The PA Senate Appropriations Committee is close to passing a charter school bill that could negatively impact schools. We continue to be concerned with the proposal because the goal of any legislative effort to reform Pennsylvania’s charter school sector should be one that ensures quality growth. As currently written SB 1085 does not.
To grow good charter schools, the evidence is abundantly clear that quality charter schools are directly correlated to quality authorizers. States with multiple, independent authorizers — independent legally and managerially from existing local and state education agencies — produce more and better opportunities for students.
In Michigan, university authorizers are constitutionally autonomous from the state department of education. The State University of New York’s Charter Schools Institute is also autonomous and is accountable to taxpayers and the legislature for the schools they authorize and manage.
These are just two models that prove independence from existing structures should be encouraged and valued in order to attract high quality universities that are also progressive, forward–thinking, and looking for opportunities to be distinctive. If the goal is to bring strong higher education institutions into the fold to improve K-12 student outcomes, the Pennsylvania Department of Education can’t be controlling every move. As currently written, SB 1085 regulates at an unprecedented level.
Over 15 Articles (including over 100 provisions) already apply to charter schools under PA Code Section 1732-A, yet the current proposal adds dozens of pages of increased regulation for charters and authorizers.
We encourage you to read through the current proposal and contact your legislators.
For your convenience, we have marked up a copy of Pennsylvania Senate Bill 1085 to show on the same document where language is wrong, bad for chartering, or the cause of additional, punitive or damaging oversight. Download it here.
This proposal would need to be significantly amended before it goes to conference and that is highly unlikely. It is time to scrap this bill and work to build a consensus on what will help improve outcomes for Pennsylvania’s students.
Response to “Brooklyn Councilman Steve Levin Calls for Moratorium On New NYC Charter Schools”
Alarming and disturbing – two words that are not normally associated with New York City charter schools. Two words that in no way describe the choice public schools that continually provide the most innovative options and stellar achievement for students. In fact, a study by Caroline Hoxby shows that the longer NY students are in charter schools, the higher they achieve.
Yet, Brooklyn-based Council member Steve Levin, clearly emboldened by Bill de Blasio’s mayoral victory, has called recently for a moratorium on all new charter schools in the city. He claims that everyone should be alarmed by the projected budget increase for charter schools across the city. To be clear, he called the increase “a bee in his bonnet”.
The inability of Levin to A) recognize that an increase in the budgets of charter schools will improve parents’ ability to free their children from mediocre at best traditional public schools and B) deal with the bee in his bonnet presents a threat to parent power in the nation’s largest city. New York City’s parents must be aware that the reign of charter-ally Michael Bloomberg is giving way to a hostile environment for high performing and innovative public schools of choice – and de Blasio hasn’t even been sworn in yet.
Not only are the proposals by de Blasio to charge charter schools rent, end all new charter co-locations, and now Levin’s call to halt the establishment of new charters in general threatening to the charter schools themselves, but also to parents. The power of parents to choose and to liberate their children from dismally achieving traditional schools is being damaged. Parents who know how great their children’s charter schools are working also know that establishing more great charters schools is necessary to spread power, choice, accountability, and achievement to other families. The Big Apple’s new political leaders, however, don’t understand that, and are bolstered to damage parent power and choice for our kids. That is what is truly alarming and disturbing.