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By Joseph D’andre
Sierra Vista Herald
April 9, 2015

Doug Ducey wants to continue to expand the role of charter schools in the Arizona education system.

However if you walk down the street and ask anyone what a charter school is, exactly, you will get a muddled response of confusion. So here is a primer on charter school education.

Arizona has 531 charter schools serving 136,323 students, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics.

In the 2013-2014 school year, Arizona opened the second most charter schools in the nation with 87 new schools educating 39,000 students according to the National Alliance for Public Charter School data.

There are 1.7 million students enrolled in charter schools in America. Just 10 years ago there were only 58,620 students enrolled according to studies by the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education and Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes.

So what exactly are charter schools?

Like traditional public schools, charter schools are a form of free public education funded by the government and open to all students.

Unlike traditional public schools, charter schools are independently run by charter management organizations and are free from curriculum regulations that bind together schools run by a district.

In exchange for their freedom of operation, charter schools must sign a charter promising they will meet certain academic and management performance goals or face closure.

Charter schools were introduced to the United States in 1991 with the intention of offering parents an additional choice of education and being ‘laboratories of innovation.’

How have charter schools performed?

Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes has been studying charter schools since 2009. In its most recent study released after the 2013 school year, the most telling statistics compare reading and math scores of charter schools to traditional public schools in their local market.

The study found that reading scores at over half of the nations charter schools are not significantly different than their local market public school, and 19 percent are significantly worst.

Forty percent of the nations charter schools report math scores that are not significantly different and 30 percent are significantly worst.

However, a quarter of charter schools produced significantly better reading scores than their local traditional public school, and nearly a third of charter schools produced significantly better math scores.

How are charter schools similar to traditional public schools? How are they different?

Both public and charter schools are funded by federal, state and local tax dollars. Additionally, both public and charter schools receive money per pupil that attends school.

Charter schools receive 36 percent less per pupil on average according to the Center for Education Reform. Additionally, charter schools do not receive funds to pay for their facilities so in many cases a percent of pupil funds must be spent on that.

Like public schools, charter schools “must be religiously neutral and must be non-religious in their programs, admissions policies, governance, and employments practices,” according to the United States Department of Education.

The most glaring difference that separates public from charter schools is the state-sponsored curriculum.

Public schools are bound to a strict curriculum that outlines how and what a student is taught, and how they are evaluated.

Charter schools are given relatively free rein in terms of curriculum. Rather than a set curriculum defined by the state, charter schools are allowed to design their own curriculums.

For example, BASIS Schools, a successful chain of charter schools based out of Arizona, is known for an accelerated math and science program that prepares students to take AP exams, according to an executive at BASIS, Dr. Peter Benzanson.

“Parents choose us because of our accelerated and rich math and science program,” Benzanson said.

Given this freedom, charter schools must meet certain standardized test scores outlined in their agreed upon charter. If they do not meet their academic or financial expectations, they risk being closed down.

The left supports charter schools, or is it the right?

Republicans have traditionally favored charter schools by way of public education reform and free choice of school. On the other hand, Democrats are backed by the ultra powerful teachers union that oppose charter schools and see them as competition. Only 7 percent of charter schools are unionized according to the Center for Education Reform.

However many politicians on both sides of the fence both favor and oppose charter schools. “It is looked at as a partisan issue but there is a lot of bipartisan behind school choice,” said Michelle Tigani the director of communications at the Center for Education Reform.

Charter school supporters are spending big money to influence both Republican and Democratic politicians.

For example, Texans for Public Justice found that between 2009 and 2013 Texas’ top six charter school chains donated about $800,000 to politicians. The two highest beneficiaries were Democrat Bill White and Republican Rick Perry.

In New York, pro charter school organizations spent $16 million on lobbying and campaign contributions in 2014 alone, according to an analysis of lobbyists reports and campaign finance data found by Capital New York. The donations were to assist New York’s pro charter school Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo in his battle against New York City’s anti charter school Democratic Mayor, Bill de Blasio.

Where does Gov. Doug Ducey stand?

True to his Republican ideologies, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey supports charter schools and parental choice.

“For too long, the federal government has forced a one-size-fits-all model on our education system,” Ducey said at his inaugural state of the state speech. “Let’s make open enrollment and parental choice a reality,” he said.

Ducey went on to say that he wants to take the nearly 400,000 empty seats in Arizona public school classrooms, and allow the state’s top public schools – charter and traditional – the “ability to apply for use of the empty schools and empty classrooms, so we can put those kids where they belong – in the public school of their parent’s choice.”

Following his election, Ducey chose three education advisors that come from pro-charter school backgrounds: Lisa Graham Keegan, Matthew Ladner and Eric Twist.

Why support charter schools?

Simply, charter schools supply parents with an additional option when choosing a school for their children. Instead of being funneled into the only neighborhood school in their district, parents are able to make a choice depending on which school fits their child best.

“Demand for more schools of choice continues to grow,” Tigani said.

This creates competition with the traditional public schools. If a charter begins producing better results than the neighborhood public school, then the public school will be pressed to raise its standards and produce results.

Charter schools are designed to weed out the poor performing schools and only retain the successful. “There has been a movement towards putting the low performing schools out of business,” according to Benzanson. “Overall quality has increased significantly over the last five years with a movement to let high quality schools replicate,” he said.

“If the school isn’t living up to the charter, shape up or ship out,” Tigani said.

Why oppose charter schools?

One of the chief concerns of those who oppose charter schools is the concern of where their tax money is going. While there are many non-profit charter school management organizations, there are also a lot that are for-profit.

How are these organizations making a profit? “The money they get to educate the students,” is one way, according to the executive director of In The Public Interest, Donald Cohen.

For-profit charter school management organizations may take a percent of the taxpayer money allotted per pupil, and pocket it. “Some people believe there should be no for-profit charter schools,” Cohen said, “because all the money on profit could be going to the classroom or paying teachers more. Money that could be educating kids,” he said.

Opponents of charter schools also claim they may bring back segregation in schools. According to Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes, 56 percent of students in charter schools identify as either African American or Hispanic, compared to just 39 percent in traditional public schools. Additionally, over half of charter school students are in poverty according to free or reduced price lunch statistics.

This could be attributed to the fact that more than half of charter schools are located in urban locations according to Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes.

National outlook

The majority of the United States is open to charter schools. According to the 2013PDK/Gallop Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Publics Schools, slightly less than 70 percent of Americans support charter schools, two-thirds of Americans support new public charter schools in their community, and just over half of Americans believe that charter schools supply a better education than traditional public schools.

Forty-two states including the District of Columbia have passed laws allowing charter schools, according to the Center for Education Reform. Only Alabama, Kentucky, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and West Virginia have yet to allow charter schools within their borders.

Arizona outlook

When Arizona passed its law to allow charter schools in 1994, it became among the first 10 states to do so, and is ranked the fifth strongest of the nations 43 charter laws, according to the Center for Education Reform.

The Center for Education Reform ranks charter school laws based on if it “has strong, permanent authorizing structures, equitable funding codified in law, and autonomy across state, district, and teacher rules and regulations.”

Successes And Failures

Basis Charter Schools have 14 locations in Arizona, Texas and Washington D.C., and boast two of the top five high schools in the country, according to the U.S. News &World Report National High School Ranking.

A study by the organization Integrity in Education found that fraudulent charter management organizations in 15 states have wasted over $100 million in taxpayer money.

According to a report in 2012 by ABC 15 Arizona, Vicki A. Romero charter school located in Phoenix spent more than $48,681 of taxpayer money on renovating a local house that a school employee was to live in. The school paid for a gas range, microwave, refrigerator, dishwasher, washer and dryer, leather furniture, dining room table, bed, sheets and pillows. At the time of the scandal, Vicki A. Romero school received a D in Arizona’s A-F Accountability Letter Grade System.

By Jeanne Allen
National Review
April 7, 2015

Why we need the Student Success Act.

More than three decades ago, a historic report ushered in education reforms aimed at raising standards, holding schools accountable for students’ performance, and giving parents and teachers more power. President Ronald Reagan would attend 51 meetings to discuss the findings of A Nation at Risk and urge states to adopt academic standards that spelled out what students should know and be able to do, measured by tests and reported to parents to inform them of their children’s and schools’ performance.

Conservatives should be proud of their record in addressing the crisis of education. Yet current attitudes toward congressional action on federal education policy are a reminder of that famous admonition that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.

For nearly twenty years after the nation began its famous assault on mediocrity in 1983, states would adopt rigorous standards and high-stakes tests, enact school-choice programs, and provide for heightened performance evaluations of schools and their staffs. But a fearful establishment of education groups then weakened standards and created roadblocks to more successful innovation.

As data borne out of those first standards-based tests began to reveal a pernicious achievement gap, a bipartisan group of federal lawmakers took on the controversial task of reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) so that states and schools would have to enact serious accountability measures to address the education crisis. And so No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was established in 2002, reasserting the importance of accountability and choice with a renewed focus on student outcomes. And NCLB worked, until interest groups and the natural tendencies of the federal bureaucracy to rewrite legislative intent had their way.

With a requirement for reauthorization of NCLB now years overdue, congressional leaders have proposed new ways to properly scale the federal role in education. The Student Success Act, currently before the House of Representatives, is one such noble effort. It would remove the tidal wave of mandates that have hit schools as a result of NCLB tinkering, Race to the Top, and other misguided efforts.

The bill gets Washington out of the classroom and returns the responsibility for delivering a quality education to states and school districts. But some conservatives have wrongly come out against the bill, arguing that it doesn’t do enough to reduce the federal role and restore local control.

It dismays me to have to say that, having served in the Reagan administration and as the leader of the Heritage Foundation’s first education-policy office, and as a successful leader in education reform, my conservative friends are misinformed about this bill and what it will do.

The Student Success Act swings the pendulum back to minimal federal intrusion in state affairs. It restores to the states power to implement current federal programs, gives local school districts more leeway on accountability and testing, ensures that reporting and accountability for federal funds are transparent, and provides incentives for states and schools that offer choices to parents. The bill provides flexibility and autonomy in developing rigorous state standards and meaningful school-choice programs. The bill eliminates the ability of the U.S. education secretary to waive tenets of congressionally approved law and ensures that Title I does what was intended in 1965: help the least-advantaged kids learn and progress.

Without reauthorization of NCLB, the federal government will continue to amass power and will repeat history, leaving too much authority in the hands of Washington bureaucrats and special interests.

When I think about the history of ESEA, I am angered that programs created to support the needs of our students have instead become a cash cow for mediocrity. The Student Success Act represents the epitome of both a conservative agenda and a move toward providing equity and educational justice to children whose parents and teachers are their best advocates. Failing to pass it reinforces bad policy and does nothing to help our children or our nation gain a competitive edge.

Whether one likes Common Core, believes in school choice, or appreciates the role of standards and measurement, the current Washington policy regime undermines a state’s proclivity to make fundamental decisions regarding these and other education policies without coercive processes. I have seen firsthand when governors across the nation lead well and strong with encouragement — not coercion — from officials at the federal level.

The Student Success Act represents precisely the right kind of balance that can once again ensure achievement-focused education reforms. It’s time to make history, not repeat it, so that our kids no longer are condemned to growing up in a nation at risk.

Jeanne Allen is senior fellow and president emeritus of the Center for Education Reform, which she founded in 1993.

By Mariene Sokol
Tampa Bay Times
April 3, 2015

Read the PDF version of Bused and Broken here.

First she noticed the gates around the building, then the boys playing football shirtless at the bus stop. Kenyatta McClairen had a bad feeling about her 11-year-old son’s new school.

Her instincts were right.

Before her son could make it to class on his first day, one boy grabbed his neck while the other tried to snatch his cubic zirconium earring. Afraid of his attackers, he just gave it to them, the police report said.

The robbery didn’t happen in the high-crime East Tampa neighborhood where McClairen and her children lived. It happened inside a school 12 miles away in Brandon, a bedroom community with 3,000-square-foot homes and backyard pools.

McLane Middle School, by some measures the most troubled school in Hillsborough County, has battled waves of violence and crime for the better part of a decade.

Rampant suspensions have cut down on class time, especially for McLane’s black students, who test well below black children at other middle schools. Teacher ratings are unusually low, suggesting children who need the most help are being bused to the place least able to provide it. And while behavior has improved under an energetic new principal, large-scale busing from Tampa’s poorest neighborhoods — a root cause of the disorder — remains in effect.

What happened at McLane is partly a function of the way society’s problems spill into big, urban school systems. But a closer look reveals Hillsborough school leaders helped create McLane’s problems years ago, then let them fester.

As part of a well-intended move to foster racial integration, officials allowed magnet schools to claim most of the middle school seats in East Tampa and import their students from other areas. The policy pushed large concentrations of poor East Tampa students into a faraway school that had no connection to their neighborhood and a staff weakened by too many under-performing teachers.

That led to what experts say was an entirely foreseeable reign of chaos that the district let stand in the face of alarming headlines and statistics. Over the last decade — culminating with an especially troubling 2013-14 academic year — thousands of 11-, 12- and 13-year-old kids found themselves in a middle school that failed them.

Last year, records show:

• An average of one student a week left McLane in handcuffs.

• Nearly 14 percent of teachers were rated “unsatisfactory,” nearly nine times the district average and more in number, 9, than any other public school in Florida.

• McLane’s state test scores lagged behind the district average for middle schools. And its black students, who comprise slightly more than half the school, performed 10 to 20 percentage points worse than their black peers across the county.

• McLane students were three times more likely than those at other Hillsborough middle schools to receive out-of-school suspensions and six times more likely to be referred for expulsion or change in placement, with many problems occurring on long bus rides.

• McLane led the county with 35 expulsion cases, eclipsing schools twice its size. The school record: 51 in 2007. Black students were most affected, with far more cases in the last three years than at any other middle school.

Acting superintendent Jeff Eakins, who lives in Brandon, said he doubts McLane was as constantly chaotic as some describe. But he acknowledged “pockets of occurrences, sometimes on a daily basis” that created stress for students and teachers.

Others who experienced it describe the school differently.

“It was kind of a shock to the senses,” said Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Deputy Chad Keen, who became McLane’s resource officer in early 2014. “I came in thinking, ‘How bad can this be? I was in middle school once.’ I wasn’t here on campus but 30 minutes and there was already a huge fight breaking out in the main office.”

Reading teacher Margery Singleton said she left abruptly in late 2013 after bullies threatened a seventh-grader in her class. She tried to lock them out, but another student let them in. She recalls seeing her student tremble and knowing his tormenters would be waiting for him later.

“I think about McLane a lot. It’s something that is burned into my psyche,” Singleton said.

“I couldn’t take it any more. I needed to separate myself. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Built on a quiet street a short walk from Brandon High, McLane opened a century ago as “Brandon School.” It was later named for Eldridge Franklin McLane, a principal there for more than 30 years.

A promotional YouTube video, posted on the district website in recent weeks, highlights McLane’s history and its robotics and technology program — a point of pride for more than 100 high-achieving students who are separated from the others for their core classes.

All county schools were affected by court-ordered busing for integration that began in the 1970s.

What followed was a collision of events and agendas.

After U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Kovachevich lifted the busing order in 2001, Hillsborough could no longer assign students to schools based on race.

But the district still wanted diversity. So it turned to a popular tool of voluntary integration — magnet programs that would draw middle-class students to the inner city. MaryEllen Elia, as head of the district’s magnet office — years before she was named superintendent in 2005 — enthusiastically embraced the concept.

To encourage inner-city kids to enroll in largely white schools after 2001, the district designed a voluntary choice system.

Two problems: Not enough inner-city families opted to send their kids to the suburbs. And magnets often displace children who live closest to the schools.

With magnet programs in every middle school in mostly black East Tampa, administrators scrambled to find seats for thousands of children.

McLane was not the only middle school tapped to receive displaced students. Mann Middle in Brandon also became a destination, as did Madison and Monroe in South Tampa.

The effects varied as busing patterns shifted. But, judging by discipline statistics, McLane saw the worst of it.

Parents and police reports describe gang-influenced students as old as 15 pressuring others into acting as drug mules. Former teachers say students swore at them to establish “street cred” and treated an arrest or suspension as a badge of honor. Substitutes avoided the school.

“You’re more of a juvenile officer than a teacher,” said Devin Irvin, 28, a onetime McLane student who taught physical education there last spring.

Some years were better than others. Discipline improved after Frank Oliver, a former Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive back, became principal in 2009.

Speaking at a teacher dismissal hearing in 2011, Oliver said, “McLane is a tough school, has been a tough school, and we’ve put things together where the culture has changed.” A student survey showed the school felt safer.

But those numbers soon headed south. McLane made headlines in 2013 after someone filled a hall with pepper spray, sending dozens to hospitals. Today, viewers who click on the district’s new promotional video on YouTube see clips about the pepper spray incident as well.

When Keen, the school resource officer, came on the job in January 2014, “flash mob fights” involving hundreds of kids were happening at arrival and dismissal. They would kick and shove any adult who got in their way. “It’s almost like the worst kind of riot you can imagine on TV,” he said.

A 2014 survey asked teachers at McLane if “students at this school follow rules of conduct.” Three percent agreed, by far the lowest number among more than 200 Hillsborough schools.

The Tampa Bay Times asked to interview Elia about McLane and the magnet school policies in force during her tenure before she left her job as school superintendent, and again last week. She did not respond to any of the requests.

Nothing provides a more powerful window into McLane at its worst than Sheriff’s Office reports for the 2013-14 school year:

Kids contending with homelessness and learning disabilities. Some students arming themselves out of fear. Others threatening to punch an assistant principal, shoot a student or start a riot. A teacher accused of trying to steal school furniture.

A 12-year-old girl tussled with a civics teacher over a cell phone, trashed the classroom and left school in handcuffs, according to one report, declaring, “I don’t give a f— what you say, I want my phone.”

Weeks later, two students were arrested on charges they attacked a boy in the bathroom for his cell phone. Both their mothers told the Tampa Bay Times their children had learning difficulties.

A special education student — 12 years old, weighing 80 pounds — was caught with an open knife in his black-and-yellow Batman backpack. He “admitted to bringing the knife to school to scare someone if they tried to jump him.” After his arrest, he got a 10 day out-of-school suspension.

Another student was charged with trespassing, accused of returning to school after being suspended the day before. It turned out he was a runaway who slept under the bleachers at Brandon High. Another report said he kicked in the office air conditioner and bit a chunk out of the squad car seat when Keen arrested him a month later.

Students were accused of assaulting teachers. Two were arrested after another 12-year-old was caught with a blade, or “shank.” He was giving his belongings to a friend when it fell to the ground. The friend, searched to see if he was armed, was carrying marijuana.

The defining moment of 2013-14 came on Feb. 25, when an afternoon crowd at the bus ramp became so violent that Keen used a Taser on two 14-year-old girls who were fighting.

A probe struck the girl who was on top, and that stopped the fight. The girl on the bottom pushed past Keen, ran home and was later arrested.

Keen took the first girl to the office, where he removed the Taser probe and a nurse treated the puncture wound.

She was arrested too.

Sheriff’s officials issued a news release lauding Keen’s actions, and the event became a catalyst for change.

Security cameras went up. Sheriff’s cars descended on McLane at dismissal time. The school issued nearly 100 out-of-school suspensions in March, followed by more than 120 each in April and May.

The message: Gangs and bullies would not rule McLane.

Opponents of busing say the practice creates a physical and psychological distance between a school and the community it serves. In East Tampa, where poverty contributes to often stressful home lives, the relationship is that much more important — and precarious.

It doesn’t help when the school is 12 miles away from home.

“It does create a two-community school,” Eakins said. “And if you are going to create a two-community school, you have got to figure out a way to make one community out of it, and that is the challenge that McLane has had over the years. That absolutely can be done. But you have to take some extra measures — and sometimes extraordinary measures — to bring those communities together.”

Parents of students involved in the expulsion cases said they felt alienated from the school and had trouble getting clear information. Some said their children, once deemed disruptive, were targets for arbitrary discipline.

Timeka Bowles, whose son was moved to an alternative school after he and a friend were accused of shoving a teacher, said McLane called her over minor infractions. “Like, he had a rubber band on his wrist. I said, ‘for real?’ Some of the things were so petty.”

Kasanthian Smith, who had two sons transferred out of McLane, said the older one was suspended for chewing gum.

Principal Dina Langston, who took over in November 2013, said school officials communicated their concerns clearly with parents. She can’t imagine a child suspended for chewing gum, she said; even the idea of suspending for dress code is a stretch.

More likely, she said, the children had been warned and refused to wear the uniforms staff keep at the office. “Then they get disrespectful, so something that started over something simple turns into disrespectful and willful disobedience — ‘You can’t tell me what I will or won’t do.’ ”

Some East Tampa parents said they didn’t know how their kids even wound up at McLane. “Why do they commute the kids way out there? It’s crazy,” said Jesstina Burden, whose son was transferred after the same incident as Bowles’ son. “All these schools they pass. I don’t understand.”

Some said their kids had learning or behavioral issues that, in their opinion, were not addressed properly.

And they often got in trouble on the bus. Smith said she got a call at 9 a.m. saying her son was being suspended for “horseplay.” Through 2013-14, McLane reported 350 bus referrals, a pace comparable to this year, though overall discipline numbers are down.

Parents said they didn’t trust the school, even as they admitted their kids violated school policy and sometimes the law.

Smith, whose younger son was arrested on a drug possession charge, acknowledged he was on probation at the time and later developed a drug problem. But the day of his arrest, she said, he was wearing a borrowed jacket. She believed him when he said he was not high.

Ultimately, she said, it’s impossible to know how many of his problems were related to school.

What she does know: “They were drilling them with so much negativity and making them feel like they’re worth nothing. And they feel like they’re nothing. And us as parents, we’re left with, we don’t know what to do.”

While no one wants to give up on a child, teachers said they sometimes encountered students who simply could not function, and the majority who wanted an education suffered as a result.

“One of the hardest parts is, these are kids,” Keen said. “And I think a lot of times when these things are happening, it’s hard to remember that. Because kids shouldn’t be acting that way.”

The fact that their neighborhoods were home to rival gangs makes the job harder. “We have kids with tattoos already with ‘Rest In Peace, So-and-So,’ ” Keen said. “That’s what a lot of fights start from. Someone says (something) negative about their friend who was killed. Fight’s on.”

At community meetings in Hillsborough and nationwide, civil rights activists increasingly invoke the phrase “school-to-prison pipeline.” The theory holds that schools discipline black students more frequently and harshly through zero-tolerance policies and racial bias, setting them on a path toward the criminal justice system.

A complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights alleges Hillsborough not only over-disciplines black students, but gives them an inferior education.

At D-rated McLane, a number of grim statistics support those allegations. Nearly 90 percent of last year’s expulsion cases involved black students, who make up 52 percent of the school.

Sixteen percent of McLane’s black eighth graders were reading at grade level, compared with 62 percent of its white eighth graders. Districtwide, 35 percent of black eighth graders and 68 percent of white eighth graders read at grade level.

Officials who created the McLane situation, and experts outside the district, say what happened there did not arise from discrimination. Rather, they say, students were collateral damage in a war of competing interests as the district embraced magnet schools decades ago.

Starting in the 1990’s, East Tampa’s middle schools — Young, Franklin, Ferrell, Orange Grove and Williams — became specialty schools offering curricula in science and technology, criminal justice and the performing arts. Later, Ferrell and Franklin became single-gender schools.

The middle magnet schools choose their students through a lottery system that is weighted based on zip code, income and other factors designed to create a diverse student body. But, as with the choice program, families must apply. If they do not, or if they apply and do not get in, the children are put on a bus to McLane or another school.

The choice program, rolled out in 2004, was intended to maintain the diversity court-ordered busing had created. The idea was that urban families would send their children to suburban schools in hopes of giving them the best education.

But officials were way off in predicting how many would take part. “Many parents, because of where they live and where they work, even if it’s a failing school, their kids are going to go there,” said Bill Person, then-director of pupil administrative services.

Person, now retired, said he tried to warn his bosses that thousands of middle school students needed seats. But they were slow to respond. And when they tried to convert some magnets to neighborhood schools, they met with resistance from parents who didn’t want to move their kids.

“We were not willing to make the hard decisions to reclaim seats in the inner city,” he said.

The district made room for some East Tampa middle school students by converting James and B.T. Washington to K-8 schools. But both were overrun by students. Books, computers and bathrooms were scarce. Expulsion cases were in the double digits. That plan was short-lived.

There was talk of building a new middle school near Ybor City. But that has yet to happen.

When told what became of McLane, Person said: “We always thought this was temporary. We never thought it would still be going on after 10 years.”

Scholars say it’s not unusual for districts to create troubled schools as they pursue other, often noble objectives.

“Educational policy is like an architectural dig. You have layers of reforms on top of each other,” said Chester Finn, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education and now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

He’s not against magnets. They’re “something to be applauded,” he said. “It means some children are getting a good education and achieving their goals.” But “when you ordain that some schools will be successful, the poor and broken ones tend to do worse.”

The contrast can be found everywhere, including Pinellas County, where the expansion of fundamental and magnet schools has attracted children of the most ambitious parents.

“Everyone knows that school that nobody wants to send their kids to,” said Kara Kerwin, president of the Center for Education Reform, which advocates for charters and vouchers. “For me it’s why the education reform movement was born.”

But the result can be a downward spiral. As families find alternatives — nearly 300 kids zoned for McLane attend charters — schools get bad reputations that compound the exodus.

Experts say a key factor is the concentration of poor students.

At their worst, said author and University of Missouri professor Bruce Biddle, high-poverty schools “are rife with crime, rife with alienation and rife with youngsters left behind by society. They have been brutalized by the educational system and they know it. They wind up taking it out on the school and taking it out on each other.”

As for teachers, Biddle said, “you have young, inexperienced people who spend a year there and they flee.”

Irvin, the P.E. teacher, said as a young black man with family members who had been in prison, he tried to reach out to his students at McLane.

“They’re just so deep into the whole culture, the society, they can’t see five or 10 years down the line,” he said.

“When you’re at that middle school age, it’s all about impressing. You want to fit in, you want to be cool. And if being cool means cussing out your teacher and making sure everybody sees and hears about it, then that’s what you do.”

Soon after she took over as principal for the retiring Oliver, Langston, 43, vowed to remake McLane from top to bottom. She got support from someone in the district who knew East Tampa well — area director Owen Young, a former principal of Middleton High.

School officials say the results are dramatic and encouraging.

Langston dismissed six poorly performing teachers at year’s end. Others left voluntarily.

She asked the whole faculty to read Eric Jensen’s Teaching With Poverty in Mind. The book makes a case that, while students’ brains are susceptible to harm from poverty, they can also soak up the good from a great school with caring teachers.

Langston relaxed the dress code. She made discipline and class routines more consistent.

Each class has a “reflection” desk labeled in fluorescent green, a place to cool down after a blow up.

Dismissals are staggered so not everyone is at the bus ramp at once. Enrollment is down from about 900 last year to 803, including 344 from the city.

Discipline referrals dropped from 1,647 in the first half of 2013-14 to 640 this year. Some of the change reflects a new, less punitive approach when kids are tardy. Nearly 40 percent were for eighth-graders, who seem “a little bit more hard-headed in trying to get underneath what we’re trying accomplish, that this is a place of learning,” Langston said.

Attendance is up. And arrests have stopped almost entirely, said Keen, who, despite his harsh initiation, considers McLane a good school. Kids turn in drugs and stolen phones. They shake his hand. When he first arrived they would call him “F-12,” a profane rap term for police.

To reach out to East Tampa parents, McLane held a conference night at Middleton. Langston has driven sick children home. She’s on the phone with parents late at night when they can’t find their kids.

She drove into the city to meet a morning bus parked because four students were “acting the fool.” She loaded them in her SUV and carted them to school.

“I’ll do whatever I can, probably more than what I should have to,” she said. “But the parents are learning and gaining respect for me. It sends a message to them in the community that we care about your child. Kids won’t learn if they don’t think you care.”

It’s exactly the right response, said Eakins. He suggested the district can do more, maybe send McLane teachers to East Tampa after school or on Saturdays for programs at Middleton.

Langston can’t undo the past, Eakins said. “All she can do is right the ship and have the right type of attitude in doing that. This can’t be a police-state school. This has got to be one where kids are advocated for.”

The transition is far from complete.

On Feb. 27, deputies made three arrests after a fight began on a bus leaving McLane. Two girls were brawling right on the moving bus, officials said. They continued after the bus pulled over and a deputy tried to break them up. A 12-year-old boy egged the crowd on, yelling “fight” and “f— the police.”

In March, officials say a former student, who had been arrested on charges he issued a bomb threat, came back to McLane and tried to give Keen a fake name. He was charged with trespassing.

But even some parents whose kids have had trouble appreciate the improvements this year.

That group includes Laquanda Watson, whose daughter was jumped on an October day when Keen was busy breaking up other fights. “There’s not as many conflicts as last year,” Watson said. And her daughter is benefiting from tutoring.

Results are mixed with the new teachers as well.

Rachel-Star Goldstein — hired fresh out of college to teach disabled students, although her certificate was in social studies — saw so many behavior problems she wrote a detailed letter to Elia.

The events, most in September, included fights in class and a student urinating in the hall. Administrators were slow to respond, she wrote. Once, hearing a student discussing a drug deal, she called the office. The student noticed and told her he knew what kind of car she drove.

Langston said she cannot have a child arrested for just discussing a crime. She denied administrators were slow to assist Goldstein. When something happens, she said, “We run.”

Like Oliver before her, Langston is pleased with her progress and looks forward to favorable numbers in this year’s surveys.

But it’s impossible to predict how long the improvements will last — or the long-term effects on kids who were pushed out or under-served in years past.

Keen no longer sees gang graffiti, a positive sign. But when he returns from a week off he finds “F-12” etched in the bathroom mirrors. In his view, Langston and her team are working to exhaustion. If they ease up or leave, the school could backslide.

He sees busing as an ongoing challenge, as kids are less likely to take pride in the school.

Young, the area director, disagreed, predicting they will behave as they grow to appreciate McLane. “We have kids around the country who are not magnet kids who get on a bus to go to a culture that they really own,” he said.

“If you love them and if that’s at the core of how they feel and what they expect from the leader, then they will have no problem getting on a bus and going to McLane. I believe strongly that the school is moving in that direction.”

Eakins, new in his job as the district’s leader, said he is keeping an open mind about McLane.

“It’s going in a good direction,” he said. “But we always ask ourselves: What’s in best interest of the students? If we feel like the path we’re moving down isn’t sustainable, then we owe it to the students and the families to always look for other solutions.”

By Ingrid Jacques
The Detroit News
April 3, 2015

John Rakolta Jr. recently accompanied a Detroit mother and her two children on their journey to school.

The CEO of Walbridge and a co-chair of the Coalition for the Future of Detroit Schoolchildren wanted to see for himself what challenges families face each day. It floored him.

This family’s day starts at 6:15 a.m. They walk seven blocks to the nearest bus stop and wait 30 minutes. After a 10 minute bus ride, they walk five blocks and wait another 30 minutes for the second bus. The mother then walks her children to their respective schools.

“I get to Florida faster than they are able to get to school, and that’s the truth,” Rakolta said Monday during the coalition’s presentation of its recommendations.

This daily commute takes about two hours, each way. Just hearing about it sounds exhausting. But it’s what this mother, and many parents like her, are willing to do to get their children to schools they trust.

This particular mother sends her kids to charter schools. More than half Detroit’s children now attend charters. Most charter schools can’t provide transportation, so it’s up to parents to find a way there.

The fact they go to such great lengths is a powerful testament to the value of these schools. Parents who are disappointed with Detroit Public Schools are making choices based on a variety of factors, from better academics to school culture and safety.

All those reasons have merit.

That’s why this coalition’s cautions about charter schools seem misplaced. In its report, the 36 members of the coalition highlight what they found to be an unbridled charter environment, with a dozen charter authorizers running schools in Detroit. Tonya Allen, CEO of the Skillman Foundation and a co-chair of the coalition, blamed the density of school choice for the academic struggles of Detroit students. The coalition concludes the number of players contributes to poor coordination of schools and “no accountability.”

On the accountability front, that’s simply not true. Most charter authorizers are doing a good job regulating themselves and the markets they serve. As Jared Burkhart, executive director of the Michigan Council of Charter School Authorizers, points out, in the past five years, there has only been a net increase of seven schools in Detroit.

The coalition also points to the need for more quality and transparency of charter schools. But the state charter council has already sought that on its own. Burkhart and his members are spearheading an accreditation effort that would make Michigan the first in the country to put its charter authorizers through rigorous scrutiny.

One of the state’s largest authorizers, Grand Valley State University, just completed the process through the Georgia-based AdvancED. And other authorizers are lining up to do the same.

The national group Center for Education Reform gives Michigan’s charter school law an “A” grade. And after the coalition’s report, the center warned of adding “additional layers of bureaucracy with regards to the opening, closing, and renewal of charter schools.”

And Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes studied the performance of charters in 41 urban areas, including Detroit, and found students are gaining more than two months additional learning in a year than are their traditional public school peers.

Charter schools are also playing a significant role in encouraging middle-class families to stay in Detroit.

The Best Classroom Project, a grassroots group, has brought more than 300 Detroit parents together on a mission to find good kindergarten programs in the city. Many of the schools that have stood out to these families are charter schools.

While there is certainly room for improving charter schools, they have done much to offer better school choices in Detroit — and they shouldn’t be hampered in that work.

Ingrid Jacques is deputy editorial page editor of The Detroit News.

By Rachel Mullen
Watchdog.org
March 30, 2015

Charter schools are an important part of the school choice movement. Unfortunately, as with any of these entities, some game the system.

These unethical and wasteful schools taint the entire education reform movement. Ohio is no exception to this. The Center for Education Reform recently gave Ohio’s Charter Schools a grade of “C.”

Dave Yost, the Auditor of State, has taken an aggressive stand towards cleaning up wasteful charter schools, making them more accountable to the taxpayers. The auditor has demanded repayment of nearly $300,000 from two charter schools.

Sunrise Academy, a chartered Islamic school in Hilliard will need to repay $198,746. Those funds were attributed to an instructor hired to teach non-English speaking students. However, this instruction was never provided to the students.

Wendy Marshall received $88,750 in tax dollars to open the Directional Academy in 2013. That school never opened after accepting the funds. Yost is demanding they be returned to the state.

House Bill 2 is a charter school reform bill now being considered by the Legislature. It is co-sponsored by Majority Whip Mike Dovilla and state Rep. Kristina Roegner. The bill was written to increase accountability, transparency and responsibility in Ohio’s charter schools. Yost testified before the House Education Committee earlier this month regarding this bill.

His testimony focuses on possible abuses and closing those loopholes. One of those issues is truancy. If a student is truant, the school should withdraw him. Funding is based upon a 105 hour clock, allowing a student to miss a month of school and the school would still be receiving payment from the state.

“If the student misses 104 hours, then shows up for a single day, the student gets a new 105-hour clock. The school is not required to withdraw the student and they continue to receive funding as if the student hadn’t missed a day of school. That means that it is possible for a student to show up for as few as 10 days of school and receive funding for an entire year.”

Yost also suggests placing liens on school buildings in the event that a charter school fails soon after opening its doors. Under the current system, if a school fails quickly, the school still ends up with a building paid for by the taxpayers.

 “Currently, because of short investment horizons, facilities are often funded by front- loaded leases that use a high proportion of revenue in early years to retire the debt over a short amortization. Then, if the school fails, the realty company, often controlled by the management company, owns the building.

It is worth recognizing the interest the state has in that building – but for the state funding, the building would not have been acquired. Education of our children ought not be a back-door means to acquire real estate. “

Student transfers are not currently tracked well. If a school cannot locate the student identification number, it creates a new one. Allowing the Ohio Department of Education to use the identity of the student would cause more accountability. Privacy is not a concern as the state already has this information.

“The State funds students based on attendance, and as my office’s work has amply demonstrated over the past several years, the “honor system” used in Ohio is open to abuse.

During interviews, we have discovered that schools will often generate a new SSID for a student when they have difficulty finding that student’s previously assigned SSID. In 2012-13, we discovered multiple SSIDs for the same student, which wreaks havoc on efforts to track student transfers between schools.

The simple solution is to follow the example of every other state in the Union, save one, and allow ODE to know the identity of the student behind those numbers. We are one of only two states that hamstring our Department of Education like this. It will increase the accuracy of our data, prevent funding errors and make sure that children don’t fall through the cracks. “

The school choice movement allows families the opportunity to determine which education is best suited for their children. But, like any school, charter schools need to be accountable to the taxpayers. Closing loopholes for abuse of state resources emboldens the movement as it increases confidence from the public.