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by Amelia Pak-Harvey
Sentinel and Enterprise
September 21, 2016

LOWELL — Adding more national attention to the statewide fight over charter schools, a new report from a conservative, New York-based think tank concludes that charter-school enrollment actually increases per-pupil spending for traditional school districts.

Question 2 on the Massachusetts ballot, which would allow for up to 12 charter schools or expansions every year, has drawn a heated battle that has racked up more than $18 million in spending from proponents and opponents combined.

At the heart of the costly battle is money itself.

Opponents of the measure, which include the Save Our Public Schools campaign, argue that charter schools take money away from traditional school districts.

Sending districts are reimbursed through a complex formula in which money for each student follows a child to their charter school.

Yet, a new Manhattan Institute report contends that while charter-school enrollment reduces the net amount of Chapter 70 state aid that districts receive, it increases per-pupil spending in the 10 districts with the largest number of charter-school students.

“It is not false that charter enrollments cost district schools over $400 million a year,” said Max Eden, author of the report.

But after Massachusetts’ “unique reimbursement” — which he argued is one of the most generous reimbursement plans in the nation — districts are getting paid a significant amount of money for students they no longer teach.

“They are left with more to spend on the number of students they serve, even if they have less money to spend overall,” Eden said.

The report bolsters the pro-charter-school stance — that districts keep getting paid for students who are simply not there.

The state reimburses the full cost of a student’s tuition by 100 percent the first year the student leaves, and 25 percent for five years after that.

Those reimbursements aren’t always fully funded. Even so, Eden said, it still causes an increase in the per-pupil amount.

The report uses fiscal 2016 numbers from the Massachusetts Teachers Association website that detail charter-school payments and the number of children sent to charter schools, according to Eden.

That analysis includes Lowell, which had 1,490 charter-school students in fiscal 2016.

After state reimbursement, the district paid about $14.8 million in charter-school costs. In fiscal 2017, the current fiscal year, Lowell is projected to pay nearly $17 million.

Eden calculated his own per-pupil spending amounts both before charter-school enrollment and after enrollment, concluding that Lowell’s per-pupil amount increased from $12,045 to $12,269 due to charter enrollment.

Across the top 10 districts, Eden found that per-pupil spending increased by about $85 million.

Yet, as school officials may argue — and what the report also mentions — a technical per-pupil increase still doesn’t erase the challenge of students lost to charter schools.

Districts may still have to fund materials or resources for an entire classroom even though just one or two students might have left.

Save Our Public Schools argued that the report was bought and paid for by the “same Wall Street billionaires” who are funding Question 2.

In a statement, the campaign said the institute “quarrels” with state data that show 231 districts will lose more than $450 million to charter schools this year.

“Right-wing think tanks can fiddle with the numbers all they want, but Merrimack Valley parents and educators see the impact of this financial drain in classrooms every day,” the campaign said in a statement. “Schools without librarians, larger class sizes, school buses eliminated, and other serious cuts.”

In a statement, state Executive Office of Education spokeswoman Laura Rigas said the office will review the final report when it becomes available. But she said it appears to be consistent with the office’s own analysis that per-pupil spending has gone up in districts with the most charter-school students.

Beyond the numbers, the report is the latest example of a statewide question that has attracted plenty of attention out of state.

In spending efforts on both sides, $11 million has come from outside the state.

Families for Excellent Schools, a nonprofit based in New York, has given nearly $6 million to the group fighting for charter-school expansion, Great Schools Massachusetts.

And beyond the Manhattan Institute, which has published previous reports supportive of charter schools, the issue has attracted attention from other out-of-state groups such as the Center for Education Reform.

Read more: http://www.sentinelandenterprise.com/news/ci_30386680/study-bolsters-charter-schools#ixzz4LYeDhk3A

by Sam Alton
Daily Titan
September 20, 2016

On Aug. 21, John Oliver, host of HBO’s satire news program “Last Week Tonight,” unleashed a biased attack against charter schools in the United States. The attack, which was unfair at best, undermined and glazed over the many successes that charter schools have had in helping the communities they serve in favor of bashing them for their failures.

After the segment aired, it came as no surprise that the Center for Education Reform (CER), a pro-charter organization, did not take kindly to the outlandish attacks on charter schools. CER redid their entire homepage to fight this attack. The center expresses their anger by saying, “(Oliver) leveled a very unfair, unfortunate, unbalanced, unwarranted and generally unhinged tirade against charter schools,” according to the CER’s website.

In response to the segment, the CER launched a video contest titled “Hey John Oliver, back off my Charter School!”

The center is currently offering a $100,000 prize to the winner’s chosen charter school so it can set the record straight, and show how much charter schools can help their communities instead of the negative stigma Oliver’s argument could spread.

The clip of the segment has since reached almost 6 million views on YouTube, and sparked a serious outcry against Oliver’s claim that charter schools are generally a bad system, taking away funding from traditional schools. However, the positive statistics that Oliver so kindly left out, show the opposite on a larger scale.

Charter schools are usually very community-based. They create “safer, stronger communities,” and can be credited to making “an inner-city ghetto into a bustling and safer neighborhood or bringing families in rural America together,” according to the CER.

During the 18-minute segment of the show, Oliver focused on only the worst and most specific examples of charter schools across the United States. The show portrayed charter schools as unequipped to provide high quality education, and as untrustworthy institutions that are not deserving of government funding. In fact, it is these very institutions that need and deserve the most support.

A 2014 survey of charter schools across the United States found that when compared to more traditional public schools, charters tended to receive significantly less revenue per student (roughly 36 percent less), and that the general demographics of the students they serve tended to be from lower-income and minority groups.

These schools are not only helping students who are minorities and who come from families near or below the poverty line, but they are helping students who struggle to learn in a typical classroom environment. This is done by giving them a different approach to quality education–something Oliver doesn’t seem to recognize.

Going even further, a study conducted in 2016 by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools found that more than 400 new charter schools have opened this year. Adding to the 6,800 charter schools that serve over 2.9 million students across the country, parental interest in these high-quality forms of education is growing, so diluting them to be untrustworthy isn’t helping anyone.

Oliver’s general argument came down to the idea that since some charter schools have been mismanaged, all charter schools are bad. Not only were his examples highly irregular cases, but most of his sources were old. Dating from 2012 or earlier, some of the clips he aired featured people whose clothes and hair have been out of style for decades.

By focusing only on the negative statistics, Oliver missed out on the chance to highlight the positive effects that charter schools have on the students and communities they serve. Oliver complains that the private funding and running of charter schools leads to a corrupt administration. While there have been cases where this is true, the majority of charter schools benefit from this type of oversight. Mainly because it allows for schools to run without the red tape of government policies that tend to stifle any kind of innovation and progress that administrators and teachers try to enact. This just proves that one cannot judge the whole by the shortcomings of a few.

Only time will tell if the attack by Oliver, who has been compared to Oprah by the New York Post in his ability to influence a wide reaching audience, will have any lasting damage on the integrity of America’s charter school system. Hopefully Olivers’s words won’t be heeded by the nation’s public since charter schools are a great experiment for American education.

While no one has yet to win the contest, hopefully the prize money donated and the pro-charter content in the videos will be able to reach as many people as Oliver shouldn’t have.

The Columbus Dispatch
September 19, 2016

Last month, comedian John Oliver unleashed funny broadside on charter schools in America. He spotlighted the worst of the worst charters, the ones that fail students, escape rigorous oversight and cost taxpayers.

The pro-charter Center for Education Reform responded with a video contest, “Hey John Oliver, Back off My Charter School!” The center offers a $100,000 prize to the chosen school of the winner who “shows John Oliver why making fun of charter schools is no laughing matter … and why we need more opportunity, not less.”

What a great opportunity for the winner to respond with facts and a dollop of humor.

What’s not amusing, though, is the NAACP’s updated stance on charters. In July, NAACP delegates passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on charter schools, pending an October vote of its national board. The NAACP asserted that charters have aggravated school segregation, eroded local control of schools, wasted public funds, and disproportionately disciplined minority students.

But they’re missing the point. As with all public schools — and remember, charters are public schools — there are good ones and bad ones. If they fail, they should close.

A 2015 Stanford University study of charters in 41 urban areas in 22 states showed significant long-term gains: Low-income black students received the equivalent of 59 days of additional learning in math and 44 days of additional learning in reading compared with their peers in traditional schools.

We hope NAACP board members consult with parents of charter students before the October vote.

— Chicago Tribune

by PRWeb
Timesunion
September 16, 2016

The Center for Education Reform invites all charter schools to submit a video for a chance to win money.

Washington, DC (PRWEB) September 15, 2016

September 26th is the deadline for The Center for Education Reform’s (CER) “Hey John Oliver! Back Off My Charter School” Video Contest. The contest was born after HBO’s Last Week Tonight’s host, John Oliver, did an “unfair and unwarranted segment, tearing apart charter schools and minimizing their impact,” said CER founder & CEO Jeanne Allen. The Center responded by creating this contest in order to set the record straight and showcase the powerful stories of how charter schools are providing an important option to students across the country.

Parents, students or school leaders, as well as students who are not currently in charter schools but would like to be, are encouraged to shoot informal videos on their mobile devices and send those in for a chance to win $100,000 for their schools!
Videos from charter schools are flowing in, and CER is reviewing entries. A panel of independent judges, including some celebrities, will select the best video that demonstrates the most distinguishing feature of the charter school experience.

You may also find this article via PRWeb on Times Union Online, Houston Chronicle Online, My San Antonio, Benzinga, Seattle pi, San Francisco Chronicle Online, Press Release Rocket, WTLZ-TV Online, University Chronicle,DMN Newswire,WFLX-TV Online,WECT-TV Online, KOLD-TV Online, KUSI-TV Online, KEYC-TV Online, WFMJ-TV Online,WALB-TV Online, WAVE-TV Online,KLTV-TV Online,KLKN-TV Online and KUAM-TV Online

by Mark Brodie
KJZZ-FM Online
September 15, 2016

The Arizona State Board for Charter Schools has approved an intent to revoke the charter of a Mesa school that closed just as school was supposed to start. And recently, charter schools caught the eye of John Oliver, on his HBO show, Last Week Tonight.

In response to the monologue, the Center for Education Reform launched what it’s calling the “Hey John Oliver, back off my charter school” video contest, which aims to show how charter schools help students and their families.

Diane Schanzenbach is the director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution – it’s a non-partisan economic think tank that looks at a variety of policies, including education. We ask if she thinks charter schools suffer a perception problem.

by Paul Perry
Inside Philanthropy
September 14th, 2016

On August 21, 2016, John Oliver stepped into the heated debate around charter schools. His segment reported on mismanagement and misspending at charter schools in several states. It also called into question the free market approach advocated by some in the charter school community. How? By, among other things, hilariously swiping at former presidential candidate and Ohio Governor John Kasich’s comparison between schools and pizzerias.

In response, the Center for Education Reform—a charter school advocacy outfit funded by big names such as the Walton Family Foundation, the Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation—has launched a $100,000 competition called “Hey John Oliver! Back off My Charter School!” in which it is soliciting responses to Oliver’s segment from charter schools around the country. The organization has noted that funding for this particular campaign will come from “program funds” that it collects from over 1000 donors each year. That said, these big-name funders have a long history of supporting advocacy efforts for charter schools and this effort is just the latest salvo in a long-running battle that is reaching its 25th year.

As the charter school advocacy movement comes of age, even the founder and CEO of the Center for Education Reform, Jeanne Allen, has tough words for its leaders. She notes that charter reformers have become “our own worst enemy” and that their agenda comes across as “narrow, hollow and hostile.” Earlier this summer, Allen released a white paper calling for a new direction for the charter school movement while calling into the question the money and muscle of funders and the organizations they sponsor to “struggle every day to defend what already exists.”

From 1991 to 2000, 36 laws were enacted governing the creation of new charter schools and two creating new full school choice programs. Since then, progress seems to have slowed and funders like Gates and Walton are beginning to ask why, even as they continue to cut checks. Part of this trend is obviously due simply to the initial ramp-up and early novelty of the movement when it was just getting started. Still, with all of this investment from major philanthropic institutions and withering critiques from major media figures like Oliver, many in the movement are questioning why it feels like more was accomplished in the early years of the movement than in the recent past.

As much as Oliver’s segment highlighted important distinctions between how charter schools and district schools operate, a 2015 report by the Mind Trust, a charter advocacy organization based in Indianapolis, found that most charters very closely resemble their district school counterparts despite claims about innovation in the sector. This is fueled by risk-averse authorizers and philanthropists who place big bets on well-established models, such as charter management organizations (CMOs), as opposed to radical new ideas.

Despite the mixed record for charters over the past quarter century, as noted by Oliver, major foundation dollars have flowed big time towards charters and away from traditional public schools. In fact, funding for charters increased from 3 percent in 2000 to 16 percent in 2010, while it was cut in half for district schools over the same period, according to Michigan State University researchers Sarah Reckhow and Jeffrey Snyder.

But we wonder what more recent data might show. As we’ve reported, some emerging big ed funders like Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan are looking beyond charters as they plot to reinvent American education. Personalized learning is one idea with the potential to edge aside charters in the competition for funder dollars, with major attention from Zuckerberg and Gates, as well as others from the tech philanthropy community.

A great many of the new activist philanthropists coming on the scene are focused on scalable solutions. Yet, as we’ve noted before, charters have struggled on this front. While large shares of students in some poor cities are now in charters, these schools still only educate 5 percent of all K-12 students—after 25 years of effort and billions of dollars in donor backing. Scaling the charters that are actually good is even harder.

If you’re a young tech type looking at what new solution might sweep over and remake the K-12 landscape, it’s not clear you’d see charters as an obvious candidate. How enthusiastic do you think Silicon Valley VCs might be about a product that had captured only 5 percent of market share after a quarter-century? At this point, funding charters looks more a bit more akin to backing direct services than fomenting a disruptive revolution.

All of which is to say that you can understand why charter backers might be so sensitive about John Oliver’s humorous broadside. As we’ve reported, the biggest charter funders have lately doubled down, but there’s a growing struggle underway for the hearts and minds of new funders coming on the scene.

by Alyson Klein
Education Week
September 13, 2016

GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump is pledging that, if elected, he’d be the “nation’s biggest cheerleader for school choice” and would offer states the chance to use $20 billion in federal money to create vouchers allowing children in poverty to attend the public, charter, or private school of their choice.

In a speech at a charter school in Cleveland, he also said he’s a supporter of merit pay for teachers—a signature policy of both Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush’s administrations—although he did not explain how he hopes to further the cause, other than rhetorically taking aim at tenure.

“There is no policy more in need of urgent change than our government-run education monopoly,” Trump said. “The Democratic Party has trapped millions of African-American and Hispanic youth” in struggling schools.

“We want every inner-city child in America to have the freedom to attend any school,” he said.

Trump said that the $20 billion in federal funds could be combined with more than $100 billion in state and local money to create vouchers of up to $12,000 annually for the nation’s poorest kids.

Read the rest of this article on www.edweek.org