- Now what will happen to our public schools? [FOCUS mentioned]
- The Real Threats to Charter Autonomy [FOCUS mentioned]
- Bill Aims to Boost Growth of High-Quality Charter Schools; Cross-Aisle Support Seen
Now what will happen to our public schools? [FOCUS mentioned]
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
April 2, 2014
Muriel Bowser's strong victory last night over Vincent Gray in the District's Democratic primary for Mayor creates tremendous uncertainty in the 18 year effort toward school reform in the nation's capital. The editors of the Washington Post put it this way:
"Under the consistent leadership of the first school chancellor of the mayoral-control era, Michelle Rhee, and her successor, Kaya Henderson, along with Deputy Mayor for Education Abigail Smith, the city has made unprecedented progress in improving educational options for all children. Both Ms. Bowser and Mr. Catania say they want to accelerate that progress, which is commendable. Voters will want to know how they propose to do so without the kind of disruptions that, in the past, have so often set back school reform."
But disruptions are almost certain to come. Miss Bowser failed to commit during her campaign to keeping Kaya Henderson on as DCPS Chancellor, a highly visible lack of support for someone fighting day and night in the trenches to provide a quality educational seat for all. The Councilwoman has also said she want to force charter schools to have a neighborhood preference for admission, a proposal a panel of experts soundly rejected.
The well-respected Deputy Mayor for Education Abigail Smith has work in progress in many areas. I had the opportunity to catch up with her at the recent FOCUS Gala, and as I was speaking to her everyone in the vicinity kept telling me what a great job she was doing and how much they like her. She may be the second casualty of a new Administration.
There is the promise by Mr. Gray to turn over vacant DCPS buildings to charters, a process that was going full steam ahead until the election season started. Finally, we have the Adequacy Study which for the first time documented illegal funding for the traditional schools outside of the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula to which charters have been denied access. Mayor Gray is to introduce a new budget tomorrow that is anticipated to have money allocated to close this gap. Now, the recommendations coming out of this document may very well be trashed.
Politicians have so many ways that they can restrict the freedom and autonomy of charters, as the FOCUS executive director Robert Cane pointed out last week. Let's prepare for a new round of attacks so that we may preserve the academic progress this school system that educates 44 percent of all public school children has been able to achieve.
The Real Threats to Charter Autonomy [FOCUS mentioned]
Center for Education Reform
By Patrick Burke
April 1, 2014
In recent remarks, Robert Cane, executive director of Friends of Choice in Urban Schools (FOCUS), issued a powerful warning to the charter school movement in the District of Columbia.
Cane spoke of the momentous progress that has been made over the years in making charter schools promising educational options for DC students, but also of the threats to derail the engine driving much-needed reform in the District.
There’s no denying the strides made in DC’s efforts to create a robust charter school environment and the increased student proficiency as a result, but even the most Parent Power friendly areas still face challenges.
Of all the attacks on the charter movement, Cane says, “the most insidious is the continuous assault on what truly defines charter schools: individual-school control over operations and freedom from burdensome oversight.”
This assault comes through in a number of ways, from the ‘controlled choice movement’ to the burdensome regulations charter schools increasingly endure.
Said Cane, “Over the years legislation and regulations have been proposed that, for example, sought to require every charter school to use the same reading program; to impose uniform truancy and disciplinary policies and procedures on charters; to require every charter regardless of its mission, to adopt “universal values,” “financial literacy,” and “environmental literacy” curricula.
He continued, “Now getting serious traction nationally, the controlled choice movement would limit choice by empowering the government to centrally engineer school admissions in order to achieve increased racial and socioeconomic diversity or other goals.”
“The idea that central planning of any kind should be applied to the charter schools is more frightening than any moratorium on chartering,” he said.
In Cane’s view, charter autonomy is crucial to improving student achievement:
“The success of the charter schools also shows what all of us already know: that we’re still far short of our goal of educating every charter school kid to the limits of his or her ability. I know that many charter educators spend the majority of their waking hours working on this problem and I’ve no doubt that over time they’ll solve it in their own individual ways if given the leeway to do so.”
Bill Aims to Boost Growth of High-Quality Charter Schools; Cross-Aisle Support Seen
Education Week
By Alyson Klein
April 1, 2014
States and districts would be encouraged to help grow high-quality charter schools—and ensure that they enroll and retain English-language learners and students in special education—under a rare, bipartisan bill introduced Tuesday by Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., the chairman of the House education committee, and Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the panel.
Under the measure, the two main federal programs for charter schools would be consolidated, combining federal grants to help charter school developers open new schools, with money to help charters find and fix up facilities. Overall, it calls for $300 million a year in federal funding for charters, a little more than the roughly $250 million the current Charter School Grants program received in the most recent budget, for fiscal year 2014, which started back on Oct. 1.
The revamped program would provide incentives for states to help develop charter schools and make it easier for those who operate charters with a track record of success to open more schools. Right now, charter operators can get federal grants to open new schools, but not to expand existing, successful models.
The bill closely mirrors legislation, also supported by Kline and Miller, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives by broad, bipartisan margins back in 2011, as well as the charter portion of a broader bill to renew the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which only garnered GOP support. Neither bill ever made it to the floor of the U.S. Senate.
The big difference in this new piece of legislation: The bill would create a grant program to help Charter Management Organizations (think KIPP or Aspire) open new charter schools. That's something U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan supports.
And the bill makes it clear that states can use so-called "weighted lotteries," meaning that they can give preference to low-income students, racial minorities, and other disadvantaged children in admissions. That's something the administration has also been pushing. In addition, it would allow students who graduate from one charter school (say, an elementary school) to enroll in an affiliated school (say, a middle school) without having to go back through a lottery.
Advocates for charter schools gave the legislation a big thumbs-up, including the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools and the National Association of Charter School Authorizers. And some advocates for students with disabilities—a group that many argue has been ignored by the charter sector—are also on board, including the Council for Exceptional Children and the National Center for Learning Disabilities.
But Mary Kusler, the director of government relations for the National Education Association, a 3-million member teachers' union, said the bill doesn't go far enough when it comes to beefing up accountability measures for charter schools.
The bill "falls short of safeguards needed in the two-decade-old charter sector," she said. For instance, she explained, the bill doesn't require charters that get private money to disclose how much and who it is from. (That's something state and federal laws for non-profit organizations often govern, but Kusler argued that disclosure laws vary state by state.) It also doesn't require charters to have the same open-meetings laws as other public schools.
Still, Kusler sees the bill, overall, as an improvement on current federal laws governing charter accountability. For instance, she likes a provision that would call for states to spell out their oversight plans for charter school authorizers.
The charter school bill could be considered by the House education committee as early as next week.