- Pensions at Charter Schools Hot Topic With IRS
- Survey: D.C. Students Say School is 'Too Easy'
- Kids Say Math Work is too Easy
Pensions at Charter Schools Hot Topic With IRS
The Washington Times
By Ben Wolfgang
July 9, 2012
Charter school supporters are continuing to pressure the Internal Revenue Service to change proposed regulations that could disqualify teachers at charter schools from public pension systems.
The potential changes, released late last year, would revise the definition of “governmental plans,” the current standard for determining who can be legally considered a government employee and therefore eligible for state retirement plans. There’s a growing fear that charter school employees would not meet the new IRS criteria, and ineligibility for pensions, analysts fear, could keep good teachers from taking jobs at charters and slow the alternative schools’ rapid growth across the U.S.
“The charter school sector around the country needs to be able to grow … you see states across the country improving their charter-school laws. This rule could jeopardize that,” said Renita Thukral, senior director of legal affairs at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
Ms. Thukral and other charter backers testified Monday before a panel of IRS officials, who are sifting through more than 2,300 public comments submitted by teachers’ groups and others urging changes to the proposal.
Members of Congress also have weighed in. In February, Rep. John Kline, Minnesota Republican, and Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican, sent the IRS a letter saying the proposal “could unfairly jeopardize the retirement security of charter-school teachers.”
The rule is in draft form, and a firm date for its finalization has not been set.
An IRS spokeswoman had no comment Monday, but the agency previously said its new guidelines aren’t meant to disqualify charter teachers from state pension plans.
Its justification for the rule, it says on its website, is an increasing concern about the “growing number of requests for governmental-plan determinations from plan sponsors whose relationships to governmental entities are increasingly remote.”
But the alliance has estimated that, if unchanged, the rule would force 95,000 charter school teachers nationwide - about 93 percent of the total workforce - to leave their schools or risk losing their pensions.
As currently written, the regulation would establish five criteria for determining eligibility in state retirement plans.
They include a requirement that all institutions eligible for governmental plans have “governing officers appointed by state officials or publicly elected,” and that a government body must be responsible for all the debt a participating institution accumulates.
Ms. Thukral said it is possible charters could meet the guideline of having governing officers appointed or elected by the state, but it is unlikely they would meet any of the other requirements.
Charter schools, for example, can go bankrupt and out of business without a government - state or local - guaranteeing its debts. Proponents believe that is one of their key strengths, since they compete in an educational marketplace and close if they are unable to attract enough students or quality instructors.
Among other suggestions, Ms. Thukral told the IRS on Monday that the rule could be amended to include language making clear public charter schools will be considered “agencies or instrumentalities of the state.”
Survey: D.C. Students Say School is 'Too Easy'
The Washington Examiner
By Lisa Gartner
July 9, 2012
D.C. schools: Easy as Sunday morning?
Sure, if you believe the system's students: 39 percent of D.C. fourth-graders and 34 percent of eighth-graders said their math lessons were often or always "too easy" on a survey by the Center for American Progress.
In fact, District eighth-grade students were more likely to say their math work was mindnumbing than their counterparts in Maryland or Virginia, of whom 31 and 32 percent said the same, respectively.
Of course, significantly fewer District students are graduating from high school, attending class or passing standardized tests than their suburban peers -- so take the results with a grain of salt.
It is, of course, also the case that lessons below rigor can bore a child and turn him off school. But 90 percent of D.C. eighth-graders said they feel they usually learn in their math classes. Eighty-seven percent of Maryland students and 89 percent of Virginia students said the same.
Other findings from the survey include the 71 percent of District eighth-graders who report usually "understanding what their math teacher asks" (75 percent in Maryland and 77 percent in Virginia).
Virginia students were more likely to say they read five or fewer pages in school and for homework each day than students in the District or Maryland, while District students were more likely than Maryland and Virginia students to read more than 20 pages.
Kids Say Math Work is too Easy
The Washington Examiner
By Lisa Gartner
July 10, 2012
About one-third of Washington-area fourth- and eighth-grade students think their math schoolwork is too easy.
School officials' response: not for long.
The District's fourth- and eighth-grade students scored the lowest in the country on standardized math tests in 2011. Yet 39 percent of D.C. fourth-graders and 34 percent of eighth-graders said their math work is often or always too easy, according to national survey data studied by the Center for American Progress. This puts the District slightly worse off than the national averages of 37 percent for fourth-graders and 29 percent for eighth-graders.
The survey paints a similar picture in Virginia and Maryland, where more than 30 percent of the students said math work is too easy.
Center for American Progress researcher Ulrich Boser said the survey suggests students aren't being engaged and reaping maximum benefits from class time.
But school officials said students shouldn't get too comfortable. All three states are in the process of rolling out tougher curricula for the coming years.
"If there were students who didn't feel they were being challenged in mathematics before, my guess is their feelings are going to change if they haven't already," Virginia Department of Education spokesman Charles Pyle said.
The District and Maryland have joined the national Common Core State Standards Initiative, adopting the same -- and often more rigorous -- academic standards as 45 other states.
Virginia chose not to join the group but created its own higher standards.
"We're continuing to raise the bar for academic achievement," said Brandon Frazier, spokesman for D.C.'s Office of the State Superintendent of Education. "It's an ongoing process, but we're definitely taking the lessons learned and growing from them. And this survey is part of those lessons learned."
But even as school systems make changes, Boser said most people still think students are overworked.
"But the problem with that public perception is it ignores what is happening in the broad swath of schools across the D.C. region or the nation at large," he said. "Most students are saying that they're not being challenged enough. Most students are not getting the real rigorous learning opportunities that they need to succeed. ... I think students want to be challenged. I think they realize that they need to have a rigorous education. And frankly, engaging material is more interesting material."