charter schools, despite the passionate rhetoric tossed about the Statehouse this week, will neither save nor destroy public education in Indiana.

What they can do, as they’ve already done in Indianapolis, is provide individual families with a viable option to a poorly performing traditional school. About 10,000 students attend charters in Marion County. How many of those families would have stayed in the city if their options had been limited to neighborhood schools plagued with low student achievement and weak discipline?

Charter schools also can be designed to help students with special needs and special interests. The Excel Center on Indianapolis’ Westside, for example, is targeted to young adults who failed to earn a high school diploma with their peers and now, because of their age, may feel uncomfortable attending a traditional high school.

Charters also can push district administrators to embrace innovation. IPS, for instance, has expanded its range of magnet schools, including the creation of high schools dedicated to medicine and law, in part to retain students who might otherwise have left for charters.

Still, the great majority of students in Indiana will continue to attend traditional public schools no matter which version of the charter bill finally arrives on the governor’s desk this spring. As House Speaker Brian Bosma, the chief sponsor of the charter legislation, House Bill 1002, acknowledged this week, “charter schools are no silver bullet. And public schools aren’t failing.”

The reality that charters have their strengths but also are limited in their reach is often obscured by the fiery rhetoric spouted by both opponents and supporters of education reform. But the fact is that no one step, whether expanding charter schools or implementing full-day kindergarten, will be enough to ensure that more students are better prepared for the rigors of a rapidly changing and highly demanding economy.

The hard but necessary task of raising Hoosiers’ cultural expectations toward education will take a generation or more to complete. Indiana has made sound progress toward that goal in the past decade. It’s critical, however, that we not lose momentum because the adults in charge argue vehemently that there’s only one way to get there.

SOURCE: Indianapolis Star, http://www.indystar.com/article/20110211/OPINION08/102110323/Another-option-not-magic-bullet?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|Opinion|p

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By Matt Wilhalme
February 11, 2011
Chicago Sun-Times

Namaste Charter School Thursday became only the second school in Chicago to get the nod from Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign.

Just over a year after the first lady announced the initiative, Namaste received the HealthierUS School Challenge Gold of Distinction award for its commitment to the health of its students.

The Academy for Global Citizenship, a Chicago charter school, and Golfview Elementary in northwest suburban Carpentersville are the only other schools in the state to receive the accolade.

Namaste’s fitness and nutrition program puts it among 525 schools nationwide currently certified by Obama’s program, school Founder and Principal Allison Slade said. To become certified schools must meet food, physical activity and nutritional education goals set by the government.

“The great thing for us is that it recognizes all of the hard work that we have been doing for seven years. … It’s really great to receive affirmation from the outside that we, in fact are, one of the healthiest schools in America,” Slade said.

The secret to the school’s success has been the environment created by combining academics with daily physical activity, Slade said. Students begin their mornings with breakfasts that feature granola, yogurt and oatmeal before taking part in a daily yoga session with the entire student body. Lunches can consist of anything from Tilapia to turkey burgers on a whole wheat bun, or a stop at the salad bar.

Students spend 60 minutes a day in physical education, but also are encouraged to remain active, even in class, by getting up and stretching or doing other exercises throughout the day.

The children have been receptive to the movement and education built into the classroom experience, officials said.

Among their peers at similar schools, Namaste students have scored 10 percentage points higher on their math, reading and composite scores on the Illinois Standards Achievement Tests, Slade said.

Parents and students said the program led to dietary changes at home.

“I have been to other schools, but this one is the most fun I have ever had,” said third grader Isela Oritiz, 9, after a relaxing yoga session.

“Models like this one are really the beacons for us as we move forward and for many other schools as we move to develop similar type programs,” Assistant U.S. Surgeon General Dr. James Galloway said after the ceremony.

By June the United States Department of Agriculture hopes to see 1,250 schools reach the program’s goals.

SOURCE: Chicago Sun-Times, http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/3759213-423/chicago-charter-school-honored-by-first-ladys-lets-move-campaign.html

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By Mark Wiggins
February 10, 2011
ABC News 25

WACO – They’re an often-overlooked part of our public education system, but when state legislators take aim at education funding, charter schools could be hit especially hard.

They’re open to the public and offer many programs often not found in the larger districts, and across Texas they’re growing.

At Rapoport Academy, Superintendent Dr. Nancy Grayson has been busily renovating a collection of antique buildings in East Waco to keep up with her growing charter’s needs. Across town at the Waco Charter School, two new temporary buildings stand eagerly awaiting a growing student body.

But like all schools, they’re in trouble.

Anywhere from 60 to 75 percent of charter funding comes from public funds, but per student, those funds are already vastly less than what regular school districts receive.

“We are faced annually with a lower funding than an ISD,” says Waco Charter School principal Bonnie McRae.

“We get about $1,200 less per student,” adds Grayson, “And we get no facilities funding, so we are already a lean, mean machine.”

Without facilities funding, schools like Waco Charter School and Rapoport are on their own when it comes to those expansion efforts. It’s just one of a number of support pathways available to traditional schools that charter schools don’t have access to placing charters at a fiscal disadvantage from the get-go.

“We’ll be 12 percent, plus the 12 to 15 percent lower than we are already, and then we don’t know where the ‘lean machine’ goes at that point,” explains Grayson, “But we’ll figure that out.”

One of the Texas Legislature’s targeted areas for cost-cutting is the School Foundation Program, which provides funding to both districts and charter schools. If charters lose funding from this source, it could be difficult to recover.

Unlike districts, charter schools can’t raise taxes to offset cuts. Instead, they rely on alternate sources of funding, like grants, to pick up the difference. The bottom line:

It could endanger the very things that make charters unique.

“It will impact our teacher ratios, unfortunately,” explains McRae, who says the strength of many charters lies in the small class sizes and more personal attention from teachers — something larger schools simply can’t provide.

Science teacher Brad Roberts says the importance of that can’t be overlooked.

“Well our kids are our future,” says Roberts, “So the more one-on-one they can get, to me the better it’ll be in the long run for them.”

However, there may be some hope.

Dr. Grayson says charters schools’ sizes make them the ideal places to try out new techniques and ideas, and their experience running high-performance institutions off of limited funding gives them valuable expertise.

That expertise is something that could come in handy for larger districts, who often take proven programs first piloted in charter schools and scale them up for broader use.

It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement, says Dr. Grayson, who recently met with top-level legislators and educators across Texas to discuss the advantage of charter schools and districts working together.

Of course, a little competition never hurts.

“Everyone rises to entice those students to come,” says Grayson. “It’s a perfect scenario. It’s the American way.”

Additional Links

Rapoport Academy
TEA: Charter School Funding
Texas Charter Schools Association

SOURCE: ABC News 25, http://www.kxxv.com/Global/story.asp?S=14009266

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February 9, 2011
WBTV

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) – South Carolina schools chief Mick Zais says 1 of his top priorities is a bill he hopes will increase the number of charter schools statewide.

Zais advocated the measure Wednesday while surrounded by more than 20 charter school students.

It would force school districts to spend local property taxes on students in 11 charter schools who live in their area. Schools organized under the statewide charter district now get state and federal money but none from the district. Most of the students are enrolled in online schools.

District officials argue they can’t afford to lose the money as they anticipate deep budget cuts from the state. But Zais argues charters are public schools, too. He says it’s the students’ money, not the districts’.

SOURCE: WBTV, http://www.wbtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=14001427

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February 10, 2011
Jackson Clarion Ledger

Senate Bill 2774 is designed to strengthen the state’s current charter school law by allowing organizations to run open-enrollment charter schools anywhere in the state after receiving approval from the state Board of Education, the state College Board or local school districts.

But the Mississippi NAACP opposes the law, citing the need for stronger education funding across the board.

The current law allows charter schools to open only in low-performing districts. Gov. Haley Barbour earlier this year signed into law a weaker public charter school law.

Charter school advocates wanted a more comprehensive law to provide for open-enrollment and to allow more groups to petition for their creation. The state’s current charter school law stipulates that only parents whose children are in schools ranked as under-performing for three years by the Department of Education could ask for the takeover option.

The earliest that could happen is late 2012. Charter schools are generally defined as those supported by taxpayer dollars but freed from some of the restrictions governing traditional public schools.

Standards, accountability and equal access must be the cornerstones of Mississippi’s charter school program. Charter schools can’t become state-subsidized “private” schools while the existing public school system is left to die on the vine. But charter schools can be a viable alternative.

SOURCE: Jackson Clarion Ledger, http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20110210/OPINION01/102100312/Charter-Expanding-viable-alternatives

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By Gary Scharrer
February 10, 2011
Houston Chronicle

AUSTIN — San Antonio charter school student Joshua Tamayo brought a message to Texas lawmakers Wednesday: “Don’t cut our funding. If we’re the future, then why would they want to cut our funding?”

Helen Sherwood, a Houston parent of a student in a Harmony charter school, also brought a message as more than 1,000 charter school advocates visited the state Capitol.

“Charter schools are an important part of Texas. We’re here to stay. We are making a positive difference in education in Texas,” she said.

Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, addressed an enthusiastic crowd outside the Capitol in a bitter wind and 27-degree temperature, winning applause when he asked the charter school supporters to support his Senate Bill 127 to lift the cap on charter operators — now at 207.

Across Texas, 80,000 students attend charter schools, public schools free of many of the rules and regulations of traditional public schools. About 17,000 kids are on charter school waiting lists.

A list of requests

In addition to more charter schools, supporters want:

equalized funding with other public school students;

money or assistance with facilities (charter schools do not get any facilities funds);

same access to bond guarantees through the Permanent School Fund as traditional public schools;

property tax exemptions for owners of real estate they lease to a charter schools – with the savings passed on to the schools.

With Republican majorities in the House and Senate, charter school advocates would seem to have a receptive audience. Proponents, however, likely will run into the same problem as other groups looking for more money or opposing budget cuts. The state faces a budget shortfall of at least $15 billion and little inclination by GOP leaders to do much beyond spending cuts.

Lots of frustration

“The bottom line is that charter schools are going to be hurt by this budget as badly as district schools,” said Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston, vice chair of the House Public Education Committee. “They all have to come up with about a thousand dollars per student in savings.”

Hochberg disputed claims that charter schools get about $1,200 less per student than traditional public schools. State law requires charter school operational funding meet the average funding for traditional public schools in their area, Hochberg said.

The legislator said he invited representatives from Houston ISD and YES Prep charter schools after they made conflicting claims. “So, we got them all together and they figured out the difference was about twenty bucks per student,” he said.

The budget mess has created frustration, and charter school advocates and groups lobbying lawmakers for different causes “need to call the governor and lieutenant governor and their legislators,” Rep. Jose Menendez, D-San Antonio, told the crowd.

“All we’re hearing is, ‘give us more money’ or ‘don’t cut us. What do you support us doing?” Menendez said.

SOURCE: Houston Chronicle, http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7420524.html

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By Tamar Snyder
February 8, 2011
The Jewish Week

Kids will spend just a quarter of day speaking English, with no translation during math, science and history classes, organizers say.

The educational philosophy behind the new Shalom Academy Charter School, which is set to open this fall in the Englewood-Teaneck, N.J., area, came into sharper view for the first time this week.

At the school’s first informational session, held Monday night at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center, founder Raphael Bachrach shared Shalom Academy’s mission: “to graduate students that are proficient in the Hebrew language.”

Students in kindergarten and first grade in the kindergarten to fifth grade school will spend only a quarter of the day learning in English; subjects such as math, science, and history will be taught exclusively in Hebrew.

“There will be no translation,” said Elizabeth Willaum, the acting head of school, who has a long history of founding and implementing dual-language immersion programs. “It works; it’s like magic,” she told a packed crowd of about 500 people.

“An extreme amount of immersion is better than a wishy-washy amount,” Bachrach said, explaining why the charter school chose an immersion model that involves 75 percent of the instruction in the younger grades being taught in Hebrew. Research has shown that “dual-language immersion is proven to enhance cognitive development and increase self-esteem,” he said.

In addition to the New Jersey core curriculum, which will be taught in both Hebrew and English, students will take a mandatory Hebrew language arts class, which will cover Hebrew grammar and other “finicky rules,” as Bachrach put it.

Students in grades two through five will spend half of their day learning subjects such as math and science in Hebrew. Language arts, health, and history will be taught in English.

Several parents in the audience expressed concerns regarding the academic performance and adjustment period for students with current weak or nonexistent Hebrew language skills. Bachrach said that the school is “committed to differentiated learning” and that there will be some sort of tracking on each grade level. “Some students will know a lot of Hebrew; some will have no Hebrew whatsoever,” he said. “But being in an environment with everyone else will reinforce each other.”

Prior to the meeting, Bachrach did not return numerous calls and e-mails from The Jewish Week seeking comment about the school’s educational philosophy.

At the information session, the school announced that it had begun accepting applications and would hold a lottery for its 160 spots on Feb. 14 — only one week after the initial information session.

It is unclear how much effort the charter school has put into outreach within the black and Latino communities, as the roughly 500 people who filled the packed auditorium did not reflect the true diversity of the district. Most were white and many men wore yarmulkes.

The Englewood and Teaneck school districts are about half black, a quarter Hispanic, and 10 percent Asian, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Children of the founder’s group, led by Englewood resident Bachrach, will be given preference in terms of enrollment, something that “the state allowed for,” according to Bachrach.

For the rest of the charter school applicants, siblings must apply separately. In future years, however, siblings will be given priority, Bachrach said.

Willaum, who resigned from her post as the assistant superintendent for the Englewood Public School District in December, said it “just doesn’t make sense,” to wait until high school to provide foreign language instruction.

When children are ages 3 to 10, “that is the time in which activity of the brain is twice as quick,” she told the crowd. “That is the time in which we should be immersing our children in a second language.”

Willaum helped develop New Jersey’s first Spanish-English dual-language program in Englewood back in 1991, as well as other immersion programs in Long Branch, Perth Amboy, Elizabeth, and Union City in New Jersey and in upstate Syracuse.

She cautioned parents that it may take between four and seven years for a second language to take root and translate into greater academic performance and better critical-thinking skills. This “cognitive stretch,” as she called it, doesn’t happen overnight, she said.

Shalom Academy has yet to announce where its building will be located, leading parents to wonder whether they will be provided with free busing. The location of the facility will be announced in the near future, Bachrach said.

Several questions were posed by religious Jewish parents wondering how the charter school would accommodate holidays and dietary concerns.

Shalom Academy’s calendar will follow that of Bergen County Community College. The school will be closed for Rosh HaShanah but not for Sukkot or other Jewish holidays. There will be no early dismissal on Fridays. Still, “no student will be penalized” for observing his or her religion, Bachrach said.

Other parents in attendance asked whether the school would offer a kosher meal plan. “The school will be fully respectful of the needs and rights of all children; that’s an ongoing theme,” Bachrach responded.

Bachrach was asked whether the school would administer the placement exam for yeshiva high schools that is administered by The Jewish Education Project. The test is known as the BJE, for the organization’s former name, the Board of Jewish Education. Bachrach said he was unfamiliar with the exam. After being informed by an audience member, he responded “absolutely not.”

As many as 16 spots may be open to those who are not residents of Teaneck or Englewood. However, the first two registration periods are open exclusively to residents; if there are any remaining spots after that time, non-residents will be included within the third lottery. When asked what the chances were of a non-resident gaining a spot at Shalom Academy next year, Bachrach suggested the questioner look around the room. “We do have quite a demand.”

For information about the application/lottery process, visit www.shalomacademycharterschool.org.

SOURCE: The Jewish Week, http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/new_york/hebrew_immersion_bergen_county_charter_school

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By Ali Helgoth
February 08, 2011
The News Herald

LYNN HAVEN — Tuesday night, a parent approached Tim Kitts, chief education officer of Bay Haven Charter Academy, to let him know how important moving the school’s middle and high school facilities to the former Sallie Mae building is to her.

Her family purchased a house because of its proximity to the site the charter academy bought as part of its expansion efforts.

She was one of many Bay Haven supporters who packed into the Lynn Haven City Commission meeting room Tuesday night to let the commission know about their support for the charter school that intends to move into the former Sallie Mae building, located in a Lynn Haven industrial park.

City officials have said they support the charter school, but, as City Manager John Lynch reiterated during the meeting, “this site may not be the appropriate site for our concerns.”

He’s suggested a different site might be located for the school, which would allow a business to move into the Sallie Mae building.

To that end, the city has discussed options with Bay County Economic Development Alliance Executive Director Janet Watermeier and Bay Haven officials. An option discussed included the city joining with the EDA and other organizations to purchase the building from Bay Haven and lease or sell it to a company while an alternate Lynn Haven location is selected for the school.

A Fairfax, Va.-based company has expressed interest in consolidating its call center operations in Lynn Haven, Watermeier said, but only if the building is available. She said it would bring 514 jobs.

However, she said the deal would only work if it was beneficial for all parties, including the charter academy.

“I applaud the commission for trying to do the right thing for the community on both sides,” she said.

“What we’ve been trying to do in a time of severe unemployment … is see if we can have a charter school in Lynn Haven and bring in (jobs),” she said.

Kitts said the school is an economic generator.

He said there will be 130 jobs at the new school that pay an average of $39,000 per year, including the salaries of administrators and paraprofessionals.

“The school will be a long-term land owner and tenant,” he said.

In addition, he said school employees and students’ parents would patronize local businesses, having an even bigger economic benefit.

That factor wasn’t lost on parents of Bay Haven students. Heather Ward suggested she and others would no longer shop at Lynn Haven businesses in protest of what she called the city’s “scare tactics.”

“Nothing is too great an inconvenience when it comes to the education of our children,” she said.

The Sallie Mae location is also an advantage for the school, Kitts said. By moving into the existing building the charter academy “will literally save millions of dollars” because some rooms and bathrooms are ready for use by students, he said.

He and commissioners agreed to a workshop meeting to discuss issues.

“We just want to be able to work this out,” he said.

One of the issues is whether the school is allowable in the industrial park.

Mayor Walter Kelley started the meeting by saying, “I hope we solve all the problems real quick,” but there’s nothing quick about the timeline the charter academy faces.

“The land development process is complex,” Robert Jackson, the city’s attorney, said.

In buying the former Sallie Mae building and intending to renovate and repurpose the building, Jackson said Bay Haven has “gone from being a school to land developers, and it’s a whole different set of rules.”

He said there is a discrepancy in the city’s master plan and the Land Use Development Code. The land use code lists schools as allowable in areas zoned industrial, but the master plan does not address schools in industrial areas.

The comprehensive plan is exclusive, not inclusive, he said. That means uses are assumed to be not allowable unless they are specifically listed as allowable. Because the master plan does not address the issue, it’s assumed to not be allowed.

Jackson said the city plans to address the discrepancy that was created last year when the land use code was changed to allow Florida State University to build on the old fuel depot property.

Until then, he said in order to change the land use, the school must first file an application with the city, which must be approved by the planning commission before the city commission reviews it twice. If approved, it must be submitted to the Department of Community Affairs, a state agency that must approve all large scale land use changes. The agency has 60 days to review the application, and Jackson said they typically take the full two months before issuing recommendations for changes.

After the DCA gives approval, it must go back to the city commission for adoption, a process that takes two commission meetings. If approved, the change would take effect after 35 days.

At that point, the school would need to apply for a development permit, which would need to be approved by the city’s planning commission and city commission.

“Typically it takes … six months to a year to get something through,” Jackson said.

Bay Haven, though, doesn’t think the process has to be quite as complicated.

Kitts said he doesn’t believe there is a discrepancy in city regulations and the master plan does not preclude building schools in industrial areas because it is allowable in the land use code, a document referenced by the master plan.

Without having to work with the DCA, the timeline to move forward with the school would be reduced.

The school has yet to file an application with the city for the project. Kitts said the school intends to have the application submitted soon.

He said after the meeting he didn’t learn anything from the city during the meeting he wasn’t already aware of.

“We’ve always intended to work through the process and we’re hopeful it will work for the benefit of North Bay Haven,” he said.

SOURCE: The News Herald, http://www.newsherald.com/news/meeting-90777-pack-charter.html

The post Charter School Supporters Pack City Meeting appeared first on Leave Charter Schools Alone.

By Elizabeth Crisp
February 9, 2011
Jackson Clarion Ledger

The state Senate has again adopted legislation to extend charter schools in Mississippi, but it’s unclear how it will fair in the House where similar legislation has died in recent years.

Supporters of Senate Bill 2774 say it would lift restrictions that have made the schools unpopular here, while those who oppose the bill say it would hurt local school districts.

“I’m not saying this is the silver bullet, but it’s a part of it,” said Sen. Michael Watson, a Republican from Pascagoula who has been a key proponent.

Lawmakers are churning out legislation this week ahead of a key deadline to move bills off the chamber floors by Thursday.

Both chambers are expected to take up a slew of bills today, including a Senate bill that would place stricter penalties on people found guilty of animal cruelty and House legislation to require public schools to adopt sex education policies.

Sen. Billy Hewes, a Republican from Gulfport who has supported the animal cruelty legislation, said the bill as written will only affect dogs and cats, since some have expressed concern over implications to the state livestock industry.

“We’ve heard from a lot of folks on this,” he said. “We made sure it was strictly written to only apply to dogs and cats.”

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Greg Ward, D-Ripley, said he will present the animal cruelty bill to his committee if it passes the Senate this week.

“All I can do is bring it to the committee for a vote,” Ward said.

House versions of the bill died in that committee earlier this session.

The charter school bill has passed the Senate the past three sessions, but generally is altered or fails in the House. It’s opposed by several education and civic groups including the NAACP.

“Under the bill being considered, vital resources would be diverted from existing public schools to support charter education while over 95 percent of school-aged children would remain in public school settings with further depleted resources,” said Derrick Johnson, Mississippi NAACP president.

Sen. Hob Bryan, D-Amory, questioned whether the current charter school law needs to be altered to benefit the schools.

“Supposedly there are all these regulations standing in the way,” he said. “I’m still trying to find out what these mysterious regulations are.”

Meanwhile, on the House side, lawmakers overwhelmingly passed a bill that would provide a one-year window for people to purchase eight-year driver’s licenses as opposed to the typical four-year license.

House Bill 606 would allow individuals to purchase the eight-year licenses between July1 and June 30, 2012.

Any extra money raised would go to buy equipment for the Highway Safety Patrol, said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Johnny Stringer, D-Montrose, the bill’s author.

A four-year license would still be available for $21. The eight-year license would cost $39, Stringer said.

SOURCE: Jackson Clarion Ledger, http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20110209/NEWS010504/102090335/Charter-schools-pushed

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By Glenn McNatt
February 3, 2011
The Baltimore Sun

Montgomery County is rightly proud of its public school system, which is widely regarded as one of the best in the state. Perhaps that’s why nearly eight years after state lawmakers passed a law allowing for the establishment of charter schools — alternative institutions that receive public funds but operate independently — the Montgomery County school board has yet to approve a single application to open one.

Is that because no one has come up with a credible plan for a school that would give parents more choices for educating their children? Or is it because local school officials simply don’t want the competition?

The state school board looked into the matter last year after Montgomery County school officials turned down the applications of two groups that wanted to set up new charter schools in the district. What they found goes a long way toward explaining why school reform advocates like the Washington-based Center for Education Reform have rated Maryland’s charter school law as one of the weakest in the nation. Despite passing important reforms last year regarding lengthening of the time it takes teachers to earn tenure and linking student test scores with teacher evaluations, lawmakers need to take another look at strengthening the state’s charter school law if Maryland is to build on those gains.

In Montgomery County, for example, one of the groups wanted to set up a primary and middle school with an emphasis on foreign languages called the Global Garden Public Charter School. The other group, Crossway Community Inc., wanted to expand an existing pre-k/kindergarten Montessori program into a pre-k through sixth grade public charter school. After Montgomery school officials denied their applications, they appealed to the state Board of Education. In an opinion issued last week, the state board found Montgomery had failed to provide any reasonable grounds for rejecting the proposals, saying the explanations given by local officials were “vague and, at best, confusing” and questioning whether the decision was not simply a result of local board members’ personal biases.

Under Maryland’s charter school law, the state education board can’t approve charter school applications on its own, nor can it overrule a local school district’s decision to deny one. The most it can do is review the local board’s decision to determine whether the process by which it was reached was fair, reasonable and in conformity with the requirements of law. Where if finds these conditions have not been met, it can send a rejected application back to the district with a recommendation that it be reconsidered, which is what it did with the Global Garden and Crossway proposals.

School officials in Montgomery County, however, have indicated that although they intend to respond to the state board’s concerns about how their decisions were reached, they have no intention of reversing them. A school department spokesman pointed out that the state board’s finding only addressed the procedures for handling the applications, not the substantive issues regarding curriculum, finances, staffing and school governance that led board members to reject the applications. Nor did it address the failure of the law itself to specify what those procedures should be.

In fairness, Montgomery County isn’t the only school district in Maryland to resist charter schools. Of the 42 such schools presently operating in the state, 33 are in Baltimore City, with the rest scattered among a handful of other districts. And while it’s true that charters are often thought of as only for low performing school districts in need of educational reform, the innovation and greater choice they bring can become assets for even the best-performing school systems.

But for that to happen, lawmakers must strengthen Maryland’s current charter school law. One needed change is a provision establishing an independent authority to charter new schools whose applications are turned down by local school boards or, alternatively, giving that power to the state school board. Another would be allowing charters to compete for state school construction funds so they can upgrade their facilities. Both would encourage the kind of innovation and experimentation the state needs to see happen in its schools.

Maryland lawmakers practically had to be dragged kicking and screaming to vote for the reforms last year that later helped the state win $250 million in federal education funds from the Obama administration. But putting teeth into the state’s charter school law this year to help build on that progress should be a no-brainer in a state whose future depends on a well-educated workforce. The more options parents have for educating their children in ways that spark their curiosity and inspire a love for learning, the more likely they will be to succeed in life as well as in school.

SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun, http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/2011/02/more_charter_schools_mean_more.html

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February 7, 2011
News 10

ALBANY, N.Y.– More than 2,000 charter school parents protested at the Empire State Plaza in Albany on Monday.

The parents asked for equal treatment under the governor’s new budget plan during this rally, which had been one of the largest advocacy days this year. They also want state legislators to treat charter schools equitably.

Families representing two-thirds of New York City’s charter schools met their local representatives and urged them to visit their schools to see that they are achieving stronger results with community aid.

The parents also asked state representatives to resist calls from charter opponents to slash funding.

SOURCE: News 10, Albany, NY, http://www.wten.com/Global/story.asp?S=13985519

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By Abdul-Hakim Shabazz
February 8, 2011
Indianapolis Examiner

In today’s episode of the battle over education reform, two of the state’s biggest teachers unions have scheduled rallies in Indianapolis, Anderson and East Chicago to protest what Indiana lawmakers are doing at the statehouse.

I think it’s rather ironic the Indiana Federation of Teachers and the State Teachers Association chose two school districts that the liberal think tank, Center for American Progress, have labeled as the worst in return on investment to the taxpayers. That list also included Gary, but being on the streets of Gary after 5 p.m. could prove to be hazardous to your health. And I also wouldn’t go investing my hard-earned money in Anderson schools either.

Now I don’t expect to hear much of anything new coming from the unions, however if they really wanted to have an impact, instead of their usual rhetoric regarding school reform and accountability they would offer up some ideas for the debate. Actually, if they were really sharp, instead of coming across as educational obstructionists, they would pull their resources and create their own charter schools and show everyone else how it’s done.

Think about this for just a second. The unions are notorious for saying that “charters take and resources away from public schools”, “no school reform will matter unless you have parental involvement”, “performance based evaluation is unfair.” If these folks are so smart and know what works, because according to them no one else does, then the unions should be willing to put its money where its mouth is and start a school, owned and operated by teachers.

I did some research and it costs about $250,000 to start up a charter school. The Unions spent more than $1 million in the last election cycle trying to help Democrats keep control of the Indiana House of Representatives. The money they spent could have created four schools where they would have gotten to run the show. And they could use any model they saw fit, they are teachers after all.

I personally would like to see them shoot for the inner-city charter boarding school model myself. Since the parents are usually the problem, then take the kids out of that learning environment and put them someplace where they can get not only get proper instruction, but the necessary after school reinforcement and let the parents come visit on weekends. That’s just one suggestion. I’m sure the best and brightest minds of the union establishment can come up with something.

And if they really wanted to make the rest of us close our mouths and take notice the unions would only take the worst of the worst kids from failing schools and really put them in a structured environment.

Of course this all inquires a lot of work. But think, the opportunities to not only prove Governor Mitch Daniels, Superintendent of Public Instruction Dr. Tony Bennett, and yours truly wrong should be more than worth it. And you get the added bonus of educating kids who badly need it. So, what do you say teachers unions? You guys up for it or what?

And by the way, if you did form your own school, how would you deal with the union? Just a thought.

SOURCE: Indianapolis Examiner, http://www.examiner.com/political-buzz-in-indianapolis/clam-up-and-charter-up

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By Jeff Wilkinson
February 6, 2011
The State

With the United States and China the only remaining world superpowers and becoming more and more dependent on each other economically, it’s important that American children become ingrained in Chinese culture and language at an early age so they can be competitive in the future.

That was the message Saturday at a Chinese New Year family fun day at the Columbia Museum of Art, sponsored by the Chinese Association of Columbia, the Confucius Institute at USC and the new Chinese immersion charter school in Cayce, Columbia East Point Academy.

But for 6-year-old Hannah Rowell of West Columbia, it was all about the dragon.

“It was a big dragon! And there were people in it!” she said, after enjoying the lion and dragon dance with her parents Melissa and Chris, sister Olivia, 2, and adopted Chinese brother Tian, 5.

Melissa Rowell is a committee member helping to plan the curriculum for the academy, which will open in August. Located at 1340 Knox Abbott Drive, it will be South Carolina’s first Chinese immersion school, meaning that all classes except English will be taught in Chinese by teams of Chinese and American teachers.

“It’s important for China and America to understand each other,” said Xian Wu, an academy board member and mathematics professor at USC. “But if you don’t know the language, you can’t have the exchange.”

Although USC is reaching out to China through the Confucius Institute — a partnership with the Beijing Language and Cultural Institute — and the Chinese language programs at the Moore School of Business, East Point will be the state’s first elementary school or secondary school to focus on Chinese culture and language.

The state presently supports 11 bricks-and-mortar charter schools and five virtual charter schools through the S.C. Public Charter School District.

Charter schools are public and must meet all of the state standards and requirements for student testing and teacher qualifications.

But charter schools differ from other public schools in that they allow for the development of local solutions to local problems and can be closed easily if student performance is not satisfactory. In addition, all charter schools are schools of choice: Students and parents decide whether they want to participate.

The schools can be formed by a committee showing the state a need to address an education gap, said Christopher Leventis Cox, an East Point board member. They then can apply for funding through a local school district or the state charter school district.

East Point has been approved through the statewide district, Cox said.

A bricks-and-mortar charter school can provide more personal attention for students, said Brenda Boykin, an East Point board member. For instance, East Point will have only 100 students in kindergarten and first grade to start. It will add a second grade level in 2012 and a third in 2013, etc.

Boykin said statistics show that young children learn a language more easily than adults, especially when they are learning it with other children. In addition, studies show that learning a second language at an early age also spurs retention in other subjects.

“When you immerse a child in a dual language environment, you accelerate achievement,” she said.

The academy’s goal is to graduate students with a high proficiency in Mandarin Chinese and English, plus sensitivity to multiple cultures, according to its website. It will use a “one-way” immersion model, meaning most students will enter the program with no knowledge of Chinese. They will learn Chinese naturally by using it as the language of instruction.

East Point is needed in South Carolina in particular, Boykin said, because the state is the first in the Southeast and ninth in the country as a whole in exports to China. And as China’s economy and market continues to grow, South Carolina’s opportunities to do business there will grow as well.

“We need to have our children on board, because that’s where our future is,” she said.

SOURCE: The State, http://www.thestate.com/2011/02/06/1681041/chinese-immersion-charter-school.html

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February 5, 2011
Associated Press

HOUSTON (AP) — Veteran teacher and motivational speaker Harriett J. Ball, who helped inspire the KIPP charter school system, has died. She was 64.

The KIPP Foundation tweeted news of Ball’s death. The Houston Chronicle reported Saturday that Ball died Wednesday at a Houston hospital after suffering a heart attack.

Ball taught for about 35 years in the Houston and Austin school districts before becoming a speaker, training thousands of teachers with her techniques. She used rhymes and rhythm to captivate young people.

The KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) charter chain includes 99 schools that serve about 27,000 children. The public schools help prepare low-income students for college.

A wake and funeral are scheduled for Tuesday at Together We Stand Christian Church in Missouri City. Burial will be in Rosenberg.

SOURCE: Associated Press, http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/Obituaries/Article_2011-02-05-Obit%20Ball/id-6f5f918e9fcd41eb8b9a324014dccab0

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By James Vaznis
February 7, 2011
The Boston Globe

12 of the public schools could soon get OK to open in Boston

As the students filed through the front door of Excel Academy Charter School, the principal greeted each one by name. She shook hands and inspected their uniforms — dark blue polo shirts and khakis — before allowing the next student inside.

“Socks?’’ Komal Bhasin, the principal at the East Boston middle school, asked one boy, who lifted up each pant leg, revealing the requisite dark pair.

Strict discipline, along with high expectations and intensive instruction, is a hallmark at Excel Academy and other Boston charter schools that are seeking to open nearly a dozen additional campuses across the city in the next few years.

The expansions, which state education officials will decide on this month, are shaping up to be the most aggressive growth of these independent public schools in at least a decade. Boston has emerged as the hottest market for new charter schools under a state law enacted last year that encourages the doubling of charter school seats in school districts with the lowest state standardized test scores.

Of the 20 proposals for new charter schools, 12 seek to locate in Boston. The Boston applications aim to create more than 6,000 seats over the next five years, but the state law caps new seats in the city at about 4,500 — meaning state education officials will have to reject some applications even if the proposals have merit.

Some schools, if approved by the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education on Feb. 28, could open this fall, and several are already mailing pamphlets and applications to prospective students across the city.

Behind most of the proposals are four current Boston charter schools — all with high MCAS scores and popular among families of color — that are attempting to create their own network of schools. Two other proposals have been filed by new would-be charter school operators, while another is being pursued by a national operator.

“It is a surge in growth unlike any we have ever seen,’’ said Paul Grogan, president of the Boston Foundation, a charitable organization that urged the state to let more charter schools open. “We have a very strong cadre of charter schools that are proven providers and ready to expand.’’

The additional campuses should be a boon for parents who are dissatisfied with their local school systems — thousands of Bay State students are on charter school waiting lists. But the expansion is likely to come at the expense of local school districts, which lose thousands of dollars in state aid for each student who leaves for a charter school.

And as charter school operators open additional campuses, questions are emerging about whether they can achieve the same success at multiple schools as they have at a single school.

The state is turning to high-performing charter schools to close a persistent achievement gap among students of different racial and economic backgrounds, a task that has challenged urban school districts. Across Massachusetts, about 27,000 additional charter school seats could be created.

Mitchell Chester, the state’s commissioner of elementary and secondary education, will make recommendations in the coming weeks to his agency’s board on which proposals should be approved. The board will vote only on those proposals with a favorable recommendation.

“I know a lot of folks are anxious to see what we bring forward,’’ Chester said. “We will only bring forward applications that are high quality. I’m hopeful that many, if not most, of them will meet that high bar.’’

Created under the 1993 Education Reform Act, charter schools are independent public institutions that are supposed to provide innovative educational alternatives to traditional public schools. They operate with fewer restrictions from the state and almost never have teachers unions, enabling charter schools to run extended school days and experiment with new, promising programs.

The records at several of the Boston charter schools — which enroll high numbers of African-American, Latino, and low-income students — are impressive, often besting affluent suburban schools.

On the English and math tests of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System last spring, eighth-graders at the Edward Brooke Charter School, a K-8 program in Roslindale, ranked first in the state, while Excel eighth-graders ranked fifth on English and fourth on math.

Across the state, many of the state’s 63 charter schools are academic standouts, but others perform below state averages and the state has closed a few of them. Boston currently has 14 independently run charter schools.

“We don’t want to leave any student behind,’’ Bhasin said in an interview at Excel, located in a former bank loan processing center adjacent to a CVS. “Closing the achievement gap is the civil rights issue of our time. We are passionate about that.’’

Leaders of the Boston charter schools seeking to open additional campuses attribute their success to hard work. Most students, they say, enter their schools academically behind their grade levels, often by two or three years, causing the schools to devote much energy to tutoring and remediation in the early years.

To squeeze in all the subject matter, the charter schools typically run an extended day that nets students about 378 more hours of instruction annually than their peers in the Boston school system, according to a Boston Foundation report last year.

All the while, the charter schools try to inspire each student to go to college. Each homeroom at these schools is named after a college, either the alma mater of a teacher or of a former student.

On a recent tour of the Edward Brooke Charter School, housed in a former girls’ Catholic high school, school leaders attempted to debunk the myth that charter schools are “MCAS drill factories,’’ saying they teach material that goes well beyond that covered by the standardized test.

“These kids will leave our school at the end of the eighth grade able to compete with Newton and Wellesley,’’ said Jon Clark, a co-director of the school, which is seeking state approval for three additional campuses in Boston.

In the classrooms, teachers did not post MCAS questions or test-taking tips on the walls. Instead, they strung banners predicting each class’s graduation from college, such as the “Class of 2021’’ for the sixth grade, and a poster of the school’s core values: focus, integrity, respect, self-determination, and teamwork.

Critics of charter schools — including many teachers unions, school committee members, and superintendents statewide — discount their academic accomplishments, arguing that they recruit more academically motivated students while ignoring students who get special education or lack fluency in English.

“I remain concerned about their unwillingness or inability to teach or welcome all children, especially special education and English language learners,’’ said Richard Stutman, president of the Boston Teachers Union. “It’s a major problem. It’s unfair to the entire city that charter schools can single out and educate a carved-out niche of students, and it’s a violation of the public trust because they get public funds but don’t have to educate all of the public.’’

Although charter schools deny such accusations, the new state law requires them to strive to enroll students who reflect the demographics of the areas they serve. (Charter schools admit students through a lottery.)

As charter schools seek to expand, the Boston school system is in the midst of overhauling many of its schools and programs in hopes of keeping its students and attracting new ones.

The same state law allowing the charter schools expansion also gives local school districts extraordinary powers, such as bypassing some teacher contract provisions, overhauling underperforming schools, or creating their own district-run charter schools. Boston is fixing 12 underperforming schools and is seeking state approval to open two of its own charter schools.

“We have an obligation to provide a great education in our system, not necessarily to compete with charter schools,’’ said Michael Goar, Boston’s deputy superintendent. “We want to be the school system of preference and not [of] default.’’

But Yuberkis Calderon pulled her 11-year-old son, Joshua Polanco Calderon, out of the Tobin K-8 School in Roxbury last year, after school district officials revealed that it had among the lowest MCAS scores in the city.

Joshua is now a student at the nearby Roxbury Prep Charter School, where he was recognized for academic achievement at a schoolwide community meeting recently. Roxbury Prep, located on the third floor of a Mission Hill nursing home, is seeking state approval to open three more middle schools and a high school.

“My mom decided I should go to a more challenging school,’’ Joshua said in an interview, as his mother, who speaks little English, listened. “She just wanted me to have the best education. She loves this school because it has a lot of energy.’’

Joshua, who says he spends about three hours a night doing homework, added, “It’s hard work, but it’s worth it.’’

SOURCE: The Boston Globe, http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/02/07/rise_of_the_charter_schools/?page=full

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February 4, 2011
The Payson Roundup

If we don’t pay attention — right now — very closely — we’re gonna blow it. That’s why we hope that lots of Payson parents get involved in the effort to launch a charter school that will specialize in science and technology.

A few dozen parents have teamed up with the Payson Unified School District to decide whether to try to start what amounts to a magnet school for students interested in science and technology — future doctors, engineers and programmers.

The group hopes to take advantage of a national movement dedicated to revitalizing science education. The Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) program provides funding for innovative programs, with a special interest in rural areas.

The school district hopes to also take advantage of state laws that allow a district to set up a charter school.

The effort exudes a certain disheartening irony. Arizona has led the nation in support for charter schools even as it has starved its public schools.

Charter school backers hope the competition will improve public schools. As a result, the Legislature has given charter schools the freedom to innovate that maddening layers of mandates and regulations has denied public schools.

It’s not all that hard to build a great school. All you need is a bright, creative, experienced principal with power to run the school.

Then you need great teachers not buried under an unmanageable number of students. That is the foundation on which you must build. All the rest is just tinsel on the eves, sparkling in the wind.

A science-based charter school might follow just such a model, since it could operate with much more freedom to embrace innovative programs, reward great teachers and take advantage of the expertise of people without all the formal education credentials. That could include faculty at a hoped-for ASU campus in town, which would have a focus on green technologies and alternative energy.

As a country we need to do a better job of involving as many students as possible in math, physics, and all of the sciences.

The United States has been the leader in innovation since before the industrial revolution. Our leadership continues today. As a country of achievers and international leaders we need to make sure we help our youth continue to be the top scientists, doctors and economists in a complicated world.

We need to make sure there is no loss of interest in these fields that results in a shift toward second-class status. In one international survey, U.S. students ranked 29th among 57 nations in their mastery of science. Moreover, a national survey of science and math education put Arizona students at the bottom of the heap nationally.

There are some students and adults who don’t understand the most fundamental aspects of scientific thought. As a result, they cannot pursue the careers of the future or even make wise choices as voters and as consumers.

We might be squandering the hard work of generations, just as the rest of the world resolves to overtake us. We will pay dearly for this foolish indifference to the education of the next generation.

So we hope that you will contact Superintendent Casey O’Brien’s office or Laurel Wala or some other member of the Payson Area Association for the Gifted to help research the possibilities.

We haven’t blown it yet — but time is slipping away.

SOURCE: The Payson Roundup, http://www.paysonroundup.com/news/2011/feb/04/science-charter-school-may-serve-critical-need/

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By Jane Stancill
February 4, 2011
News & Observer

Thirteen charter schools in North Carolina received the go-ahead to expand from the State Board of Education on Thursday.

The board voted to allow the schools to add students or grade levels. Charter schools, which receive public money but operate outside state rules and regulations, must get approval from the State Board of Education to grow more than 10 percent.

Several Triangle charters were approved for growth by the board, including Casa Esperanza Montessori and Exploris Middle School in Wake; Maureen Joy Charter and Voyager Academy in Durham; and Neuse Charter in Johnston.

The board did not approve growth at two charters in Durham – Carter Community School and Kestrel Heights School. The state’s Office of Charter Schools recommended against expansion in those cases, citing a decline in four categories at Carter and a previous admissions policy at Kestrel Heights that wrongly admitted students selectively instead of by lottery.

The vote came amid talk of more charter schools in North Carolina. The new Republican majority in the state legislature has vowed to lift the state’s 100-school cap on charters. Lawmakers have also talked about allowing state lottery money to be used to construct new charter school buildings. This week, state senators debated a proposal that would remove oversight of charters from the State Board of Education and give it to a newly created charter school commission.

Ann McColl, the state board’s legislative director, said Thursday that the board should remain the governing body over all state schools, including charters. She said a charter advisory commission could be established, but that ultimate authority should rest with the state board.

Most of the 13 charters got approval to add students to their current grades, but several are offering new grade levels.

Exploris in Wake will add fifth grade. Voyager Academy in Durham, which had approval for middle school and high school grades, will add kindergarten through third grade.

Carl Forsyth, managing director at Voyager, said the school would add third grade in the fall and add kindergarten through third grade later.

Forsyth said the school will build a high school and an elementary building close to the current middle school building. At full enrollment, Voyager will have about 1,300 students in kindergarten through 12th grade, making it one of the largest charters in the state.

SOURCE: News & Observer, http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/02/04/967002/state-board-approves-charter-school.html

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By Nancy Badertscher
February 4, 2011
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Fulton County school board appears ready to make a push to become the largest system in the state to take the charter school tenets of flexibility and increased parental involvement system-wide.

Board members don’t officially vote until Feb. 24 on whether to petition the state to become one of Georgia’s first charter school systems, as well as its biggest with 92,000 students. But at a board retreat last week, the consensus of the majority was to proceed, officials said.

“I feel good about moving forward to develop more specifics of the petition,” Linda Schultz, school board chairwoman, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

School Superintendent Cindy Loe said she’s also supportive of going ahead with plans for the system to become a charter system.

“I think it could be a great thing for the system and for the community as a whole to rally around,” Loe said, “and I think that there are great potentials for continuing to improve student achievement from having that support and buy-in from the community.”

Currently, eight of the state’s 180 public school districts — city systems Cartersville, Decatur, Gainesville and Marietta, plus Floyd, Putnam, Warren and White counties — are state-approved charter school systems, with school-level control over budgets, programs, personnel and innovation. Several other systems have pending charter applications.

All systems have until 2013 to pick one of three paths: retaining the status quo or becoming either an IE2 system or a charter system.

Last year, Fulton nixed the idea of becoming an IE2 system, which presents with the potential for greater flexibility from state rules but a top-down administrative approach. The status quo was never considered a viable option.

Board members solicited feedback from the public last fall on the pros and pitfalls of a charter system. Nine hundred people appeared at a series of public forums. Eighty others submitted written comments and more than 70 students weighed in as well.

“I was impressed by the quality of suggestions that we received during the forums,” Schultz said. “It was clear to me that our staff, parents and community felt we could improve student achievement with additional flexibility in specific areas.”

School board members have said they want the switch to a charter system to be cost-neutral. One of the next steps would likely be considering each recommendation for what rule changes might be required and what expenses might be involved, Loe said.

For example, one of the frequent themes in the feedback was the desire for smaller class sizes, she said. That would not require a rule change, but it would have to be pointed out that reducing class sizes means hiring more teachers, Loe said.

“Class size is so expensive, that would be a hard thing to do,” she said.

Martha Greenway, deputy superintendent for organizational advancement, said the feedback from parents and staff showed an interest in more flexibility in the delivery of instruction, providing the potential for more innovative learning via the Internet, in-the-field experiences and hands-on experience.

There were calls for more foreign language and music programs and for teachers to be evaluated more on performance and less on years of service, Greenway said.

Among student groups, one of the stated priorities was a system that promotes teachers who are really engaged and committed to student learning, something that might not have always been achieved in the past, she said.

Loe said a lot of ground still has to be covered before the transition to a charter system starts, which would be August 2012 at the earliest.

“We’re still on track for that possibility, if everything keeps looking positive,” she said.

SOURCE: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, http://www.ajc.com/news/fulton-appears-set-to-828364.html

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Linda Shaw
February 4, 2011
The Seattle Times

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn spent about an hour Friday discussing charter schools with two University of Washington experts and advocates, along with a conference table full of people from the city, Seattle Public Schools, unions and at least one foundation.

So does that mean McGinn might advocate for charters here? Even though voters already have turned them down three times, most recently in 2004?

No answer on that one yet.

McGinn said he’s open to the idea. He may have voted against them three times, as he said Friday that he thinks he did, but his questions showed a lot of interest in charters — the publicly funded but privately run schools that exist in all but 10 states, one of which is Washington.

During the meeting he organized at City Hall, McGinn also suggested charters might be a way to attract more students to Seattle’s public schools.

It’s kind of like the Microsoft Connector bus from Seattle to that company’s headquarters, he said, saying he wonders why the city isn’t running that as a public service instead.

“I think there’s an analogy there,” he said.

But McGinn said afterward that charter schools are just one of a number of education reform ideas he’s been discussing with city, business and education leaders. He hasn’t had much to say about any of them — although he may down the road.

And when might that be? No answer yet on that one, either.

SOURCE: The Seattle Times, http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2014135093_politicsnw05m.html

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By Arie Kirk
February 1, 2011
The Herald Journal

Officials in three Idaho school districts are exploring the option of establishing a charter school.

Preston, West Side and Oneida school districts may form a consortium to create a professional technical charter school, according to Preston Superintendent Barbara Taylor.

During a recent board meeting, members of the Preston School Board gave Taylor permission to work on the charter application. Approval was given out of concern for the future of technical programs.

“I think for the survival of those programs, we owe it to them to keep exploring this idea because … their risk is so much greater when we start looking at things that have to get cut,” said Fred Titensor, the board chair.

Taylor said there wouldn’t be one facility for the school; the charter would be in each of the three districts and classes would continue to be offered at the respective schools.

“The programs would still be housed at the schools,” she said. “The teachers would still teach their students.”

Programs that want to be included in the charter would have to apply and the school’s five-member board of directors, which Taylor said would include the three area superintendents, would select the participating classes.

Now that the board has given Taylor approval to continue looking at the feasibility of a charter school, she has started to write some of the charter. Taylor said the petition deals with everything related to starting a school, like governance and staffing. She will write the part of the charter that covers instruction.

Once the petition is complete, it will go before the three school boards for action before continuing further, Taylor said.

Curriculum between the traditional schools and a charter school will need to be aligned, Taylor said, allowing participating students to graduate with a high school and charter school diploma.

Districts can opt out of the charter at any time, Taylor said.

Taylor said she doesn’t know how a charter school might change these programs, but she hopes it can save them.

“We know we’re going into difficult times financially. We know that PTE programs are difficult to fund and this is a way to continue to maintain support for those programs in our schools and it gives us an opportunity to look at a charter school law and make it work within a public school setting,” Taylor said, later adding, “I’ll be honest with you. If we have to go through many more years of budget cuts, we cannot sustain those programs.”

SOURCE: The Herald Journal, http://news.hjnews.com/news/article_a8c31dd4-2da1-11e0-8df8-001cc4c03286.html

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By John Payne
February 1, 2011
Columbia Missourian

Last week, organizations across the country held events to celebrate National School Choice Week, so it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on the benefits we receive from the educational options that most of us enjoy.

The opponents of school choice often deride it, suggesting that it only serves as a means of undermining public education. Most middle- and upper-class parents, however, already exercise control over most aspects of their children’s educations. They choose their homes based in part on the quality of the school district they are located in, or, if they have the resources, they decide among a number of private and parochial schools.

These schools are not perfect — far from it, in some cases — but, for most of these students and parents, the system works relatively well. There is a well-known correlation between academic achievement and socioeconomic status, and students from higher-income families outperform lower-income students on practically every measure.

This disparity is also reflected in the achievement gap between white and minority students. Tino Sanandaji, a Ph.D. student in public policy at the University of Chicago, recently compared the scores of non-Hispanic white American students with those of non-immigrant Europeans on the Programme for International Student Assessment test, and found that the American students performed admirably. White Americans scored seventh out of 28 countries, beating students from Denmark, Sweden, and France, as well as an average of 15 European Union countries.

On the other hand, our educational system routinely fails poor and minority students — those least able to choose a different school by moving to another district. Although the racial achievement gap has narrowed somewhat in recent years, at age 17, black and Hispanic students still score about 10 percent worse on average than white students on the reading portion of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. There are a number of proven ways we can expand choice and improve academic achievement for those students.

Missouri has already experienced some success with charter schools. According to a 2009 study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University, students attending charter schools in Missouri show more improvement in both mathematics and reading than similar students in traditional public schools, and this remains true when looking only at black and Hispanic students.

Unfortunately, state statute limits the existence of charter schools to the cities of St. Louis and Kansas City. If that restriction were removed, the gains of charter schools could be expanded to students in other struggling districts.

Furthermore, we could provide parents and students with more options in existing public school districts simply by restructuring how the schools are funded. Under a weighted-student-formula program (also known as “backpack funding”), students can attend any school within the district, and the schools are funded based upon the number of students they attract — with more dollars devoted to students who typically require more resources to educate (e.g., those with disabilities).

Schools are then allowed more autonomy to experiment and compete for students — and for the money attached to them. In California, the cities of San Francisco and Oakland both implemented backpack funding and saw large gains in student achievement across ethnic and socioeconomic lines. San Francisco is now the top performing large urban school district in the state, according to the California Department of Education. There is no reason, outside of political intransigence, that the St. Louis and Kansas City school districts could not enact the same reforms.

It would be difficult to design an educational system worse for the disadvantaged than one that assigns students to schools based on the housing that their parents can afford. Although our best schools, public and private, are the product of parental choice, poor and minority students are frequently stuck in monopolistic urban school districts. School choice is not a panacea for this problem, but giving parents the power to choose is a necessary step toward ensuring a quality education for all of Missouri’s students.

John Payne is a research assistant for the Show-Me Institute, an independent think tank promoting free-market solutions for Missouri public policy.

SOURCE: Columbia Missourian, http://www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/2011/02/01/guest-commentary-charter-schools-could-help-poor-students/

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By Kerry Benefield
February 1, 2011
The Press Democrat

The former Gold Ridge Elementary School campus in Rohnert Park next next fall will become home to the first public Waldorf-inspired high school in the North Bay.

Credo High School is expected to pull students from the seven public kindergarten through eighth grade Waldorf-inspired schools in Sonoma, Marin and Napa counties to fill 100 freshmen slots in its inaugural year.

Cotati-Rohnert Park District officials will provide administrative and budgetary oversight for the charter school.

Interest is “very strong,” said school developer Chip Romer of Sonoma. “People are willing to come from as far as Napa and Novato. They have been wanting this for many years.”

About 250 people attended an open house on the Gold Ridge campus in November, Romer said. A second open house is scheduled for Saturday.

“This is sort of hotbed of Waldorf education in the whole world, this region. I feel like this it’s a natural next step,” said Susan Olson, executive director of Sebastopol Independent Charter School, a Waldorf-inspired K-8 campus established in 1995.

Olson also serves on Credo’s board of directors.

The Waldorf name is trademarked and affiliated with private schools that adhere to a philosophy of an arts-heavy curriculum that is based on a student’s natural developmental progress.

In Sonoma County, private Summerfield Waldorf serves kindergarten through 12th graders on their Willowside Road campus in west Santa Rosa. Annual tuition for the 94 high school students is $16,250 and 35 percent of those students receive some level of financial assistance, according to the school.

As a public “Waldorf-inspired” charter school, the curriculum will follow Waldorf philosophy but will remain public. Credo is expected to receive state funding and students will be required to meet state and federal academic standards.

Romer expects to be granted a $370,000 two-year, start-up grant from the California Department of Education. But he called Credo’s vision a “very expensive proposition.”

Families will be asked to contribute $200 a month to support the curriculum, he said. No student can be denied entry for lack of funds or because of special education needs.

“It’s really enriched curriculum that can’t be funded by the state” average daily attendance funding, he said.

All graduates will be required to complete the so-called A-through-G college preparatory curriculum necessary to apply to any California State University and University of California campus.

“We will not turn people away. We cannot turn people away,” he said. “They will be challenged, they will be supported, but they better be serious students if they want to be with us,” he said.

The goal is to enroll 100 freshmen in the first year from the approximately 160 eighth graders who graduate from the seven Waldorf-inspired “feeder schools,” according to Romer. To date, 50 families have signed up for the fall, he said.

“I think we are the solution to the woes in public education or at least one solution,” Romer said of the alternative curriculum that puts an emphasis on music, foreign language and throwback skills like bookbinding, blacksmithing, knitting, and black and white print making.

“What they are learning is delayed gratification and perseverance,” Romer said. “It’s a sadly missing thing in our culture. Everybody wants gratification yesterday.”

In Waldorf-inspired campuses, textbooks are rare. Credo teachers will be required to be credentialed if they are teaching core subjects like English, math and science, but not if they are teaching non-core curriculum.

All teachers will be required to complete a multi-year Waldorf teaching course by the fifth year of their employment at Credo.

“In high school, we are really moving into a real thinking realm,” Olson said. “They are questioning everything. These teenagers really want to know why.”

The proposal has earned backing from Cotati-Rohnert Park, Sonoma County’s third largest school district that has in recent years closed schools, not opened them.

Under increasing budget pressures and declining enrollment, Cotati-Rohnert Park shut Richard Crane Elementary in 2002, Gold Ridge and La Fiesta elementary schools in 2008 and Mountain Shadows Middle School last spring.

Down from its peak of about 8,300 students in 1999, the district has 5,900 students and expects to enroll 5,450 in the 2013-14 school year.

District superintendent Barbara Vrankovich said she endorsed the charter school in part because she doesn’t expect the district to lose students who would have ordinarily attended either Rancho Cotate High or Technology High. The curriculum is unique enough that for students who have not attended a Waldorf K-8 campus, it likely won’t be a fit, she said.

“We lose students to (Santa Rosa High School’s) ArtQuest who might instead chose to go to Credo, but your typical high school student who is interested in athletics, clubs, is probably not going to go to Credo because it is not consistent with what they envision for the school school experience,” Vrankovich said.

While the district isn’t expected to lose students and affiliated state funding to Credo, it isn’t likely to make much money from the venture, either.

The operating agreement, not yet hammered out, will pay Cotati-Rohnert Park between 1 and 3 percent of Credo’s state “average daily attendance” income. Because the district is not charging Credo to use the Gold Ridge campus, it can charge up to 3 percent.

Based on the school’s projected enrollment, first year revenue for Cotati-Rohnert Park could be between $7,500 and $22,000. At peak enrollment, that could rise to between $33,000 and $99,000, said Wade Roach, the district’s chief financial officer.

A deal on what percentage the district will charge the new school is expected in April or May.

“For the district, it’s not about making money off Credo,” Vrankovich said. “We wouldn’t have authorized the charter if we were going to turn around and take advantage and charge them rent.”

“We are all in a compromised situation in public education. We need to be in it together and not cannibalize each other,” Romer said.

Romer said the budding partnership will put Cotati-Rohnert Park in the spotlight for hosting an alternative curriculum at a public school campus in Northern California.

“Other districts around here have a reputation of not being friendly to charter schools,” Romer said. “This district is the early believer.”

“We are looking at the bigger picture of our community,” said board president Ed Gilardi. “It won’t draw anything away.”

On the contrary, Romer said. Seven public kindergarten-through-eighth-grade Waldorf-inspired campuses in Sonoma, Marin and Napa counties have approximately 1,620 students.

“It’s my understanding that all have waiting lists to get in,” said Debra Lambrecht, administrator for the Alliance for Public Waldorf Education.

SOURCE: The Press Democrat, http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20110201/ARTICLES/110209945/1350?p=all&tc=pgall

The post Rohnert Park Sponsors Waldorf-Style Charter High School appeared first on Leave Charter Schools Alone.

January 27, 2011
Los Angeles Times

A nonprofit that examines the authorization of charter schools gave good marks Thursday to the Los Angeles Unified School District — a finding that may surprise some local charter school operators who have long battled the school system.

The thumbs-up comes from the Chicago-based National Assn. of Charter School Authorizers, which is “devoted exclusively to improving public education by improving the policies and practices of the organizations responsible for authorizing charter schools.” The organization is regarded as pro-charter schools; in fact, its board chair, James Peyser, is a partner in the NewSchools Venture Fund, which has provided funding to propel the growth of charters.

Charter schools are free, publicly funded schools that are managed independently of the education agencies that allow them to open.

The researchers noted that L.A. Unified, the nation’s second-largest school system, has authorized more charter schools than any other school district.

The largest five authorizers in the nation are, in order, the Texas Education Agency, the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools, the Los Angeles Unified School District, the Chicago Public Schools and the North Carolina Department of Education, according to the report. All told, these five agencies oversee 26% of all charter schools.

The commendation for L.A. Unified goes beyond just allowing charters to operate.
L.A. Unified lands in the “top quartile” based on its overall “best practices,” said Courtney Leigh Beisel, a spokesperson for the organization. These include how the school district handles its application process, contracting procedures and performance evaluations as well as its general monitoring and oversight of charters.

The caveat is that the finding is based entirely on survey information provided by the district itself.

Charter operators have credited the district with some recent improvement, but some also have sued L.A. Unified, claiming that the school system has violated a legal obligation to provide sufficient classroom space to charters. And this week, once again, many charters were unhappy over the amount of school space the district said it could offer.

At the other extreme are critics of charter schools, who contend the school system has kowtowed to charter advocates at the expense of traditional schools and failed to hold charters accountable for poor performance and a legal obligation to provide services to all students.

SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/01/la-unified-gets-praise-for-authorizing-and-overseeing-charter-schools.html

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By Lisa Gartner
January 29, 2011
The Washington Examiner

Interest in charter schools is growing in the Washington area, as student enrollment grows and a record number of schools are expected to apply to open in the District.

But the charter fever growing in Maryland and Virginia is bumping up against state laws that give authority to traditional public school boards, which both applicants and experts say don’t trust charters and shoot down their applications out of bias.

“Relative to prior years, our information sessions have been packed,” said Brian Jones, chairman of the D.C. Public Charter School Board. “At least two applicants who have operated successful charter schools in other states are looking into the District — that’s exciting.”

Applications are due Monday to the board, which oversees 52 charter schools that operate on 93 D.C. campuses and serve 27,660 students — about 38 percent of city public school students. Last year, as enrollment climbed 6 percent, the charter board approved four new schools set to open in the fall. Among those is an elementary school from KIPP, a national network of college-prep charters known for impressive graduation rates.

The District’s charter school board is an independent body that reviews and approves applications, unlike other jurisdictions where traditional school boards approve the applications.

“When the [traditional] board is the authorizer of charters, there’s a real tension there. They’re inclined to view charter school success as a zero-sum game,” Jones said, pointing to the shared teachers and students.

The Center for Education Reform, a nonprofit charter advocacy group, ranked the District’s charter school law as the nation’s best with an A. Maryland received a D and Virginia an F.

“School boards see charter schools as competition — they’re not in favor of them,” said Alison Consoletti, the nonprofit’s research director.

The Maryland State Board of Education chastised Montgomery County’s school board last week for its anti-charter bias when it overturned the county’s rejection of two charter schools.

The state said Montgomery “failed to provide any rationale for its decision” against Global Gardens Public Charter School and that it was “very concerned” by biases among three board members. In a questionnaire of candidates for board re-election, then-President Patricia O’Neill said she was “skeptical about charter schools” and “worr[ies] about the draining of funds from MCPS.”

Global Gardens board member Ashley Del Sole said she knew “we never had a chance” when applying to the Montgomery school board. “Their schools are among the best. It’s the ‘why fix what’s not broken’ mentality.”

Only four charter schools are open in Virginia, with none in Northern Virginia. Arlington-based Imagine Schools, a nationwide charter operator with three locations in the District and three in Prince George’s County, is in “the exploratory phase” of applying for a charter in Loudoun County, a spokeswoman said.

The last application the Fairfax County School Board received — and rejected — was in 2003. Board President Kathy Smith, who has served on the board since 2002, said her colleagues are “not out there looking for [charter applications] because that’s not our job, but we are open to them, when we get them.”

Five charter schools operate in Prince George’s County, the second-largest concentration in Maryland to Baltimore City’s 34. Among Maryland’s lower-performing districts, “It’s likely that they’re open to alternative strategies,” Consoletti said.

The Maryland state board gave Montgomery 90 days to revisit the charter applications, which delighted Del Sole. “I think the time of charter schools is here.”

SOURCE: The Washington Examiner, http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/dc/2011/01/charter-schools-boom-parents-seek-more-options

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By Anna Davis
January 28, 2011
London Evening Standard

A team of American education experts have been flown into London to teach English parents how to set up free schools.

The group of teachers, politicians and parents from the US are all involved in running “charter schools”, which are similar to Education Secretary Michael Gove‘s new free schools.

They will speak to about 400 English parents at the first national free schools conference tomorrow.

The American delegation today met teachers at the King Solomon Academy in Lisson Grove – run by education charity Ark, which plans to open free schools across the country.

Joel Klein, former chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, visited the school with Mr Gove.

Charter schools are funded with public money but are free from some of the rules that apply to other schools.

SOURCE: London Evening Standard, http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23918347-us-charter-school-pioneers-fly-in-to-advise-british-parents.do

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January 28, 2011
Palladium-Item

Opponents of charter schools in Indiana are saddled with a fundamental weakness in their argument against expansion of educational choices. They must persuade the public, and members of the Indiana General Assembly, that parents aren’t qualified to select the best learning environment for their children.

After all, parents aren’t forced to ship their children to charters. They choose to do so. …

Now, the General Assembly is debating whether more families should have the option of choosing a charter for their families. House Speaker Brian Bosma and other key legislators from both parties are pushing a bill that could greatly expand the number of charter schools in Indiana. Only 62 charters now operate in the state, in part because Statehouse Democrats used their majority in the House to attack educational options.

The legislation would give authority to a host of new sponsors, including a new state charter school board, mayors in cities of more than 35,000 people, and private, nonprofit universities.

Opponents are aghast that private universities would be allowed to sponsor charters. That’s another tough argument for the opposition to win.

However, one component of the legislation, although well intended, does present a problem. The bill would require districts to rent vacant school buildings to charters for only $1 a year. It’s certainly a challenge for charter school organizers to raise capital to obtain and often renovate buildings, but the state shouldn’t take away school boards’ ability to make decisions about how best to use public properties.

With that weakness noted, and with the understanding that charters are by no means a panacea to what ails this state’s educational system, the legislation deserves strong public support.

SOURCE: Palladium-Item, http://www.pal-item.com/article/20110128/NEWS03/101280301/1003

The post Parents Deserve Charter Choice appeared first on Leave Charter Schools Alone.

By Jenny Brundin
January 12, 2011
KUER Local News

SALT LAKE CITY, UT (KUER) – It’s a critical year for Utah public schools. Utah funds students on a per pupil basis at a rate considerably less than any other state in the nation. And for the past three years, there hasn’t been money to pay for thousands of new students starting school. School officials say they’re at the breaking point. Lawmakers see glimmers up hope in an economy that’s starting to rebound. But when it comes to the state’s schools, legislators have a lot more on their minds than money. KUER’s Jenny Brundin reports.

Go to le.utah.gov. Then, click on search bills. Select “All Legislation.” Presto! A list of all the bills proposed – so far – by lawmakers for this year’s legislative session. One of the longest categories by far is education bills. There’s Charter School Amendments, Charter School Modifications, Civics Education, K-3 Reading Amendments, Engineering Initiative In Elementary and Secondary Schools, Math Education Initiative. And the list goes on.

ROBERTS: I don’t know of any career out there where every year they have to change what they do and adapt to new laws quite to the extent that they do in the education community.

That’s Debra Roberts, chair of the state school board. This year, she and her fellow board members are asking lawmakers to pause and instead, allow teachers to implement the newly adopted national Common Core Standards. The initiative is a rigorous program to get all students ready for college. It involves immense changes in the curriculum, such as moving algebra down to second grade. But here’s what Senator Howard Stephenson, chair of the public education budget committee, says about the board’s request to lawmakers to put the brakes on new initiatives.

STEPHENSON: I would say that’s one of the most foolish requests I’ve heard from the state school board. The idea that all incumbent programs are somehow better deserving than any new program is really a preposterous notion.

Stephenson is the sponsor of a more than a dozen schools bills – like . putting more real-world math curriculum into schools. He also wants to expand public charter schools, make teachers accountable, and make it easier to fire bad teachers.

STEPHENSON: My bill would remove the career status of a low-performing teacher.

Translation? No tenure. Kory Holdaway with the Utah Teacher’s Association, the state’s largest teacher’s union, hasn’t seen the bill. But he says it’s a fallacy that the union wants to protect poor teachers.

HOLDAWAY: If we’ve got a poor teacher, it reflects poorly on the profession, so we obviously as an association wan the best and the brightest that we can get.

He prefers a more collaborative approach as practiced by the Granite school district, which works with the union to deal with bad teachers. Another bill would assign a letter grade to each school. Stephenson says it’s revolutionized education in Florida, which has moved from the bottom to the top quartile in student performance in 10 years. African American and Hispanic students ranked at the bottom 10 years ago; now he says they’re performing higher than white kids in Utah.

STEPHENSON: African-American and Hispanic students in Florida were ranked in the bottom nationally. They now rank near the top and in fact they are superior in performance to Utah white kids.

The school board’s Debra Roberts says it wasn’t just the letter grade that improved Florida’s schools. Third graders who weren’t at grade level weren’t allowed to move on, and millions of dollars were sunk into teacher training and other programs. Because the common core standards comes with a new testing and accountability system that will take years to implement, she believes a letter grade doesn’t make sense. Other proposals may get a better reception. Like letting high school students get college credit for on-line classes. Senator Howard Stephenson:

STEPHENSON: This has the capacity for saving hundreds of millions of dollars.

And that’s money that lawmakers desperately need. Despite the lengthy list of bills proposing this or that change to how Utah schools operate – the main drive will be to find more DOLLARS for schools. Over the past three years, twenty-five thousand new students have started school with no new money to pay for them. Federal stimulus money helped, but schools have had to dip into reserves and into teacher’s social security and retirement funds. Money is the top priority for everyone, all the way up to the Governor.

HERBERT: We’re going to for the first time in three years, fund growth in education.

Here’s Governor Gary Herbert.

HERBERT: We’re going to add 50 million dollars into the budget to help with the growth they have here of about 14,000 plus new students that they have coming into the schools this year.

Herbert recommended 50 million more for new students, and continuing optional extended day Kindergarten for at-risk students. Preliminary studies show at risk kids who come out of full-day Kindergarten are almost at the level of their peers entering first grade. But Representative Kraig Powell, who supports full-day Kindergarten, says it will be a delicate balancing act as lawmakers put together a budget.

POWELL: It’s a delicate dance that we have to perform among the various levels of the state budget and we the Governor’s Office in finding that money.

Powell has his own bills that he hopes will help Utah schools. It proposes amending Utah’s constitution — to allow teachers to ask their students to bring school supplies from home. Right now state law prohibits them from charging parents for anything that resembles a fee because the constitution guarantees a free public education. Bill sponsor Representative Kraig Powell:

POWELL: This is order to solve a very simple problem in Utah right now. The teacher in my child’s classroom, if she asks her student to provide school supplies, is held to be in violation of a state policy.

He says it would simply allow families who have the resources to help out. Often times teachers just dig in their own pockets to pay for supplies. But school board member Leslie Brooks Castle says that works great in an opulent neighborhood. She thinks Powell hasn’t thought through implications of poor children whose parents don’t have the money. She calls the legislation diversionary.

ROBERTS: We are the most underfunded education system in the United States and the legislature is asking kids to bring their own pencils to school? They need to fund education.

The school board has proposed some of its own ideas to boost funding for schools, including freezing the basic rate for local taxation. That means that as the economy improves, more money would flow into schools. Or – reviewing and eliminating some sales tax exemptions. So far though, none of those ideas appears on the long list legislative proposals.

SOURCE: KUER Local News, http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kuer/news.newsmain/article/1/0/1748583/KUER.Local.News/Lawmakers.Want.Changes.in.Public.Education

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By Deborah Simmons
January 12, 2011
The Washington Times

Education-reform group cites city, underscoring Rhee’s efforts

As unions move to organize charter-school employees, former D.C. Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee rolled out a taut school-reform agenda that pushes charter expansion and public-private vouchers, and she said the untold number of charter teachers she has encountered are not “interested in joining a union.”

Ms. Rhee‘s proposal and comments came as the District of Columbia won the No. 1 spot for its charter-school laws, which are touted in a new Center for Education Reform study for supporting school and teacher autonomy. Ms. Rhee supported those efforts as chancellor by pushing union roadblocks aside to institute groundbreaking reforms and broaden school choice.

“I am in favor of employees being able to organize. That said, I’ve met significant numbers of charter-school teachers, none of whom are interested in joining a union,” Ms. Rhee, now head of an organization called Students First, told The Washington Times. “Rather, they are focused on working with the students, parents and administrators in their school to create the best learning environment possible. Work rules and tenure are the least of their concerns.”

Those learning environments, which often include longer school days and weekend classes, are least restrictive when teachers and administrators are free of traditional red tape and parents are encouraged to select the best academic fit for their children.

Labor organizers already wield influence in charter schools in several states, such as New York and New Jersey, as well as Florida, California, Illinois and Michigan.

But charter schools and “union shackles” are incompatible, Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform, said Wednesday.

“In states where charters are not granted the freedom and flexibility to provide innovative learning environments for their students, they are not able to fulfill their intended purpose,” Ms. Allen said.

“This is especially true when it comes to their staff. Teachers should be allowed to achieve success in the classroom free of union contracts that could restrict extended school days or additional instruction. At the same time, charters should be empowered to identify and remove staff who are not making the grade for kids. Union shackles are at odds with the nature of charter schools,” she said.

The new study reviewed 40 states and the District of Columbia on their charter-school laws, and graded them on the number of authorizers, schools allowed, fiscal equity and operations, including autonomy, teacher freedom and union influence.

D.C. charter laws ranked No. 1 on all criteria, with two other jurisdictions — second-place Minnesota and third-place California — also earning an A. Minnesota was the first state to establish charter schools, doing so in 1991.

Virginia ranked 40th out of 41, one of four states to earn an F — the others being Kansas, Iowa and Mississippi.

Maryland wasn’t much better — placing 35th, or seventh from bottom.

New York ranked as the seventh strongest even though its “union-forced rules dominate some aspects of charter [school] contracts,” the report said.

But the state got good marks because it raised its cap on the number of charter schools in 2010, grants a blanket waiver on most centralized rules and regulations, and grants limited autonomy based on individual schools’ enrollment numbers.

A total of 14 states earned a C, largely attributed to funding inequities and the lack of autonomy. For example, while New Jersey’s laws allow teachers in new charter schools to negotiate contracts as a unit or as individuals, teachers in traditional schools that convert to charters retain collective-bargaining agreements and their schools must participate in the state’s retirement system.

With Ms. Rhee looking on Wednesday, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called union demands problematic for school reform and fiscal responsibility.

Promising to push merit pay, end tenure and expand charters, the Republican governor said in his State of the State address, “Teaching can no longer be the only profession where you have no rewards for excellence and no consequences for failure to perform.”

He also vowed to trim the rising costs of union pensions, which he called “this cloud that hangs over us and almost every state in the union.”

Ms. Rhee, who implemented a teacher-evaluation plan that continues to draw heavy union criticism, is an educational adviser to top officials in New Jersey, Florida and several other states.

SOURCE: The Washington Times, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jan/12/dc-charter-school-laws-earn-a/

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By Mike Hasten
January 13, 2010
Monroe News Star

BATON ROUGE — Louisiana businesses could start their own charter schools that give preference to children of their employees under legislation to be proposed by Gov. Bobby Jindal.

The governor surprised state lawmakers Wednesday in announcing at the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry’s annual meeting that he will propose such legislation in this year’s legislative session. It’s modeled after Florida’s “charter schools in the workplace” initiative and has been implemented in other states.

“This new business-charter school partnership legislation will help feed the pipeline of qualified workers for Louisiana businesses while creating important career opportunities for students,” the governor said. “Ensuring that every Louisiana student has a great education is the critical foundation to helping our children pursue the career of their dreams.”

Under the proposal, businesses could donate land, buildings and funding to establish charter schools and in exchange get seats on the school board and reserve up to 50 percent of the space in classrooms for children of their employees. The remainder of the space would be open for community enrollment.

The charter schools could be designed to target specific professions, so enrolled students would receive job training as well as academics.

Jindal sees it as an added attraction for luring businesses to the state because they can take responsibility for assuring that their employees’ children get a good education.

Caroline Roemer Shirley, executive director of the Louisiana Charter School Association, welcomes the governor’s plan but says she expects some opposition from anti-charter school forces.

She said she likes the idea of “combining economic development and education,” and “we’re excited when a policymaker, especially the governor, endorses charter schools.”

Under Louisiana law, charter schools are public schools, so they must accept students from the community. They also are eligible for state and local funding, like other public schools.

Jindal said he has discussed the idea with CenturyLink CEO Glen Post, who he said “at this point, likes the concept” and believes it could “provide high quality education” for the children of CenturyLink’s employees and the Monroe community.

A news release from the governor’s office quotes Post as saying, “This is a great innovation for expanding educational opportunities for our children and helping businesses succeed here in Louisiana. Companies like CenturyLink should benefit as programs such as this one help create a more qualified work force in the future.”

Lawmakers at the LABI meeting said they were surprised by the governor’s announcement.

“This is the first time I’m hearing this,” said House Education Committee Chairman Rep. Austin Badon, D-New Orleans. “I’m sure it’s a preliminary statement.”

“This is the first any of us heard about it,” said Speaker of the House Jim Tucker, R-Terrytown. “It’s worth pursuing,” he said, but he’s concerned about what laws might have to be changed to allow it and what it would cost the state.

SOURCE: Monroe News Star, http://www.thenewsstar.com/article/20110113/NEWS01/101130317

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By Vicki L. Phillips
January 11, 2011
Education Week News

Last month, as the result of the District-Charter Collaboration Compact sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, nine cities from across the country came together to commit to overcoming one of the most persistent divides in public education and accelerate progress for all of our students: public charter schools vs. traditional public schools.

The cities—Baltimore; Denver; Hartford, Conn.; Los Angeles; Minneapolis; Nashville, Tenn.; New Orleans; New York City; and Rochester, N.Y.—announced compacts between their public school districts and public charter schools, a significant step toward expanding and institutionalizing collaboration in an area that has experienced far too much contentiousness. The compacts represent a bold commitment between district and charter leaders to build on each other’s strengths in pursuit of a common mission—giving every student a great education.

At the Gates Foundation, we believe it’s all about the students, too. That’s why we’ve invested in public charter schools, which can be incubators of innovation. And it’s why we’ve invested in traditional district schools, many of which have shown the ability to be innovative in their own right. In both types of schools, we focus our investments on the same sets of classroom-based issues: making sure all students have high standards and a demanding curriculum, imparted by great teachers.

As a former teacher, superintendent, and state education secretary, I’ve learned a couple of key lessons over the course of a life spent in education.

First, the only things that are viral in education are the viruses that come to school during cold and flu season. To actually transmit best practices from classroom to classroom, much less from school to school, district to district, and state to state, is incredibly hard.

Second, while public charter schools are a critical component of the public school system, they account for just 3 percent of our nation’s public school students. They will never fully replace traditional school districts.

So if we want to have a measurable impact on student achievement, we need to create a pipeline through which good ideas and lessons learned can be shared between charter and district schools. These compacts will create the pipeline. Around the country, there are already examples of collaborations between charter and district schools. But these sorts of partnerships are too few and too diffuse. That’s why the Gates Foundation is excited to support the compact efforts. In our experience, district public schools and public charter schools can learn a lot from each other, if they commit to listening to one another. The compacts enshrine that commitment.

For example, one of the biggest challenges charter schools face is finding quality facilities. In Rochester’s compact, the city’s school district is committed to providing no-cost lease or rental of buildings to charter schools in the city.

We simply don’t have time to argue about whether district or charter schools are better, as though there’s a zero-sum competition for excellent schools.

In Denver, district and charter schools are developing and implementing a common approach to enrollment across all schools, and ensuring that parents are informed about all the school choices in the city.

In Los Angeles, district and charter schools will share new tools for teacher evaluation, strategies for recognizing highly effective teachers and principals, and improved professional-growth opportunities for all teachers and principals.

The city leaders who signed the compacts are leaving behind stale fights about governance structure in favor of collaborative efforts to give all young people great public school options. They will ensure students in both district and public charter schools have equitable access to funding and facilities, and that charter schools reach all students, including English-language learners and those with special needs.

These leaders recognize that the scale of problems we face requires us to admit there is no silver bullet—we need excellent district schools and excellent charter schools.

I can’t say it better than it’s written in Denver’s compact: “The children living within Denver do not belong to a particular district school or to a particular charter school—the children in Denver are all our children.”

Additional cities have already expressed interest in developing their own district-charter collaboration compacts to reflect this spirit of collaboration. We hope these nine cities will continue to inspire many more across the country to start working together on behalf of all students.

In an economy where a postsecondary degree has become a prerequisite for success, one-third of students never graduate from high school, and half of those who go to college never get a diploma. We simply don’t have time to argue about whether district or charter schools are better, as though there’s a zero-sum competition for excellent schools.

We need to focus instead on improving classrooms so that every school can be a great school, and every student can get the education she deserves. These compacts allow us to sharpen that focus, and begin looking forward, together.

Vicki L. Phillips oversees education programs for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The foundation provides grant support to Editorial Projects in Education, the nonprofit corporation that publishes Education Week.

SOURCE: Education Week News, http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/01/12/15phillips.h30.html

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By Valerie Strauss
January 10, 2010
The Washington Post

This was written by leaders of the Knowledge Is Power Program, better known as the KIPP charter schools, in response to a guest post I published last week. That piece, by Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation and author of “All Together Now: Creating Middle-Class Schools through Public School Choice,” was itself in response to a debate that I had with my inimitable colleague Jay Mathews about school reform that touched on KIPP. You can find that debate here.

By Jonathan Cowan and Steve Mancini
On Jan. 3, The Answer Sheet featured a guest post by Richard Kahlenberg that highlighted attrition in KIPP schools.

We respect Mr. Kahlenberg’s right to question KIPP’s results, and we welcome healthy debate about the merits of KIPP’s philosophy and model. However, it is also important to clarify the fact base around the issues he raises.

At KIPP, we have a long standing commitment to transparency, continuous learning, and improvement. As such, we are always improving our data collection and reporting processes in order to share our successes and challenges. We focus on understanding the “health” of our schools: Are we serving the students who need us? Are our students staying with us? Are our students making academic progress? Are we fulfilling our promise to get kids to and through college? Are we creating a sustainable model?

Over the last few years, we have begun publicly reporting our performance as it relates to these questions. For instance, we publish our student mobility data in our annual Report Card, to illustrate whether our students are, in fact, staying with us. Our success depends on being held accountable for the results we produce for our kids.

In order to address specific criticisms raised in the piece, we ’d like to clarify Mr. Kahlenberg’s conflation of KIPP’s attrition statistics and our policies on “backfilling” empty student spots. In fact, these are two entirely separate issues, and should be addressed individually:

Assertion 1: KIPP’s success is due to high attrition and the fact that the “weakest” students leave.

Mr. Kahlenberg mentioned the June 2010 report by Mathematica Policy Research, but claimed that it does not tell the whole story when it comes to student mobility. In fact, the Mathematica report is very comprehensive, looking at 22 new and full-fledged schools over four years.

As Mr. Kahlenberg stated, the study found that attrition rates at KIPP schools nationwide were not systematically higher or lower than at comparable schools—some schools had higher attrition, some lower, some the same.

But the Mathematica report also had a second finding that Mr. Kahlenberg did not highlight: The vast majority of KIPP schools had a significant impact on achievement for all students who had ever attended, even if they didn’t complete all four years. Students who left the 22 schools during the study period were still counted in the report, which means the high achievement researchers found was not just a result of attrition. In fact, in conducting the analysis this way, Mathematica is holding KIPP accountable for all the students it ever enrolled, whether they stayed or left.

In his post, Mr. Kahlenberg relied on a study of KIPP Bay Area schools, published by SRI International in 2008, that found those schools to have unusually high levels of attrition. We absolutely agree that this study was rigorous and its findings are valid.

However, it was based on data from just five KIPP schools over a three-year period, and only one of those schools had reached full enrollment at the start of the study period. Thus, the SRI study does not account for how attrition rates at those schools have fallen as these KIPP schools have matured over the past four years.

Assertion 2: KIPP middle schools have high test scores because they do not enroll students after sixth grade.

Mr. Kahlenberg claimed that the reason Mathematica’s attrition results are flawed is because KIPP schools do not accept new students to make up for the ones they lose. He acknowledged that KIPP does take in new sixth-graders, but claimed that this is because sixth grade is “a natural time to start middle school.”

However, it is not the case that KIPP cuts off enrollment after sixth grade. Many KIPP middle schools, including those at KIPP DC, now regularly enroll new students at all grade levels, fifth through eighth. KIPP’s high schools also take students at all levels, from ninth to twelfth grade.

As more schools are reaching full enrollment and sustainability, this issue of “backfilling” classes is also subsiding.

The SRI study data Mr. Kahlenberg cites cuts off in 2006-07, when the eighth grade class was at 55% of the starting size of the entering fifth grade class. But that data is now several years old, and those numbers have improved dramatically. As of 2010-11, the KIPP Bay Area eighth grade class is at a full 86% of its starting fifth-grade size. We are working hard to increase that percentage even farther, at KIPP Bay Area and in all other regions.

As KIPP continues to grow, moving from start-up to sustainability, we have seen significantly reduced attrition rates and had success enrolling students at all grade levels. We remain focused on continuing to improve in these areas so we can set ever more students on the path to college and a better future.

Jonathan Cowan, Chief Research & Innovation Officer
Steve Mancini, Public Affairs Officer
KIPP Foundation

SOURCE: The Washington Post, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/charter-schools/kipp-responds-to-criticism-on.html

LeaveChartersAlone’s Note: Similar questions have been raised about other successful charter organizations. Click here to read.

Click here to read LeaveChartersAlone’s opinion on the subject.

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By Robert Cane
January 10, 2011
Washington Examiner

Mayor Gray has taken office with school reform efforts more prominent in District residents’ minds than ever before. Empowering enthusiastic and determined educators to open new public schools independently of the school system transformed D.C.’s public education offering.

From two small charter campuses 14 years ago to nearly 100 today, District public charter schools now educate nearly 40 percent of the city’s public school children.

From 2007 to 2010, D.C. charter secondary schools raised students’ reading proficiency from 43 to 52 percent while DCPS secondary schools raised reading proficiency from 29 to 42 percent. In the same time frame, D.C. charters increased secondary school students’ math proficiency from 43 to 57 percent while DCPS increased math proficiency from 26 to 43 percent.

Charters’ high-school graduation and college-acceptance rates also are much higher than in D.C. Public Schools.

Given the coverage prior to Gray’s election, D.C. voters could be forgiven for thinking that Mayor Adrian Fenty was a school reform zealot while Mayor Gray was reluctant to reform, if not hostile to it.

Yet during the campaign, Gray enthusiastically championed charter school reform as he had one year earlier when Fenty targeted charter schools for steep budget cuts but left DCPS alone.

As council chairman, Gray inserted language into the 2011 Budget Support Act to help charters access surplus school buildings before they are offered to private developers. By contrast, the Fenty administration routinely frustrated charters’ attempts to buy or lease school buildings from D.C.’s under-enrolled school system — even after then-Chancellor Michelle Rhee closed 27 DCPS schools.

The first school reforms that the new administration should implement are those that Gray already supports. The D.C. School Reform Act, which established the city’s charter school reform, requires that charters receive the same public funding per student as traditional public schools. The current charter school public funding deficit runs to about $5,000 per student — an inequality Gray has pledged to reverse.

No less important, D.C. law requires that charters be offered school buildings that DCPS no longer needs. Gray’s commitment to this school reform would be a welcome change from the Fenty administration’s illegal defiance.

DCPS has significantly more school space than it can use. In addition to charters being offered surplus buildings, there also should be opportunities for charters to co-locate with under-enrolled city-run schools. An excess space analysis should be a priority.

The new administration also should cast a critical eye over the Office of the State Superintendent of Education. Like Maryland or Virginia, D.C. needs a state office to set K-12 standards. But OSSE has grown far beyond this role, going over the head of the charter schools’ regulator, the D.C. Public Charter School Board, by piling regulations on charters in violation of D.C.’s charter school law.

The thread running through the new administration’s school reform agenda should be support for what makes D.C.’s school reforms work.

First is autonomy from the school system and freedom from unnecessary regulations while being held accountable for improved student performance by the charter board. Second is direct accountability to the mayor as opposed to the D.C. Board of Education.

Both bold, beneficial reforms can deliver further success for students only if they are allowed to play to their strengths. Success also requires a level playing field with equal public funding and fair access to surplus public school buildings.

We need more high-quality public schools, charter and traditional. More successful charter operators from outside the city should be given an opportunity to prove themselves, and more D.C. charters that have failed to do so should be shown the door. DCPS should be no less demanding of its teachers, principals and school operators.

SOURCE: Washington Examiner, http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/2011/01/gray-reform-starts-charter-schools

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By Tom Bohs
January 9, 2011
Jackson Sun

In last week’s Jackson Sun online poll, about two-thirds of 622 responders said they are against establishing a public charter school in East Jackson. Often the contrarian when it comes to public opinion, I am here to argue in favor of the school.

Charter schools present an opportunity for innovation in public education. They are tools that can help move public education away from its 19th and 20th century education model. Charter schools are allowed to operate outside of the traditional public education rulebook, and for good reason. Innovation demands new approaches to old problems. Charter schools do have to meet federal guidelines regarding non-discrimination and other fairness laws, but beyond that, they are free to try new ideas to meet student needs.

This is especially important in today’s technology-driven world where people get to individualize nearly every aspect of their lives. But public K-12 education has, for the most part, failed to keep up with this trend. Public education still is a homogenized, generic system. Classrooms and curricula in Los Angeles differ little from classrooms and curricula in Boston. There is little innovation in higher education teacher training as teachers are cranked out cookie-cutter fashion ready to step into a K-12 classroom to pick up where the last teacher left off.

That is not to say there are not good, even great teachers in our traditional public schools. Clearly there are. But when you compare traditional classrooms with the innovations in nearly every other aspect of our lives, they begin to look like rotary dial phones sitting next to iPhone 4s. You can still make a call on a rotary phone — at least I think you can — but you can’t do much else with it. Public education largely has failed to keep up and to innovate. What passes for progress in public education are magnet schools, smart boards and computers in classrooms. But it is still essentially the same classroom approach with students all pointed in the same direction.

Higher education is beginning to move forward with online learning, for-profit colleges, satellite campuses and highly specialized education and training programs such as The Art Institutes and technical training schools. The goal is to give people the education they need, when they want it, where they want it, delivered to them in the format they want to meet specific personal needs. Such education is highly goal-oriented and technology driven.

Another advantage of a charter school is that it can be designed to address a specific student population with a curriculum geared to meeting those specific needs. That is what is being proposed for the East Jackson school. It would target underprivileged black students interested in a college-prep environment. It would offer them the extra help they need to meet such an education goal with longer hours, more days in school, specialized curriculum, technology help, mentoring and life-skills learning opportunities, all in one school at one location. It would employ teachers chosen specifically to meet such education demands.

The closest thing to such a school in the Jackson-Madison County school system is the Parkview Montessori School. Those children live in a very different, non-traditional public school environment unlike any other in the school system. They are self-directed, intensely focused on their individual tasks, often not operating at a traditional school desk. They are allowed to follow their natural interests instead of being shoehorned into a one-size-fits-all classroom environment. Montessori teachers also approach teaching differently, directing rather than teaching, carefully observing students and waiting for teachable moments.

Each charter school would operate in its own unique way, addressing a specific student population with specialized course materials, education focus and teachers. Each charter school would develop its own personality and image in the community. It would be led by a group of people dedicated to that school’s mission and separate from the school board and central office leadership.

Not every charter school succeeds. But not every traditional school succeeds, either. A charter school doesn’t need to be better than a traditional school in the normal sense of the word better. But it does have to meet its unique goals and provide students with the education needed to pass standardized tests and meet other legal public education requirements. They just get to go at it in their own specialized way.

There is a place for and a need for charter schools in public education. It is time for Jackson-Madison County to join the march to the future.

SOURCE: Jackson Sun, http://www.jacksonsun.com/article/20110109/COLUMNISTS01/101090312

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January 10, 2011
Inside INdiana Business

A poll from the Indianapolis-based Foundation for Educational Choice shows voters throughout the state favor school vouchers and charter schools. The survey, conducted by Braun Research Inc., also suggests the majority of respondents are not satisfied with the current public education system.

INDIANAPOLIS, IN – Voters in Indiana decidedly favor school vouchers and charter schools, and desire a balanced variety of options when it comes to educating their children, according to a poll released today by the Indianapolis-based Foundation for Educational Choice.

The poll—“Indiana K-12 & School Choice Survey”—also reveals that Indiana voters are unaware of how much is spent in public schools; most respondents substantially underestimated per-student spending.

“Hoosiers see the tremendous value in giving families options,” said Robert Enlow, President and CEO of the Foundation for Educational Choice. “If a school voucher, charter school, private, or home school can give a child an effective, personalized education, that child has a right to receive it. This poll shows Indiana voters agree.”

Braun Research Inc. conducted phone interviews with more than 3,400 Hoosier registered voters November 12-17, 2010.That firm’s president, Paul Braun, expressed confidence in the accuracy of the study’s results, due to “thorough briefings stressing objectivity, heavy monitoring, sample performance reviews, verifications and post-data-collection checks on each survey by interviewer and phone center.”

The following are the poll’s key findings:

Indiana voters are unsatisfied with the current public education system. On average, registered voters in Indiana are more likely to think K-12 education is on the “wrong track” (51 percent) compared to the “right direction” (31 percent). Indiana voters describe the state’s public school system more often as “fair” or “poor” (55 percent) versus “good” or “excellent” (42 percent).

Indiana voters lack awareness and information about how much is spent in public schools. Nearly two out of three respondents (64 percent) underestimated per-student spending in the public schools.

Hoosiers support charter schools. Indiana voters are far more likely to favor charter schools (66 percent) than to oppose such schools (16 percent). Respondents who said they “strongly favor” charter schools outnumber those who say they “strongly oppose” by a four-to-one ratio.

Hoosiers support school vouchers. Indiana voters are far more likely to favor school vouchers (66 percent) than to oppose them (24 percent).

Indiana voters indicate they should have a variety of schooling options. If they had the option to select any type of school to obtain the best education for their child, 41 percent said they would choose a private school, 10 percent a charter school, and 7 percent a home school.

“This poll shows most Indiana voters do not realize how many of their tax dollars are being spent on an education system they do not even consider effective,” said Enlow. “Giving families the freedom to choose the education that’s best for their children would ensure funds were spent more effectively, and it would give every child access to the education they deserve.”

To see a summary of survey results, a series of PowerPoint slides highlighting key findings, and description of the methodology, click here.

Braun Research callers interviewed 1,017 registered voters in Indiana to produce an initial statewide sample. Braun Research then made additional phone calls to achieve at least 350 total completed interviews in each of eight counties. The margin of sampling error for each statewide survey is ±3.1 percentage points and approximately ± 5.4 percentage points (approx.) for each of the eight countywide samples.

About The Foundation for Educational Choice
The Foundation for Educational Choice is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and nonpartisan organization, solely dedicated to advancing Milton and Rose Friedman’s vision of school choice for all children. First established as the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation in 1996, the foundation continues to promote school choice as the most effective and equitable way to improve the quality of K-12 education in America. The foundation is dedicated to research, education, and outreach on the vital issues and implications related to choice and competition in K-12 education.

SOURCE: Inside INdiana Business, http://www.insideindianabusiness.com/newsitem.asp?ID=45544

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By Dana Wilson
January 8, 2011
Examiner.com

The New Jersey Department of Education is expected to announce on January 15 how many of the 51 recent charter school applications will be approved. This current round of competition for new charter schools set a state record for the highest number of charter school applications submitted.

Currently, there are a total of 73 approved charter schools. For the 2010-2011 school year, charter schools are serving more than 26,000 students.

Often times low income parents in urban communities don’t feel they have a choice of where they send their children to school, unless they get a financial aid scholarship, receive a school choice voucher, or win the lottery. If they won the type of lottery where you win millions of dollars, then they could send their children to the private school of their choice. However, it is the school lottery system used by many urban charter schools, where the number of students far outweigh the number of available openings/slots in the school that is discussed in this article.

Charter schools are public schools that operate independently from district schools. In New Jersey, they may be organized by a group of teachers, parents, community groups or institutions of higher education. These groups enter into an agreement with the state board of education and receive a performance contract called a “charter”. Charter schools are public schools and may not charge tuition. With the advent of charter schools, parents now have a choice in public education, according to the New Jersey Charter School Resource Center website.

Charter schools often have creative ways to attract students such as growing trend to offer dual-language curriculum or an academic theme, similar to magnet schools (such as Humanities, Science, etc). In September, Princeton International Academy Charter School will become the first ever Mandarin-English public school in the state in the form of a new charter school. Similarly, Hatikvah International Charter School (an East Brunswick elementary school) opened as the first New Jersey Hebrew charter school. Tikun Olam Hebrew Language Charter High School (slated to open in Edison) is one of the NJ applications pending approval on Jan. 15. Some members of the Edison Board of Education oppose the application. The Hoboken Dual Language Charter School (nicknamed “HoLa” which means hello in Spanish) opened its doors this September to 132 students in grades K-2 and is New Jersey’s first Spanish-English charter school.

The Newark charter school movement gained some additional momentum in September, 2010 when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerman announced he was donating $100 million to Newark public schools. Zuckerman is working with Democratic Mayor Corey Booker and Republican Governor Chris Christie, both of whom favor expanding the number of charter schools in Newark and other urban districts. According to a New York Times article, the changes would not formally relax the legal power the state seized in 1995, when it declared Newark’s schools a failure and took control of the system, replacing the elected school board with a mostly toothless advisory board. Rather, Gov. Christie plans to give Mayor Booker a major role in choosing a new superintendent and redesigning the system, but to retain the right to take control back.

Recent movies such as “Waiting for Superman” and “The Cartel” place a heavy emphasis on problems in the public school systems, including those in the Tri-State area. Both movies highlight some issues surrounding the charter school movement, such as the difficulty of getting one approved, and the difficulty of getting students enrolled in charter schools. Waiting for Superman was released around the same time as the Facebook donation.

“The Cartel,” a documentary film which focuses heavily on problems in New Jersey public schools, also sheds some light as to why the number of people lining up for charter schools is steadily increasing.

“Only 35 percent of American high school seniors are proficient readers. Only 23 percent are proficient in math. Nationwide, only 74 percent of ninth graders graduate within four years—and that number drops to about 50 percent for black and Hispanic students. Twelve percent of American high schools are “dropout factories”—schools where less than 60 percent of freshmen even make it to their senior year,” according to The Cartel movie website.

“Despite their infancy, charter schools are popular with students, parents and teachers — on average, they have waiting lists greater than 50 percent of their enrollment. However, they only represent 1 percent of the 1.3 million public school students in New Jersey,” according to the New Jersey Charter School Resource Center.

In “Waiting for Superman”, Nakia, a single parent struggling to get ahead, can no longer keep up with the $500 per month tuition for her daughter to attend a local Catholic elementary school. That’s why Nakia submitted an application for her daughter Bianca to attend the Harlem Success Academy, a free charter school in Manhattan, New York with strong state test results. Bianca is one of 767 children vying for 35 spots. (This Examiner won’t be a movie spoiler and say what happens in the movie).

One of the most controversial issues regarding charter schools is that in many cases there is no teachers’ union. A highly publicized example of this was when a popular and highly regarded New York City teacher lost her job at a charter school after she began questioning her pay, which was considerably lower than the typical compensation offered by area public schools. She later got a job at a public school. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/28/nyregion/28charter.html?_r=1&ex=1152072000&en=66db8b5386723147&ei=5070&emc=eta1

Many public school supporters also state that academically charter schools are often no better (or worse than) than the public school districts. At the end of the 2009-2010 school year, Newsweek reported on a study by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Educational Outcomes (CREDO), which found that 37 percent of charter schools produce academic results that are worse than public schools, while only 17 percent perform significantly better. Earlier studies sponsored by the American Federation of Teachers, the second-largest teachers’ union, had produced similar results, but they were suspect, since unions stood to lose from the charter-school movement.

Failing charter schools are closed down. Since 1996 (according to the NJ Department of Education website),

• 5 charter schools have been denied final granting of charter after having an approved application but were not prepared open;

• 11 charters have been revoked by the Commissioner;

• 17 charters schools board of trustees have surrendered their charter;

• 3 charters have not been renewed after the comprehensive renewal process.

Additional Information:
“The Cartel” movie, which has had limited screenings, now also sells DVD’s through www.Amazon.com.

“Waiting for Superman” will be available in Blue Ray and DVD formats on February 15.

National Stats on Charter schools

SOURCE: Examiner.com, http://www.examiner.com/elementary-education-in-newark/nj-parents-can-t-get-enough-of-charter-schools

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Editorial
January 7, 2011
Green Bay Press Gazette

The schools of tomorrow likely will look much different from those of today, and we’re glad the Green Bay School District is among those looking to change with the times.

The school district this fall will open the John Dewey Academy of Learning charter school, a project-based learning environment that initially will serve 60 to 70 students in grades eight through 11. With charter schools still relatively rare in our area — the West De Pere School District opened one in 2007 — officials still are working to clarify what the charter school is, and what it isn’t.

“It’s for all kids, from gifted and talented to kids who are struggling,” said Tom Blankenheim, associate director of alternative programs for the Green Bay district, “where they’re not finding a good fit between the traditional model of education and their needs. It’s a chance for kids who want to take more of the responsibility for their own learning.”

Charter schools have a greater degree of autonomy than regular schools, which exempts them from certain state or local rules, according to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. Still, they must hire licensed teachers to administer state tests and follow federal regulations, among other requirements.

Green Bay’s new school will offer project-based learning, which allows students to work on academic projects of their choosing that incorporate state curriculum standards. It’s similar to the project-based model used by Phantom Knight School of Opportunity in the West De Pere School District, and educators say certain students thrive within that type of educational environment.

As with anything, there’s a cost to the new school — a yet-to-be determined site, technology and staffing all factor in — which will be partially offset by start-up and implementation grants. But such an investment also can pay off in per-pupil money from the state, Blankenheim said, as innovative educational models may keep students from dropping out of school or leaving the district.

Still, officials say — and we agree — that giving students innovative options for learning remains the primary objective. Green Bay’s high school completion rate was slightly less than 79 percent in 2008-09, according to DPI statistics. And while districts like Milwaukee fare considerably worse — it had a completion rate of 67 percent in ’08-’09 — when one-fifth of students aren’t graduating, any option that can help them finish school should be examined.

For some students, charter schools might be the answer. For others, online learning, virtual charter schools and other unconventional but increasingly accepted — and even lauded — forms of learning could provide the key. Some may continue to thrive in a more traditional classroom environment, albeit one increasingly buoyed by technology unheard of even a generation ago.

Tomorrow’s schools will need to graduate skilled, savvy, global citizens. It stands to reason that they won’t necessarily look, or function, like the schools of today.

SOURCE: Green Bay Press Gazette, http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/article/20110107/GPG0602/101070499/Editorial-Education-changing-with-the-times

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By Jim Warren
January 7, 2011
Lexington Herald Leader

FRANKFORT — A bill allowing charter schools in Kentucky, and letting parents under certain conditions to enroll their children in public schools closest to their homes, is headed for a likely Senate vote Friday.

Senate Bill 3 sailed out of the Senate Education Committee on Thursday, with all five Democrats on the committee voting against it. The bill’s co-sponsor, Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville, said afterward that he expects a vote by the full Senate on Friday.

Most of the 2½ -hour committee discussion focused on the bill’s school-enrollment provisions, which are aimed primarily at the Jefferson County Public Schools, but apparently could apply to other Kentucky districts as well. Officials at the Fayette County Public Schools said Thursday afternoon that they don’t believe the measure will affect Lexington as it’s now written.

Charter schools are publicly funded schools that are granted special contracts, or “charters,” freeing them from many public school regulations. Proponents say this allows charters to use new, more innovative teaching methods, helping students who have been struggling in traditional schools.

Williams, who described SB 3 to education committee members Thursday, stressed that it allows, but doesn’t require, charter schools. Charters, he said, would provide “a new tool” for Kentucky school districts to help low-achieving students.

SOURCE: Lexington Herald Leader, http://www.kentucky.com/2011/01/07/1589388/panel-approves-bill-allowing-charter.html

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Lindsey Burke and Jena Baker McNeill
January 5, 2011
The Heritage Foundation

Abstract: President Obama’s Educate to Innovate initiative has provided billions in additional federal funding for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education programs across the country. The Administration’s recognition of the importance of STEM education— for global competitiveness as well as for national security—is good and important. But the past 50 years suggest that federal initiatives are unlikely to solve the fundamental problem of American underperformance in STEM education. Heritage Foundation education and national security analysts explain that, though Educate to Innovate is intended to raise the U.S. “from the middle to the top of the pack in science and math,” the federal program’s one-size-fits-all approach fails to remedy the underlying problems of academic performance and does not plug the leaky pipeline in the American education system.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Sputnik and the space race inspired a generation of Americans to pursue education and careers in science and technology. Half a century later, American students are now ranked 22nd and 31st among their peers throughout the world in science and math, respectively. Students in the United States, once a leader in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), are now outperformed by students from Liechtenstein, Slovenia, Estonia, and Hungary, among others.[1]

In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education published “A Nation at Risk,” a national study that highlighted the unacceptable state of the American education system:

Our nation is at risk. Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world. This report is concerned with only one of the many causes and dimensions of the problem, but it is the one that undergirds American prosperity, security, and civility…. What was unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur—others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments. If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.[2]

More than two decades later, in 2010, the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine published “Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited: Rapidly Approaching Category 5,” which built on the findings of their 2005 “Gathering Storm” report. Notably, the report warns that, “Today, for the first time in history, America’s younger generation is less well-educated than its parents.”[3]

Attempting to counter the faltering academic standing of American students and seeking to elevate them “from the middle to the top of the pack in science and math,” the Obama Administration announced its Educate to Innovate initiative in November 2009.[4] The program, while touted as an effort to enhance STEM education, falls short of achieving this goal because it fails to address the underlying problems that plague the current educational system.

The Obama Administration should limit, not increase, federal influence over education, and afford state and local policymakers flexibility with their federal education dollars in order to better target resources to those areas most in need. For their part, state and local policymakers should:

• Promote alternative and flexible means to certify new teachers;

• Create an environment favorable to online education to allow more students to have access to quality STEM education;

• Link teacher pay to performance to help recruit and retain qualified teachers; and

• Reform the traditional public school structure to promote school choice.

Educate to Innovate

President Barack Obama’s Educate to Innovate campaign is touted as a collaborative effort between the federal government, the private sector, and the non-profit and research communities to raise the standing of American students in science and math through commitments of time, money, and volunteering. The program strives to increase STEM literacy, enhance teaching quality, and expand educational and career opportunities for America’s youth.

When the program was first announced in November 2009, the participating organizations offered a financial and in-kind commitment of more than $260 million. Taxpayer obligations for the federal government’s portion of Educate to Innovate add to that total.

Additionally, five public–private partnerships were announced, as well as commitments by key societal and private-sector leaders to mobilize resources for STEM education, innovation, and awareness.[5] These partnerships and commitments are:

• Time Warner Cable’s “Connect a Million Minds” (CAMM), which pledges to connect children to after-school STEM programs and activities in their area;

• Discovery Communications’ “Be the Future” will broadcast dedicated science programming to more than 99 million homes and offer interactive science education to approximately 60,000 schools;

• Sesame Street’s “Early STEM Literacy” commits to a two-year focus on STEM subjects;

• National Lab Day will promote hands-on learning with 100,000 teachers and 10 million students over the next four years, and foster communities of collaboration between volunteers, students, and educators in STEM education. These initiatives will then culminate in a nationally recognized day centered on science activities;

• The National STEM Video Game Challenge promotes the design and creation of STEM-related video games;

• The annual White House Science Fair will bring the winners of science fairs from across the nation to the White House to showcase their STEM creations and innovation; and

• Sally Ride, first female astronaut, Craig Barrett, former Intel chairman, Ursula Burns, CEO of XEROX, and Glenn Britt, CEO of Eastman Kodak, committed to foster interest and support for STEM education among American corporations and philanthropists.[6]

In January 2010, President Obama announced the continuance of the program, highlighting the half-billion-dollar financial commitment from the Administration’s partners. This expansion includes an added commitment of $250 million in financial and in-kind support, and a promise by 75 of the nation’s largest public universities to train 10,000 new teachers by 2015. The program expansion also included further public–private partnerships intended to facilitate the training of new STEM educators, including the launch of Intel’s Science and Math Teachers Initiative and the PBS Innovative Educators Challenge, as well as the expansion of the National Math and Science Initiative’s UTeach program and Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowships in math and science. Furthermore, the President called on 200,000 federal government employees working in the fields of science and engineering to volunteer to work with educators in order to foster enhanced STEM education.[7]

A More Fundamental Problem

When President Obama announced his Administration’s plan to enhance STEM education, he affirmed that “we know that the nation that out-educates us today will out-compete us tomorrow.”[8] The President’s plan to enhance STEM education, much like similar efforts in the past to improve education through short-term bursts with federal dollars, falls short of the dramatic changes needed in the educational system to truly fill the gap.

The need to improve STEM education in the United States is no recent revelation. Over the past 50 years, American leaders have repeatedly discussed the need to enhance STEM education. Yet, despite increasing federal efforts and spending, U.S. students continue to under-perform in STEM subjects. In 2007, for instance, the America COMPETES Act created new federal funding for STEM education. The act included the creation of a new federal initiative to train 70,000 new teachers in Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses, as well as initiatives intended to provide existing teachers with STEM training and to encourage university students pursuing STEM degrees to concurrently obtain teaching certifications. Despite these efforts, there remains a major shortage of qualified STEM teachers throughout the nation—and American students continue to perform worse than their peers in STEM subjects.[9]

Encouraging the private sector to get involved in the education of tomorrow’s workforce can align the education of today with the skills needed for tomorrow. Using creative approaches to tackle learning challenges is certainly a concept that should be embraced. The problem with the President’s approach, however, is that the root of America’s STEM education deficit is much more fundamental than the problems addressed by the President’s initiatives. The American K–12 education system is meant to function as a pipeline that prepares students for higher education and careers. But with an average annual dropout rate of close to 10 percent, there is little doubt that this pipeline has sprung a leak.[10] Even many of those who do graduate with a high school diploma lack the knowledge and skill-base to succeed in the STEM field.

In the United States today, just 73 percent of freshmen entering high school will graduate within four years, and those who do are often not adequately prepared for higher education and careers in STEM fields.[11] Too many students are not making it through the leaky pipeline of the American education system with the skills they need to succeed. The reasons for their underperformance stems from a number of problems:

A One-Size-Fits-All Approach. Despite increasing federal control over the American education system over the past 50 years, educational achievement across the country has continued to deteriorate.[12] A large part of the problem is that the federal focus centers on a one-size-fits-all approach. Most recently, this approach is part of the Obama Administration’s efforts to impose national education standards and tests on states. This is a significant federal overreach into states’ educational decision-making authority, and will likely result in the standardization of mediocrity, rather than a minimum benchmark for competency in math and English.[13] Applying a blanket approach to education reform undermines innovation in STEM education, increasing conformity at the expense of meeting the diverse needs of students and parents.

Recruiting Quality Teachers. The Educate to Innovate initiative increases Department of Education grants to train teachers in the STEM fields by $10 million, and lauds a promise by 75 of the nation’s largest public universities to train 10,000 new teachers by 2015. But in pledging to train 10,000 new teachers over the next five years, public universities will be training just 2,500 more teachers in the STEM fields than are currently being trained. This means that each of the 75 schools will train just six new teachers per year.[14]

A major impediment to improving STEM education in the public school system, however, is the ability of schools to recruit quality teachers in the field. The average salary for K–12 teachers in the 2006–2007 school year was $51,000, 86 percent of the yearly salary of occupations requiring similar education.[15] More than half of the workers in science and engineering fields earned a salary of $70,600 or more in 2007.[16] Students graduating from college with STEM degrees recognize that they can earn more in non-teaching professions and are shying away from careers in education. The Business Higher-Education Forum estimates that by 2015 there will be a shortage of 283,000 science and education teachers in secondary education alone.[17]

Concurrently, barriers also exist discouraging those who are currently in STEM professions from becoming teachers. Individuals with a professional background in STEM have the potential to be outstanding teachers because of their in-depth understanding of the subjects and practical experience. In many cases, however, these individuals face difficulties in obtaining teaching certifications, in terms of time, cost, and prohibitions imposed, often from federal policymakers.

Fixating on the Traditional School Model. While alternative education programs have long been in development, the American education system has continued to fixate on the traditional school model. Alternative education programs offer much promise for fostering innovation in education across the country. Online or virtual learning programs, for example, allow a break from the traditional model in which educational opportunity is tied to one’s zip code and enables students to gain access to the best teachers regardless of where they are located. In 2009, the U.S. Department of Education conducted a meta-analysis of online-learning studies and concluded that “students who took all or part of their class online performed modestly better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction.”[18]

Online-learning options are growing rapidly and present an effective new medium for STEM education. As of 2009, 45 states had some form of online-learning program, with more than one million students enrolled in courses online.[19]

Plugging the Leaky Pipe

This leaky pipeline is perpetuated as students, ill-prepared by a faltering educational system, face significant challenges in pursuing STEM education in post-secondary school. While the absolute number of students attaining STEM degrees more than doubled between 1960 and 2000, the number of students attending college increased. The percentage of students obtaining STEM degrees has, thus, held relatively constant around 17 percent for the past several decades. In the 2002–2003 school year, for example, of the approximately 2.5 million degrees awarded, 16.7 percent of bachelor’s degrees, 12.9 percent of master’s degrees, and 34.8 percent of doctoral degrees were in a STEM field. In comparison, roughly equal numbers of bachelor’s degrees were awarded in STEM as were awarded in business, and twice as many business master’s degrees were awarded. Only at the doctoral level do STEM degrees exceed most other fields.[20]

Despite the low number of STEM degrees awarded, demand for STEM professionals is growing. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports that between 1993 and 2004, employment in STEM fields grew by 23 percent, while overall employment in non-STEM fields grew by only 17 percent.[21] Furthermore, in 2010, the National Science Foundation reported that “the S&E [science and engineering] workforce has shown sustained growth for over a half a century, and growth is projected to continue in the future.” The same National Science Foundation report also estimated that the average annual growth rate for the science and engineering workforce is 6.2 percent, compared to 1.6 percent for the overall U.S. workforce. While the current economic recession has strained employment opportunities, the need for STEM remains strong and is a means to foster innovation in national security and industry, as well as promote job growth in research and development and related areas. The current educational system, however, continually fails to prepare students for a post-secondary STEM curriculum.

This means that America needs a real solution to the challenges in STEM education, one that develops and fosters interest in the subjects from an early age and builds a strong base of STEM-educated citizens throughout the United States. In order to achieve this goal, federal and state policymakers should work toward genuine education reform that empowers parents to choose a school that best meets the needs of their children. Data demonstrate that the one-size-fits-all federal efforts to improve STEM education have simply fallen short in educating America’s children in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Educate to Innovate is another broad scheme that will spend taxpayer dollars without getting to the root cause of deficiencies in the K–12 education system. In order to plug the leaky pipeline of STEM education, states should:

• Seek alternative and flexible means to certify new teachers. Too many science and math teachers do not have a degree in the subjects they teach. STEM majors have the potential to serve as high-quality science and math teachers; however, the rigor of such courses of study makes it difficult for these students to concurrently pursue minors or certificates in education. Traditional education degrees or certificate programs have a high cost in both time and money. Alternative certification programs, however, offer a low-cost, time-efficient means of training greater numbers of quality STEM professionals to enter the teaching field.

Organizations such as the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE) offer increasing appeal to both potential new teachers and schools seeking to hire these excellent teachers. Last year, ABCTE provided 219 new teachers with certificates, up from 144 in 2008. The cost of this program is a mere $1,995, while a traditional university degree could cost on average $28,080 at a public four-year university, or upwards of $105,092 at a private university.[22] Candidates for an ABCTE certificate need only to hold a bachelor’s degree, pass a background check, and pass teaching-knowledge and subject-area exams, with most completing the program in less than a year. ABCTE certification is already accepted as a teaching qualification in Florida, Idaho, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Utah, and Oklahoma.[23] While alternative teacher-certification skeptics have argued that such programs are not as rigorous, research has shown these concerns to be unfounded.[24] ABCTE reports that only 40 percent of its candidates are able to complete their rigorous program, highlighting its quality and merits.[25]

Nevertheless, traditional four-year universities are also stepping up in forming programs to encourage and enable STEM majors to pursue teaching after graduation. The University of Texas at Austin’s UTeach program, for example, offers students the opportunity to obtain a STEM degree and a teaching certificate concurrently.[26] The University of Texas is now graduating 70 science and math teachers per year with a 70 percent retention rate compared to the 50 percent national retention rate.[27] Following on the UTeach example, 13 other universities, including the University of California at Berkeley, have begun similar programs as part of the National Science and Mathematics Initiative (NSMI).[28]

• Encourage greater access to online classes and programs. In recent history, the quality of education available to a student has largely been determined by zip code. Online education programs, however, provide quality STEM education to students regardless of geography. Approximately 1 million students, or 2 percent of U.S. K–12 students, already participate in online education, with 27 states offering statewide virtual schools and 24 states plus the District of Columbia allowing students to attend these schools full-time.[29]

Across the nation, there is a great variety of online or virtual learning programs. Many offer supplementary education, presenting students the opportunity to take classes not offered at their schools (whether an upper-level Advance Placement (AP) class or basic physics) or offering a hybrid education to enhance in-class instruction. Others offer full-time programs or cyber charter schools where students “attend” all of their classes online. These programs may be either publicly run, under state, school district, or charter authority, or privately run, as the for-profit education industry now accounts for roughly 10 percent of the education market.[30] Another added benefit to online education is the ability to customize programs to student needs and allow students to work at their own pace.

For STEM education and beyond, virtual learning programs address teacher shortages. Students are able to take a chemistry class from the best instructors online, countering the fact that many school districts have trouble finding qualified STEM teachers. Some online programs even offer virtual chemistry or biology laboratories.

• Link pay to performance. Teachers’ salaries have long been based on seniority and credentials, completely ignoring market influence and teacher efficacy. To help recruit and maintain qualified teachers, school districts should link pay to performance. For STEM teachers or those with degrees or professional experience in the field, higher salaries are more prevalent in industry than in the teaching profession.

Recognizing this market demand, employers may need to offer STEM teachers better compensation. Providing bonuses for those teachers who are successful in recruiting more students to enroll and pass AP courses in the STEM fields could attract and retain high-quality teachers.[31] In Florida, a state leader in education reform, the One Florida program offers $50 in state funding to teachers for each of their students who pass an AP exam, up to $2,000 a year.[32]

• Empower parents with school choice. Millions of students across the country are trapped in low-quality, government-assigned public schools. School choice, however, offers parents the opportunity to choose schools for their children that offer better opportunities that meet their children’s needs. Last year, 23 private-school-choice programs in 15 states and the District of Columbia offered varying degrees of school choice options to 190,000 of the nation’s students. These programs not only provide better educational opportunities, but force schools to have greater accountability to students and their families through competition. In addition, 40 states and the District of Columbia permit charter schools, and 46 states have public-school-choice options.[33]

In the case of public-school choice, a key component has been the availability of “backpack funding,” or allowing funding to follow a student to a public school of choice. Such mobile funding also offers great potential for the future of online education, such that students could be able to use either a portion of their educational funding for supplemental virtual education or all of their educational funding for full-time programs.

A Nation at Risk

A STEM-educated workforce is vital to the security and the prosperity of the U.S. as industry and government increasingly demand highly trained STEM professionals to compete in the global market, and look to science and technology to help stay one step ahead of national security threats.

The United States must not allow itself to continue to be outcompeted in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. While the Administration’s Educate to Innovate initiative is intended to raise the U.S. “from the middle to the top of the pack in science and math,” this one-size-fits-all, federal approach fails to remedy the underlying problems of academic performance and does not plug the leaky pipeline in the American education system.

—Lindsey M. Burke is a Policy Analyst in the Domestic Policy Studies Department and Jena Baker McNeill is Policy Analyst for Homeland Security in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation. The authors thank research assistant Jessica Zuckerman for her assistance.

SOURCE: The Heritage Foundation, http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2011/01/Educate-to-Innovate-How-the-Obama-Plan-for-STEM-Education-Falls-Short#_ftnref1

Click here to download the report

REFERENCES IN THIS REPORT:

[1]U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, “Highlights From PISA 2006: Performance of U.S. 15-Year-Old Students in Science and Mathematics Literacy in an International Context,” December 2007, at http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2008/2008016.pdf (December 1, 2010), and press release, “Remarks by the President on the ‘Educate to Innovate’ Campaign and Science Teaching and Mentoring Awards,” The White House, January 6, 2010, at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-educate-innovate-campaign-and-science-teaching-and-mentoring-awar (December 1, 2010).

[2]National Commission on Excellence in Education, “A Nation at Risk,” April 1983, at http://www.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/risk.html (December 1, 2010).

[3]The National Academies Press, “Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited: Rapidly Approaching Category 5,” 2010, at http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12999&page=1 (December 1, 2010).

[4]Press release, “Remarks by the President at the National Academy of Sciences Annual Meeting,” The White House, April 27, 2009, at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-at-the-National-Academy-of-Sciences-Annual-Meeting (December 1, 2010).

[5]Press release, “President Obama Launches ‘Educate to Innovate’ Campaign for Excellence in Science, Technology, Engineering & Math (Stem) Education,” November 23, 2009, at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/president-obama-launches-educate-innovate-campaign-excellence-science-technology-en (December 1, 2010).

[6] Ibid.

[7]Press release, “President Obama Expands ‘Educate to Innovate’ Campaign for Excellence in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education,” The White House, January 6, 2010, at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/president-obama-expands-educate-innovate-campaign-excellence-science-technology-eng (December 3, 2010).

[8]Press release, “Remarks by the President on the ‘Educate to Innovate’ Campaign.”

[9]Dan Lips and Jena Baker McNeill, “A New Approach to Improving Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Education,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 2259, April 15, 2009, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2009/04/A-New-Approach-to-Improving-Science-Technology-Engineering-and-Math-Education.

[10]U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, “Fast Facts,” at http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=16 (May 26, 2010).

[11]Press release, “President Obama Announces Steps to Reduce Dropout Rate and Prepare Students for College and Careers,” The White House, March 1, 2010, at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/president-obama-announces-steps-reduce-dropout-rate-and-prepare-students-college-an (December 3, 2010).

[12]Lindsey M. Burke and Jennifer A. Marshall, “Why National Standards Won’t Fix American Education: Misalignment of Power and Incentives,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 2413, May 21, 2010, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2010/05/Why-National-Standards-Won-t-Fix-American-Education-Misalignment-of-Power-and-Incentives.

[13] Ibid.

[14]Dave Saba, president and CEO of the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE), in Sarah Torre, “Innovation Missing from President’s Educate to Innovate Program,” The Foundry, Heritage Foundation blog, February 3, 2010, at http://blog.heritage.org/2010/02/03/innovation-missing-from-presidents-educate-to-innovate-program.

[15]National Science Foundation, Science and Engineering Indicators 2010, Chap. 1.

[16] Ibid., Chap. 3.

[17]Business-Higher Education Forum, BHEF 2006 Issue Brief, 2006, at http://www.bhef.com/publications/documents/brief3_s06.pdf (December 3, 2010).

[18]U.S. Department of Education, “Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies,” September 2010, at http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf (December 3, 2010).

[19]John Watson, Butch Gemin, Jennifer Ryan, and Matthew Wicks, “Keeping Pace with K–12 Online Learning: A Review of State Level Policy and Practice 2009,” November 2009, at http://www.kpk12.com/wp-content/uploads/KeepingPace09-fullreport.pdf(December 21, 2010).

[20]Jeffrey J. Kuenzi, “Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education Issues and Legislative Options,” Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, May 22, 2006, at http://media.umassp.edu/massedu/stem/CRS%20Report%20to%20Congress.pdf (December 3, 2010).

[21]Lips and McNeill, “A New Approach to Improving Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Education.”

[22]The College Board, “What It Costs to Go to College,” at http://www.collegeboard.com/student/pay/add-it-up/4494.html (December 3, 2010).

[23]American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence, athttp://www.abcte.org(May 26, 2010).

[24]Robert Gordon, Thomas J. Kane, and Douglas O. Staiger, “Identifying Effective Teachers: Using Performance on the Job,” The Brookings Institution, April 2006, at http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2006/~/media/Files/rc/papers/2006/04education_gordon/200604hamilton_1.pdf (December 3, 2010).

[25]Lindsey Burke, “Getting Talent in the Classroom,” The Foundry, Heritage Foundation blog, October 16, 2009, at http://blog.heritage.org/2009/10/16/getting-talent-into-the-classroom/.

[26]The University of Texas at Austin, UTeach, at http://uteach.utexas.edu/ (December 3, 2010).

[27]National Math and Science Initiative, “UTeach Program,” 2010, at http://www.nationalmathandscience.org/index.php/uteach-programs/uteach-program.html (December 3, 2010).

[28]University of California at Berkeley, CalTEACH, 2008, at http://calteach.berkeley.edu/about.php (December 3, 2010).

[29]Dan Lips, “How Online Learning is Revolutionizing K–12 Education and Benefiting Students,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 2356, January 12, 2010, at http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/01/how-online-learning-is-revolutionizing-k12-education-and-benefiting-students.

[30] Ibid.

[31]Ethel Machi, “Improving U.S. Competitiveness with K–12 STEM Education and Training,” Heritage Foundation Special Report No. 57, June 16, 2009, at http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/06/improving-us-competitiveness-with-k-12-stem-education-and-training.

[32] Ibid.

[33]Lindsey Burke, “School Choice in America 2009: What it Means for Children’s Futures,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 2332, November 12, 2009, at http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/11/school-choice-in-america-2009-what-it-means-for-childrens-futures.

The post “Educate to Innovate”: How the Obama Plan for STEM Education Falls Short appeared first on Leave Charter Schools Alone.

by Natalie Hopkinson
January 6, 2011
NPR

Natalie Hopkinson is a fellow of the Interactivity Foundation and the co-author of Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop Generation.

Something wasn’t right at the high school that Darwin Bridgers’ son attends, so he sat in on the class to see for himself. All morning long, the instructor at the Washington, D.C. charter school pointed to a list of ground rules, a detailed list of rewards and punishments posted on a wall near the front of the class filled with black and Latino students.

Then the students filled out worksheets. That’s how it went: rewards and punishments, then worksheets. No instruction, just worksheets. At the end of the class, Bridgers, who works as an exterminator, pulled aside the teacher, a young white male and recent graduate.

“I wanted to know when he was going to do some, you know, teaching,” Bridgers explained to me recently. “You know, like, how we used to have in school? She would stand in front of the class … ”

I nodded my head. I attended K-12 at schools in Canada, Indiana and Florida in the ’80s and ’90s, but I knew exactly what he meant. There would be assignments to read from textbooks. A teacher would give a lecture and randomly call on students. Students would ask questions and write things down. Then there would be some sort of written exam to see what you’d learned.

Of course, today the “reformers” say that that way of teaching is old school. It was fine before the days of social media and the “information revolution” and the global economy. But now, as the argument goes in films like Waiting for Superman, no self-respecting parent would ever send his or her child to a “failing” public school like the one that generations of Bridgers’ family attended in their neighborhood in Northeast Washington.

For Bridgers’ son and a disproportionate number of black students around the country, charter schools have become the preferred choice. The idea is that charters can find a model that produces results — measured in test scores — then apply it to different campuses. They can raise and spend money independently. They can have management consultants, and they can compete — just like a business. As the charter school movement picks up steam nationwide, the District of Columbia may provide a glimpse of the future of “choice”: Roughly 40 percent of children enrolled in District of Columbia public schools attend charters.

Many D.C. parents are finding that, sure, there are plenty of choices — just not a lot of good, or even passable ones. When you mix corporate strategies with an ominous 2014 compliance deadline under the “No Child Left Behind” law, you often end up with scenes that look nothing like what most of us might recognize as a classroom.

“What once was an effort to improve the quality of education turned into an accounting strategy,” the acclaimed education historian Diane Ravitch writes in her book The Death and Life of the Great American School System. “The strategy produced fear and obedience among educators. It often generated higher test scores. But it had nothing to do with education. It produced mountains of data, not educated citizens. Its advocates then treated that data as evidence of its success.”

That strategy has grown even more intense as teachers and administrators are testing for their professional lives. Under “No Child Left Behind”, 100 percent of schools must reach certain test-score targets by 2014; schools that fall short could lose federal funding, or be closed.

Even if the law is repealed, which is something the Obama administration has signaled it will do, education has been changed in this country forever. Obama’s “Race to the Top” program continues to use the same sticks and carrots that require educators to teach to the test or else be fired or make less money.

The looming deadline is making people do crazy things: Like administrators pushing out low-performing students in North Carolina. Like teachers helping students cheat in Atlanta. Like officials producing math so fuzzy, it would make Wall Street CEOs blush. And, in the case of the Oprah-certified former D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, like importing shoddy private managers to take over a school.

Under this framework, “failing” schools are by definition the ones serving the most vulnerable populations — recent immigrants learning English, families battling poverty, children with trifling or MIA parents. The reformers say that even these students would produce better test scores if only they weren’t sitting in front of “lazy” teachers collecting checks, a slight upgrade from Ronald Reagan’s welfare queens.

Under this movement, teachers don’t get better with practice. Instead they are installed and reinstalled like interchangeable parts. Teachers’ unions, originally organized to protect the mostly female work force from capricious regulations of their marriages and lifestyles by mostly male administrators, are depicted as the enemies of progress. (Police unions somehow escaped blame for rising murder rates.)

I’m less concerned about the teachers and administrators than I am the children stuck in those classrooms. What it means to learn has been transformed for a generation of urban children. Education is acquiring a basic body of knowledge needed to competently vote and play Jeopardy, appreciate music and art, go to college and get a job, communicate and so on.

But in the name of reform, it’s as if somehow the goalpost has been moved without our realizing it. Now education — for those “failing” urban kids, anyway — is about learning the rules and following directions. Not critical thinking. Not creativity. It’s about how to correctly eliminate three out of four bubbles. The whole messy, thrilling, challenging work of shaping young minds has been reduced to a one or a zero. Pass or fail.

A decade of this language has taken its own toll. Kids attend “failing” schools. A majority of black boys are “failures.” Whole communities are branded with a collective “F.” Conservative California politicians liken Compton parents who demand the heads of school staff to modern-day versions of Rosa Parks.

So in cities such as New York, they bring in the number crunchers instead of real education experts — even if these privatization experiments can go horribly, tragically wrong. And even if choosing a charter school often means choosing to racially segregate.

Public schools that enjoy certain socioeconomic privileges (and a minimal number of needy kids) are thriving and will continue to be left alone. But for the “failing” communities and students, there will be no public system. Instead they are required to navigate the education marketplace, choosing between neighborhood schools that have been creamed of their best students and the new experimental start-ups that on average perform worse than traditional public schools. “This strategy plays a shell game with low-performing students, moving them out and dispersing them, pretending they don’t exist,” Ravitch wrote.

We have collectively decided that we are incapable as a society of honoring the social contract to own buildings and pay teachers in disadvantaged communities. How can a whole demographic of children need to be “fixed”? How can all of them be wrong?

As for his black son, Bridgers believed that there was something wrong with the medicine. “The teacher was too young,” he says. “He couldn’t handle the pressure.” A week after Bridgers visited the school, his son told him that the young teacher had left and never come back. So Bridgers sent his son to live with his mother in Pennsylvania. “I coach football Little League,” he told me. “This is what we talk about on the sidelines. It’s terrible what they are doing to these schools.”

SOURCE: NPR, http://www.npr.org/2011/01/06/132702152/the-root-the-mceducation-of-charter-students

The post The Root: The McEducation of Charter Students appeared first on Leave Charter Schools Alone.

By Rhonda Evans
January 4, 2011
The Guardian

Michael Gove is holding up Alberta in Canada as a role-model for UK education. But is the schools secretary being a little too selective?

Britain’s recent further slide down the international education league tables of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has provided Michael Gove with an opportunity for political capital. This follows on from comments he made almost as soon as taking office, in which he highlighted the achievements of Alberta, Canada, which regularly scores more highly than any other English-speaking region in the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) rankings.

“In … Alberta, schools have been liberated, given the autonomy enjoyed by charter schools in the US,” said Gove in a speech to school leaders in June. “Headteachers control their own budgets, set their own ethos and shape their own environments. And the result – Alberta now has the best-performing state schools of any English speaking regions.”

The inference is that what British schools need is autonomy for heads (freeing them from local authority “control”), choice for parents and even more competition between schools.

Gove cites Angus MacBeath, former Edmonton schools superintendent, “who has achieved superb results by, in effect, making every school a charter school … Competition has driven improvement and the same virtuous dynamic has delivered better value for money.”

Having recently returned from making a documentary about the Albertan system, and having talked to MacBeath himself, among others, I can’t help coming to the conclusion that the schools secretary is being highly selective in his comments about Alberta so as to justify a further large dose of the free market, under the guise of rolling back the state and fitting snugly into Tory ideology.

To this end he has encouraged parents to set up their own schools with their own curriculums, and offered state schools the opportunity to become academies, so divesting them of their relationship with their local education authority. Many believe his underlying intention is to bolster the plethora of private companies who already make millions from the education budget and are waiting to take over the running of state schools, filling the void created by Gove.

I was in Alberta for two weeks, speaking to principals, teachers and parents, and interviewing staff from the provincial government (Alberta Education) and Edmonton Public School Board.

I found Albertan school leaders proud of their state education system. As Ron Bradley, principal of Ross Sheppard high school, told me: “We are public schools that offer choice. We’re as good as anyone else and we’re probably better than many, so if you want to come in as a private school, please come in, and we’ll compete with you and blow you out of the water. We welcome charter schools. We’ll just build a school beside them and put them out of business.”

Instead of seeking to further weaken and dismantle local authorities, Alberta’s education system is based on the belief that local school boards – the equivalent of LEAs – rather than private enterprise are best placed to respond to local needs. Though the curriculum and exam system are the same throughout the province, enabling province-wide comparisons of student and teacher achievement, Albertans believe that the needs of each school are best addressed within each district.

Principals have the freedom to shape the culture of their schools, but only within the remit of the district. Each principal is a team player, contracted to the district, and is moved around schools as the superintendent sees fit.

Equitable distributionThe idea that headteachers in Edmonton are totally autonomous is not true. Take the central core of any school’s budget, its teachers. In Edmonton, they have worked out what they regard to be an equitable way of distributing staff costs in which the district charges all schools a basic figure for any teacher. So, whether you are hiring a teacher with 25 years’ experience or just five months’, it’s the same cost per teacher. Compare that with heads in the UK, who have to make decisions on the basis of cost rather than educational needs.

Alberta’s success story began about 30 years ago, when then-fashionable free market advocates within the provincial government encouraged private and charter schools to set up. As in the US, there is no federal control of education in Canada; each province is responsible for its own education system. For the one third of children who live in rural areas, there is only their local school, much like in the UK. But within the urban areas of Edmonton and Calgary, there was pressure from the private sector, and politicians were offering to fund both private and state schools out of the public pot.

The response of Edmonton’s district superintendent at the time, Emery Dosdall, was to find out what parents wanted. As a result, Edmonton Public School Board introduced specialist programmes or options catering for every conceivable interest: sports, faith, language, certain trades, the international baccalaureate, you name it, they offered it.

This kept both the middle classes and the dollars within the state system, eliminating the demand for private schools, several of which closed down or became state schools. It also enabled the district to reinvigorate schools in formerly working-class areas, which were experiencing falling rolls. One of Edmonton’s most successful, Victoria School of the Arts, is situated in the downtown area. It was formerly undersubscribed; after reinventing itself as an arts specialist it is now hugely popular with the middle class across the city, but local children have priority.

Educationalists in Alberta believe choice creates “buy in” from parents and students. Visiting Pollard Meadows primary, one of nine across the city that offer both a mainstream, and more traditional, learning approach, I found the parents of both systems very happy with what they’d bought into. Whatever the programme, whether language, faith, science, or a teaching approach such as Cogito, where five-year-olds sit at desks and are taught in rows, all Albertan children are taught the same curriculum. There is no hiving-off of the so-called non-academic child into a vocational curriculum, since all these programmes come on top of, not instead of, the core curriculum.

These ideas increase the social mix. I met a 15-year-old who wanted to become a psychologist but who was taking the hair and beauty programme alongside students contemplating careers in the beauty sector. “It’s fun, I’m not very social, and this allows me to make new friends,” she told me. Her principal, Jean Stiles, explains: “In these options we want all our kids to be alongside one another. It builds the culture of our school.”

In fact, Alberta doesn’t stream or set children until they reach 16. When challenged about this, principals greeted me with incredulity. “Why would you want to make a kid feel bad about itself at such a young age?”, said Victoria Arts’ headteacher, John Beaton.

Although parental choice reinvigorated the state system, all principals agree that it opened up the system to competition. As Stiles says: “Every year in February, the gloves would come off and we’d be fighting each other for students and staff.”

The current superintendent, Edgar Schmidt, has made it his priority to address this. As a result, Edmonton principals get together once a month to share ideas and plan strategy. They form links with other school leaders in their own part of the city, and principals from what they term “have” schools support principals from “have not” schools.

At local level, the superintendent influences the culture and priorities of the district, and this crucial role is filled by only the best and brightest of former principals. Aspiring deputy and assistant heads are brought into the district office to work as assistant superintendents, so they can gain a district-wide perspective. Superintendents attend their own training college.

It’s hard not to detect a whiff of – dare one say it – socialism about the Edmonton system. But Gove has not pinpointed these characteristics.

MacBeath stresses that it has taken 30 years to put together an education system that leads the world, and he is deeply sceptical of politicians who propose a quick fix, particularly within a free market with ad hoc solutions. MacBeath told me he has been invited to the UK by Gove’s office to tell the secretary of state more about how he can replicate Alberta’s success. “I doubt whether I’ll be telling them what it is they want to hear,” he says.

“You have to have a brutal honesty about how badly you’re doing. So, the only way that you can change Britain is to start embarrassing people with the ugly truth. The ugly truth is the poorest are getting screwed. And guess what? Taxes are raised for all people, not just the middle class.”

Most people in Alberta knew exactly what was wrong with our system (overly influential private sector, too little middle-class buy-in to state schools, selection, streaming etc) – and their solutions are very different from Michael Gove’s.

• Rhonda Evans’s films about schools in Alberta can be seen at http://www.teachers.tv/videos/autonomy-choice-and-competition

SOURCE: The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jan/04/education-policy-canadian-model

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By Mary MacVean and Alexandra Zavis
January 1, 2011
Los Angeles Times

Some campuses say they lack the means to provide nutritious meals — or any meals.

At Larchmont Charter School in Los Angeles, a former restaurant chef whips up pasta with fresh vegetable sauce for lunch one day; on another he offers a salad bar with figs grown on campus.

But 500 miles north, in tiny Red Bluff, lunchtime at Sacramento River Discovery Charter School is decidedly different: Students must either bring their own lunches or place orders with parent volunteers who make a daily run to Taco Bell, Burger King or Subway.

Cafeteria food at traditional public schools has long had a bad reputation, but at least children can count on a meal that’s free for needy families.

Mealtime is more complicated at the more than 900 publicly financed charter schools in California. Unlike traditional campuses that must follow state nutrition regulations for schools, charters can make independent decisions about what’s for lunch. Some charter school officials decide not to serve it at all, even if that might mean that the nutrition needs of some of the state’s poorest children are not being met.

“Charter schools are about family choice,” said Phyllis Bramson-Paul, director of nutrition services for the state Department of Education. “On the other hand, there is a lot of hunger in California, and we know children who are hungry don’t learn as well.”

In fact, state education leaders have urged schools to expand existing food programs to include breakfast, citing consistent research showing that hungry children struggle to learn.

More than 3 million California students are eligible for help because they come from households that meet federal income requirements, currently $40,793 a year or less for a family of four, according to Department of Education officials. Although charters — just like traditional public schools — can get a cash subsidy from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to help provide meals to needy children, they are exempt from a state requirement to serve at least one nutritionally adequate subsidized meal a day to qualifying children.

Advocates for low-income families worry that those struggling to put food on the table can be left to decide between a traditional public school that offers their children adequate nutrition and a charter that may have smaller classes or more enrichment programs.

Lunchtime on some charter campuses “indulges the students’ worst impulses and obligates the parents to pay for meals that USDA is willing to fund,” said Matthew Sharp, a senior advocate at California Food Policy Advocates.

Colin Miller, vice president for the California Charter Schools Assn., said the schools are intended to give parents choices over their children’s education and “parents are fully aware of what the school can and cannot offer.”

Miller said he did not know how many children eligible to receive subsidized meals attend schools that don’t offer them.

A recent state audit was conducted in part to try to answer that question. Auditors were able to determine that more than half of the 815 charters active in April did participate in federal breakfast or lunch programs.

However, auditors found that the state education department lacked reliable data on charters’ nutrition programs. Attempts to get answers directly from charter schools met with no response in dozens of cases, leaving auditors unable to provide a complete picture of nutrition in schools that serve about 341,000 children, or 5% of public school students.

Some charter schools told the state that they provide an alternative meals program without government funding. Even with access to government funding, other charter schools report that they do not have the resources to feed students on campus or to comply with the numerous food safety, nutrition and administrative requirements to participate in federal meal programs.

At Sacramento River Discovery Charter School, more than half the students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, according to Larry Newman, the principal. But he said the school, which has 60 students in grades six to 12, does not have the kitchen, staff or funding to operate a meal program.

Catering options are limited. The school tries to buy the most nutritious takeout items but, Newman said, “It’s fast food…. It is not ideal.”

Some charters contract with the local school district to use its meal service, especially when they share a campus with a traditional school.

A number of caterers have also emerged to serve the charter movement. One of the largest, Revolution Foods, was started in 2006 by two mothers in Northern California. It now feeds about 60,000 meals a day to children in California and several other states.

“We heard from so many schools that it was a huge burden for them to figure out how to run a meals program,” said Kirsten Tobey, one of the founders of Revolution Foods. “There’s a huge record-keeping requirement in all these programs.”

The company makes its meals from scratch in its own kitchens, including one near downtown Los Angeles. On a recent day, the kitchen is simultaneously busy and quiet. One worker counted apples going into a box. At stations with stainless steel counters, others folded whole wheat tortillas containing beef, cabbage and homemade refried beans. Elsewhere, previously used boxes were readied to transport new meals.

Such services come at a premium, though. Although companies like Revolution Foods say they work hard to keep prices down, many charters find that the government reimbursement rate in California — up to $2.96 a meal for lunch and $1.98 for breakfast — doesn’t cover the cost of hiring a caterer.

Century Community Charter School in Inglewood, which opened in 2004, waited two years before its application to participate in the National School Lunch Program was approved. Even with reimbursements, the middle school, which serves about 400 students, was still falling $2,000 to $5,000 short each month, according to Principal Teri Norris.

“They have to stop calling it free lunch because it is not free to the schools,” she said.

One of the problems, she said, was that many students skip lunch and the school was reimbursed only for meals served. After numerous attempts to get the children to eat, the school canceled the program four years ago, Norris said.

Now, on most days, the children bring lunch from home. On Tuesdays, the kids can buy pizza from Pizza Hut for a dollar a slice, and on Fridays, parents cook hot dogs.

“We’re going to give them what they are going to eat, and kids eat pizza and hot dogs,” Norris said.

Tatiana Rivas, a 14-year-old in pink braces, said Tuesdays and Fridays were her favorite days. She often has nothing to eat, she said, because her mother works as a nanny and doesn’t have time to prepare food in the morning.

“I eat their food,” she said, pointing to friends who had brought sandwiches and tacos.

The school encourages the children to make their own lunches and teaches them about nutrition. For those who forget their lunches, it provides peanut butter sandwiches and snacks.

“No kid is ever hungry,” said Norris, who bought pizza for several children one recent Tuesday.

Still, she acknowledged the lack of a lunch program might be keeping some of the poorest families from sending their kids to the school. When the school opened in 2004, 85% to 95% of the children qualified for free or reduced-price meals, but the figure has fallen to about half.

Food policy experts concede that because charters range from small independent operations to large well-funded nonprofits, it would be hard to set standards that should be applied to all.

But Sharp, of California Food Policy advocates, said he would like to see school boards ask charter operators about their nutrition plans before approving new schools and require them to make provisions for students who qualify for free and reduced-price meals.

At Larchmont Charter, near both wealthy and low-income neighborhoods, students who can afford to pay $6 for lunch help cover the cost of providing free or reduced-price meals to the 30% who qualify for assistance. Parent volunteers help to run the meal program, which also keeps overall costs down.

All the food is made from scratch by Robertino Giovannelli, a chef who has a kindergartener at the school, and he uses locally grown, organic ingredients when possible.

“It’s what children deserve,” said Julie Johnson, who heads the school lunch committee. “That’s what they all should get.”

In downtown Los Angeles, Para Los Niños, which operates a charter elementary and middle school, provides free breakfasts, lunches and snacks to all 400 of its mostly low-income students. The federal government reimburses the school for all but $35,000 of the $329,000 annual cost, and the education nonprofit solicits donations to cover the balance.

The food is made by Unified Nutrimeals, which delivers meals daily in sealed containers that are kept in a warming oven or refrigerator until served.

“Some of these kids, this is their only food throughout the day,” said Gisselle Acevedo, president and chief executive of Para Los Niños. “You can’t expect them to … learn everything they are supposed to learn, and be engaged, if they don’t have appropriate nutrition.”

SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0101-charter-food-20110101,0,6502977,full.story

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By Richard Kahlenberg
January 04, 2011
The Century Foundation

Yesterday, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan published an op-ed in the Washington Post calling for bipartisan school reform centered around ideas like charter schools and merit pay for teachers. The instinct to find common ground between parties is sound, but as I note in an article in The New Republic today, a far better idea for bipartisan reform involves scaling up choice within the public school system. If implemented correctly, the conservative idea of school choice can advance the liberal goal of reducing the economic school segregation that lies at the core of our education challenges.

Duncan’s op-ed correctly observes that “few areas are more suited for bipartisan action than education reform” and he lists a number of sensible fixes to the No Child Left Behind Act, such as employing high quality tests that don’t narrow the curriculum, and measuring schools by the value they add to student learning as opposed to their absolute levels of performance. Duncan then throws in ideas long congenial to Republicans: charter schools (the vast majority of which are nonunionized), and teacher pay for performance.

Unfortunately, Duncan picks a fight by rejecting a key measure in No Child Left Behind that Republicans strongly favor: the federal right to transfer out of failing schools to better performing public schools. He rejects “federally dictated…school-transfer options,” which conservatives advocate as a way to promote greater accountability and competition among schools.

But there is also a strong liberal reason to support public school choice: the program’s ability to liberate low-income students from struggling high poverty schools. As James Ryan points out in his new book, Five Miles Away, A World Apart, the separation of rich and poor students in American public schools is the central impediment to equal opportunity. If properly structured to allow movement across school district lines, public school choice could do far more to address the gap in school performance than traditional reforms. As a Century Foundation study in Montgomery County Maryland recently found, even the most economically disadvantaged students can cut the achievement gap in half by attending more affluent schools.

Education is an important topic for bipartisan reform. But the key innovation lies in a different sort of reform than the Education Secretary envisions.

SOURCE: The Century Foundation, http://takingnote.tcf.org/2011/01/meaningful-bipartisan-school-reform.html

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By Morgan Smith and Sarah Butrymowicz
December 2, 2010
New York Times

It was almost lunch time on the day before Thanksgiving break, but Gustavo Corrales, a math teacher, was not ready to let his students out the door at the San Juan campus of IDEA Public Schools, a network of charter schools in the Rio Grande Valley.

“I’m not going to pass you if you don’t know what to do — but it’s not because I’m being mean. I’m not being gacho,” he said, using a Mexican slang word for “unkind.” “It’s because I want you to learn.”

Earlier that same morning, across Highway 83 at Southwest High School in Pharr, Cindy Rivera, a language arts teacher, passed out copies of Edith Hamilton’s “Mythology” to about 18 ninth graders. “This is a college level book, guys,” she said encouragingly, introducing a unit on classical gods and goddesses. “The material is perfect for high schoolers. You love violence, and you love romance.”

The two teachers are supposed to be rivals. Mr. Corrales works in a charter school that is publicly financed but operates independently of the Pharr-San Juan-Alamo Independent School District, where Ms. Rivera teaches. Nationally, charter schools and traditional school districts battle for students and money, and trade claims about their relative success.

But here in the Valley, less than an hour from the Texas-Mexico border, the charter network and the district are working together. With IDEA in the lead, they are creating a training center for teachers and principals that will serve both charter schools and traditional ones. By doing so, the area is helping to write a new chapter in charter-district relations, one that replaces competition with collaboration to better serve the needs of students, regardless of which school they attend. Urban districts like New York, Philadelphia and New Orleans have already developed such partnerships.

Mr. Corrales and Ms. Rivera each face a steep challenge: They are expected to take hundreds of students who statistically are unlikely to graduate from high school, and prepare them for college and life. IDEA and the Pharr-San Juan-Alamo district are both growing and hiring new teachers and principals every year. The center is intended to help prepare those educators for the intensity of the social and academic challenges that are endemic to a poor, largely rural community.

The Obama administration, which has advocated for more charter schools as part of the public education solution, supports these team efforts. Earlier this year, it made $643 million available through Investing in Innovation grants. Some of that money promoted charter-district collaborations.

In New Haven, Conn., for example, a grant awarded to Achievement First, a charter school, will place regular public school principals in charter schools for residency training. And in a collaboration outside the grants, charter schools in Washington, D.C., which teach about 40 percent of the city’s students, signed on to the district’s Race to the Top application, agreeing to work together on designing new teacher assessments.

IDEA has received nearly $5 million from the federal government, and the network has privately raised an additional $3 million to start the training center in the Valley.

First-year teachers and those recruited from elsewhere will attend the center for a few weeks of training over the summer. They will also go to multiple sessions throughout the year and can call on the center for extra help. In all, about 1,200 educators will pass through the center over the next four years.

Though teacher training centers have been around for years, cuts in state and local education budgets have forced some to close or to reduce their services, said Barnett Berry, who heads the nonprofit Center for Teaching Quality, based in North Carolina. The intense pressure to raise test scores and satisfy demands of the Bush-era No Child Left Behind act had a counterintuitive effect, shifting spending from improving teaching to raising test scores.

In South Texas, it is particularly difficult to get high-quality teachers into the classrooms where the students need them most — and teacher effectiveness is the single biggest predictor of student success, according to many education reformers.

The Rio Grande Valley serves as a demographic portrait of one of the most educationally underserved populations in the United States: overwhelmingly poor (89 percent of the students in the Pharr-San Juan-Alamo district qualify for free meals) and overwhelmingly minority (99 percent Hispanic). How the education system handles these students has “profound implications” for the challenges that demographic change will bring on a national level, said Robert Carreon, who directs Teach For America’s program in the Valley.

Most of the teachers in the rapidly growing Valley are Texas natives or are from the region, like Ms. Rivera, who graduated from Pharr-San Juan-Alamo schools. The need is great, due to the continued expansion of districts like P.S.J.A., which is one of the region’s largest, and the high demand for spots at IDEA, which currently has 14,000 students on the waiting list. Yet just 13 percent of adults over age 25 in the Valley have college degrees, severely limiting the hiring pool.

“South Texas really has to rely on their own homegrown talent,” said Ed Fuller, a senior research associate for the Center for Teaching Quality. “You get into this vicious cycle.”

Many South Texas students who decide to enter teacher training programs have low SAT scores. When they graduate from the teacher training and earn their certification, Mr. Fuller said, many of them also tend to score low on certification tests. Research has demonstrated that those who had low scores are often less effective teachers.

While IDEA tries to hire teachers who have at least two years of classroom experience and a record of improving classroom success, it also hires straight out of teacher preparation programs, particularly those around the state.

Selectivity in both traditional and alternative certification teacher training programs is low, Mr. Fuller said. A report from the National Council on Teacher Quality found that only four schools in Texas had a strong teacher preparation program, although one was in the Valley, in Edinburg, on the campus of the University of Texas, Pan American.

It’s time for that to change, said Tom Torkelson, founder and chief executive of IDEA.

“All we’re doing is enshrining within our K-12 education system all the kinds of race and class inequities when we don’t ensure that every child has a great teacher,” Mr. Torkelson said. “Right now, people’s ZIP codes are the most likely indicator of whether they are going to go to college and succeed.”

SOURCE: New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/us/03ttteach.html

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By Leave Charters Alone
December 3, 2010

Stories related to charter schools and their self-described movement has lately been featured in the media probably more than it has been for the past five years combined. This increase in public attention is indebted to many factors such as dedication of updated resources to the movement by the Obama administration and the latest documentary by Oscar winning director Davis Guggenheim, “Waiting for ‘Superman‘”. As it is been the case wherever money is involved, the issue stirred a hot debate, emotions ranging from characterizing charter schools as the new savior of the broken education system to the latest demons to hijack money from our much-needy schools. Whatever the case is, the issue warrants an objective look.

The nation’s first charter school was opened in Minnesota in 1992 according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Since then charter schools mushroomed all over the country, bringing the number of charter schools close to 5,000, serving 1.6 million students in 41 states. Like any new enterprise, in their initial years the movement enjoyed the freedom to grow with lax oversight. This period allowed many of today’s high performing charters, such as KIPP, experiment and flourish as well as bad apples take advantage of the imprudent regulations. While charters were flying under the radar in this period, it was usually the bad apples that made the headlines in the media.

When we came to the 2000s, tables started turning for charters as the famous “No Child Left Behind Act” made its way to the country’s classrooms. With the new regulations charters started to be held more accountable for their students’ academic achievement and how they spent their money in a manner much closer to traditional school districts than ever before. The charters that achieved the reputation of being “high-performing” paved their success in this “high-accountability” period. Today there are dozens of these schools such as nationwide KIPP Schools, California’s Green Dot Public Schools, Texas’ Harmony Public Schools or New York’s Harlem Success Academy. These charters have long track records and are subject to increasing public scrutiny.

The charter movement has come a long way and refined itself, pushing the best practices and practitioners to the top. Although charter schools are subject to almost all of the same regulations and oversight, certain myths have inherently followed the movement as the issue includes two important elements, money and children. One of the most famous of these myths is that charter schools achieve comparable academic performance by selectively forcing out weak academic students. It is important to remember charter schools give students a choice. In fact from a policy standpoint, creating schools of choice encourages families to become astute consumers of education. Charter schools students sometimes opt out and re-enter the traditional public school system for a variety of reasons. These reasons include less extracurricular activities at the high school level, absence of bus transportation or simply moving out of the area. These charter-unique challenges are most mirrored by the inequitable funding these schools receive. Regardless, in most cases charter schools still have the same attrition rate as their surrounding school district. Even successful charter schools suffer from this misconception. On August 17, 2010, USA Today ran a story on Texas’ acclaimed Harmony Public Schools. In the article Ed Fuller, a University of Texas-Austin researcher, was quoted “It’s not hard to be ‘Exemplary’ if you lose all the kids who aren’t performing”. More than one month later Harmony was featured on Texas Insider on September 27, 2010 with a title “What Drives High Achievement At Harmony Charters?” This time Fuller conceded that the percentage (Fuller reported the network’s attrition rate as 50% in USA Today) was merely an estimate based on an informal review of high school-level data, not a comprehensive study. Fuller also said that he did not find that the students who left had significantly lower test scores than those who stayed. This is an example of the same account reported in two completely different ways.

When we look at the facts, in the 2009-10 school year, of the 75 charter schools in Texas operated by Uplift Education, IDEA, KIPP, YES Prep and Harmony, 64% achieved the state’s highest ranking of exemplary. This percentage was more than double the percentage of traditional public schools receiving exemplary ratings within the traditional school districts where these charter schools operate. It is important to note that under Texas’ inequitable funding formula, charter school districts receive on-average around 80% of the funding a traditional urban district receives per student, making their academic performance all the more notable in terms of strong taxpayer dollar stewardship.

Unfortunately, the attempt by many to understand this substantial disparity in academic performance has led to both honest misunderstandings as well as the purposeful spread of misinformation by charter school opponents. These “myths” distract from the numerous substantive reasons for this difference in academic performance: longer school hours and more school days (made possible by lean central office costs), a strong and intense focus on leadership development, multiple pipelines of human capital, and a strong culture created through smaller schools, strong relationships between educators and families, and high-expectations for student achievement.

Charter schools already became an integral part of our education system and they do not seem to be going anywhere. The good ones deserve a fair look at their performance as their public service means to better the lives of our children.

SOURCE: Leave Charters Alone

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