The Center for Media and Democracy has done a great public service, collecting and sorting a big pile of charter school failure data that the USED somehow just wasn't interested in pursuing all that much.
They have taken the NCES data from 2000-2013 and pulled out a state-by-state list of failed charter schools. This gives you, or your local press if they actually feel moved to pursue a story, a heaping database of charter failure info. One interesting feature from a Your Tax Dollars at Work perspective-- the charter schools that hoovered up some tasty public tax dollars and never even opened in the first place! In Michigan in the 2011-2012 school year, according to CMD, twenty-five charters received grants and never opened.
But for those of you who are visual learners, CMD has a big interactive map. I'll include that here, but I recommend you go over to CMD and read the whole piece for more details. Here's what charter failure to the tune of 2,500 schools (2,500!!) looks like. (And remember-- this is only through 2013)
Source: NCES Common Core of Data Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey for school years 2000 to 2013. Data are available at https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/pubschuniv.asp. For purposes of this analysis, schools coded in the survey as “closed since last report,” and “inactive-temporarily closed” were deemed closed. Schools that changed status from “charter” and “open” to “not applicable” and “closed” in subsequent year were also deemed to be closed charter schools. Additionally, schools coded as open charters in one year that then are missing from the survey for at least the next two subsequent years are also deemed to be closed. - See more at: http://www.prwatch.org/node/12936#sthash.I4eFu51g.dpuf
Friday, September 25, 2015
Kansas Solves Teacher Eval Riddle
Governor Sam Brownback wants to pay teachers strictly based on merit, and some legislators think that's a darn fine idea.
For instance, here's a member of the special committee to find a new finance formula for schools
“I say the highest paid individual in your school should be your best teacher, period, and I believe that,” said Rep. Ron Highland, a Republican from Wamego
Of course, lots of folks find that idea appealing, but the problem remains-- how exactly does one determine who that best teacher is? What are the qualities that are most valued in a teacher, and how does one measure those qualities or outcomes or what-have-you? Well, Rep. Highland has that puzzle solved as well.
“I can walk into any school and talk to the janitor and I can tell you who the best teacher is in every school. They all know, so telling me you can’t figure that out, I don’t buy that argument,” said Highland.
So there you have it. Just ask the janitor.
Highland may have a point. I'll bet if I ask a janitor in a school building who the best teacher is, he can give me an answer.
In fact, if I ask two janitors-- or two janitors, a cafeteria lady, the floating specialist, the principal, a couple of parents, and the guy who lives next door to the school, they can all tell me who the best teacher is, they can all tell me.
They just won't tell me the same thing.
Identifying excellent teachers is not a problem. It has never been a problem. The problem has been, and remains, that every person has a different idea about what "excellent teacher" means. Despite repeated insistence by public ed critics and the secretary of education that schools are packed with terrible, awful, no good teachers, I'm betting that it's very hard to find a classroom teacher that doesn't have at least one fan.
You know the old saying-- a person with one watch always knows what time it is, but a person with two watches is never sure.
I'll give Highland this much-- his Ask a Janitor evaluation method couldn't work any worse than the various VAM models in use around the country (assuming the school still has a janitor).
For instance, here's a member of the special committee to find a new finance formula for schools
“I say the highest paid individual in your school should be your best teacher, period, and I believe that,” said Rep. Ron Highland, a Republican from Wamego
Of course, lots of folks find that idea appealing, but the problem remains-- how exactly does one determine who that best teacher is? What are the qualities that are most valued in a teacher, and how does one measure those qualities or outcomes or what-have-you? Well, Rep. Highland has that puzzle solved as well.
“I can walk into any school and talk to the janitor and I can tell you who the best teacher is in every school. They all know, so telling me you can’t figure that out, I don’t buy that argument,” said Highland.
So there you have it. Just ask the janitor.
Highland may have a point. I'll bet if I ask a janitor in a school building who the best teacher is, he can give me an answer.
In fact, if I ask two janitors-- or two janitors, a cafeteria lady, the floating specialist, the principal, a couple of parents, and the guy who lives next door to the school, they can all tell me who the best teacher is, they can all tell me.
They just won't tell me the same thing.
Identifying excellent teachers is not a problem. It has never been a problem. The problem has been, and remains, that every person has a different idea about what "excellent teacher" means. Despite repeated insistence by public ed critics and the secretary of education that schools are packed with terrible, awful, no good teachers, I'm betting that it's very hard to find a classroom teacher that doesn't have at least one fan.
You know the old saying-- a person with one watch always knows what time it is, but a person with two watches is never sure.
I'll give Highland this much-- his Ask a Janitor evaluation method couldn't work any worse than the various VAM models in use around the country (assuming the school still has a janitor).
Wednesday, September 23, 2015
Gates Plan Crashes, Burns School District
Back in 2012, "teacherpreneur" Ryan Kinser wrote on the Gates Foundation blog, Impatient Optimists, to sing the praises of the Gates partnership with Hillsborough County schools in a program called Empowering Effective Teachers.
Back in 2009, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded the Hillsborough County, Florida, school system a $100 million grant to revamp teacher evaluation. The Empowering Effective Teachers Initiative (EET) resulted in a massive overhaul of how we view teaching and learning in the nation’s eighth largest district.
Sure-- the Gates had made yet another commitment to completely changing the whole teaching profession, because, hey-- they're rich and they think they know what needs to be done.
In 2012, Kinser talked about three big lessons from the program.
1) View teachers as the solution, not the problem. That lesson must have come later, because part of the original plan was to fire the bottom 5% of the teaching force every year (there's that magic 5% again).
2) Teachers and evaluators must build trust. The plan cycled teachers out of the classroom for stints as evaluators, because, reasons. Apparently, that was not always a big team-building exercise.
3) Use multiple measures that are transparent and authentic. Yeah, the fact that this was a lesson that had to be learned tells you how straight their heads were to start with.
Oh, and Kinser refers to the ongoing program as building the ship while sailing it-- oddly less terrifying than building the plane while flying it, but still not exactly stuffed with we-know-what-we're-doing-ness.
Well, that was 2012. A few other things have happened in the meantime. Back in 2010, Arne Duncan and Dennis Van Roekel stopped by to make a fuss, but that was about the last time that anybody wanted to throw an EET party.
That fire 5% of the sucky teachers thing? It should have gotten rid of 700 (700!!!) teachers-- you know, the expensive ones, because everyone knows that the bad teachers that need to be rooted out are, coincidentally, the older teachers who cost a bunch of money. But it never happened.
And that $100 million grant that Kinser was so proud of? Funny thing. Gates officials would now like you to know that the grant actually said "up to" $100 million.
I am kind of excited about that, because I now realize that I can tell, say, a used car dealer that I will pay "up to" seventy grand for a car and just pay five thousand bucks. I could promise to buy a new house with "up to" $10 million and just fork over a check for $10.75. I do regret not knowing this trick when my children were young and I could have bribed them to do chores with offers of "up to" $100 for mowing the lawn.
The original deal was $102 million from the district and $100 million from Gates. Turns out those numbers are a little off-- the district has kicked in about $124 million, while Gates has put in $80 million. And the district estimates that the total cost of the program will land in the $271 million.
Have there been problems. Well, another cornerstone of the program was merit pay (to offset Florida teacher pay which, to use a technical term, sucks), and that merit pay element turns out to be real expensive (which, it turns out, was a problem that could even be predicted by a lowly high school English teacher).
Other issues? Well, in 2014, the Tampa Bay Times sat down with some local officials and Gates honcho Vicki Phillips, and Phillips herself recognized one unfortunate effect of the program:
Another tough challenge is education's biggest oxymoron: teacher respect. "One thing we are dismayed about is how we have made teachers feel over the last 15 years," Phillips said. "We shamed and blamed them. It was unconscionable. We do not want them to feel that way."
Meanwhile, since 2009, Gates Foundation has caught on to the researched news that merit pay doesn't work. In fact, even when it's studied by the reform-friendly Roland Fryer of Harvard, it doesn't work. (Of course, "work" means "raise student test scores" because it's always always always about test scores). So the Gates isn't very interested in the Hillsborough EET program any more.
Once again, we see the problem with a business-style reformster approach to education. Gates didn't come in and make a commitment to Hillsborough Schools-- they came in and made commitment to their own business theory, and despite the number of years written into that commitment, the actual length of the commitment was "as long as it makes business sense to keep putting money into this."
Public schools make an institutional commitment to educate students in their community for, well, ever. Businessmen make a commitment to spend money on something as long as it makes sense to them. This does not make businessmen evil, but it does mean that they are bad candidates to become involved in the institution of public education. Hillsborough has been left holding a multi-million dollar bag because, while the Gates Foundation can walk away any time they feel like it, Hillsborough County schools are committed to educating children in the county as long as there are children in the county.
Charter operators are bad enough, sweeping into a community, hoovering up as many tax dollars as they can get their hands on, and quitting when it suits them to do so. But this seems somehow worse-- the Gates paid Hillsborough a pile of money for the chance to use their schools and their teaching staff as guinea pigs. And once the experiment looked like it wasn't going to pan out, the Gates just walks away from the lab, leaving someone else to clean up the mess and look after the experimental subjects with no regard for how badly those subjects may have been messed up.
One would hope that Gates would eventually learn something, that with a little reflection he might say to himself, "Gee, I was so sure that small schools would work, but they didn't. Then I was so sure merit pay would work, but it didn't. Maybe I should think twice about other stuff I'm so sure of before I start screwing with people's lives and livelihoods." Of course, there's a worse possibility-- that Gates isn't "so sure" at all, but that he's just casually tinkering with notions like a ten year old poking new trails for ants with a stick and as he wreaks havoc, he's not even all that invested in what he's doing. That would be awful, and I have a hard time imagining someone that detached from the lives he messes with, but as I remember his "We'll have to wait a decade to see if this stuff works" comment-- well, it's not inconceivable.
P.S. If the Hillsborough School district sounds vaguely familiar, it may be because you heard it in conjunction with MaryEllen Elia, who is currently the Reformy Boss of Education in New York State. But before that, she was the superintendent of Hillsborough schools when this Gatesian money pit was welcomed into the district. Honestly, some days I feel as if public education is an orphan in a coincidence-riddled Dickensian novel.
Back in 2009, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded the Hillsborough County, Florida, school system a $100 million grant to revamp teacher evaluation. The Empowering Effective Teachers Initiative (EET) resulted in a massive overhaul of how we view teaching and learning in the nation’s eighth largest district.
Sure-- the Gates had made yet another commitment to completely changing the whole teaching profession, because, hey-- they're rich and they think they know what needs to be done.
In 2012, Kinser talked about three big lessons from the program.
1) View teachers as the solution, not the problem. That lesson must have come later, because part of the original plan was to fire the bottom 5% of the teaching force every year (there's that magic 5% again).
2) Teachers and evaluators must build trust. The plan cycled teachers out of the classroom for stints as evaluators, because, reasons. Apparently, that was not always a big team-building exercise.
3) Use multiple measures that are transparent and authentic. Yeah, the fact that this was a lesson that had to be learned tells you how straight their heads were to start with.
Oh, and Kinser refers to the ongoing program as building the ship while sailing it-- oddly less terrifying than building the plane while flying it, but still not exactly stuffed with we-know-what-we're-doing-ness.
Well, that was 2012. A few other things have happened in the meantime. Back in 2010, Arne Duncan and Dennis Van Roekel stopped by to make a fuss, but that was about the last time that anybody wanted to throw an EET party.
That fire 5% of the sucky teachers thing? It should have gotten rid of 700 (700!!!) teachers-- you know, the expensive ones, because everyone knows that the bad teachers that need to be rooted out are, coincidentally, the older teachers who cost a bunch of money. But it never happened.
And that $100 million grant that Kinser was so proud of? Funny thing. Gates officials would now like you to know that the grant actually said "up to" $100 million.
I am kind of excited about that, because I now realize that I can tell, say, a used car dealer that I will pay "up to" seventy grand for a car and just pay five thousand bucks. I could promise to buy a new house with "up to" $10 million and just fork over a check for $10.75. I do regret not knowing this trick when my children were young and I could have bribed them to do chores with offers of "up to" $100 for mowing the lawn.
The original deal was $102 million from the district and $100 million from Gates. Turns out those numbers are a little off-- the district has kicked in about $124 million, while Gates has put in $80 million. And the district estimates that the total cost of the program will land in the $271 million.
Have there been problems. Well, another cornerstone of the program was merit pay (to offset Florida teacher pay which, to use a technical term, sucks), and that merit pay element turns out to be real expensive (which, it turns out, was a problem that could even be predicted by a lowly high school English teacher).
Other issues? Well, in 2014, the Tampa Bay Times sat down with some local officials and Gates honcho Vicki Phillips, and Phillips herself recognized one unfortunate effect of the program:
Another tough challenge is education's biggest oxymoron: teacher respect. "One thing we are dismayed about is how we have made teachers feel over the last 15 years," Phillips said. "We shamed and blamed them. It was unconscionable. We do not want them to feel that way."
Meanwhile, since 2009, Gates Foundation has caught on to the researched news that merit pay doesn't work. In fact, even when it's studied by the reform-friendly Roland Fryer of Harvard, it doesn't work. (Of course, "work" means "raise student test scores" because it's always always always about test scores). So the Gates isn't very interested in the Hillsborough EET program any more.
Once again, we see the problem with a business-style reformster approach to education. Gates didn't come in and make a commitment to Hillsborough Schools-- they came in and made commitment to their own business theory, and despite the number of years written into that commitment, the actual length of the commitment was "as long as it makes business sense to keep putting money into this."
Public schools make an institutional commitment to educate students in their community for, well, ever. Businessmen make a commitment to spend money on something as long as it makes sense to them. This does not make businessmen evil, but it does mean that they are bad candidates to become involved in the institution of public education. Hillsborough has been left holding a multi-million dollar bag because, while the Gates Foundation can walk away any time they feel like it, Hillsborough County schools are committed to educating children in the county as long as there are children in the county.
Charter operators are bad enough, sweeping into a community, hoovering up as many tax dollars as they can get their hands on, and quitting when it suits them to do so. But this seems somehow worse-- the Gates paid Hillsborough a pile of money for the chance to use their schools and their teaching staff as guinea pigs. And once the experiment looked like it wasn't going to pan out, the Gates just walks away from the lab, leaving someone else to clean up the mess and look after the experimental subjects with no regard for how badly those subjects may have been messed up.
One would hope that Gates would eventually learn something, that with a little reflection he might say to himself, "Gee, I was so sure that small schools would work, but they didn't. Then I was so sure merit pay would work, but it didn't. Maybe I should think twice about other stuff I'm so sure of before I start screwing with people's lives and livelihoods." Of course, there's a worse possibility-- that Gates isn't "so sure" at all, but that he's just casually tinkering with notions like a ten year old poking new trails for ants with a stick and as he wreaks havoc, he's not even all that invested in what he's doing. That would be awful, and I have a hard time imagining someone that detached from the lives he messes with, but as I remember his "We'll have to wait a decade to see if this stuff works" comment-- well, it's not inconceivable.
P.S. If the Hillsborough School district sounds vaguely familiar, it may be because you heard it in conjunction with MaryEllen Elia, who is currently the Reformy Boss of Education in New York State. But before that, she was the superintendent of Hillsborough schools when this Gatesian money pit was welcomed into the district. Honestly, some days I feel as if public education is an orphan in a coincidence-riddled Dickensian novel.
The Feds Don't Get Testing Consequences
Valerie Strauss asked a fairly simple question of the White House and the Education Department: Are you aware that one consequence of the policy requiring test results in teacher evaluation is that many teachers' evaluations are based on subjects or students they don't teach.
For example, in New York City middle schools, it’s been estimated that over 60 percent of New York City teacher evaluations are out-of-subject. An art teacher would be evaluated in part on student math scores. Are you aware of this state-level consequence of federal policy and do you think it is fair to teachers?
The White House response was, "Go ask the Education Department."
Strauss presents the entire USED answer without comment. I would like to go ahead and present some comment.
Their Answer
The feds open with the right general sorts of noises. Parents have a right to know how their kids are doing, and student performance should be assessed because otherwise some groups will be swept under the rug (and this has been the narrative for so long that you would think, by now, the USED would be holding up some students that they finally found hiding under a rug and hollering, "See, we never would have found these kids except for The Test" but no, that hasn't happened).
After "rug" the next sentence is "Communities deserve accountable schools" which somehow thrown into this same paragraph as if assessing student progress and evaluating schools and teachers are exactly the same subject, as if there were nothing at all to discuss about how directly student achievement is a straight-ahead measure of school effectiveness. Anyway, "multiple measures" in italics and underlined. "Only a handful of states" link non-tested subject teachers to test scores, which just seems unlikely, given that the feds required all states to use test scores in the waivers, and in fact spanked Washington State for refusing to do so.
The response now moves to the DC Public Schools as an exemplar, and when that happens you know you're in the weeds. Maybe you're in the weeds with an intern who was assigned this response and doesn't know any schools except DCPS. The DC bullet points discuss the use of the state tests in teacher assessments, while ignoring the question of whether those were used for teachers of non-tested subjects or not.
Then USED quotes from its own ESEA Flexibility Policy Document, which does include a part that says you can use another assessment as long as it -- holy crap!! -- after developing, piloting and implementing, it must do all of the following--
1) be used for continuous improvement of instruction
2) rank and sort students into at least three different levels
3) I have to just copy this one because it's such bureaucratic gobbledeegook
use multiple valid measures in determining performance levels, including as a significant factor data on student growth for all students (including English Learners and students with disabilities), and other measures of professional practice (which may be gathered through multiple formats and sources, such as observations based on rigorous teacher performance standards, teacher portfolios, and student and parent surveys);
4) evaluate teachers and principals on regular basis
5) provide clear, timely and useful feedback for instruction and PD
6) must be used as part of personnel decisions
Oh, and all personnel must be trained on the system. Annnnd the data must insure that poor and minority children are not taught by a disproportionate number of inexperienced, unqualified or out-of-field teachers.
Oh, Really
First of all, can we please note that the current Big Standardized Test system in place does not meet these requirements. I mean-- clear, useful, and timely feedback? Would that be the part where we aren't allowed to see the test and get nothing back but raw scores and don't get them till the following school year? I am also wondering if the prohibition against inexperienced and unqualified teachers for poor kids would bar TFA temps from working in high-poverty areas? Ha! Of course not.
Second-- this is the solution? The art teacher in my building is supposed to do all of this, including training all of us in how the art assessment works, on top of making sure that art students are sorted into "Great," "Okay," and "Sucky" because an important part of all education is ranking students into winners and losers.
But Mostly
I want to point out that the Education Department NEVER ANSWERED STRAUSS'S QUESTION!!
What they did was carefully outline what their regulations say could be happening, maybe. They did not say if they have any knowledge of that actually happening. Nor did they acknowledge the real-world conclusion of many states which is "We can either spend a bunch of everybody's time and money working up these assessments or we can just use the BS Tests in the formula, since the USED is clearly perfectly happy with that."
The Duncan USED is an abject failure in many ways, but that failure is facilitated by their absolute refusal to confront-- or even see-- the actual consequences of their ill-considered amateur hour policies. In particular, their insistence on putting the BS Tests in the drivers seat, in making those tests the focus and purpose of education, has been hugely destructive to public education and the teaching profession. Their continued attempts to paper that over with pretty words shows that either they are truly, deeply clueless about what they've done, or they understand perfectly and are just hugely cynical. I would ask them which is the case, but if a major education writer from a major American newspaper can't get an answer, I don't imagine I'd do any better.
For example, in New York City middle schools, it’s been estimated that over 60 percent of New York City teacher evaluations are out-of-subject. An art teacher would be evaluated in part on student math scores. Are you aware of this state-level consequence of federal policy and do you think it is fair to teachers?
The White House response was, "Go ask the Education Department."
Strauss presents the entire USED answer without comment. I would like to go ahead and present some comment.
Their Answer
The feds open with the right general sorts of noises. Parents have a right to know how their kids are doing, and student performance should be assessed because otherwise some groups will be swept under the rug (and this has been the narrative for so long that you would think, by now, the USED would be holding up some students that they finally found hiding under a rug and hollering, "See, we never would have found these kids except for The Test" but no, that hasn't happened).
After "rug" the next sentence is "Communities deserve accountable schools" which somehow thrown into this same paragraph as if assessing student progress and evaluating schools and teachers are exactly the same subject, as if there were nothing at all to discuss about how directly student achievement is a straight-ahead measure of school effectiveness. Anyway, "multiple measures" in italics and underlined. "Only a handful of states" link non-tested subject teachers to test scores, which just seems unlikely, given that the feds required all states to use test scores in the waivers, and in fact spanked Washington State for refusing to do so.
The response now moves to the DC Public Schools as an exemplar, and when that happens you know you're in the weeds. Maybe you're in the weeds with an intern who was assigned this response and doesn't know any schools except DCPS. The DC bullet points discuss the use of the state tests in teacher assessments, while ignoring the question of whether those were used for teachers of non-tested subjects or not.
Then USED quotes from its own ESEA Flexibility Policy Document, which does include a part that says you can use another assessment as long as it -- holy crap!! -- after developing, piloting and implementing, it must do all of the following--
1) be used for continuous improvement of instruction
2) rank and sort students into at least three different levels
3) I have to just copy this one because it's such bureaucratic gobbledeegook
use multiple valid measures in determining performance levels, including as a significant factor data on student growth for all students (including English Learners and students with disabilities), and other measures of professional practice (which may be gathered through multiple formats and sources, such as observations based on rigorous teacher performance standards, teacher portfolios, and student and parent surveys);
4) evaluate teachers and principals on regular basis
5) provide clear, timely and useful feedback for instruction and PD
6) must be used as part of personnel decisions
Oh, and all personnel must be trained on the system. Annnnd the data must insure that poor and minority children are not taught by a disproportionate number of inexperienced, unqualified or out-of-field teachers.
Oh, Really
First of all, can we please note that the current Big Standardized Test system in place does not meet these requirements. I mean-- clear, useful, and timely feedback? Would that be the part where we aren't allowed to see the test and get nothing back but raw scores and don't get them till the following school year? I am also wondering if the prohibition against inexperienced and unqualified teachers for poor kids would bar TFA temps from working in high-poverty areas? Ha! Of course not.
Second-- this is the solution? The art teacher in my building is supposed to do all of this, including training all of us in how the art assessment works, on top of making sure that art students are sorted into "Great," "Okay," and "Sucky" because an important part of all education is ranking students into winners and losers.
But Mostly
I want to point out that the Education Department NEVER ANSWERED STRAUSS'S QUESTION!!
What they did was carefully outline what their regulations say could be happening, maybe. They did not say if they have any knowledge of that actually happening. Nor did they acknowledge the real-world conclusion of many states which is "We can either spend a bunch of everybody's time and money working up these assessments or we can just use the BS Tests in the formula, since the USED is clearly perfectly happy with that."
The Duncan USED is an abject failure in many ways, but that failure is facilitated by their absolute refusal to confront-- or even see-- the actual consequences of their ill-considered amateur hour policies. In particular, their insistence on putting the BS Tests in the drivers seat, in making those tests the focus and purpose of education, has been hugely destructive to public education and the teaching profession. Their continued attempts to paper that over with pretty words shows that either they are truly, deeply clueless about what they've done, or they understand perfectly and are just hugely cynical. I would ask them which is the case, but if a major education writer from a major American newspaper can't get an answer, I don't imagine I'd do any better.
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
LA Plan To Crush Public Education
The LA Time published further confirmation of the story they broke in August-- Eli Broad and friends would like to replace public education in Los Angeles, taking over half of the district's "business."
The confirmation comes by way of an extraordinary document-- the Great Public Schools Now Initiative. It's nothing short of amazing-- a plan to do away with democratically controlled, publicly accountable education in LA.
Granted, LA schools have never been short of people willing to just go ahead and impose their will on the school district. It was just last week the Times ran the news that a group of "concerned citizens" had gotten a meeting with LAUSD school board president Steven Zimmer to tell him what they think he should do about filling the superintendent spot. How cool is that?! I think I will call the mayor of my town and tell him I want to meet to discuss my recommendations for how to make a budget. In fact, speaking of budgets, maybe I'll just summon my state's governor and some key legislators to a meeting where I'll tell them what they should do about the budget impasse. Because, you know, representative democracy is for suckers and little people-- People Who Matter just pick up the phone and tell elected officials what's what.
But the Great Public Schools Now Initiative puts the "aud" in "audacious" and the "balls" in "holy schneikes but you have a big brass pair on you!" It's forty-four pages of How To Completely Circumvent the Public School System For Fun and Profit.
The Times coverage hits some special highlights, so I am going to skate across this pond of barely frozen pig poo as quickly as possible. But just in case you think some of what you're seeing about this plan involves scrutinous depalabration (my new term for close reading-- patent pending), here are the goals of the plan in the plain executive summary English:
This effort will be structured over an eight-year period from 2016 to 2023 with the following objectives: (1) to create 260 new high-quality charter schools, (2) to generate 130,000 high-quality charter seats, and (3) to reach 50 percent charter market share.
That is, not incidentally, almost doubling the current charter capacity in LA. But the creators of this plan say that "the opportunity is ripe for a significant expansion" of charter baloney in LA.
Big Ripe LA Dreams
GPSN thinks that LA is redolent with potential, positively fecund with charter possibilities, because reasons. [Insert Chamber of Commerce boilerplate here.]
But the dream is not just to tap into the huge market of students trapped in failing blah blah blah waiting for their chance for high-quality seats (and, man, I would love to see one of these seats, sit in one of these seats, visit the High Quality Seat Factory and see how these seats are made) blah blah blah.
No, the dream is to "create a national proof point for other states and cities seeking to dramatically improve K-12 education." GPSN wants LA to be the new New Orleans, the exemplar for charter champions everywhere, as they head out to double down, buckle up, and cash in. Gosh, let's see what kind of program they have in mind, because I'm sure it won't turn out to be a hollow, costly, unscaleable, irreproduceable, unsustainable plan at all.
But first...
Background: LA Schools Suck
Urban minority students trapped in zip codes blah blah blah no change in last years blah blah blah. Poor minority students have potential for success, and that potential goes untapped because of schools and not at all because of systemic racism and poverty. Nuh-uh. Just bad schools. Which, incidentally we keep throwing money at, but they don't get any better. Also, achievement gap.
Charter Schools Fix Everything While Riding Unicorns Across Rainbows
LA is filled with parent demand for charters, plus the suckiness of LAUSD. Oddly enough, the Deasy-loving tablet-pushing reformsters behind GPSN are not going to pause to consider their own role in the LAUSD suckness. But it doesn't matter because they have the biggest charter sector in the world, and it's awesome.
Charters "have maintained impressive growth" and now show a "total market share" of almost twenty-five percent. This is because of "the success of charters to push past environmental and political factors and achieve sustainable growth over time." So success = more of them, It's almost as if we're discussing an investment business, and not a school. And indeed, we go on to discuss charter unit growth and enrollment trends.
We will also discuss student achievement, relying on API (Academic Performance Index) scores, and we don't have time right now to discuss how much baloney is stuffed into this mostly-standardized-test-scores measure. But GPSN wants you to know that the charters do better at the API stuff, mostly, pretty much. The state also has a special sauce for setting predictions of outcomes, and while I'm not super-familiar, it sounds like one more variation on "We're going to compare your students to other imaginary students over here that are more or less the same even if they are imaginary."
At any rate, charters are awesome. This report does not address the possibility that charters are creaming and skimming, nor does it discuss the value in regular, intense test prep. Charter are awesome. Awesome! And CREDO, a group that exists primarily to promote charters, says so, too, so it must be true. So many days of learning (whatever the hell that is) are added.
Waitlists
If you believe that waitlists actually provide meaningful data, we have some charts for you. Everyone else can just move on. Unless you want to look at the map that highlights some great market opportunities.
Things We'll Need Our Friendly Elected Officials To Do
The California Charter School Association has helpfully dragged the LAUSD into court so that judges can 'splain to them that they have to give us whatever we want. Kewl, because we're going to need space for all those super seats.
We made some headway on the last school board elections. We just need to get more people involved in the elected school board who will roll over and let us stomp them in the head.
The public support is growing. As proof, they offer a picture of a rally. You know, the kind where charter operators get all their parents to come, or else. The data point GPSN likes? There are now more charter parents than unionized teachers.
Any Obstacles?
GPSN spots a few.
Real estate and builders are needed to get enough snazzy charters built and filled. But the state's tax-exempt bond market is opening up to charter operators, so that's a plus.
Human capital. Yes, that's what they call it. They are going to need many, many teachers, even as the teacher pipeline in California is choking and sputtering (teacher ed program enrollment down 53%). The charters will have to compete with LAUSD for both quantity and quality (And--update-- as commenter Jack Covey notes below, the LAUSD actually got back in the game by actually giving teachers a raise, and free marketeers never want to apply the free market to teacher salaries). Charters look to "high quality providers," by which they mean TFA and Relay Academy, so it's possible they have some different definition of "high-quality"-- anyway, TFA is tanking and Relay hasn't arrived in LA yet, so charters are stuck trying to hire actual teachers with actual training. Of course, some charter outfits like Aspire are creating their own fake teaching credentials, but those don't serve the larger cause.
Also, finding principals will be a real bear.
GPSN wants to double the charter market in eight years, but by gum, they just won't sacrifice quality to do it. So funding. And closing down crappy charters that don't belong to the Right People.
Let's Talk Money
Speaking of sustainability.
Remember when a charter's selling point was that it could do more with less. That was apparently not in LA, where, if I'm reading these charts correctly, GPSN will need almost a half a billion-with-a-b dollars of outside money over the next eight years to pull this off (excluding any potential overruns, which I'm sure won't be an issue when building a few hundred new schools). In fact, late in this report, it starts to become clear that this is, in part, an investors prospectus.
That half-a-billion includes funds for building schools, "scaling" schools, getting teachers (this includes pumping up TFA and Relay), recruiting principals, organizing and advocacfy, and fund management (because you don't just stick $500 million in a desk drawer somewhere).
I am now really curious about what outside investors are spending on LA charters right now, but clearly, LA will be one more place where the effect charter schools will be to raise the total cost of the complete school system a whole hell of a lot. I'll say it again-- only charter school operators believe you can live in two homes for the cost of one.
They have many hopes, including parent groups, CCSA, and Emma Bloomberg's new Big Data group, Murmuration-- plus the United Way and other community groups who will, apparently, contribute to replacing a public school system with private profiteering.
Okay, "replace" is too strong a word. Fifty percent of LA students will be allowed to stay in the public schools, or whatever is left of them after the charters have sucked them dry. But don't worry-- I'm sure that the charters will call first dibs on the most challenging, difficult, expensive students in the system, taking on the challenges of students with special needs, English language learners, and the most vulnerable students, leaving the public school with the strongest, most capable, most resilient students in the city.
Bottom Line
I am absolutely bowled over at the magnitude of this power grab. Imagine if Broad and his friends said, "We're not happy with the LAPD, so we're going to hire and train our own police force, answerable to nobody but us, to cover some parts of the city. Also, the taxpayers have to foot the bill." Or if they decided to get their own army? Or their own mayor?
Who does this? Who says, "We can't get enough control over the elected officials in this branch of government, so we will just shove them out of the way and replace them with our own guys, who won't bug us by answering to Those People."
This is not just about educational quality (or lack thereof), or just about how to turn education into a cash cow for a few high rollers-- this is about a hamhanded effort to circumvent democracy in a major American city. There's nothing in this plan about listening to the parents or community- only about what is going to be done to them by men with power and money. This just sucks a lot.
The confirmation comes by way of an extraordinary document-- the Great Public Schools Now Initiative. It's nothing short of amazing-- a plan to do away with democratically controlled, publicly accountable education in LA.
Granted, LA schools have never been short of people willing to just go ahead and impose their will on the school district. It was just last week the Times ran the news that a group of "concerned citizens" had gotten a meeting with LAUSD school board president Steven Zimmer to tell him what they think he should do about filling the superintendent spot. How cool is that?! I think I will call the mayor of my town and tell him I want to meet to discuss my recommendations for how to make a budget. In fact, speaking of budgets, maybe I'll just summon my state's governor and some key legislators to a meeting where I'll tell them what they should do about the budget impasse. Because, you know, representative democracy is for suckers and little people-- People Who Matter just pick up the phone and tell elected officials what's what.
But the Great Public Schools Now Initiative puts the "aud" in "audacious" and the "balls" in "holy schneikes but you have a big brass pair on you!" It's forty-four pages of How To Completely Circumvent the Public School System For Fun and Profit.
The Times coverage hits some special highlights, so I am going to skate across this pond of barely frozen pig poo as quickly as possible. But just in case you think some of what you're seeing about this plan involves scrutinous depalabration (my new term for close reading-- patent pending), here are the goals of the plan in the plain executive summary English:
This effort will be structured over an eight-year period from 2016 to 2023 with the following objectives: (1) to create 260 new high-quality charter schools, (2) to generate 130,000 high-quality charter seats, and (3) to reach 50 percent charter market share.
That is, not incidentally, almost doubling the current charter capacity in LA. But the creators of this plan say that "the opportunity is ripe for a significant expansion" of charter baloney in LA.
Big Ripe LA Dreams
GPSN thinks that LA is redolent with potential, positively fecund with charter possibilities, because reasons. [Insert Chamber of Commerce boilerplate here.]
But the dream is not just to tap into the huge market of students trapped in failing blah blah blah waiting for their chance for high-quality seats (and, man, I would love to see one of these seats, sit in one of these seats, visit the High Quality Seat Factory and see how these seats are made) blah blah blah.
No, the dream is to "create a national proof point for other states and cities seeking to dramatically improve K-12 education." GPSN wants LA to be the new New Orleans, the exemplar for charter champions everywhere, as they head out to double down, buckle up, and cash in. Gosh, let's see what kind of program they have in mind, because I'm sure it won't turn out to be a hollow, costly, unscaleable, irreproduceable, unsustainable plan at all.
But first...
Background: LA Schools Suck
Urban minority students trapped in zip codes blah blah blah no change in last years blah blah blah. Poor minority students have potential for success, and that potential goes untapped because of schools and not at all because of systemic racism and poverty. Nuh-uh. Just bad schools. Which, incidentally we keep throwing money at, but they don't get any better. Also, achievement gap.
Charter Schools Fix Everything While Riding Unicorns Across Rainbows
LA is filled with parent demand for charters, plus the suckiness of LAUSD. Oddly enough, the Deasy-loving tablet-pushing reformsters behind GPSN are not going to pause to consider their own role in the LAUSD suckness. But it doesn't matter because they have the biggest charter sector in the world, and it's awesome.
Charters "have maintained impressive growth" and now show a "total market share" of almost twenty-five percent. This is because of "the success of charters to push past environmental and political factors and achieve sustainable growth over time." So success = more of them, It's almost as if we're discussing an investment business, and not a school. And indeed, we go on to discuss charter unit growth and enrollment trends.
We will also discuss student achievement, relying on API (Academic Performance Index) scores, and we don't have time right now to discuss how much baloney is stuffed into this mostly-standardized-test-scores measure. But GPSN wants you to know that the charters do better at the API stuff, mostly, pretty much. The state also has a special sauce for setting predictions of outcomes, and while I'm not super-familiar, it sounds like one more variation on "We're going to compare your students to other imaginary students over here that are more or less the same even if they are imaginary."
At any rate, charters are awesome. This report does not address the possibility that charters are creaming and skimming, nor does it discuss the value in regular, intense test prep. Charter are awesome. Awesome! And CREDO, a group that exists primarily to promote charters, says so, too, so it must be true. So many days of learning (whatever the hell that is) are added.
Waitlists
If you believe that waitlists actually provide meaningful data, we have some charts for you. Everyone else can just move on. Unless you want to look at the map that highlights some great market opportunities.
Things We'll Need Our Friendly Elected Officials To Do
The California Charter School Association has helpfully dragged the LAUSD into court so that judges can 'splain to them that they have to give us whatever we want. Kewl, because we're going to need space for all those super seats.
We made some headway on the last school board elections. We just need to get more people involved in the elected school board who will roll over and let us stomp them in the head.
The public support is growing. As proof, they offer a picture of a rally. You know, the kind where charter operators get all their parents to come, or else. The data point GPSN likes? There are now more charter parents than unionized teachers.
Any Obstacles?
GPSN spots a few.
Real estate and builders are needed to get enough snazzy charters built and filled. But the state's tax-exempt bond market is opening up to charter operators, so that's a plus.
Human capital. Yes, that's what they call it. They are going to need many, many teachers, even as the teacher pipeline in California is choking and sputtering (teacher ed program enrollment down 53%). The charters will have to compete with LAUSD for both quantity and quality (And--update-- as commenter Jack Covey notes below, the LAUSD actually got back in the game by actually giving teachers a raise, and free marketeers never want to apply the free market to teacher salaries). Charters look to "high quality providers," by which they mean TFA and Relay Academy, so it's possible they have some different definition of "high-quality"-- anyway, TFA is tanking and Relay hasn't arrived in LA yet, so charters are stuck trying to hire actual teachers with actual training. Of course, some charter outfits like Aspire are creating their own fake teaching credentials, but those don't serve the larger cause.
Also, finding principals will be a real bear.
GPSN wants to double the charter market in eight years, but by gum, they just won't sacrifice quality to do it. So funding. And closing down crappy charters that don't belong to the Right People.
Let's Talk Money
Speaking of sustainability.
Remember when a charter's selling point was that it could do more with less. That was apparently not in LA, where, if I'm reading these charts correctly, GPSN will need almost a half a billion-with-a-b dollars of outside money over the next eight years to pull this off (excluding any potential overruns, which I'm sure won't be an issue when building a few hundred new schools). In fact, late in this report, it starts to become clear that this is, in part, an investors prospectus.
That half-a-billion includes funds for building schools, "scaling" schools, getting teachers (this includes pumping up TFA and Relay), recruiting principals, organizing and advocacfy, and fund management (because you don't just stick $500 million in a desk drawer somewhere).
I am now really curious about what outside investors are spending on LA charters right now, but clearly, LA will be one more place where the effect charter schools will be to raise the total cost of the complete school system a whole hell of a lot. I'll say it again-- only charter school operators believe you can live in two homes for the cost of one.
They have many hopes, including parent groups, CCSA, and Emma Bloomberg's new Big Data group, Murmuration-- plus the United Way and other community groups who will, apparently, contribute to replacing a public school system with private profiteering.
Okay, "replace" is too strong a word. Fifty percent of LA students will be allowed to stay in the public schools, or whatever is left of them after the charters have sucked them dry. But don't worry-- I'm sure that the charters will call first dibs on the most challenging, difficult, expensive students in the system, taking on the challenges of students with special needs, English language learners, and the most vulnerable students, leaving the public school with the strongest, most capable, most resilient students in the city.
Bottom Line
I am absolutely bowled over at the magnitude of this power grab. Imagine if Broad and his friends said, "We're not happy with the LAPD, so we're going to hire and train our own police force, answerable to nobody but us, to cover some parts of the city. Also, the taxpayers have to foot the bill." Or if they decided to get their own army? Or their own mayor?
Who does this? Who says, "We can't get enough control over the elected officials in this branch of government, so we will just shove them out of the way and replace them with our own guys, who won't bug us by answering to Those People."
This is not just about educational quality (or lack thereof), or just about how to turn education into a cash cow for a few high rollers-- this is about a hamhanded effort to circumvent democracy in a major American city. There's nothing in this plan about listening to the parents or community- only about what is going to be done to them by men with power and money. This just sucks a lot.
PA: Schools Are Starving
In Pennsylvania, we're on the downhill slide toward October, and still the capital suits in Harrisburg can't get their jobs done. The state budget is long overdue, and schools are starting to feel the money crunch.
Pennsylvania budget impasses are such a regular event that they get their own Wikipedia page. This year's giant legislative screw-up means we've had five late budgets out of the last nine. And this year's has shown no signs of solution, as new governor Tom Wolfe does head to head with a GOP-controlled legislature. There are a variety of issues out there from privatizing liquor stores to fixing the pension mess to neener neener you're not the boss of me.
But while Harrisburg fiddles, the schools of Pennsylvania are doing a slow burn. Chester Uplands made headlines for not making their payroll, but they were just the leading edge of a wave of school based disasters.
In Philadelphia, the schools have stopped hiring because they're having a capital-induced cash flow problem. Consequently, we get this story of a school with over seventy students in a class.
In Erie, the district is literally living paycheck to paycheck, with the teachers union saying they'll go short-term without pay and the district talking about shutting down until they get money again.
Meanwhile, in my own neck of the woods, my district has joined the many districts looking at setting up a line of credit, but holding off as long as possible because that will cost our taxpayers real money. And our neighboring district's board was last night absorbing the news of a rating downgrade because of the state's financial logjam.
Harrisburg can make noises about holding out on budget issues in order to represent the interests of the taxpayers, but their inaction is, at this point, costing the taxpayers money, both directly in the costs of borrowing operating funds, and indirectly in higher interests rates because of rating downgrades.
And this is on top of Pennsylvania's massive mistakes with the pension fund and a senseless, money-sucking funding formula for charters (though many districts have decided to stop paying cyber school bills until they have money to do so). Plus, given PA's famously unequal funding formula, poor districts are getting squeezed far worse than wealthy ones.
The current noises out of Harrisburg are not encouraging, though there is talk of some sort of stopgap measure to slap a bandaid on the bullet holes that the legislature has shot in local school finances, and while the temporary relief is appealing, I worry that such a move will only prolong the legislative shenanigans. I'm partial to making all legislators go without paychecks and administrative budgets until they get things fixed, but that would take an act of the legislature, so it's a non-starter. But keep watching-- we may eventually show the whole nation what happens when a state stops funding its schools entirely.
Pennsylvania budget impasses are such a regular event that they get their own Wikipedia page. This year's giant legislative screw-up means we've had five late budgets out of the last nine. And this year's has shown no signs of solution, as new governor Tom Wolfe does head to head with a GOP-controlled legislature. There are a variety of issues out there from privatizing liquor stores to fixing the pension mess to neener neener you're not the boss of me.
But while Harrisburg fiddles, the schools of Pennsylvania are doing a slow burn. Chester Uplands made headlines for not making their payroll, but they were just the leading edge of a wave of school based disasters.
In Philadelphia, the schools have stopped hiring because they're having a capital-induced cash flow problem. Consequently, we get this story of a school with over seventy students in a class.
In Erie, the district is literally living paycheck to paycheck, with the teachers union saying they'll go short-term without pay and the district talking about shutting down until they get money again.
Meanwhile, in my own neck of the woods, my district has joined the many districts looking at setting up a line of credit, but holding off as long as possible because that will cost our taxpayers real money. And our neighboring district's board was last night absorbing the news of a rating downgrade because of the state's financial logjam.
Harrisburg can make noises about holding out on budget issues in order to represent the interests of the taxpayers, but their inaction is, at this point, costing the taxpayers money, both directly in the costs of borrowing operating funds, and indirectly in higher interests rates because of rating downgrades.
And this is on top of Pennsylvania's massive mistakes with the pension fund and a senseless, money-sucking funding formula for charters (though many districts have decided to stop paying cyber school bills until they have money to do so). Plus, given PA's famously unequal funding formula, poor districts are getting squeezed far worse than wealthy ones.
The current noises out of Harrisburg are not encouraging, though there is talk of some sort of stopgap measure to slap a bandaid on the bullet holes that the legislature has shot in local school finances, and while the temporary relief is appealing, I worry that such a move will only prolong the legislative shenanigans. I'm partial to making all legislators go without paychecks and administrative budgets until they get things fixed, but that would take an act of the legislature, so it's a non-starter. But keep watching-- we may eventually show the whole nation what happens when a state stops funding its schools entirely.
OH: 200 Failed Charters
When the Washington State supreme court ruled charters unconstitutional just before the school year started, charter fans were outraged. "How can you just toss those charter students into the street? How can you destabilize their educational life?" That's a legitimate complaint. But if charter boosters feel that way about the loss of Washington's modest charter school fleet, how must they feel about the charters of Ohio?
Ohio has worked hard to establish itself as the Nation's Bad Example when it comes to charter, providing ample examples of every possible way to do charters poorly.
Earlier in the month, we were reminded of the scandal that unrolled when David Hansen, Ohio's department of education charter czar and husband of John Kasich's campaign manager, was forced to resign after it was discovered that he was cooking the books to pretty up the charters operated by big GOP donors (his defense was something along the lines of "Well, the rules are confusing and I don't see where it says I can't do this").
But the new year is barely under way and we are reminded, again, that Ohio wants to lead the nation in the vast number of charter schools that go belly up.
In East Columbus, families who thought they were sending their children to FCI Academy received a phone message the day before school was to start "reminding" them not to send their children to the school on Wednesday. Sure enough-- on Wednesday the building was locked and no officials to be found. The school turned out to be a half million dollars in debt, though that took some figuring since they also weren't keeping proper records or paying taxes.
FCI Academy was part of one more trend in John Kasich's Ohio-- religious-based charter schools. The school was headed by Tracey Posey, wife of Bishop Edgar Allen Posey of Living Faith Apostolic Church, and co-located with the church itself. The school had a history of financial issues, probably not unrelated to their employment of Carly Shye who was previously convicted of embezzling from various charter schools. FCI is not alone in its church-charter school model, which is unsurprising given Kasich's belief in churches as a replacement for the social service arm of government. Remember his school mentor program that initially required schools to partner with a church?
But there are so many, many charter stories in Ohio-- stories of corruption and incompetence and failure and if it seems like there are more stories than I can tell, more stories than we remember, a recent story from the Akron Beacon Journal tells us why.
The Beacon Journal's education writer is Doug Livingston, who does yeoman's work. In last week's story, he covers the death of yet another charter-- this time its the Next Frontier Academy of Akron-- and while the school's story is one more example of charter shenanigans, it's the context that Livingston creates that really shows how big a charter mess Ohio has become.
Next Frontier was just one more charter opened by educational amateurs; one of the co-founders appeared to want a school that he could use as a case example to sell his book about How To Fix Students. Mismanaged and unable to attract enough students, the school floundered quickly and blew through a stack of money, though as yet nobody knows how much because, once again, nobody really kept any useful records that they will yet share with the state. Their sponsor wanted to get pull the plug; the state said they could not. And, a la New Orleans, nobody is really sure which students attended the school or what has become of them since.
Livingston says that Next Frontier was one of 43 charters that opened in 2013. Today only 8 of those are still open. That's an 82% failure rate. And consider this:
Among the nearly 6,000 publicly funded agencies in operation during Next Frontier’s two-year lifetime, state audits found that three of every four missing taxpayer dollars were in charter schools — $6.3 million — among the 400 in operation.
Livingston marks 2013 as the peak year in Ohio, when the number of charters that had been opened crossed the 400 mark. And now Next Frontier has become the 200th charter school in Ohio to close. And that is a 50% failure rate.
It also represents 200 times that students, families, and communities have been tossed and turned, their stability whacked on the head, by some charter operator. It represents a whole lot of students who have been left to twist in the wind. And it represents a huge amount of tax dollars wasted.
One could argue that Ohio is particularly egregious in its lack of charter regulation and oversight, and to their credit, many charter advocates have called for better policing of charter schools (though when one operator asks the state to help clear out messy competitors, that opens another can of worms).
But it's not just that Ohio has tried to set itself up as a charter wild west; the problems in the state are not unique to Ohio, but are the same old charter school problems writ in a large, messy scribble. The modern charter industry invites people to get in the business for all the wrong reasons, so that from Day One, a new charter has priorities over and above educating students. That set of priorities (make money) in turn invites shenanigans, because like the health insurance biz, a successful charter school runs on NOT providing the service it contracted for-- the less you can get away with doing for the "customer," the more money you keep.
And while the churn and competition and winners and losers of the free market have a place in many businesses, they have no place in public education. A 50% failure rate is fine for some businesses; it is not remotely fine for public schools. You can close as many restaurants as you want, and people can still eat. But schools should be near-permanent stable institutions in a community, answerable to the community, and committed to serving them (you know-- like the public schools that charter students are dumped back into when the charters tank). Charter schools are not inclined toward any of those goals or standards. The modern business-style model of a charter school is fundamentally flawed, inherently a mismatch for the mission of public education. The scale and scope of charter failure in Ohio is spectacular, but it is not fundamentally different from the charter problem in any other state.
Ohio has worked hard to establish itself as the Nation's Bad Example when it comes to charter, providing ample examples of every possible way to do charters poorly.
Earlier in the month, we were reminded of the scandal that unrolled when David Hansen, Ohio's department of education charter czar and husband of John Kasich's campaign manager, was forced to resign after it was discovered that he was cooking the books to pretty up the charters operated by big GOP donors (his defense was something along the lines of "Well, the rules are confusing and I don't see where it says I can't do this").
But the new year is barely under way and we are reminded, again, that Ohio wants to lead the nation in the vast number of charter schools that go belly up.
In East Columbus, families who thought they were sending their children to FCI Academy received a phone message the day before school was to start "reminding" them not to send their children to the school on Wednesday. Sure enough-- on Wednesday the building was locked and no officials to be found. The school turned out to be a half million dollars in debt, though that took some figuring since they also weren't keeping proper records or paying taxes.
FCI Academy was part of one more trend in John Kasich's Ohio-- religious-based charter schools. The school was headed by Tracey Posey, wife of Bishop Edgar Allen Posey of Living Faith Apostolic Church, and co-located with the church itself. The school had a history of financial issues, probably not unrelated to their employment of Carly Shye who was previously convicted of embezzling from various charter schools. FCI is not alone in its church-charter school model, which is unsurprising given Kasich's belief in churches as a replacement for the social service arm of government. Remember his school mentor program that initially required schools to partner with a church?
But there are so many, many charter stories in Ohio-- stories of corruption and incompetence and failure and if it seems like there are more stories than I can tell, more stories than we remember, a recent story from the Akron Beacon Journal tells us why.
The Beacon Journal's education writer is Doug Livingston, who does yeoman's work. In last week's story, he covers the death of yet another charter-- this time its the Next Frontier Academy of Akron-- and while the school's story is one more example of charter shenanigans, it's the context that Livingston creates that really shows how big a charter mess Ohio has become.
Next Frontier was just one more charter opened by educational amateurs; one of the co-founders appeared to want a school that he could use as a case example to sell his book about How To Fix Students. Mismanaged and unable to attract enough students, the school floundered quickly and blew through a stack of money, though as yet nobody knows how much because, once again, nobody really kept any useful records that they will yet share with the state. Their sponsor wanted to get pull the plug; the state said they could not. And, a la New Orleans, nobody is really sure which students attended the school or what has become of them since.
Livingston says that Next Frontier was one of 43 charters that opened in 2013. Today only 8 of those are still open. That's an 82% failure rate. And consider this:
Among the nearly 6,000 publicly funded agencies in operation during Next Frontier’s two-year lifetime, state audits found that three of every four missing taxpayer dollars were in charter schools — $6.3 million — among the 400 in operation.
Livingston marks 2013 as the peak year in Ohio, when the number of charters that had been opened crossed the 400 mark. And now Next Frontier has become the 200th charter school in Ohio to close. And that is a 50% failure rate.
It also represents 200 times that students, families, and communities have been tossed and turned, their stability whacked on the head, by some charter operator. It represents a whole lot of students who have been left to twist in the wind. And it represents a huge amount of tax dollars wasted.
One could argue that Ohio is particularly egregious in its lack of charter regulation and oversight, and to their credit, many charter advocates have called for better policing of charter schools (though when one operator asks the state to help clear out messy competitors, that opens another can of worms).
But it's not just that Ohio has tried to set itself up as a charter wild west; the problems in the state are not unique to Ohio, but are the same old charter school problems writ in a large, messy scribble. The modern charter industry invites people to get in the business for all the wrong reasons, so that from Day One, a new charter has priorities over and above educating students. That set of priorities (make money) in turn invites shenanigans, because like the health insurance biz, a successful charter school runs on NOT providing the service it contracted for-- the less you can get away with doing for the "customer," the more money you keep.
And while the churn and competition and winners and losers of the free market have a place in many businesses, they have no place in public education. A 50% failure rate is fine for some businesses; it is not remotely fine for public schools. You can close as many restaurants as you want, and people can still eat. But schools should be near-permanent stable institutions in a community, answerable to the community, and committed to serving them (you know-- like the public schools that charter students are dumped back into when the charters tank). Charter schools are not inclined toward any of those goals or standards. The modern business-style model of a charter school is fundamentally flawed, inherently a mismatch for the mission of public education. The scale and scope of charter failure in Ohio is spectacular, but it is not fundamentally different from the charter problem in any other state.
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