Moms For Liberty's Big Takeover Plans

Tiffany Justice, one of the co-founders of Moms For Liberty and experienced Florida rabble rouser, appeared on Steve Bannon's show to share some of her thoughts about ongoing culture battles, and at one point she laid out her plans for what comes next:

BANNON: Are we going to start taking over the school boards?

JUSTICE: Absolutely. We're going to take over the school boards, but that's not enough. Once we replace the school boards, what we need to do is we need to have search firms, that are conservative search firms, that help us to find new educational leaders, because parents are going to get in there and they're going to want to fire everyone. What else needs to happen? We need good school board training. We need lawyers to stand up in their communities and be advocates for parents and be advocates for school board members who are bucking the system. Right now, parents have no recourse within any public education district.

The "no recourse" talking point sits awkwardly next to a description of the recourse (democratic elections) that Justice (who was defeated when she ran for re-election to her own school board seat) plans to take, but sure. Parents will take over school boards, fire everybody, and hire The Right Sort to replace them. And while some training is needed for school board members, the main thing is to run, because

But what my message today is – get out and run for school board. It's a part-time job. It's not a full-time job. Anyone can do it. You do not need to have a background in education and we need more people.

Justice was on Bannon's show War Room: Pandemic, because angling for political victories and advocacy spins is just like what folks are going on in Ukraine these days. She talked about the heroism of Ron DeSantis, and of course parental rights:

Parental rights are rights that every parent has, and the government does not give them to you, and they cannot take them away. Every parent has the fundamental right to direct the upbringing of their children, their medical care. That includes mental health, by the way, their education and their values, education, their morals, their religious and character training. All of these things lie within the responsibility of the parent. We, as parents, are happy to own those responsibilities within our rights.

It underlines the way in which the parental rights movement at its most extreme seems to have nothing at all to do with a children's rights movement. I'm a parent, and I absolutely get the rights and responsibilities that parents have to protect and guide their children, but there's a line past which it all starts to become creepy, as if you own this child and will engineer the tiny human to turn out to be exactly what you choose them to be, and much of the parental rights activist rhetoric lives close to that line. "I have total ownership and control of my child" is exactly how you get to the notion of "My child didn't turn out exactly the way I demanded they turn out, so somebody else must have messed with their head." Parental rights are a real thing, and parental responsibilities are a very real thing, but children are actual human beings and not lumps of clay to be crafted by other adult humans.

Justice and Bannon are sad that folks are lying about Florida's bill, which is just a parental rights and anti-grooming bill and not-- they interrupt themselves before they can say what it is. But Justice says she doesn't see the big deal "We said no sexual orientation instruction or gender identity instruction in grades K through three" and many of her fans and Bannon think is should be K through twelve. Yes, why is everyone so upset that supporters of the bill equate teachers, LGBTQ persons, and pedophiles? (Also, implying that Disney only opposes the law because they are interested in sexualizing children.) As with all talk in support of the law, Justice and Bannon skip past the part where any parent can decide for themselves what constitutes "instruction" about sexual orientation or gender identity, so teachers now have to watch out for any lesson that could lead to Pat talking about having two Mommies at home. Though it would be entertaining if the first parent lawsuit under the bill is some parent arguing that boys and girls restrooms are a means of instructing about gender identity. Maybe fans of the law should just wait until we see how the court challenge turns out.

Justice throws around some numbers about public school failure, which serve mostly as a good example of why school board members and other people who want to talk about education policy should know something about it (she cites 29.8% of Kentucky third graders reading on grade level, but she appears to be talking about proficiency, which is above grade level). This, somehow, is related to talking about gender identity and sexual orientation in first grade.

Justice could be on the show because she was in DC to talk to some GOP House members. She can't imagine why Dems don't want to talk to her (I'm not sure, but one possible explanation that comes to mind is that she didn't call their offices to make an appointment). Which brings us back to the point at the top-- Moms For Liberty wants to talk about how to take over the states (because states rights are at the heart of all this stuff). 

PA: Activist Takes Out A School Board (Update)

Make of this story what you will. An angry Libertarian activist just managed to remove five members from a school board.

Beth Ann Rosica is the head of her own consulting business; she's also an active Libertarian and advocate in the Greater Philly corner of Pennsylvania. She writes regularly for Broad and Liberty ("Thought-provoking and shareable ideas for free thinkers in Greater Philadelphia and beyond"), is tied to Independent Women's Voice (a right-tilted Club for Growth and Leonard Leo funded advocacy group) and has been a vocal opponent of vaccine and masking mandates. And she's the executive director of Back to School PA, a PAC funded by venture capitalist Paul Martino, teamed up with Clarice Shillinger, a former GOP staffer who's been busy launching lawsuits and school board takeover bids around the state (you can read more about the group here).

Anti-maskers in PA got a big boost last December when the PA Supreme Court threw out a state mandate for school masking based on the argument that the state department of health had no authority to impose such a mandate. Most districts took that as a cue that they could not impose mandates of their own. 

Not West Chester Area School District, or other districts in Chester County. There the board members voted to keep masking rules in place. Anti-maskers weren't having it, and Beth Ann Rosica took the board to court, filing a petition to have the five board members removed, claiming “permanent and irreparable harm due to their fabricating, feigning or intentionally exaggerating or including a medical symptom or disease which results in a potentially harmful medical evaluation or treatment to the child and as such, the (school directors) are to be held accountable.”

This week the court granted her wish. The board members are removed from office, with the court directing Rosica and the Board to each propose some replacement members, and the school district and the board members to share the costs of the proceedings.

It's not clear exactly why the judge reached this conclusion; Judge William Mahon reportedly wrote that his decision came after there was no response to the petition from the school district or its counsel. Attorneys have filed a motion to reconsider arguing that April 4 was the actual deadline for responding to the petition. 

This is only the first of several such court challenges; four other Chester County districts have been challenged, using the same template that Rosica used. That was created by Shannon Grady, CEO of GOAthletics and author of The Lactate Revolution (her LinkedIn profile says she's "the global leader in application of lactate dynamics for human performance optimization, a nationally recognized expert in the field of applied Physiology and Exercise Science, with over fifteen years as an industry leader in sports performance management"). Says Grady, "I’m not trying to ruin school board members’ lives or sue them for money. It’s just, know your place.” Also,  “We do not co-parent with our school district, the CCHD, or the state,”

It's hard to tell exactly where this is headed next, but for the moment, the usual folks are delighted. One observer cheered that now students will not have to wear their masks of slavery. And on Twitter...

They've got a list of people to cancel, and they're coming for them. Stay tuned.

Update: The judge got the district's attorney to admit that he messed up by miscounting days, and then rescinded the order. So the district gas a school board again-- for the moment. The petition to remove the board members will move forward. 

Housing Benefits For Teachers?

Years ago, a friend of mine began her teaching career in a small town out West, located a stone's throw from the Canadian border and not near much of anything else. The job came with a rent-free house to live in, a necessary feature of a job in a place where there was little real estate to come by.

Nowadays, there are versions of that problem cropping up all over the country, particularly in places where the gap between housing costs and teacher salaries are so great that teachers, particularly new ones, must either commute huge distances or just pass the district by. 

It's a serious problem for districts, who can have real trouble recruiting teachers. And even if they do hire teachers who end up making long commutes, they lose the benefits of having those teachers as active members of the community in which they teach. As for teachers, housing troubles just add one more item to the list of pinches they feel from low pay. 

One national study found that 35% of teachers are "rent burdened." In other words, if you remember the old rule that 30% of your income should go to housing costs, 35% of teachers are above that line. And that's just looking at rent. 

There are various patche4s out there, like grant programs for new teachers who are first time home buyers. Homes for Heroes is another such program that says it's out to give back to teachers and other community workers.

Many districts take on the job of building and renting housing for district employees. California has several such programs that allow teachers to rent new homes at below-market costs. A study looked at the various locations in the state where such a program could be or is being operated (every county in the state has some LEA-owned property that could be so developed). Several districts in North Carolina offer subsidized housing for teachers. Currently the state of Hawaii, another location with many districts in which teachers can't afford to live, is working on developing state-owned below-market-priced housing for teachers. Heck, even Florida just set aside $100 million to help teachers, law enforcement officers, nurses, and firefighters buy homes. 

The benefits of having teachers live in the community where they teach are huge, as are the benefits of having teachers who don't spend their days worrying about how to keep a roof over their heads, or wondering if they'll ever be able to settle down and start a family. When you start out as a teacher, you don't expect to be rich, but you also don't expect to be homeless or to be spending many hours of your day driving back and forth to work. The housing crunch gives an unexpected hiring advantage to districts like those in my area, where a teacher's salary can buy you an affordable but nice home.

The most obvious solution is to pay teachers more, though in out of control markets like Silicon Valley, I'm not sure there's enough "more" to ever solve the problem. Subsidizing housing for teachers is a cheaper solution for districts and states, though there can be a lot of devils in those details, with the least desirable option being a creepy company town. On the other hand, having a brace of fellow beginning teachers living nearby to commiserate and brainstorm would be a nice benefit. 

I almost didn't write this post. It seems outside the realm of policy debates and instructional ideas, but that's kind of the point. We've got whole groups of beginning teachers who should have their brain free to think about how to teach and how to prepare lessons and maybe even how to push for important policy ideas, but instead a whole lot of them are all tied up worrying about things like what they can afford to eat and which bills to pay and which second job to land and how they are going to find a livable place to come home to and just how they're going to stitch together a life with their paycheck. How many teachers are we losing because of that moment when they look at their paycheck and look at housing market and just think, "Shit. I can't do this" and dreams of starting out an independent life as a young twenty-something just kind of shrivel up and die. 

If we aren't going to pay teachers well, the very least we could do is find ways to help them stretch that tiny paycheck a little further. 

PA: New Voucher Bill Moves Forward

Today Pennsylvania's House Education Committee approved HB 2169, a bill to offer "Lifeline Scholarships," which is the newest fun name for a neo-voucher education savings account program. 

This is not new in Pennsylvania, where pushing for an ESA voucher program is an annual activity (here's 2017 and 2018, for examples). ESAs (aka vouchers on steroids) are the current preferred approach of public ed privatizers. 

The Commonwealth Foundation, a right wing dark money advocacy group tied to ALEC and the State Policy Network, was right on this story later the same day, deploying the current assortment of arguments. The quality of a child's education should not be determined by their  zip code (but that certainly doesn't mean that we should make sure that every zip code has the funding and support necessary to achieve excellence). Americans love school choice (but not when we call them "vouchers," which are clearly a public subsidy for private school, so you won't catch us using the V word). And this year, the hot new talking point is "Boy, those pandemic test scores are low!" Which fits with the standard choicer technique of arguing strenuously that that problem right there is really bad, without ever making a case for why their preferred solution would actually fix anything. 

The bill is HB 2169, and it follows the usual pattern for such bills. 

Standard foot-in-the-door style for choicey legislation is to set it up strictly to rescue those poor children at "failing" schools. Students are eligible for this bill if they attend a "low-achieving school," which is a special dodge because PA defines "low-achieving school" as "a public school that ranked in the lowest 15%" of elementary or secondary schools on the annual Big Standardized Test. So even if every school in the state did awesomely this year, 15% would still be "low-achieving" schools. Fun fact: "this term does not include a charter school, cyber charter school, or area career and technical school." In other words, by state definition, a charter school cannot be low-achieving.

The money is handed to a third party program manager, who takes their cut and hands the money off to parents (because that way the state isn't actually directly funding things like, say, religious schools). The parent gets access to an account (perhaps via debit card) and the money can be spent for the usual approved items-- tuition and fees for a private school, textbooks, uniforms, fees for an SAT-ish test, instructional materials, hardware, software, special services, and the ever-popular "other valid educational expenses." Parents get the chunk of money and go shopping for education products.

Parents may not get a kickback from the vendor. They can't put their own money in the account, but they can use as much of their own (or someone else's) money as they wish.

There are safeguards for the vendors themselves. The voucher can't be considered financial assistance for the vendor, nor does participation in the program make the vendor a government actor. And a whole subsection underlines that "participating entity autonomy" can not be infringed on in any way. In other words, when you use the voucher to send your child to a private Christian school, they can accept your child knowing that the government won't make them follow any rules or change any part of how they operate. Also, when they reject your child for whatever reason they like, they government still won't bother them. 

Along with that, there are minimal-to-none standards for oversight and accountability. The auditor general is required to conduct audits of the accounts annually checking for cases of "fraudulent misuse"; there is no requirement for minimum number of audits to conduct. Vendors have to comply with some non-discrimination rules and provide parents with receipts for how the money is spent; if they're going to collect a lot of money, they might have to meet some financial standards. 

There are no requirements that the vendors actually do a decent job. Despite the fact that the stated purpose is to rescue students from public schools that aren't giving them an education, there is nothing in the bill to provide assurance or checks that the vendors that parents have paid (with taxpayer dollars) have provided the student with a decent education. Under "academic accountability standards," we get a requirement that parents must let the state know when the child has graduated, a requirement that FERPA is followed, and that parents fill out a "satisfaction survey" each year. 

That's it. If taxpayers want some assurance that this rerouting of tax dollars has resulted in better education for the students that Commonwealth Foundation is so concerned about--well, no such assurances will be forthcoming. 

All of the above is par for the course, such as we've seen in other states. The funding of the vouchers includes a curious feature. Typically an ESA gifts the family with whatever monies the state was going to send to that student's local school district. But this bill throws in an extra wrinkle-- the amount in the ESA will be determined with this formula:

All the money the state sends to all the school districts minus all the money the state sends that is for transportation divided by all the students in all the school districts. (For students with special needs, throw in a multiplying factor.) So basically the average per pupil state payment.

Which means that some districts will lose less than their actual per pupil state funding, and some will lose more. Commonwealth Foundation estimates that will make about a $6,700 voucher for students; they also claim that $19,200 is the total spending per student-- I have no idea where that figure comes from, as per pupil spending varies wildly from district to district in PA, giving us one of the most inequitable funding systems in the country. We just had a whole lawsuit over this. It would cost a ton of money to fix it.

I suspect the $19,200 number is mostly to say, "Look-- losing $6,700 wouldn't hurt districts all that much, but there are districts where the per pupil spending dips down close to $11K. The state only contributes an average of around 33% of district spending, with the rest made up by local sources, which is why rich districts can be rich and poor districts can't. 

In other words, the poorer the district, the more they depend on state funds. And guess which districts tend to fall in that lowest 15%, so that the districts that are most likely to be hit by these vouchers would be the ones that can least afford it. Meanwhile, $6,700 is not going to fund a whole lot of private schooling.

And as always, it cannot go without mentioning that a student can only use a voucher to attend the private school or vendor of their choice if that vendor accepts them. This is school's choice, not school choice.

Like all voucher/ESA plans, this defunds public schools while giving parents little choice and taxpayers no accountability. Parents get no back-up; just a small chunk of money and a wisg for good luck from the state as it washes its hands of them.

The bill came out of the House Education Committee today (all R but one voted for it), had its first reading in the house, and was tabled, which means it can be removed from the table by direct action or will automatically pop back up in fifteen days. If you're in Pennsylvania, now would be a great time to get ahold of your representative and ask them to kill this bad idea of a bill.  

"Don't Say Gay" Reactions: Masks Off

Now that Don't Say gay is the law in Florida (at least until someone takes it to court), the anti-gay folks are out in force. I get PR releases from folks who want to get themselves quoted in The Media, and they are about what you'd expect.

For instance, FreedomWorks, the Libertarian advocacy group that was part of the Koch Brothers push for the Tea Party movement, wants to hoot a little. From their Press Release:

Despite the many lies and relentless attacks on parental rights by the national media, woke corporations, and Democratic leaders, this bill’s passage means that Florida parents will now enjoy greater control and transparency over their children’s education. It is the fundamental right of parents to make decisions regarding the education and upbringing of their children. HB 1557 reinforces that right and protects Florida families.

The "lies" that they refer to aren't terribly accurate--except for one. That's the one that says the law doesn't single out gay folks, which is technically correct and deeply disingenuous, because everyone understands exactly what the bill is supposed to prevent; DeSantis can say that the bill doesn't single out gays even as his press secretary says only "groomers" oppose it. In case you're not sure, here's a Tweet from Mothers For Liberty, who like many others, have a pretty clear idea of what the law is about.

The "grooming teacher" theory, the idea that all teaching about LGBTQ persons is just a way for predatory teachers to "recruit" is offensive on so many levels, but for people insist that LGNTQ persons are made and not born, it's a natural fit. If LGBTQ identity doesn't occur naturally--if people aren't born that way--well, then, either it's the result of some sort of mental illness, or LGBTQ is perpetuated by constant recruiting, by LGBTQ adults tricking children into changing teams. This perpetuates the age-old evil conflation of LGBTQ and pedophiles. It's also a dumb theory, and a nasty one that is best held by someone who has never met an LGBTQ teen or listened to a student crying and desperately wishing they could be "normal." 

This also fits well with a particular political lens, a lens that views all complaints and pleas by certain subgroups as simply some kind of political dodge, a ploy that doesn't come from actual lived human experience, but from an artificially crafted play to angle for political power. Members of groups don't talk about oppression or bias because those are real things, but because that's a way to craft an argument to Get Stuff. It's all just a trick to get special treatment. One wonders how much of this believe about need to recruit members and politically trickery to gain power is all projection.

The "the law doesn't actually say gay" argument does open an interesting line of thought, though, since it forbids instruction about gender identities and sexual orientation, since "male" and "female" are gender identities, and heterosexuality is a sexual orientation. So it's entirely possible that Florida just made it illegal to have school restrooms segregated on the basis of gender identity.

The FreedomWorks release also repeats another recurring pattern-- "Florida's parents will enjoy greater control" really means "Florida's straight cisgender parents of straight cisgender children" will enjoy greater control. 

Deb Geller, "former UCLA Dean and expert at Intelligent.com," also sent along her two cents, and it's much more sensible:

My concern is about how teachers will interpret the law. Too many schools already act as if all families include a mother and a father; students are expected to make Mother’s Day and Father’s Day cards or craft projects for what may be non-existent parents. Whether a child is being raised by a single, divorced or widowed parent, by grandparents or other family members, by same-sex parents, or in foster care, this is problematic.

Fear of retaliation for what they believe to be a violation of this law may lead to more of this type of subtle discrimination by teachers against students and their non-traditional families. All of our children -and their families- deserve to be treated with equity and respect. Diversity should be celebrated, not censored. Curriculum decisions should be driven by educators with students’ best interests in mind, and not by politicians with their own interests in mind.

Well, yes. The chilling effect is a major feature of the law, amplified by the enforcement of the law by parents. Florida has now given every parent the ability to interpret the law as they see fit (including whatever mom created that Tweet above). It doesn't matter if some bring nonsense suits that lose in court--school districts have neither the time nor the money to defend themselves from nonsense suits, and district administrators will continue putting the kibbosh on anything that might trigger their district's most anti-LGBTQ parents.

Ugly days ahead in Florida. 

ICYMI: Tax Edition (3/27)

Because ours are done. Fortunately, the finances of the Institute are uncomplicated (as zeros often are). Also, enjoy the annual hilarity of the $250 limit on teacher's professional expenses. But here's some reading for the week.

Cleveland charter schools uses public dollars to fight union drive

Tanisha Pruitt in the Ohio Capital Journal, detailing how one charter is using its covid relief funds to try to squelch a union drive by teachers. 

It's pride week in Austin schools. The Texas AG says that's illegal.

Washington Post coverage of a bald-faced campaign ploy to strike out--again--at LGBTQ students.

Schools nationwide are quietly removing books from their libraries

A Washington Post story about the entirely-predictable trend of gutless administrators unilaterally getting rid of any books that might "cause trouble." 

Texas superintendent tells librarians to pull books on sexuality, transgender people

Here's exactly the kind of gutless administrator we're talking about, quietly trying to cover his butt and avoid cranky phone calls.

My Little Town

Nancy Flanagan reflects on the racism, small town style. 

After losing book banning drive, some Moms for Liberty are aiming at Tennessee's school board

Jo Napolitano at The 74 has the story of how one high-profile Moms for Liberty group mostly failed with the book banning drive, and is now setting its sights on more high power targets.

How the Minneapolis Foundation bankrolls the destruction of public schools

At Racket, Rob Levine has the history and methodology of one of Minnesota's well-heeled corporate privatization groups, and just how much damage they've done. 

Inside the chaotic charter schools run by a for-profit company

Jeff Bryant has a look inside the schools run by Accel Schools. The chain doesn't know much about education, but it knows an awful lot about how vulture capitalism works by stripping "value" out of an "asset" and handing off the remains to the next extractor.

As legislators push so-called ‘anti-CRT’ bills citing discomfort, Black students ask whose feelings matter

WFPL reporters do a deep dive into this story about race and curriculum, asking whose voices are being heard.

Public school advocates launch effort to stop DeVos-backed voucher proposal

It never stops. In Michigan, DeVos and her buddies are attempting an end run around the governor by creating a ballot initiative to create tax credit scholarship tyle vouchers. But some public school supporters are organizing a response.

I study school choice, and DeVos's plan would hurt Michigan kids

An actual fan of school choice says that the DeVos plan for Michigan is bad news for kids.

Democrats hunting for footing in Education

This week Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire landed in the New York Times, explaining how Democrats are failing to get any ground on education. 

Did charter schools game the system with PPP loans?

Craig Harris takes a look at how charter schools snagged some small business covid loans (because whether a charter is a public school or a private business depends on which answer gets money). The original piece was a USA Today story, but this link will take you to the no-paywall Yahoo News version.

MGT Consulting and Somerset Academy: A Florida Case Study in Ed Reform Working for itself

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider makes sense of the convoluted story of Florida corruption and self-dealing (a story ironically that only came to light because two scams got in each others' way).

How Big Tech sees profit in Social and Emotional Learning at School

Anna Noble at Telegraf shows how big tech is getting its big greasy hands into SEL. Surprise, not.

Petaluma charter school lessons

Thomas Ultican with another of his well-researched deep dives, this time into the shenanigans around the establishment of another amateur-run charter school.

Feds Propose Change In Charter School Grant Regulations

 This is exactly the kind of boring policy wonk stuff that can make ordinary humans nod off. But it;'s worth paying attention to. It's even worth giving the feds your two cents. I'll tell you how at the end of this. First let me explain what's happening.

The Charter Schools Program (CSP) is a federal grant program that gives charter schools money both for start-ups and expansions. It's a big, beautiful federal tax dollar gravy train, and it's been running for many years through many administrations. The first batch of granty largesse was disbursed in 1995; since then something like $4 Billion has been thrown at charters, with decidedly mixed results. A report from the Network for Public Education found that about 1 out of every 4 dollars ($1 billion) had been spent on fraud and waste, including schools that closed within a year as well as schools that never opened at all (spoiler alert: no, the taxpayers don't get their money back when that happens). Despite all that, the gravy train is still running, this year to the tune of about $440 million.

But if we're going to do this, couldn't we at least institute a few rules for getting the grant money? That's what the Biden administration is proposing right now, and we are all invited to offer our thoughts before the proposed rules are adapted and/or adopted.

The language of the proposal is about priorities--in other words, if you meet these certain guidelines, you score more points in the Give Me Some Grant Money contest-- and application requirements. So let's take a look at the proposed language and see what we've got, because some of this is good and some of it could be better. First, there are two proposed priorities.

Proposed Priority 1—Promoting High-Quality Educator- and Community-Centered Charter Schools to Support Underserved Students.

The proposal notes that although charters were envisioned as laboratories of education, where teachers could develop cool new ideas and, in collaboration with public schools, send those ideas out to do good for students everywhere, the reality is that in some communities, "teachers, parents, and community leaders have expressed concerns about not being included as active participants in charter school decision-making." Modern charters have ended up, in many cases, being not so much educator or community centered as owners-of-the-business centered. 

So to score grant-winning points in this priority, charters would have to do some of the following.

Involve "meaningful and ongoing engagement" with current and former educators in founding, governance, school-level decisions about curriculum and instruction, and day-to-day operations. This would be a markedly different model than that used by profiteering charters that are built on models for "extracting value" rather than educating students.

Use a community-centered approach that involves starting with a community needs assessment and continues with regular engagement with the community. Different from those charters operated at a distance by boards hundreds of miles away.

For modern charters, this may be an issue. While some charters are very much engaged with their communities and educators, many are simply business operations.

Proposed Priority 2—Charter School and Traditional Public School or District Collaborations That Benefit Students and Families

This again harkens back to the original concept of charters as partners and collaborators in a public ed system, a vision that has all but vanished in favor of a model that says charters will "help" public schools by spurring them on with market-based competition. That competitive model forbids collaboration; many charter organizations keep their materials as proprietary trade secrets, even requiring employees to sign non-disclosure agreements to protect their "trade secrets." This is completely contrary to a notion of charters as laboratories of education.

So under the proposal, a charter that wanted to score grant-winning points would have to do some version of teamwork, as in

Propose a collaboration with at least one traditional public school or traditional school district. That collaboration could include curricular or instructional resources, professional development, or other practices that could benefit students. In other words, team up with a public school in ways that would make both schools better. 

Does that sound like a hard thing to object to? Just watch-- charter school fans are already clearing their throats, warming up for songs of how public schools are mean to them and also, they should be allowed to guard the trade secrets that make them successful. The whole modern charter universe has competition hard-wired into its dna; there is no logical reason for this to be so (unless you think the real point of charters is to allow entrepreneurs to launch successful education flavored businesses), but just watch and see.

Proposed application requirements

The proposal addresses the issue of "non-profit" charter schools that operate as fronts for for-profit operations.

We reiterate that a charter school is, by definition, “a public school that . . . is operated under public supervision and direction,” and for-profit entities are ineligible to receive funding as a CSP project grantee or subgrantee. It is also a violation of CSP requirements for a grantee or subgrantee to relinquish full or substantial control of the charter school (and, thereby, the CSP project) to a for-profit management organization or other for-profit entity because, among other things, a grantee or subgrantee receiving CSP funds must establish and maintain proper internal controls and directly administer or supervise the administration of the project.

And just in case that's not clear enough:

Some examples of impermissible delegations of administrative control include situations in which the EMO controls all or a substantial portion of grant or subgrant funds and expenditures, including making programmatic decisions (also referred to as “sweeps contracts”); the EMO employs the school principal and a large proportion of the teachers; or the EMO makes decisions about curricula and instructional practices.

This is really important. Politicians have long slunk around the issue of charter schools by saying, "Well, of course, for profit charters shouldn't be allowed" while ignoring charters that are non-profit in name only (looking at you, Clinton 2016). The industry has become quite adept at using non-profit charter schools to generate profits, and all of these arrangements have the same problem as a straight-up for profit charter--the interests of the people making a profit are in direct opposition to the interests of the students. IOW, the less money I spend on those students, the more money I get to pocket. This absolutely needs to be stopped.

Another proposed requirement is that folks who want the grant money to help launch a new charter school must provide a community impact report that shows there's demand for the school and that the school would "serve the interests and meet the needs" of students, families, and the community from which the students will be drawn. That includes showing a plan for making the charter school demographics comparable to those of the community being served. In other words, no segregation academies. And "robust" community engagement plan for creating and maintaining strong partnerships. Charter schools that want this grant money cannot keep producing charters that are done to the community rather than with it.

There are also considerable reporting requirements for any for-profit entity that the charter intends to hire. 

For the CSP grants that are given to states (who in turn dole money out within their own boundaries) these same requirements are in place. The states must also provide detailed information about how they will award the grants, including how expenditures will be monitored and judged.

Other things

The proposal talks a lot about diversity that aims at racial and socio-economic diversity, for instance, in requiring charters to match the make-up of their community. But there's not much about students with special needs or English language learners; these are both categories that many charters deliberately under-serve compared to the public schools in the same communities. 

There's still no auditing mechanism for applications--in other words, nobody is checking to see if the grant application matches reality.

It also seems reasonable to ask for specific caps on grants to schools that haven't been launched yet. One of the big wastes in previous granting has been giving money to schools that never actually opened. 

Speak Up!

Offering your two cents is the easiest thing in the world (Well, not the easiest--but pretty damn easy). On the government website that I'm linking right here, you can find a copy of the full proposal. Up and to the right is a blue button that says "comment," which you just click on and there you go. There's a guide in case you want some "how to" tips. You can comment as an individual or as a group representative. You can even comment anonymously. 

Do not be intimidated. One of the comments currently up at the sites say, in total, "Hi hello I believe this is an important topic to discuss!"

And here's the thing. The charter industry does not want this, and they are already mustering troops to flood these comments with tales of how this will hurt the children and cripple their good work and be a terrible awful no good very bad thing, even though these rules boil down to a simple message--

Maybe charter schools should partner with communities and other people interested in education instead of partnering with people whose main interest is making money. 

So tell the feds that. Make your voice heard. Help the government make one tiny step toward the kind of charter function and accountability that we always should have had.