PA: Charters Argue To Keep Money They're Not Owed

Governor Tom Wolf is once again trying to address Pennsylvania's lousy charter funding rules, but right-sizing charter funding would cut into charter profiteering, and so, the pushback is under way. 

A full package of the current talking points turned up in The Daily Signal, a right-wing website. This piece of commentary comes from Amber Northern, a senior vp for research at the reformy Fordham Institute and Lenny McCallister, who, after a career as a media commentary guy, now holds down dual jobs as CEO of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools and as a senior fellow at the Commonwealth Foundation, a free market thinky tank with ties to ALEC. 

The big hook they want to hang their argument on is a recent piece of research conducted for Fordham by Mark "Jersey Jazzman" Weber. For whatever reason, they choose not to link to that research, but you can find it here. Read that, and then read further insights about the research itself here, from Weber himself. The key finding that they would like you to notice is that when students leave a public school for charters, the per-pupil spending in the public school mostly goes up. This, they note, is "contrary to charter critics' preferred narrative" (thereby suggesting that this is a concern that charter critics made up, rather than a sincere concern). 

However, what this charter critic has always said is that you can't run multiple school districts for the money that was barely enough to run one district, and the Weber research absolutely underlines that. I'm going to grossly oversimplify here, but the bottom line is that fixed costs are real. For instance, a special ed teacher is a fixed cost. If she used to serve ten students, but three leave, the district still has to keep her, but the expense of paying her is now stretched over seven students, resulting in higher per-pupil expenditures. 

Northern and McCallister would like to offer another explanation, which is that charter schools in PA receive less money per pupil than district schools. That's true--mostly (we'll get to the mostly in a second). But public schools have expenses that charter schools do not (for instance, PA cyber charters do not have transportation costs). And public schools have fixed costs. And public schools are owned by the taxpayers, and therefor the taxpayers are responsible for maintenance of those buildings. 

But the most important point to grasp about this argument is that it is an irrelevant smokescreen. 

Charter fans are concerned because "according to news sources, the new funding formula would take about $280 million currently due to charters and transfer it to school districts." 

Except that it's not being "transferred" to districts, because it represents money that charters were never "due" in the first place.

Pennsylvania charters take advantage of two huge loopholes in the law.

One is in regards to special ed students. PA students with special needs are sorted into tiers, with Tier 1 for students who need minimal intervention (eg an hour a week of speech therapy) and Tier 3 higher intervention (eg a full-time nurse or outplacement at a special school at district expense). Public schools are reimbursed by the state according to the cost levels of those tiers. Charters are reimbursed as if all their students with special needs are Tier 3 students. This means that students with low-cost special needs are like gold for the charters, who are reimbursed at levels far beyond the actual cost of the students. 

The other loophole is in the cyber charter biz, where the schools are reimbursed at the full per-pupil level of a bricks and mortar school. In effect, the cyber charter industry says, "We can do this job for far less, but we'd like you to just pay us a bunch of extra money, anyway."

Governor Wolf wants to close those two loopholes. That's where the $280 million comes from--cutting charters off from money they never had a legitimate claim to in the first place. 

Wolf is not calling for charters to shut down. He's not demanding that Pennsylvania students have fewer choices. The proposed changes would not have the slightest effect on families' freedom to choose educational options. Wolf is calling for a more responsible use of taxpayer money (plus actual regular audits for cybers, some of which have been audited in never). 

Charter proponents arguing against Wolf are not standing up for students or choice or freedom; they're standing up for the charter industry's right to rake in unearned windfall profits year after year at taxpayer expense. There's no reason for the gravy train to keep running. 

AZ: What Teacher Layoffs Look Like In An Anti-Teacher State

Carie Caruso conferenced with her supervisor and was told she was a highly effective teacher. The next day, in an online meeting, she was told that she was out of a job. 47 other teachers were part of that meeting.

Angela Philpot had 23 years of experience, but this week she was one of the 150 teachers laid off by Gilbert Public Schools in a surprise meeting with a principal who read a scripted statement from the district. No comments or questions were allowed. Philpot is an Arizona Education Association officer.

Arizona public schools have seen a big drop in enrollment this year. The Arizona School Boards Association says that 40,000 children became "ghost students"-- they just didn't show up,. and nobody knows where they were. About half of the drop in enrollment are kindergarten and first grade students. Charter schools have seen a slight growth (about 18,000), but not enough to account for all the public school losses.

And so, in an attempt to "right-size" budgets, school districts are chopping staff.

A decade or so ago, Arizona's legislature decreed that these sorts of layoffs could not consider seniority or tenure. So how are these decisions made? With evaluation rubrics like this one:

Some of the items here make a bit of sense, like unprofessional or inappropriate communications, though there's no rubric offered on how one determines if a communication falls into those categories. Some are an Arizona-specific dirty trick; because Arizona is such a teacher desert, they hire huge numbers of teachers who are not really certified for what they're teaching, so rating them low because they don't have the right certificate is a low blow. And there's the usual noble teacher baloney-- note that a highly effective teacher donates time before and after school. At least they stop short of "effective teacher avoids having children of her own so she has more time and attention for her students."

And then there's "promoting the campus culture," where a teacher can be low-rated for posting on social media about bad things done by district leadership, or simply "discusses district school decisions/concerns publicly." 

Gilbert district principals and the Office of Talent Management (seriously, who proposes these titles with a straight face) both claim that they had no idea that when they rated teachers that they would actually be ending teacher employment by the district. 

Was any of this even necessary? The ghost students are likely to reappear, particular those little who are most likely at home because Covid. And many folks have pointed out that the state actually has a billion dollar rainy day fund (and if the pandemic isn't a rainy day, what the heck is) as well as a big stack of federal stimulus money.

But Arizona's legislature and governor have been busy telling Arizona public school teachers to just go away, so assistance from those quarters seems unlikely. In the meantime, teachers who want to keep their jobs can check their local district's layoff rubric and make sure to say only happy things about their bosses, because in a state without seniority or tenure, teachers who want to keep their jobs must give up their other rights. 

GA: To Get A Voucher, Give Up Rights

Georgia is on the voucher expansion bus that so many GOP-run states are vacationing on this year, but their vouchers (like those in some other states) have a special wrinkle--a requirement for students with special needs to give up their rights if they want a voucher.

Senate Bill 47 has a variety of the usual features, including a huge expansion of voucher eligibility (because, as many states are poised to re-demonstrate, the voucher playbook is to get a foot in the door by starting the program for the neediest students, and then expand expand expand). But it includes this fun paragraph: 

With respect to local school systems, the acceptance Acceptance of a scholarship shall have the same effect as a parental refusal to consent to services pursuant to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 20 U.S.C.A. Section 1400, et seq., and a parental waiver of rights to educational accommodations under Section 504 of the federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 29 U.S.C.A. Section 701, et seq.

There's a bit of a one-two punch here, because SB47 also adds some language about funding-- whereas the old language said that the student should be followed by "an amount equivalent to the costs of the educational program that would have been provided for the student in the resident school system," the added language specifies that if the child had an Individualized Education Program (IEP), then the amount that follows them should factor in the cost of following that IEP. 

So, if I'm reading this correctly, the private school doesn't have to provide the IEP services, but it gets paid as if it were doing so. I should note that the voucher program being amended is Georgia's Special Needs Scholarship, a program already aimed at students with special needs.

There are plenty of explanations out there for why Georgia is asking parents to give up rights if they want to send their child to a private school, not the least of which is the fact that IDEA remains a huge federal unfunded mandate that requires schools to provide services, but has never come close to fulfilling the original federal promise to actually fund that mandate. And Georgia, like many states, is having a hard time attracting and retaining actual special education teachers, filling many, many, many special ed spots with teachers who lack the specialized training. And Georgia has a history using its network of special ed schools to warehouse students who are poor and Black. The Georgia Network for Educational and Therapeutic Support (GNETS) has drawn national attention over the years for its many failures.

When you can't meet a demand, figure out how to reduce the demand, I guess? There is certainly a weird irony in a program that says both "you are eligible if you have a 504 plan" and "you must give up your 504 plan if you want to use this program." It's a true Catch-22 to say that you can get your child a voucher specially set up for students to have their special needs met by agreeing not to require the school to meet your child's special needs.

Can a parent waive the rights of their child? Can the right to a free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment even be waived at all? 

The answer in Georgia is yes. And it has been for a while. While SB47 cements the concept and insures that private schools don't have to meet IEP requirements, even when taxpayers are paying for the private education, the notion that choosing a private school means waiving IEP rights has long been clear in Georgia. 

Parents have always had that personal choice. As with many choice laws, the idea is not to provide choice, but for taxpayers to foot the bill for choices that already exist. What makes this extra special is the legislature deciding that the taxpayers--and the students--should get less for their money.

In the meantime, Georgia is also a state that brings up another question--why is it that in so many states, attempts to stifle voting rights are coming out of legislatures at the same time as attempts to defund and privatize education? 

ICYMI: Palm Sunday Edition (3/28)

Yeah, that snuck up fast. Let me remind you that you can get a daily dose of education commentary on the Network for Public Education Blog of Blogs. Meanwhile, let's see what we've got on taphere.

Ayanna Presley wants girls of color to stop being punished disproportionately

Rep. Presley is trying again with legislation to disrupt the over-punishment and detention of Black girls. Let's see how far it gets this time.

Let Me Teach Like a Normal @$$ Human

At Affective Living, from active shooter training to pandemesses, Chase Mielke would like to be less superhuman in the classroom.

More than $1 billion for 56 black charter graduates?

Julian Vasquez Heilig with a piece of information that is pretty stark and clear-- Texas spent $1.21 billion over two years on nine charter chains, and those chains graduated 56 Black students. 

What They've Lost

Have You Heard talks to students from Boston, and it turns out they aren't so concerned about that Learning Loss that education thought leaders are all worked up about right now.

Setting Ourselves, and Others, Free

Teacher Tom, the littles, and shame.

Our Kids Are Not Broken

Not sure how I missed this Atlantic piece last week, but it's worth a look. Not sure I agree with all of it, but I appreciate a positive look at the students right now

What we learned about Clearview AI and its secret "Co-founder."

Not directly related, but this New York Times piece digs a bit more into the surveillance giant watching us all.

Why Common Core failed

You will learn nothing new from this Tom Loveless piece for Brookings, but you will have the satisfaction of nodding and saying "I told them so," at your computer screed. However, I do have to issue a trigger warning because Emily Hanford pops up here.

Grit backlash (again)

As a bunch of academics get ready to kick grit around, Hechinger Report talks to Angela Duckworth and gives her a chance to reflect and respond.

Biden is Reigniting the Movement to Oppose Standardized Testing

At The Progressive, Jake Jacobs looks at how the administration's hard line on testing is riling up the troops again.

Who's Zooming Who?

Who's running ed policy in Tennessee? Not the people who are actually supposed to be, TC Weber discovers. Lots of dots to connect here.

Why I'm Opting My Son Out of Standardized Tests (And You Can, Too)

Jose Vilson on why his son will not be taking New York's BS Test this year. "Our students deserve more for their resilience than this country has offered them..."

Federal government pandemic schooling data--three key takeaways

Yeah, the feds finally tried to collect some information. Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat breaks it down.

It's tempting to replace teachers with tech, but it would be a mistake

Victoria Cain and Adam Laats are at the Washington Post to deliver a lesson from history.

What did Florida get for the $1 billion/year it sends to private schools

A blistering column from Patricia Drago in the Daytona Beach News-Journal. "Let’s stop the pretense and the hypocrisy. Either accountability matters, or it doesn’t. Either curriculum matters or it does not. Either teacher certification and school safety matter or they do not. A billion dollars a year says these things don’t matter in Florida."

Stickin' to the Union

Union bashing has been popular of late. Here's Nancy Flanagan with a reply to all that bashery.

The Country Moves Forward, Education Falls Back

Gayle Greene (no relation) is at Counterpunch calling out standardized testing and the folks who are keeping us at it.

Is Your Charter School A Public School?

It seems to be one of the eternal questions (well, sort of a question) of the education debates-- aren't charter schools public schools? So for those folks who are still a little fuzzy on this, let me offer a handy set of questions to help you decide. Here are the signs of a public school.

Is the school and its resources owned by the public?

Who owns the building? If the school closed tomorrow, who would take possession of the building, the desks, the chairs, the books, the music stands, etc etc etc. If the physical resources of the building are owned by the public, it's probably a public school.

Does the school accept all students?

Usually when discussing this point, we get all caught up in the ways that charter schools market, cream, council out, don't offer specialized programs, and set up enrollment hoops that allow them to decide which students they will and will not take. But let's simplify this issue. Does the school accept all students? All. If they have a lottery to award seats to a select few, the answer is no, they are not a public school. No public school district gets to say, ever, "I'm sorry, we only have enough seats for fifty of you, so we'll have a lottery, and the people who don't get a seat in the lottery, well, you'll be on your own. Not our problem." 

Is the school run by local elected officials?

When we get to the very top level of management, do we find a board of local people elected by local taxpayers? If so, it's probably a public school. We're in a fuzzy grey area in districts under mayoral control, but not at all fuzzy when discussing upper management that is not elected by anybody at all.

Did those local officials open the school?

Who decided this school should exist, and that local taxpayers should pay for it? If that decision was made by a board of local citizens elected by local taxpayers, it's probably a public school.

Are those local official required by law to meet only ever in public?

Can the board of local citizens elected by the local taxpayers meet in secret? Or must their meetings be announced and in public, with exceptions only for times when the group must adjourn for privacy regarding, say, personnel or student issues? Public school boards don't get to meet unannounced, privately.

Are all financial records available upon request, and subject to state audit?

If you've gone to court to block the state from auditing your school financial records, you are not a public school. It's simple, really-- you're spending taxpayer money, and the taxpayers are entitled to an accounting of it. Any taxpayer should be able to access your financials. The state should audit you regularly. 

Does the school operate under the same rules laid out by the state in its public school code?

This varies tremendously from state to state, but the principle remains. Do your students, your staff, your families all enjoy the same rights and protections provided to folks in public schools? Does your school operate by the same rules that have always been on the books, or does it enjoy a bunch of special exceptions?

Finally, here is a question that has absolutely no bearing on whether or not your charter is a public school-- is the school funded with public taxpayer dollars? 

The answer to this question tells us nothing. In voucher states like Indiana and Florida, public tax dollars are used to fund religious schools, and yet none of them would claim to be a "public school." Public tax dollars delivered by way of food stamps and rent support do not turn supermarkets and apartment complexes into public facilities. The mere presence of a public tax dollar does not turn a private business into a public institution. 

If your school answers "no," to the above questions, it is not a public school. That does not automatically mean that it is evil, destructive and a pox on your community. But it is not a public school. It is absolutely true that, under certain circumstances, charter schools could be public schools. But modern charters, as currently operated, aren't public schools. The word "public" has been used as a fig leaf, a bit of window dressing by some folks who want to mask privatization while giving certain charters an association with qualities they do not actually possess. But it does not matter how many times I call my pig a cow; when the butchering is all done, I'm going to be eating pork. 

Cardona's Failed Non-Defense Defense of 2021 Testing

USED Secretary Miguel Cardona appeared on All In With Chris Hayes, and while much of the interview centered on the issue of re-opening schools, it also included this exchange:

HAYES: There`s been some controversy around or some debate around standardized testing this year for understandable reasons. Arguments go in both directions, right? One is, you want to have a guidepost to measure precisely the effects we`re talking about, the other is it seems insane to subject schools to standardized -- children to standardized testing given the least standardized year in American history.

500 researchers and scholars wrote a letter to you basically saying, don`t force schools to give standardized tests this pandemic year, that it made no sense. It would exacerbate inequality and produce flawed data. There will be standardized testing this year. Why do you think that`s a good idea?

CARDONA: You know, this is analogous to the decisions, the difficult decisions that leaders had to make last July when we talked about reopening schools. And we know that there`s no one-size-fits-all. You know, when we were thinking about reopening schools, we have very small schools and we have very large schools, and states that had high numbers and states that have very low numbers of COVID. So, there`s no one size fits all.

So the flexibilities that were announced by the department last month, allowed for some of that variance. But let me tell you very clearly, that when we`re pushing out $130 billion state-level data, not necessarily the classroom data, because teachers know where their kids are, but that state- level data is going to ensure that we`re providing the funds to those students who are impacted the most by the pandemic.

We have to be very focused on addressing achievement disparities, opportunity gaps that were exacerbated by this. And those data do help make sure that we`re moving the money and the policies for those students that were affected the most, students of color, students with disabilities who whose impact by this pandemic were greater than many others.

I include Hayes' full question because 1) it's nice to see the letter from 500 scholars being cited and 2) God bless him for calling the testing insane. Because it is. On Twitter, Philly school parents are just catching on that their children will be welcomed back to face-to-face schooling with five days of the Big Standardized Test. 

But Cardona's defense of his decision is spectacularly uncompelling. Can we break it down?

1) There's no one size fits all about this decision, because there are lots of very different schools. Okay. But this assumes the sale--we only have to care that one size doesn't fit all if we've already decided to make everyone take the test. "There's no one size fits all" could just as easily (maybe more easily) be used to argue that there's no point in giving the test this year.

2) And so we have "flexibilities." Cardona wants to sell this as the department's concession to the whole "one size doesn't fit all" thing, but again--it's an argument made about how to require the Big Standardized Test, not why to require it. And it underlines and exacerbates just how non-standard this year's results will be. Tests taken at wildly different times, in wildly different ways, with the test in some cases truncated, somehow, and given to some less that full collection of students. How will this data be comparable to anything?

3) This is not about classroom data, "because teachers know where their kids are." Well, that's one thing that he has actually gotten right. And yet, there is no plan to try tapping into this vast pool of on-the-ground data. Unlike many test-pushers, Cardona acknowledges that teachers know--but he's still not going to ask them. "Hey, I really like that cute person over there, and I could just ask them if they liked me, too, but instead I'm going to ask their next-door-neighbor's cousin's friend what they think."

4) State-level data are going to "ensure that we're providing the funds to those students who are impacted the most by the pandemic." This is where it really comes off the rails. Is the plan to use BS Test data to determine which state is most impacted? Because the impactification in my part of PA is way different from how the pandemic has impactified Philly. Does he mean that state level data will be used to identify district by district impacts? Does he mean he's after building level data? Because if we're down to building-level data, we're pretty much back to the classroom data he said we didn't need. How does one target students without looking at classrooms? There's just some level of explanation missing here.

5) Very focused on "addressing achievement disparities"! Gah. So test scores. We need to have test scores, so we can focus on test scores. "Opportunity gaps that were exacerbated by this." We need test scores so we can try to raise test scores. Because if  we wanted to address actual opportunity gaps, then we could do that without test scores. We could, for instance, do an infrastructure survey to see which students had the opportunity to learn in a building that is well-maintained with facilities less than a century old. 

6) We need the data to target the "students that were affected the most, students of color, students with disabilities whose impact by this pandemic were greater than many others." And as I've said before, if you're making the argument that Certain Students need to be targeted by the test results but you can already list who those students are, then why do you need the tests? He did the same thing in another setting, arguing "we have to make sure we are laser-focused on addressing inequities that have existed for years"-- but if they have existed for years and we have known about them for years, what will tests given under current circumstances tell us? And by the way--is this data for figuring out pandemic impact or long-standing inequity or what, exactly?

Plus--and this is a huge plus--the BS Tests, even if they do what they claim to do, only assess reading and math. The pandemic has had such a broad impact on students, from the subjects that couldn't be conducted in distance learning (band, welding, etc) to the social and emotional costs. To say that you need the tests so that you can rush out aid to the needed areas is like going into an earthquake-ravaged city and declaring, :"We'll figure out who needs aid by tallying up damage to sidewalks in neighborhoods." It's like triaging the many victims of a major bus accident by saying, "We'll assess need by checking for broken fingernails." 

This is a fail on many levels, but it fails most of all in that it simply does not make a case for subjecting students to the Big Standardized Test in 2021. If the goal was to defend that decision, Cardona simply didn't do it.

Look, I don't expect miracles. The BS Test is enshrined in ESSA, and it will take more than a Presidential magic wand to make it go away for good. But inflicting the test on students this year is a dumb, bad decision that will provide zero benefits for anyone other than the various corporations involved in the billion-dollar testing industry. Well, and the folks waiting to announce that the test results show that US public education is failing and it's time to disrupt it again some more.

What is perhaps most discouraging about Cardona's non-defense defense of the test is that it mostly just echoes the neoliberal Obama-Duncan era of ed reform. We've heard all of these arguments and some of this language before. It was bunk then, and it's bunk now. I was unexcited about Candidate Biden for education because he came with all that Obama baggage, and he didn't seem to have a plan beyond "Betsy DeVos bad." So far nothing has happened to make me change my mind. 

Do Rising Charter Tides Lift All Boats?

So lately we've been getting the charter-pushing return of the notion that the rising tide lifts all boats. Here's Fordham Institute's head honcho Mike Petrilli at The Hill, throwing in a side of "follow the science" because Petrilli is great (and I say this with all sincerity) at working the angles. 

The "science" that he's referring to is a 2019 study-ish thing that Fordham put out (with Walton financing), authored by David Griffith, entitled Rising Tide: Charter School Market Share and Student Achievement. The idea he sets out to prove is that when charters open up, the resulting competition causes all students in all schools--both public and charter--to do better. The rising tide lifts all boats.

Griffith's background is a BA in Politics and Philosophy; later on he went back to school for a Master's in Public Policy. He worked as a political aid for a couple of years, worked briefly as a "research assistant" at two different outfits, did some TA work after grad school, taught for one whole year at a DC charter prep school, then landed a job at Fordham as a Research and Policy Associate. Make of that what you will.

The "study" depends, as always, upon Big Standardized Test data. Its finding included a claim that "high charter market share is associated with" big gains for Black and Hispanic students, but no real gains for white or rural students.

I could pick apart this piece of charter marketing for you, but as it turns out, that job was already done at the time, by the folks at the National Education Policy Center. The NEPC review was conducted by Yongmei Ni; she's an actual professor, the department chair of education leadership and policy at the University of Utah, who has produced a whole bunch of actual peer-reviewed studies. 

Her review of Griffith's "study" can be found here. Here's the short form of her findings:

One should interpret the findings and conclusions with extreme caution because of major issues surrounding the data and methods, including the measure of charter market share, the sample selection criteria, and the overreliance on results based on a small number of districts, especially the ones with over 95th percentile of charter market share. Overall, the findings have little use to policymakers because of these issues with data and methods and because the report does not probe beneath the surface.

The problems with Griffith's work are many. 

The rationale for the conclusions are the result of treating correlation as causation. The positive results (all student achievement rising across the district) only appears in certain samples, and there is no evidence offered that the effect is caused by charter school presence. 

The research literature cited in the report is carefully cherry picked. The market share measurement is inaccurate. The data is inaccurate. And the selection of samples is arbitrary and "very puzzling." And there's some stuff about cubic spline regression that can be a little confusing for laypeople, but I can fully understand the point that ultimately, Griffith bases his findings on data from about six or seven districts.

So a tiny, hand-picked set of samples gets him the results he wants, if you squint and don't examine the data too thoroughly, and if you don't want to talk about how such a thing could happen.

Yongmei Ni finds that the study is not useful for guidance of policy and practice, but apparently we're going to do just that by trotting it out again to claim that the rising charter tide lifts all education boats. It may not matter, as GOP choice fans seem to have deserted charters in favor of voucher programs, but here's your reminder that following the science will not lead you to any boat-lifting charter school revelations.