Vol. 4, No. 21
June 4, 2002

* UNIONS: The California Teachers Association (CTA) lost its bid to tie nearly every aspect of classroom activity from standards to textbooks and teachers to collective bargaining. Thanks to widespread opposition, the bill was shelved late last week after its sponsor couldn't count enough votes to make it pass. But the CTA is apparently down but not out: Union boss Wayne Johnson announced that they would seek to gain control over the classroom in other legislative ways, or bring the measure directly to the voters in a ballot initiative, under the cover that they want teachers to have more control. In reality, the only power gained by this move is among union leaders.

* CHARTERS: South Carolina's average-ranked law has been on the skids since early last year, when a lower court told the legislature that it had to correct the racial balance provisions in the law in order for it to be held constitutional. To guard against the state's charters going into extinction, and to spur the creation of more charters, a measure is now pending that would allow the State Board of Education to create a Charter School Advisory Committee to review all charter applications before being submitted to local boards. The intent of the Advisory Committee is to strengthen the opportunity for charters to be approved. To respond to the court's concerns, the racial composition in a charter school must be within 20 percent of the district population, up from 10 percent. But the House voted last week to eliminate racial quotas all together, and it's unclear whether or not the Senate will act without such a component. The State Supreme Court is slated to issue its decision on the law's constitutionality.

* CHOICE: A new study of four public school choice programs in Minnesota finds that opponent's claims of harm to public schools are baseless and that these programs have spurred improvement for both students and the system. The study, "What Really Happened? Minnesota's Experience with Statewide Public School Choice Programs" finds that the number of students involved in one of the four major choice programs (open enrollment, charter schools, Second Chance options and Post-Secondary Enrollment Options) represents about 30 percent of all students. Findings also show that the growth rate of these programs has outpaced the growth rate of the state's overall K-12 student population, 1300 percent to 17 percent. In the study long-standing predictions about the creation of elite academies, re-segregation, creaming, and lack of innovation had been shown inaccurate. The full study can be found at: http://www.hhh.umn.edu/centers/school-change/.

* URBAN REFORM: The School Reform Commission designed to restore sanity to Philadelphia's schools is still woefully behind in its charge. Besides ceding too much control to the powers that be, the SRC recently took aim at three charters that have proven successful in educating children. One will not be allowed to expand; the others are being nitpicked to death on paperwork. But in a move that surprised even the charter community, SRC Chairman James Nevels announced in Harrisburg yesterday that the 26 charter applications he put on indefinite hold earlier this year may all be given the green light to open. While that's great news, the problem is that IT'S JUNE, MR. NEVELS!!! Most of the applicants have already scrapped their plans, and others may have a hard time finding staff to open. We'll give him points for "better late than never" but one charter insider offered this:

"Because we never hear directly from Mr. Nevels (except for one meeting), we're not quite sure where he stands. The recent unwarranted attacks on Harambee and Multi-Cultural, as well as the denial of expansion to PREP Charter had us thinking that protestations of support notwithstanding the SRC was anti-charter. Then this? My educated guess [and hope] would be that the SRC has realized that real reform will not come from within the system. Maybe, we can only hope, that Mr. Nevels and the others realize that charters are their natural friends and the crusty, entrenched bureaucrats at the District headquarters are not the fastest avenue to reform."

* EDISON NEWS: Relevant to Philly and elsewhere, Edison announced that it had raised enough capital to continue its operations, and we could almost hear the howls ("Foiled again!") from the opponents who have spent the last few weeks cheering on the company's demise. From their press release:

"Edison Schools … announced today that it had reached agreement on terms for $40 mm in new funding through credit lines from Chelsey Capital and Merrill Lynch. Definitive terms have been agreed upon. The financing is subject to final documentation and closing conditions. The capital will be used, in part, to fund the company's launch of new schools in Philadelphia and elsewhere as well as to open expansion sites in more than a dozen other cities this fall.

"'As we have done in every year of our operations, we have been successful in finding the capital we need to fund our growth and expansion,' said Chris Whittle, Edison's CEO. 'We are very pleased to add Chelsey Capital as one of the financial institutions supporting the continuing growth of one of the nation's largest systems of schools.

"'We believe deeply in Edison's mission to create better public schools. We're excited not only about the economic opportunity that this company represents to investors, but by its tremendous efforts on behalf of children, particularly those within our nation's inner cities.' said William Wachtel, general counsel of Chelsey." For more information go to http://www.edisonschools.com.

* BEYOND BASICS: Based on an estimate that 47 percent of high school seniors have actually taken a class labeled "economics," and in keeping with a No Child Left Behind Act provision to assess various subjects "to the extent time and resources allow," NAEP is preparing to test economics in 2006. To that end, this week the National Assessment Governing Board will hold a forum for "education policy, economics, assessment, and business groups, as well as the general public" to "testify" to the Board about it's economics framework. We won't be there, but we do have one question: With students repeatedly showing an inability to grasp reading, math and history concepts, how can they be expected to demonstrate a mastery of economics, which is built on all three? Maybe we should concentrate on our kids mastering the basics first.

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