(Newswire, June 5, 2018)  Check out these two stories on charter schools.  First the CBS Morning News on Basis Independent Silicon Valley, which has captured the top five spots on U.S. News and World Report’s list of the best high schools and where students are required to take at least seven AP courses, beginning as early as eighth grade (and some take as many as 20). Fantastic opportunities yielding fantastic results!  Then, do yourself a favor and go read “A change of schools changed everything” by valedictorian of the 2018 graduating class of PACE Career Academy in Allenstown, NH. It’s a great personal testament to all the things that are the foundation of innovations and opportunities that are charter schools.  Some excerpts: “…when I there last year as a junior I was introduced to an entirely new type of education. The staff was more helpful than I could have expected, and the environment…was welcoming. We act and are treated as individuals, as opposed to just a part of a group.”

(Newswire, June 5, 2018)  Later this month the Baltimore School Board will consider applications for six new charter schools. This would normally be reason to cheer, except for the fact that the same school board has cut its budget for the city’s existing 34 charter schools (which serve about 20 percent of Charm City’s 80,600 public school students). And, adding insult to injury, there’s a new funding formula that has charter schools paying the district millions of dollars for services previously covered by the school system.  In a laudable demonstration of calm reserve Nicole Harris-Crest, ED of the Maryland Alliance of Public Charter Schools, said the cuts and new rules made for a pretty tough environment for starting a charter school.  “But,” she added, “it adds additional people to the movement to fight for equitable funding.” It’s time the state legislature or the courts step in to make to make that happen. (The district is still fighting a 2015 lawsuit filed by a group of charter school operators who allege the district has failed to meet contractual obligations to charters and has not been transparent or consistent in the way it allocates funding to those schools.)

(Newswire, June 5, 2018) One of the comments you often hear from parents who choose to send their children to charter, or private schools is the simple desire to ensure their kids are safe – which, sadly, is often not the case in the schools that many children attend. But are those desires met?  According to The Hill the answer is a resounding yes! An analysis was conducted of the second-year results of the federal evaluation of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (the federally funded scholarship program that allows low-income families in D.C. to use public education dollars to cover private-school tuition for their kids).

Scholarship students who attended a private school were over 35 percent more likely to report that their schools were very safe. And parents of the students were about 36 percent more likely to report that their children were in very safe schools. It’s not a surprise but it is happy confirmation of what most edreform supporters have long suspected (or known in our hearts).

(Newswire, June 5, 2018)  Last week The Las Vegas Review-Journal ran a piece about how Nevada’s Clark County School District had created a new marketing position to sell the district’s schools to parents and slow the exodus of students to charter schools. It’s something that most people might let pass, but then CER is not staffed by most people.  So we opened our trusty laptop and fired off a letter to the editor, which reads in part “The [district’s] goal should not be ‘How do we convince families not to leave?’ It should be ‘How do we provide learning experiences and results that make them want to stay?’ Read the whole letter below, or visit this link.

Clark County School District’s new marketing position is the wrong approach

June 2, 2018

The dramatic increase in students leaving Clark County public schools for charter schools — which signifies the huge demand by parents for innovative approaches to learning — should give the district pause (May 27 Review-Journal). A proper response would be to create the kind of personalized and individualized approaches being offered by many charter schools. Instead, district officials think their problem is a marketing issue, and they are funding a position to stem the flow of students leaving.

This is misdiagnosing a problem. The goal should not be “How do we convince families not to leave?” It should be “How do we provide learning experiences and results that make them want to stay?”

Sadly, however, the law does not afford Clark County all the flexibility that charters have to make changes in its programs and operations. Unwieldly union contracts and state and local requirements on how schools operate hamstring well-meaning school leaders and teachers. The 19th-century factory model of school no longer works for 21st-century people.

That is the lesson that charters have afforded public education, and until citizens demand more from legislators, traditional districts will continue facing the impact of disruptive innovation. Charters and many new private schools are like Amazon, while traditional education is akin to Sears. One is finding and delivering to consumers at a more rapid pace, with higher ambitions and cognizant of the new science of learning. The other, as nostalgic as it is, has failed to keep pace with changes in technology and society.

That is what should be on the minds of Clark County school officials. It’s substance, not PR.

Jeanne Allen Washington, D.C. The writer is founder and CEO of the Center for Education Reform.

(Newswire, June 5, 2018)  A NY Post editorial lays it on the line for Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza. If he truly wants to mend fences with the city’s high-performing charter schools and their leaders, he can start by granting long-languishing space requests and also end an injustice that NY1 exposed this week: discrimination by the Committee on Special Education against kids who attend Success Academy (it’s been slow-walking requests for Success Academy students, and even unfairly denying services). Carranza not only visited charters in the Bronx and Brooklyn recently, he acknowledged that “charter schools are public schools” all welcome signs but will he follow up with tangible change? After all, as the editorial points out, Team de Blasio has talked détente with the charter movement from time to time but never walked the walk.