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By Arianna Prothero
Education Week
March 24, 2015

Participation in Indiana’s voucher program has exploded since it launched less than four years ago, putting the state on the leading edge of private school choice.

“There’s a degree of political timidity to bold reforms, or reforms as bold as school choice vouchers,” said Brian Backstrom, a senior policy adviser with the Center for Education Reform, a Washington-based school choice research and advocacy group. He said policymakers tend to dip their toes into the water with limited voucher programs. “Indiana did a big splash.”

By Moriah Costa
Watchdog.org
March 23, 2015

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The charter school program here is ranked among the strongest in the country, but advocates and city officials say equitable funding and tighter fiscal controls are needed.

The pro-charter Center for Education Reform ranked the District as the No. 1 charter sector in the country for the seventh consecutive year.

Kara Kerwin, president of the nonprofit, said D.C scored so well, in part, because other states have done so little. Meanwhile, D.C. charter laws that foster autonomy and competition have improved traditional schools, she said.

“We know that when teachers have autonomy, we know that when people can choose, we see that all of our schools do better,” Kerwin said.

The D.C. charter board works to ensure schools are performing well academically and will close schools for poor academics — factors that have helped D.C. maintain its top standing, she said.

“Performance-based accountability is the hallmark of charter schools, and in D.C. they actually do close schools or they give them to some other organization that is better equipped to do it,” she said. “In our traditional public school system, we don’t do that.”

About 44 percent of students attend  D.C. charters.

CER’s scorecard criticized the city for a lack of equal funding for charter and traditional schools. The nonprofit supports a lawsuit that alleges the city shorted charter schools by $770 million — or $1,600 to $2,600 per student —since 2008.

Funding in the district is allocated on a per-pupil basis, with the traditional public schools receiving money based on estimated enrollment while charter schools get money based on actual enrollment. Still, a city commissioned report found D.C. public schools often receive additional money from other government agencies.

Need for more fiscal accountability

A city audit found that while fiscal oversight has improved in the past three years, the city’s charter board needs to do more, city officials say. The audit found the board was unable to provide some contracts between charter schools and companies involving more than $25,000. The board is required to review contracts exceeding that amount.

The audit also recommended the D.C. Council require for-profit management companies to disclose their finances to the charter board. The recommendation comes in light of two pending lawsuits that allege charter school for-profit management companies diverted millions in public money for personal gain.

Prosecutors claim Kent Amos, founder of Community Academy Public Charter School, paid himself more than $1 million through a management company. The charter board, citing fiscal mismanagement, revoked the school’s charter last month. The other lawsuit involves the Options Public Charter for at-risk teens. The lawsuit contends three former leaders diverted public money into their management companies. The school relinquished its charter in February and will close at the end of the year.

The charter board said it did not know about the misuse of funds because for-profit management companies are not required to reveal their financial statements. A bill introduced by D.C. Council members David Grosso, I- At Large, and Elissa Silverman, I-At Large, earlier this month would require the companies to reveal financial information to the board.

The audit did not examine academic achievement of charter schools.

In a response to the audit, the D.C. charter board said it hired a specialist to help oversee schools finances and would continue to improve contract oversight. It did not agree with some of the audit’s recommendations, such as providing fiscal policies, because it found it “overreaching and incomplete.”

“The Auditor’s report highlights the continued progress PCSB has made in ensuring public charter schools are good stewards of taxpayer dollars,” Scott Pearson, D.C. Public Charter School Board executive director, said in a statement. “We are encouraged that the D.C. Council, led by David Grosso and Elissa Silverman, has already introduced legislation to strengthen our authority to oversee charter school finances.”

Continued success

Despite accusations of fiscal mismanagement at some schools, charter advocates praise the D.C. charter laws and say states can learn from the district’s charter authorizer. A recent study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes found — in D.C. and nationally — charters outperform traditional public schools academically.

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools rated the city ninth in its charter law study and No. 1 in a “Health of the Movement” report, which analyzed how the law is implemented.

“Even though these rankings are important, we still have a lot to do to improve the quality of the laws so that there’s enough funding on the table and so that there’s enough autonomy for charters to start and to do the work that they need to do without additional rules and regulations,” said Nina Rees, president and CEO of the alliance.

Although Grosso’s legislation to provide financial documents to the D.C. charter board would lead to greater transparency, Rees warned that lawmakers should be cautious about passing too many charter regulations.

“Every time you add a new provision to what’s required, you’re taking away one of the key things that makes chartering unique, which is fewer rules in exchange for academic achievement,” she said.

By Ovetta Wiggins
Washington Post
March 22, 2015

Maryland senators are planning to strike key provisions of a bill proposed by Gov. Larry Hogan (R) to increase the number of charter schools in the state, dealing a major blow to the governor’s plan to provide parents with more education options.

Senate leaders said Friday that the measure that could make it to the floor this week will be vastly different from the one Hogan proposed. The governor’s sweeping charter reform plan would have given charter operators the power to hire and fire, to set admissions criteria and to receive more public funding.

Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) said senators formed a work group to study changes to Hogan’s bill. A similar work group in the House is headed by Del. Anne R. Kaiser (D-Montgomery. The Senate group is considering a measure that would offer charters some flexibility, give them more say in who can attend their schools and clearly define whether teachers at charter schools work for the local school boards or the charter schools.

“It’s progress,” Miller said.

But charter school advocates disagree. They have argued for years that Maryland’s requirements are some of the worst in the nation and have kept charters from opening in the state. They said the changes being considered by the senators will do little to encourage more charters in Maryland.

“I don’t see new schools being able to open,” said Kara Kerwin, president of the Center for Education Reform, a national charter school advocacy group that is pushing for Hogan’s bill to remain intact. “The ones that have opened have done so with great resistance.”

The major stumbling block, advocates said, is the Senate’s plan to remove a provision that would have freed charter schools from adhering to state labor contracts. The state teachers union strongly opposes the move.

Under Hogan’s bill, charter school operators would have greater autonomy to hire and fire teachers, who under the current rules are employed by local school districts, not by individual charters. Teachers would be exempt from state certification. Charters would have a greater say over who attends their schools, with the option of giving preference to students based on geography or having a low family income. Charters would receive a guaranteed and higher percentage of per-pupil funding at the state, local and federal level. They also would be able to compete with traditional public school districts for school construction funds.

Charters would still have to be approved by local school boards, but the schools would be able to ask the State Board of Education for a “comprehensive waiver” from most laws that govern traditional public schools. The bill would not allow waivers of audit requirements, assessments that gauge student achievement or rules governing the health, safety or civil rights of students or employees.

Sen. Paul G. Pinsky (D-Prince George’s), vice chairman of the Senate Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee, said the governor’s proposal turns the current law “upside down.” He said he hopes to make “minor” changes to the current law, not the “wholesale reversal” that he said Hogan seeks.

Pinsky expects the bill to allow charters to set aside seats for siblings and for it to clarify language regarding the state’s role in appeals of whether a charter can be established and of decisions made by the local school system. It also will clarify whether teachers with provisional certification can teach in charters, he said.

Tom Neumark, president of the board of trustees at Frederick Classical Charter School, said many advocates are asking “what’s the point of changing the law” if charters will not have greater access to public funding, be able to hire their own employees and have the ability to go to the State Board of Education to authorize opening a school. Such provisions “make the difference between a good law and a bad law,” he said.

Keiffer Mitchell, a special adviser to Hogan, said the Hogan administration and charter advocates have been working with senators to come up with a compromise that will help to expand the number of charters in Maryland.

Mitchell said Pinsky has offered amendments to the bill that look “to take the current law backwards. And that’s not what the governor wants, he wants to see charters expanded.”

Mitchell indicated that there is still hope for significant charter reform in Maryland. He said negotiations have not “begun in earnest” and estimated that a final decision on the bill will be made April 13, the last day of the 90-day legislative session.

By Natasha Lindstrom
89.3 KPCC
March 20, 2015

Five years after California enacted the nation’s first law dubbed “parent trigger,” the policy debate rages over whether the controversial mechanism is an effective way to improve schools.

Teachers unions and some school officials are becoming increasingly vocal about their opposition to laws like California’s Parent Empowerment Act of 2010, which enables parents to force one of five types of major reforms on a low-performing public school if a simple majority of parents sign a petition seeking the change. Those reform options range from firing the principal and half the staff to ceding control of the neighborhood school to a charter operator.

Various forms of parent trigger laws exist in seven states.

Critics see the laws as tools for corporate-backed privatization of public education under the guise of grassroots parent empowerment. Supporters say they give parents the power to initiate change when schools perform poorly and bureaucrats fail to act.

Other states are modeling their bills on California’s law. Undeterred by defeats in more than two dozen legislatures in recent years, parent trigger proponents from Southern California are lobbying again this year in places they view as friendly to school choice — states in which leadership favors expanding charter schools, funding voucher programs and establishing education savings accounts.

Texas and Tennessee are their primary targets in 2015. Parent Revolution, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit formed in 2009 to help pass California’s law, dismisses existing parent trigger laws on the books in those states as too weak.

Parent Revolution staffers and parents supporters attended legislative hearings in Texas and in Tennessee earlier this week championing stronger versions. They celebrated when a parent trigger bill advanced out of the Tennessee Senate Education Committee on Wednesday. The Texas Senate Education Committee debated a similar bill Thursday during a hearing that lasted several hours.

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who tried unsuccessfully to pass a parent trigger bill as a state senator, has reiterated his support for shortening how long parents must wait to pull the “trigger.” He said the aggressive overhaul tool should be available to the parents of 148,000 students “trapped” at the 297 school campuses that failed to meet performance targets for two consecutive years.

“Folks need to realize that you’ve got to empower the parents as part of the process,” said Tennessee State Rep. John DeBerry, D-Memphis, who introduced his parent trigger bill for the third consecutive year. The pair of bills by DeBerry and Tennessee State Sen. Brian Kelsey, R-Germantown, would reduce the number of signatures required to a simple majority. Giving parents more power “doesn’t spell Armageddon for the public school system,” DeBerry said.

Opponents of trigger laws say the process is too divisive and disruptive.

“A petition drive is a poor way to make drastic changes within a school setting,” said Kristen Fisher, president of the Anaheim Elementary Education Association, a union representing more than 800 teachers in California’s Anaheim City School District. “It doesn’t require or allow for dialogue, and it doesn’t ensure positive change.”

Supporters balk at labor’s opposition. “If the union wants to jump up and down and scream, let them,” said former California State Sen. Gloria Romero, a Democrat who authored California’s parent trigger law and last year formed the Los Angeles-based California Center for Parent Empowerment. “They have a right to, but it doesn’t mean that the law is bad.”

Just how effective parent trigger laws can be in turning schools around remains unclear.

No parents have launched a full-fledged parent trigger campaign outside Southern California, the headquarters for the two advocacy groups devoted to helping parents organize around petition campaigns.

And even in California, only a handful of parent groups have invoked the law. Parents at a few schools, including West Athens Elementaryin South Los Angeles and Lennox Middle School near Inglewood, used it as leverage to negotiate minor changes with existing school leaders.

Just one school — Desert Trails Elementary in the tiny High Desert town of Adelanto — has been converted into a charter school using the law. That 2013 conversion followed a nearly two-year process that involved a lengthy legal battle and pitted parents against teachers and other parents.

Kara Kerwin, president of The Center for Education Reform, a Washington advocacy group that supports charters and parent trigger laws, said she sees the need for some of that divisiveness.

“Until you have some friction, things won’t change,” she said. “When it comes down to it, we really do have to clean house sometimes with the staff to really bring about change.”

Data on student performance at the overhauled Desert Trails Preparatory is limited, particularly because the California Legislature last year put a two-year hiatus on statewide reading and math rankings for all schools.

Desert Trails Preparatory’s new principal, Mandy Plantz, and the charter school’s director, Debra Tarver, are already preparing their submission to their district for a renewal of the three-year charter, using internal testing data to track improvement.

“Even if we didn’t have a trigger, we’d have to work harder than the other district schools because we have to produce,” Tarver said. “If we don’t produce, we get closed down.”

This story was originally published by The Hechinger Report.

By Amy Hansen
State Impact
March 19, 2015

When it comes to state legislation, Ohio’s charter schools are just about average, according to a new national report card.

The Center for Education Reform–which, as the Columbus Dispatch points out, is a group advocating for opening publicly funded and privately run charters–awarded Ohio a “C” grade based on a handful of grading points, including current charter laws and state funding formulas.

Up one spot from last year’s score, the Buckeye State ranked 14th out of the 42 states and Washington, D.C. that currently have some type of charter laws on the books.

Eighteen other states earned the same ranking, while four states and the District of Columbia earned “A”s, eight states got “B”s, and the remainder received “D”s or “F”s.

“Strong charter laws feature independent, multiple authorizers, few limits on expansion, equitable funding, and high levels of school autonomy,” the report’s lead editor Alison Consoletti said in a release. “Many states that appear to have all of the critical components of a strong law struggle with the implementation of key provisions, which is why the rankings over the past few years have shown little variance and have remained relatively stagnant.”

The report said Ohio’s charters have limited state autonomy and can often be on the losing side of the state’s funding formula, but points out the state could potentially boost its standing by doing things like improving charter funding and widening geographic restrictions.

Charter school reform is on the agenda for Gov. John Kasich’s administration. In this year’s state budget proposals, Kasich pledged to hold charter school sponsors more accountable, along with potentially increasing charter funding and requiring more transparency.

By Drew Taylor
Montgomery Advertiser
March 19, 2015

With Governor Robert Bentley signing into effect a bill supporting charter schools in Alabama, superintendents in the River Region still do not know what the bill means for their school systems.

The bill, which allows for the creation of up to 10-start-up charters a year for five years, was signed into effect Thursday afternoon by Bentley. With the new law, charter schools could be in place across Alabama by fall 2016. However, some educators in the area do not know what the law means for them.

Andre Harrison, superintendent of the Elmore County Public School System, said his main concerns with the bill were with funding the charters and how much money they would be taking from the school systems.

“That’s my number one concern because from my experience as an educator, you really don’t know what the bill will do until it has been implemented,” Harrison said. “That’s what I’m waiting to see and I’m waiting to see what it does to the education trust fund.”

Harrison said members of the school board have expressed similar concerns, but that all he could do for the time being was to see what impact the bill would have for Elmore County.

“This is a new bill and from my experience, I’m just waiting to see the implication and how it will affect us here in Elmore County,” he said.

Echoing Harrison’s comments, Margaret Allen, superintendent for Montgomery Public Schools, said there is a long way to go before charter schools would be set up in the Alabama and that until that happened, she would not be sure what that would mean for MPS.

“When it’s a done deal, I’m sure we’ll be getting our guidance from the state department and it will come with lots of training, I would imagine,” Allen said. “We’re just going to hold on and watch it come from the written charter to the actual charter in action.”

Like Harrison, Allen also expressed issues with funding, but said that state funding for education is the ultimate issue.

“We have a current need for public schools right here in our state and I don’t see that need going away because we have charters,” she said. “It’s still there, just as bold as it can be, a need for support to educate our children.”

Allen said that if implemented in MPS, charter schools could a number of students the opportunity to attend, but that she would always been concerned about all students.

“That choice will be for a specific number, but there would still be others that would have to be served, and they all deserved to be served with the same fervor and we need to give them the same kind of attention,” she said. “We just want to do the best for kids and have the resources to do it.”

Following the bill’s passage by the Alabama legislature Wednesday evening, various education groups commended the state for its work in getting with charter schools.

“This is undoubtedly a step forward for Alabama, but the ability of charter schools to truly influence student outcomes depends on the quality and the implementation of that law,” said Kara Kerwin, president of The Center for Education Reform.

Other individuals have expressed similar concerns regarding funding. During the School Choice Week rally in Montgomery on Jan. 28, Greg Graves, associated executive secretary of the Alabama Education Association, expressed his unfavorable opinion on charter schools. He was one of several AEA people that protested the rally, which advocated for charter schools.

“That is our purpose of gathering today, to show that the education trust fund is already strained, but to further take dollars from that to possibly create an entirely separate school system that has not been proven to be any better than we already have, that defeats the purpose of proposing legislation designed to solve the problem,” Graves told the Montgomery Advertiser.

Officials with Autauga County School System could not be reached for comment Thursday.

By Jason Russell
Washington Examiner
March 20, 2015

Alabama became the 43rd state to allow charter schools when Republican Gov. Bentley signed legislation on Thursday.

Unfortunately, the law only allows 10 charter schools to operate. The Center for Education Reform, which grades charter laws in every state, says Alabama’s charter law would earn a “mediocre grade.” Maine has a similarly severe cap on the number of charter schools and its charter laws received a “C” grade from the organization, although other factors affect grading, such as school autonomy.

Furthermore, only charters authorized by a local school board or a new state commission will be allowed to operate. Ideally, charter schools should be able to gain authorization from a number of sources. For example, in Michigan, charter schools can be authorized by school boards, intermediate school boards, community colleges and state public universities.

But despite the shortcomings of this legislation, some charter schools are better than none. Most importantly, the students who attend the charter schools will receive a better education. Their success will show the rest of the state why more charter schools are needed.

A new study released Wednesday showed that “urban charter schools on average achieve significantly greater student success in both math and reading.” It would take traditional public schools 40 additional days of math instruction and 28 additional days of reading instruction to achieve the same success. That study was released by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes.

The last state to become a charter school state was Washington, which passed its law in 2012. The District of Columbia also allows charter schools. Now only seven states lack charter school laws: Kentucky, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and West Virginia. Those states are surprisingly bipartisan: Four of the seven have Democratic governors, while three have Republican governors.

Charter schools are technically public schools because they are funded by the government, but they are exempt from many of the educational regulations that traditional public schools have.

By Laura Waters
News Works
March 19, 2015

Last week, the Paterson Charter School of Science and Technology held its annual enrollment lottery. There were 1,437 applicants for 99 openings, and so each student had less than a 10 percent chance of selection. Edwin Rodriguez, whose seven-year-old daughter, Natalie, and five-year-old son, Juelz, attend School 6, one of the worst-performing schools in the state, was one of the unlucky parents. He told The Record, “our name is on the waiting list but there are hundreds of names on the waiting list.”

This week the New Jersey Department of Education announced that, after a careful review of its most recent pool of charter applicants, it would authorize the opening of just one new charter school.  As such, the D.O.E., as well as the Christie Administration, demonstrates an overabundance of caution that ignores the plight of children like Natalie and Juelz Rodriguez.

But let’s not be too harsh. The politics of charter school authorization in New Jersey is a contact sport. Some suburban voters hate these independent public schools because they envision them siphoning cash from depleted district budgets like petty criminals huddled over the gas tank of an SUV.  NJEA leaders and other anti-choice lobbyists describe the growth of charters in urban districts like Paterson (although in this case they were referring to Camden) as an “out-of-control corporate takeover.” N.J.’s 20 year-old charter school law is flawed and obsolete, but the D.O.E. may feel threatened by some proposed revisions skulking around the Statehouse that would further curtail charter expansion. Or maybe this was just a particularly weak pool of contenders.

Whatever the reason, N.J.’s dearth of new approvals of charter schools is alarming, especially since it’s looking less like an anomaly and more like a trend.  In 2011 the Christie Administration approved 27 charter school applications. In 2012 it approved eight, the same number that Gov. Jon Corzine’s Administration approved in his last year of office.  In 2013 it approved three. In 2014 it approved five. This year so far: one, Hudson Arts and Science Charter School, which will admit students who reside in Jersey City and Kearny.

Again, let’s be fair. The D.O.E. is indeed hobbled by our state legislators’ inability to coalesce around educationally-sound revisions to charter school law. Just this week the Center for Education Reform (CER) issued its 2015 state-by-state charter school law rankings. New Jersey ranked 29th among the 42 states that have charter school laws. (For more rankings, look at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, which ranks N.J. 34th.)

There are two primary causes for our low outcome in these rankings. One is our charter school funding apparatus, which requires districts to directly pay tuition to charter schools of up to 90 percent of the “thorough and efficient funding” designated by law. CER notes, “the money charter schools receive is often much less than this because they don’t receive adjustment aid given to districts under the School Funding Reform Act. Districts can charge up to ten percent for administrative fees.” Also, charter schools receive no facilities aid.

But the biggest flaw to our charter school law is our adherence to a single-authorizer model — only the Commissioner of Education can approve charter school applications — in contrast to best practices that include additional authorizers like universities, commissions, and local school boards. From CER’s brief on N.J.:

“New Jersey’s charter school dilemma is largely due to the fact that only the state can approve charter school applications. While New Jersey initially approved many charter schools, many of these schools never opened because of district opposition, and the state chose not to step in to advocate for the schools it had authorized.”

The D.O.E. knows this. Legislators know this. Educators know this. And yet here we are.
Meanwhile, Natalie and Juelz Rodriguez will return to School 6 in Paterson, one of N.J.’s “priority schools.” Maybe next year the Rodriguez family will get lucky.

Laura Waters is vice president of the Lawrence Township School Board in Mercer County. She also writes about New Jersey’s public education on her blog NJ Left Behind.

By Margaret Grigsby
WSLS 10
March 17, 2015

WASHINGTON, D.C. (WSLS 10) – According to a new ranking of charter schools across the country, Virginia ranked next-to-last of the 42 states and the District of Columbia that have charter school laws.

Of the 43 on the list, only one-third earned above-average scores for implementing a strong policy environment according to the 16th edition of Charter School Laws Across the States 2015: Rankings and Scorecard released by The Center for Education Reform (CER).

Only four states and D.C. earned As, with D.C. holding on to number one for seven years in a row. Eight states earned Bs, 19 Cs, and 11 earned Ds or Fs.

Thirteen states saw changes to their ranking since last year.

Since 1996, CER has studied and evaluated charter school laws based on their construction and implementation, and whether or not they yield the intended result of the charter school policy, which is to ensure the creation of numerous quality learning opportunities for children.