Molly Hensley-Clancy:

Five years ago, the debate over charter schools loomed over the Democratic Party, pitting some of the party’s most prominent members and biggest donors against teachers unions. But those days could be over.

Opponents of charter schools and school choice believe the next two years could be a “tipping point” for their cause: a moment where voters soundly reject policies that have, in the past, been moving closer to the party’s mainstream, and to bipartisan consensus.

The prospect is causing anxiety for some school choice advocates and donors, who have, until recently, seen many liberal leaders embrace issues like expanding charter schools. Barack Obama and Bill Clinton are both charter school advocates, and school choice is an issue that is close to the hearts of many major Democratic donors, especially business leaders. But some charter school advocates have begun to despair that their cause could be a losing one as Democrats move toward what promises to be a divisive presidential primary.

Like everything else, both sides say, it’s all about Donald Trump.

Via a kind email:

Dear Friends.

Last night, we learned that our application to establish One City Senior Preschool as a public charter school serving children in 4 year-old and 5 year-old kindergarten was approved by the University of Wisconsin System. We are very excited! This action will enable us to offer a high quality, tuition-free education to young children living in Dane County that prepares them for school success prior to beginning first grade.

We currently offer an exciting and proven curriculum that emphasizes early reading and math literacy development, creativity, and STEM learning through play. Our program features a full-time chef, healthy meals program, field trips, Family Perks, great partnerships, and a diverse and highly qualified staff. Beginning in the summer of 2018, we will implement our new co-curricular Sports and Fitness Program for children enrolled in our school. As a year-round preschool, our program will include fun summer, fall, winter and spring sports and fitness learning and activities.

We have other exciting news to share with you this month, too. Please look out for this, along with information about our staff hiring and enrollment for 2018-19 school year.

Stay tuned!

Kaleem Caire
Founder & CEO

Beginning September 1, 2018, One City will operate two different preschools in our current facility: One City Junior Preschool for children ages 1 to 3 and One City Senior Preschool for children ages 4 and 5. We will offer two 4K classrooms and two kindergarten (5K) classrooms.

Our Senior Preschool will be tuition-free while our Junior Preschool will continue to offer scholarships to families who need assistance with paying our lower than average weekly tuition rates. Wisconsin currently does not offer per-pupil funding for public school children younger than age 4, so families must continue to pay tuition for children ages 3 and younger.

Why two schools? We were required by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction to create a separate school to receive state-funded tuition aid for our 4K/5K charter school.

Because we will operate two different schools, we are changing our name from “One City Early Learning Centers, Incorporated” to “One City Schools, Incorporated”. We will begin using the new name on March 1, 2018.

In the mean time, we look forward to working with the Madison Metropolitan School District, University of Wisconsin System and its campuses, Edgewood College and other partners to expand educational access and opportunities for children in our city and region.

Much more about One City Early Learning Centers, here.

Kaleem Caire

A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school, and more recently the Montessori charter school.

Corey DeAngelis:

The evidence is in. And it’s great news for kids in charter schools. A just-released study by my colleagues at the University of Arkansas and me finds that, overall, public charter schools across eight major U.S. cities are 35 percent more cost-effective and produce a 53 percent higher return-on-investment (ROI) than residentially assigned government schools.

And every single one of the cities examined exhibited a charter school productivity advantage over their district school counterparts. As shown in Figure 1 below, charter schools outperformed district schools in each city on student achievement despite receiving significantly less resources per student. Charter schools in all eight cities studied are getting more bang for the buck. And in places like D.C. and Indianapolis, charter schools are doing more with a lot less.

Locally, a majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter School.

Public Charters:

In 2010, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (National Alliance) collected data to determine the teachers’ union status of every charter school nationwide. Prior to the release of the 2010 report, the number of unionized charter schools was largely unknown. In 2009-10, the National Alliance reported that roughly 12 percent of charter schools participated in collective bargaining agreements with teachers’ unions. In the years since the 2010 report, union votes at several charter schools in Illinois, Louisiana, and Washington, DC received significant media attention, raising questions about whether a growing number of charter schools were unionizing. To examine whether there has been a growth in unionized charter schools, the National Alliance collected data from the 2016-17 school year. The national data from 2009-10 and 2016-17 are presented in Table 1. The state data from 2009-10 and 2016-17 are presented in Table 2. D

Karen Rivedal:

Independent charter schools are free to attend and open to all students, but Madison has never had any. Bennett’s office, opened in April 2016 within the UW System by state statute, has the ability to bypass local school boards and authorize charter schools in Madison and Milwaukee.

Bennett said he liked the idea of adding a Montessori School, organized around self-driven learning and project work, to Madison’s public education landscape. He also wanted to provide more high quality early childhood education, he said, with both options more accessible to low-income parents through the charter process.

Bennett said he hoped the IMA charter school could be rolled into the Madison School District eventually if it demonstrates it can be successful and financially sound.

Related: A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter School.

The Madison School Board rejected the proposed Montessori (quasi) charter school.

Despite spending nearly $20,000 per student, we in Madison have long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Robin Lake, Trey Cobb, Roohi Sharma, Alice Opalka:

Why Is Charter Growth Slowing? Lessons From the Bay Area

Since 2013, charter school growth has slowed significantly across the country, and the trend is similar in the San Francisco Bay Area. In fact, the 2016-2017 school year marked the first time in at least 10 years when more Bay Area charter schools closed than opened.

Three reasons for the slowdown

Our research has revealed three interlocking factors contributing to slower charter school growth:

Too few school facilities that new schools can afford.

Increased competition for resources from well-established charter networks and schools.

Political opposition from districts, some of which block access to facilities, bring lawsuits against growing schools, or make charters’ compliance with state regulations more difficult.

Alan Borsuk:

There were at least 99 reasons not to close Kathryn T. Daniels University Preparatory Academy, Michael Bonds said over and over on Thursday night.

What did the Milwaukee School Board member mean? This: On the school report cards issued by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction several months ago, 99 schools in the Milwaukee Public Schools system scored worse than the Daniels school. And MPS wasn’t threatening to close any of them, or, for that matter, to do much different at any of them.

“If we’re going to close Daniels, we should close the other 99,” Bonds said.

Oh, my. Is this what passes for persuasive argument on the Milwaukee school scene? That we have so many crummy schools that crumminess is acceptable?

How poor are the Daniels results? A small slice of the answer: In last spring’s state tests, 3% of the third through eighth-grade students were rated as proficient and 74% were at the “below basic” level. In math, 7% were proficient and 77% below basic. Overall, many of the goals set by MPS for the Daniels schools were not being met, an administrative team found. There were some signs of improvement over last year, and some indicators going the other way.

James Pogue:

The west side of Columbus, Ohio, is a flat expanse of one-story houses, grimy convenience stores, and dark barrooms, and William Lager, in his business wear, cut an unusual figure at the Waffle House on Wilson Road. Every day, almost without fail, he took a seat in a booth, ordered his bottomless coffee, and set to work. Some days he sat for hours, so long that he’d outlast waitress Chandra Filichia’s seven-hour shift and stay on long into the night, making plans and scribbling them down on napkins.

The dreams on the napkins seemed impossibly grandiose: He wanted to create a school unlike anything that existed, a K-12 charter school where the learning and teaching would be done online, and which would give tens of thousands of students an alternative to traditional public schools across the state. It would offer them unheard of flexibility—a teen mom could stay with her child and study, while a kid worried about being bullied could complete lessons at home. And it would be radically cheaper than a traditional classroom, since there would be no buildings to maintain, no teachers’ unions to bargain with. At the time—the late 1990s—it was a revolutionary idea. Lager called it, in the heady days when the internet seemed to promise a solution to every problem, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow.

But back then—before Lager had his mansion and lake house, before he rose to become a hero of the school choice movement, before Jeb Bush flew in to give ECOT’s commencement speech and Betsy DeVos helped him and his cohort transform Ohio’s educational landscape—Filichia, the Waffle House waitress, could tell Lager seemed broke. Balding, round-faced, and concentrating intently as he scribbled, she even once caught him trying to pass off photocopies of discount coffee coupons. But he didn’t plan on using a Waffle House as his office forever. “One of these days I’m going to have a real big business,” she remembers him telling her, “and you can come work with me, and you won’t ever have to work anywhere else.”

Strategy Session VIII: Turning the Tide: Tools to Promote Charter School Growth. Recorded at the 2017 National Summit on Education Reform on Thursday, November 30 in Nashville, Tennessee. According to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, only 329 new charter schools opened across the United States in 2016, down from 640 new charters in 2013. Charter schools are still growing, but at a much slower rate than just a few years ago. Why are we seeing fewer new charter schools? What can policymakers do to ensure that new high-quality charter schools are able to open and serve families? Join this session for a conversation with researchers and state lawmakers to learn what is behind this trend and how states can address the need for more quality schools in our communities. Moderator: Neerav Kingsland, Chief Executive Officer, Hastings Fund Panelists: — Richard Corcoran, Speaker, Florida State House of Representatives — Robin Lake, Director, Center on Reinventing Public Education — Michael McShane, Ph.D., Director of National Research, EdChoice — Angela Williams, Senator, Colorado State Senate

Greg Stanley:

One proposal would allow the state to create a new body to license and govern charter schools. The amendment would allow charter schools to avoid getting approval from their district’s school board by potentially getting that approval and oversight from the state.

The problem is school districts often do not want charter schools and have no interest in overseeing their operations, Donalds said.

“There are school boards that do not want anything to do with authorizing a charter school,” she said. “In some cases, the districts do not want them to succeed because they want those students back in public school and there’s a conflict of interest.”

Charisse A. Gulosino
Elif Şişli-Ciamarra:

This study provides the first systematic analysis of the composition of charter school governing boards. We assemble a dataset of charter school boards in Massachusetts between 2001 and 2013 and investigate the consequences of donor and founder representation on governing boards. We find that the presence of donors on the charter school boards is positively related to financial performance and attribute this result to the donors’ strong monitoring incentives due to their financial stakes in the school. We also show that financial outcomes are not generated at the expense of academic outcomes, as the presence of donors on the boards is also associated with higher student achievement. Founder representation on charter school boards, on the other hand, is associated with lower financial performance but higher academic achievement.

Robin Lake, via a kind Deb Britt email:

History repeats itself. Unfortunately, so does irresponsible analysis. For the 20 or so years that I’ve been studying charter schools, the attacks on charters have morphed over time. Early on, it was said that charter schools were going to admit only the most advantaged students. When that clearly didn’t come to pass, the attack line shifted to assertions that charters were more racially segregated than other schools. A study in the early 2000s by Gary Orfield seemed to confirm that: It showed that racial concentration in charter schools was higher than in nearby district schools.

But when researchers Zimmer, Gill, and Booker took a closer look, they found that kids attending racially concentrated charter schools had come from equally racially concentrated district schools. It turned out, charters were simply locating in majority-minority low-income neighborhoods and serving the at-risk kids who live there. Los Angeles is about 80% Hispanic. New Orleans is more than 80% black. Charter schools that locate in those cities are trying to serve those students. This is not segregation; this is school founders doing exactly what policymakers hoped they would do (as required in most state charter laws): serve kids most in need of a better education.

Now, a new Associated Press story is resurrecting an attack that should have been laid to rest, with headlines asserting that charter schools “put growing numbers in racial isolation.” The AP repeats Orfield’s old methodological mistake by interpreting high rates of racial concentration as “causing” segregation. If students are simply moving from one all-black school to another, there is no impact on overall segregation of schools. But there likely is an increase in learning.

The article includes some titillating stats: Charters are more “racially isolated” than district-run schools, and racially isolated schools are more likely to have low test scores. I hope it comes as no surprise to the AP education reporters that poverty is well known to be highly correlated with low proficiency rates. But they do seem ignorant of the important fact that charter schools have a strong track record in overcoming the odds of high poverty. They also fail to consider that parents choose charters, rather than being forced to send their children there.

Preston C. Green, III Bruce D. Baker Joseph O. Oluwole:

Given the recent increase in charter schools as an alternative to the traditional public education system, this Article explores the legal status and position of charter schools. Charter schools exhibit many characteristics of private schools, particularly in terms of management, but also retain many public school features. Thus, this Article explores areas of the law where charter schools were either classified as public or private in terms of state statutes or regulations, discussing recent and some pending litigation. First, this Article discusses whether charter schools, charter school boards and officials, or educational management organizations which manage charter schools are entitled to governmental immunity, thus classifying them as public entities. Second, this Article examines the interplay between charter schools, their boards, and their management organizations and whether they are subject to public accountability laws, as their public school counterparts are. Third, this Article surveys whether charter schools are subject to state prevailing wage statutes. Fourth, this Article examines whether charter schools are required to follow the same student expulsion requirements as public schools. This Article proceeds to tally the results of this litigation, discussing both whether charter schools are subject to the same laws and regulations as public schools in their districts and whether charter schools and their officials are public entities under the law, and thus subject to the same rules governing the action of public officials. This Article concludes that often times, this distinction is not clear in state statutory requirements as they currently stand, and that legislators should take care in drafting charter school legislation, so that charter schools have a clear set of rules to follow and courts have a clear set of rules to apply in litigation. The status quo is particularly troubling with regard to student disciplinary issues and educational management organizations’ fiduciary obligations, and this Article urges legislators to address these issues.

Rachel Cohen:

On a Monday night in late April, the D.C. Public Charter School Board convened for its monthly meeting with plans to vote on new charter school applications. One network, DC Preparatory Academy, submitted two requests for expansion: one to increase their student enrollment ceiling, and one to open a new elementary and middle school campus. Founded in 2003 and already operating five campuses, DC Prep is considered among the highest performing charter networks in the city. It was no surprise when the Charter Board’s staff recommended that the board vote in favor of the school’s proposals.

Yet around three hours into the meeting, when it finally came time to vote, board members started asking DC Prep leaders surprisingly tough questions. Board chairman Darren Woodruff noted that at DC Prep’s elementary campus in Anacostia, the out-of-school suspension rate stood at 6.9 percent, nearly double the charter sector’s average. And DC Prep’s Edgewood middle school campus, he said, had an out-of-school suspension rate of 27.9 percent, up from 18 percent the year before. For special education students, the suspension rate was dramatically higher—45 percent.

Woodruff was particularly troubled by the kindergarten suspensions. “I am struggling mightily to understand the logic behind suspending out-of-school 5-year-olds,” said Woodruff. “… I have been in education now for over 30 years and I can’t come up with an explanation that makes sense. I would love to hear anyone from your organization justify a 40 percent suspension rate for 5-year-olds who have disabilities. That’s the reason I will not vote for the expansion.”

Via a kind Matthew Frankel email:

Broad Range of Small and Large Local Community Businesses Pledge their Support to Provide Students with Invaluable Work-Study Opportunity

Philadelphia, PA – October 8, 2017 – Young Scholars Charter School announced today that is has forged twenty-two strategic partnerships with local businesses from around the Philadelphia area to support “Experience Week,” which takes its full student body out of the classroom and into the workplace for a series of hands on learning experiences. The annual school event will be held this year during the week of November 13th with daily themes highlighting careers in areas such as “Vocational,” “Arts,” “Humanities, “Social Science,” and “Civic Engagement.”

“Experience Week provides real work-life perspective while directly connecting names, faces, and professionals to our student body,” stated John Amenda, Executive Director, Young Scholars Charter School. “Learning does not stop in the classroom and through the strong support of the Philadelphia area business and arts community, Young Scholars Charter students are provided with valuable hands-on opportunities. Most of all, ‘Experience Week’ is the first of ultimately many professional doors our students will open as they explore their interests and eventually build a career. We often forget how important a role model can be to a young adult. The businesses and people who support this effort provide example and inspiration for our students. We greatly appreciate the professionals who volunteer their time while our students travel around the city and we are grateful for their support.”

Some of the Philadelphia-based businesses and organizations who will participate in Young Scholars Charter School’s “Experience Week” include: Munroe Creative Partners, Philadelphia City Planning Commission, Keller-Williams Real Estate, The African American Museum, The National Museum of American Jewish History, Vetri Family Restaurants, Greater Philadelphia Health Action Inc., The Stephen Klein Wellness Center, the Castle Valley Flour Mill, CBS Radio and the Walnut Street Theatre.

Trips to these and other businesses and organizations will be scheduled throughout the week for the student body, with teachers monitoring and directing these out of classroom learning efforts. For each trip, students will meet with a diverse range of professionals, learn specifics about about each professional role, participate in onsite workshops and experiences and be provided with tours of each business, organization or arts institution.

WHAT: Young Scholars Charter School’s Experience Week

WHEN: Start Date – Monday, November 13th

WHERE: Trips Around Philadelphia will be Scheduled for Students Throughout the Week. Media wishing to Learn More about “Experience Week” and Review the Full Schedule of Off-Campus Visits May Contact the School at (215) 232-9727

Jacob Carpenter:

For more than a decade, the leaders of Accelerated Intermediate Academy have run their small Houston charter school on a lean budget, paying teachers below-average salaries and educating kids in modest facilities resembling portable trailers.

At the same time, the school’s superintendent, Kevin Hicks, has drawn an annual salary of about $250,000 – a seemingly outsized sum given its roughly 275 students and 20 employees. The school is also sitting on a condo appraised at $450,000 and recently reported $12.5 million in cash reserves, records show.

“Wow. He definitely could have put more into the school,” Kennessa Johnson, a former teacher at the charter, said of Hicks. “It was extremely basic in the school. There weren’t even any windows.”

The school’s spending has raised questions about the management of the southwest Houston charter, which has received more than $55 million in taxpayer dollars since opening in 2001, a Houston Chronicle investigation has found.

One City Early Learning Centers:

A high quality preschool education, from birth to age 5, should be available and accessible to every child in the United States of America. Please join us on Tuesday, October 31, 2017 from 11:30am to 1:00pm for lunch and an important presentation and dialogue.

We would like to get your input and feedback about two significant steps One City is taking to make high quality preschool available and accessible all children. First, we are planning a major community fundraising event for 2018 that we hope to draw 7,000 to 8,000 people to attend. One City will be the host and organizer, but we plan to dedicate funds generated from the event to support tuition scholarships and teacher training at other high quality preschools so that more children have access, and more children are better prepared for school success.

Register to Attend

One City Early Learning, via a kind Kaleem Caire email:

A high quality preschool education, from birth to age 5, should be available and accessible to every child in the United States of America. Please join us on Tuesday, October 31, 2017 from 11:30am to 1:00pm for lunch and an important presentation and dialogue.

We would like to get your input and feedback about two significant steps One City is taking to make high quality preschool available and accessible all children. First, we are planning a major community fundraising event for 2018 that we hope to draw 7,000 to 8,000 people to attend. One City will be the host and organizer, but we plan to dedicate funds generated from the event to support tuition scholarships and teacher training at other high quality preschools so that more children have access, and more children are better prepared for school success.

Second, we will also talk with you about our plans to establish a public charter school that would provide economically disadvantaged families greater access to high quality preschool, and potentially create a pathway to educational success for children beyond kindergarten.

These two initiatives will be central to our efforts to initiate an effective and impactful preschool movement in Dane County. It’s one that we hope will positively impact children all across Wisconsin in the future, as well. We truly hope that you will join us.

Madison has long tolerated a non diverse K-12 governance structure, despite long term disastrous reading results.

Madison spends nearly $20,000 per student.

A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter school.

Cambridge news:

The Cambridge School Board will consider Monday night, Oct. 16, whether to approve a petition to create an outdoor-agriculture charter school.

The board’s decision, to be made at its regular meeting at 7 p.m. Monday at Cambridge High School, will be preceded by a public hearing at XXX.

Jennifer Scianna, director of the Severson Learning Center, the school farm in the town of Christiana, where Cambridge ACRES – Agriculture Center for Rural Environmental Sustainability – would be located, said the hearing will last about an hour. It will start with her giving an abbreviated version of a presentation about the school she made last month to the Cambridge School Board. Then, it will open up for comments and questions from community members.

School Finance:

About a year ago, I released this report:

In which Gary Miron and I discuss various methods by which charter school operators work largely within existing policy constraints, to achieve financial gain. While working on this report, I explored various other topics that did not make the final cut, in part because I was then, and continue to have difficulty gathering sufficient information. The other day, however this article was posted on LA Weekly about wage extraction by “Gulen” charter schools:

Madison spends nearly $20,000 per student annually, despite long term, disastrous reading results.

Wisconsin DPI, via a kind reader:

Wisconsin won more than $95 million from a competitive, five-year federal grant for the Wisconsin Charter Schools Program, according to an announcement last week by the U.S. Department of Education.

The grant, the largest in the country this year, will support the growth of high-quality charter schools, especially secondary schools that serve educationally disadvantaged students; strengthen and improve charter authorizing quality; and promote and support collaboration and sharing of best practices across the state.

“Our federal grant will help us expand charter school access throughout Wisconsin, especially for our high school kids who are from low-income families,” said State Superintendent Tony Evers. “All kids, regardless of their circumstances, deserve access to innovative opportunities through our public schools. This grant will help us promote more collaboration and partnerships to take the lessons learned in charter schools and apply that success across the state.”

Wisconsin was an early adopter of the charter school concept, enacting legislation in 1993 with 13 public charter schools created under the initial law. Today, the state has 234 charter schools, enrolling more than 44,000 students. This is Wisconsin’s sixth and largest federal grant to support charter school development.

Unfortunately, Madison’s long non diverse K-12 environment has lead to disastrous reading results, despite spending nearly $20,000 per student.

Matt Barnum:

When charter school teachers push to unionize, charter leaders often fight back.

That’s happened in Chicago, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Washington DC. Unionizing, they argue, would limit the schools’ ability to innovate, ultimately hurting kids.

But a new study of California schools finds that, far from harming student achievement, unionization of charter schools actually boosts test scores.

“In contrast to the predominant public opinion about school unionizations, we find that unionization has a positive … impact on student math performance,” write researchers Jordan Matsudaira of Cornell and Richard Patterson of the U.S. Military Academy.

The analysis is hardly the last word on the question, but it highlights the limited evidence for the idea that not having unionized teachers helps charter schools succeed — even though that is a major aspect of the charter-school movement, as most charters are not unionized.

“Contrary to the anti-worker and anti-union ideologues, the teacher unions in charter schools don’t impede teaching and learning or hurt kids,” said Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, which represents teachers in more than 240 charter schools. “And the findings — that schools with teachers who have an independent voice through its unions have a positive effects on student performance — are consistent with common sense and other studies.”

Madison has long spent far more than most government funded school districts (now nearly $20,000 per student), yet we’ve long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Yet, Madison’s non diverse governance model continues unabated, aborting the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter school and more recently a quasi Montessori charter proposal.

Mike Antonucci:

Bob Bowden:

The chapters on charter schools primarily focus on the KIPP and Mastery charter management organizations. Abrams admits that KIPP—for “Knowledge Is Power Program,” which establishes schools under state charter laws—has exhibited “exponential…

Karen Rivedal:

But Cheatham urged the board not to see it as an us-vs-them proposition, noting the charter school and its students would be fully part of the district if the contract was approved. The district also should “honor and value” grass-roots proposals that come from the community, she said, especially one like this promising to help the district address its achievement gaps for students of color.

“Many of us see the hope and opportunity there, even if the impact is small,” she said. “We think it’s worth it.”

Burke noted the projected cost per student would be around $9,000, which would rank it on the low side for elementary schools in the district, and Howard made an impassioned plea to his fellow board members to approve the contract to explore whether doing things differently results in better outcomes for minority students.

“It’s all about access,” he said. “All the data around kids of color shows we have not gotten it right. Every one of us has a part of getting it wrong for students of colors.”

“We owe it to our community of color here in Madison to give this a shot, to learn from it,” Burke agreed.

Links:

A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Preporatory Academy IB Charter School.

Madison spends more than most, now nearly $20,000 per student, while tolerating long term, disastrous reading results.

Annysa Johnson:

Bennett said he has had some interest in the Madison, though he declined to identify schools or individuals. If a school is authorized there, it would be the first in the city not chartered by the Madison Metropolitan School District, and only one of three independent charters — those not authorized by a school district — outside of Milwaukee.

Bennett’s office and post were created by the Republican-led Legislature to authorize charter schools in districts with 25,000 students or more — Milwaukee and Madison, effectively. The 2015-’17 budget plan proposed by Senate Republicans last month would expand that authority beyond those two cities.

Charters are publicly funded schools that allow for greater flexibility in the way they operate in areas such as staffing and curriculum. As of January, Wisconsin had 237charter schools serving about 44,000 students, the vast majority of those authorized by local public school districts. Twenty-two others were independently chartered — all but two of those in Milwaukee — by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and the UW-Parkside.

Though they are growing nationally, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, interest has waned in Wisconsin in recent years. Only one new school, Pathways High, is slated to open in Milwaukee this fall. And independent chartershave been slow to catch on outside of Milwaukee, in part because of a lack of funding and a push by parents for public school alternatives.

Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results. This, despite spending far more than most, now nearly $20,000 per student.

Howard Fuller:

“A bad school is our common enemy.” Those words from Cristina de Jesus of Green Dot Public Schools rang true for me the first time I read them — and they obviously had an impact on the NAACP, too. Members of the NAACP’s public education task force included this phrase in their recent report calling for major reform in the charter school movement.

The report was the latest step in the NAACP’s journey to undermine and destabilize the same charter schools that serve so many students of color.

I was pleased to see that the report, debuted at the NAACP’s national convention in Baltimore, was somewhat more nuanced and, in fact, acknowledged that high-quality charter public schools have been successful for many students of color. This acknowledgement was long overdue but the substance of the report is, once again, waging the same senseless war on charter schools the NAACP started with its call for a charter school moratorium in 2016.

Locally, Madison lacks K-12 Governance diversity.

Much more on Howard Fuller.

“Everyone always asks, ‘Why are you so small?’ Well, there are not very many teenagers who want to admit that they have a drug or alcohol problem, or mental health issues. Parents don’t want to brag about that (either),” she said.

“We are trying to break the stigma by having students feel good about themselves so they will want to get help and see that they are worthy of being happy and healthy.”

In order to break the stigma, Goll works hard to build close bonds with her students so they stay dedicated to recovery.

“Not only do our students struggle with alcohol and drug issues, they also have mental health issues. So, our school needs to be a safe and secure place where you can educate them,” she said. “We have to have a lot of trust, which takes time to build.”

Much more, here including RFP links for an independent Madison or Milwaukee Charter School.

Karen Rivedal:

In April 2017, Bennett told the State Journal he wanted to cast a wide net for possible ideas for independent charter schools, which under state law will have to be tuition-free and be open to all students in the school district.

He also had planned to consult a variety of community voices in developing the request for proposals, including UW-Madison faculty members, state lawmakers, parents, organizations and other experts to develop criteria.

On Wednesday, he said he’d done just that, singling out UW-Madison professor Julie Mead, a professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis who has done research on charter schools, as being particularly helpful in the process of developing the RFP.

He described Mead as having a “healthy skepticism” about charters and said her input was helpful in determining what sort of questions should be included in the RFP.

“Her feedback has been really instrumental on what’s controllable within the (school) model,” he said. “Getting feedback from both supporters and critics of charters has improved the RFP and will continue to improve this office.”

Bennett wouldn’t share any ideas he’s been pitched for schools in Madison so far, though he acknowledged being approached by many groups and individuals with ideas over the past year as he developed the RFP process.

Much more on the RFP along with previous (aborted) independent Charter School proposals.

University of Wisconsin System Office of Educational Opportunity, via a kind email:

As home to the nation’s first public kindergarten, Wisconsin has a proud history of visionary educators incubating innovative educational opportunities for students, families, and their communities.

The Office of Educational Opportunity is proud to be a partner in the Badger State’s living legacy of educational innovations. Our role is to connect students, families, professional educators, and community leaders with an opportunity to create a school that meets their needs and interests.

If you have an idea for a school, then we invite you to review and respond to our Request for Proposal (RFP). Details about how we will score applications are provided in the linked rubrics, but for us to “green light” any proposal, it must provide access to new educational innovations, incubate existing educational practices in new ways, and/or increase educational equity.

Selection Process

The Office of Educational Opportunity will begin seeking proposals for public charter schools in Madison and Milwaukee on August 2, 2017.

Phase 1 submissions will be scored on a rolling basis using the reviewer guide shared below.

Applicants with approved Phase 1 applications will be invited to submit a Phase II application (Phase II applications that are submitted without an approved Phase 1 will be returned to the applicant without being reviewed).

The School Selection Committee will score Phase 2 submissions using the reviewer guide provided below. The Committee will make authorization recommendations to OEO’s Director.

Applicants who receive a recommendation for authorization from the School Selection Committee may commence contract negotiations with OEO’s Director – subject to the Director accepting the Committee’s recommendation for authorization.

If mutually agreeable contract terms are reached, then the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents must approve of the contract for any school to be officially authorized by OEO.

Some history on (aborted) independent charter schools in Madison, including:

the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter School and

the Studio School.

2009: “An emphasis on adult employment“.

Unfortunately, Madison continues to support a non diverse K-12 Governance model, this despite spending far more per student than most districts and tolerating long term, disastrous reading results.

Much more on Gary Bennett’s office of Educational Opportunity.

The RFP respondents need not conform to Madison or Milwaukee’s legacy organization structure – that is, they would be a “non instrumentality” school.

This is positive. I hope and pray that we see interesting proposals and schools.

Alan Borsuk

These reasons feed my thought that the forecast for creating independent charters outside Milwaukee isn’t strong, no matter what state law says.

Under Gary Bennett, the UW System charter office has moved carefully. It does not want to create angry politics around schools in Madison or elsewhere. With the exception of plans to open a special charter school for up to 15 teenage opioid addicts somewhere in Wisconsin, the first charter schools created by the UW office are unlikely to arrive before 2019, if any come at all.

What’s likely to be in the state budget for charters? Not much different than for any other schools — increases of about $200 per student in funding in each of the next two years. That would raise the per-student amount in 2018-’19 to a bit over $8,600, which is less than conventional public schools get.

And the Milwaukee scene, in broad strokes? Chartering by city government has pretty much come to a halt. The UWM charter list includes some very good schools, but the prospects for new charters are iffy.

microeconomicinsights::

A growing body of evidence indicates that many urban charter schools boost the standardized test scores of disadvantaged students markedly. Attendance at oversubscribed charter schools in Boston for example—those with more applicants than seats—increases the test scores of low-income students by a third of a standard deviation a year, enough to eliminate the black-white test score gap in a few years of attendance.
 
 The achievement gains generated by Boston charters are in line with those generated by urban charters elsewhere in Massachusetts, as we have shown in studies of a Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) school in Lynn, Massachusetts and in an analysis of charter lottery results from around the state. Similar effects have been found in New York City and in a nationwide study of oversubscribed urban charter schools.
 
 A defining feature of most of Massachusetts’ urban charter schools is No Excuses pedagogy, an approach to urban education described in a book of the same name. No Excuses schools emphasize discipline and student conduct, traditional reading and math skills, extended instruction time, and selective teacher hiring. Massachusetts’ No Excuses charters also make heavy use of Teach for America corps members and alumni, and they provide extensive and ongoing feedback to teachers.

National Education Association:

Introduction

Charter schools were initially promoted by educators who sought to innovate within the local public school system to better meet the needs of their students. Over the last quarter of a century, charter schools have grown dramatically to include large numbers of charters that are privately managed, largely unaccountable, and not transparent as to their operations or performance. The explosive growth of charters has been driven, in part, by deliberate and wellfunded efforts to ensure that charters are exempt from the basic safeguards and standards that apply to public schools, which mirror efforts to privatize other public institutions for profit.

relinqueshment:

CREDO is the best national quasi-experimental data source we have, and its methodology holds up well in comparisons with experimental data.

To the extent you’re suspicious of CREDO or of quasi-experimental design, Rand also did a national study on charters that looked exclusively at experimental studies. The authors found:

“Consistent with many previous studies that have focused on broad sets of charter schools, we found no evidence that, on average, attending charter schools had a positive impact on student achievement. The estimated impact of attending the average charter school in the study was negative but not statistically signicant after adjusting for the multiple hypotheses tested. However, the average impact of attending charter schools in large urban areas or those serving lower achieving or more disadvantaged students was large and positive.”

Naomi Mix:

Attention aspiring charter school leaders: South Carolina policymakers are looking to award hundreds of thousands of dollars to talented educators with the skills to launch their own charter schools.
The South Carolina Public Charter School District is starting an incubator program aimed at cultivating high-performing charter schools to educate underserved, low-income and minority students.

While some of the state’s existing charter schools show “promising results” and employ “promising practices,” there are no schools in the state that have achieved the same level of success as well-known networks in other parts of the country — such as those that win the the Broad Prize For Urban Education — said South Carolina Public Charter School District Superintendent Elliot Smalley.

Mike Antonucci:

The California Teachers Association approved a new business item that reads:

CTA will develop and promote resolutions that local associations can introduce at school board meetings calling for county-wide and statewide moratoriums on new charter school authorizations.
The union has promoted limits on the number of charter schools since the charter law was passed in 1992 but I believe this is the first time it will formally call for a moratorium.

Some unions love moratoriums, but they are rarely put into effect.

Madeleine Deliee:

You’ve probably heard a lot about charter schools lately, but you may not know exactly what they are, or what makes them so popular in some circles—and controversial in others. Now, with the proposed federal budget devoting $500 million in funding to charter expansion across the United States, you’re likely to hear even more about these publicly funded, independently operated campuses. And love them or leave, their unique status affords them the opportunity to function outside the traiditonal educational model. Though they aren’t perfect, charter schools offer a few advantages.

City of Milwaukee:

For this RFP, the City of Milwaukee is using a Bonfire portal for accepting and evaluating proposals digitally.

All required documents are available for download on the Bonfire portal.

Your submission must be uploaded, submitted, and finalized prior to the Closing Time of May 30, 2017 at 2:00 PM CST. We strongly recommend that you give yourself sufficient time and at least ONE (1) hour before Closing Time to begin the uploading process and to finalize your submission.

Los Angeles Daily News:

A new labor-backed study charges that California charter schools are opening schools where they aren’t needed, but parents – not special interests or governmental bodies – should be the final judges.

The report from In the Public Interest criticizes charters for opening in areas where there is existing classroom space in traditional public schools, criticizes them for using public funds for their facilities – as they are entitled to do under Proposition 39, passed by voters in 2000 – and alleges that they are misusing funds.

“Paying for more schools than are needed wastes taxpayer dollars,” the report states. “Furthermore, an oversupply of schools serves to undermine the viability of any individual school.”

The study claims that the growth of charter schools has led to an “overproduction of schools” by focusing on available desk space, but this exhibits a fundamental misunderstanding of the basic economic concepts of supply and demand. Demand is not determined by how many things you can produce; it is determined by how many things you produce that people are actually willing to consume.

And, increasingly, traditional public schools are becoming better at producing empty desk space than well-educated graduates, as more and more parents have come to the conclusion that these schools are not working, and thus have enrolled their children in charter schools to offer them better opportunities.

James Vaznis:

Sydney Chaffee’s (center) classroom lessons at Codman Academy Charter School in Dorchester focus on the intersection of history and literature.

By James Vaznis GLOBE STAFF APRIL 20, 2017
At Codman Academy Charter School in Dorchester, Sydney Chaffee likes to put the spotlight on her students during a weekly schoolwide assembly — having them write the scripts, act out the skits, and fully take charge of an event that is integral to the Codman’s identity.

But on Thursday morning, in the midst of school vacation week, it was Chaffee who stepped into the spotlight, with the announcement that she had been named National Teacher of the Year, making her the first Massachusetts educator to receive the top award in teaching.

Chaffee’s selection made history in another way: She appears to be the first charter-school teacher to win, although a handful of those from alternative, magnet, and private schools have received the honor, according to the Council of Chief State School Officers, a professional organization that runs the 65-year-old competition.

Maureen Kelleher:

SYSTEM-GAMING HAS EXISTED FOR DECADES

Ways to make hard-to-serve young people disappear from high school rolls have existed since well before Michelle Fine’s groundbreaking study on this problem, Framing Dropouts, was published in 1991. In the early 1980s, Fine discovered that only 20 percent of the freshmen who entered one of New York City’s comprehensive high schools actually graduated. Policies around attendance and discipline pushed the rest out.

As my own 1999 reporting in Chicago showed, high schools frequently hide dropouts by transferring them to alternative schools where graduation rates and other outcomes weren’t tracked, so they didn’t count toward overall data. Despite promises from the district to address the problems, the issue resurfaced in 2015, forcing the city to recalculate graduation rates.

Notably, in Chicago, charter schools weren’t the source of the problem. Instead, the district rapidly expanded seats in alternative schools by contracting directly with for-profit alternative school providers. Just as ProPublica did nationally, Chicago journalists raised important questions about the quality of education they offer.

In an interesting Chicago twist, in the mid-1990s former CEO Paul Vallas encouraged a number of deeply-rooted, community-based alternative schools to unite under the umbrella of Youth Connection Charter School. In these schools, students attend full school days, earn credits in engaging classes and have close contact with teachers. By contrast with the schools featured in ProPublica’s reporting, data show the majority of Youth Connection Charter students earn high school diplomas and continue their education in community colleges.

It is unfortunate that school districts and operators have too often turned to alternative schools as a gaming mechanism rather than a true support for struggling students. And it is important to understand that chartering itself is not the root cause of the problem. We just put the old wine of gaming the system into a new kind of cask.

Propublica.

Heather Vogell and Hannah Fresques:

Sunshine’s 455 students — more than 85 percent of whom are black or Hispanic — sit for four hours a day in front of computers with little or no live teaching. One former student said he was left to himself to goof off or cheat on tests by looking up answers on the internet. A current student said he was robbed near the strip mall’s parking lot, twice.
Sunshine takes in cast-offs from Olympia and other Orlando high schools in a mutually beneficial arrangement. Olympia keeps its graduation rate above 90 percent — and its rating an “A” under Florida’s all-important grading system for schools — partly by shipping its worst achievers to Sunshine.

Sunshine collects enough school district money to cover costs and pay its management firm, Accelerated Learning Solutions (ALS), a more than $1.5 million-a-year “management fee,” 2015 financial records show — more than what the school spends on instruction.
But students lose out, a ProPublica investigation found. Once enrolled at Sunshine, hundreds of them exit quickly with no degree and limited prospects. The departures expose a practice in which officials in the nation’s tenth-largest school district have for years quietly funneled thousands of disadvantaged students — some say against their wishes — into alternative charter schools that allow them to disappear without counting as dropouts.

“I would show up, I would sit down and listen to music the whole time. I didn’t really make any progress the whole time I was there,” said Thiago Mello, 20, who spent a year at Sunshine and left without graduating. He had transferred there from another alternative charter school, where he enrolled after his grades slipped at Olympia.

The Orlando schools illustrate a national pattern. Alternative schools have long served as placements for students who violated disciplinary codes. But since the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 refashioned the yardstick for judging schools, alternative education has taken on another role: A silent release valve for high schools like Olympia that are straining under the pressure of accountability reform.
As a result, alternative schools at times become warehouses where regular schools stow poor performers to avoid being held accountable. Traditional high schools in many states are free to use alternative programs to rid themselves of weak students whose test scores, truancy and risk of dropping out threaten their standing, a ProPublica survey of state policies found.

Erica Copeland:

The battle of wills between charter school advocates and opponents continued last Thursday, February 9th, at the NAACP’s special hearing on charter schools in Los Angeles.

The hearing, held at the Deaton Civic Auditorium at LAPD Headquarters, convened some of the city’s most seasoned veterans and dedicated professionals in the education field.

United States Government Accountability Office:

Discipline rates (out-of-school suspension and expulsion rates) at District of Columbia (D.C.) charter schools dropped from school years 2011-12 through 2013-14 (the most recent years of national Department of Education data available). However, these rates remained about double the rates of charter schools nationally and slightly higher than D.C. traditional public schools and were also disproportionately high for some student groups and schools. Specifically, during this period, suspension rates in D.C. charter schools dropped from about 16 percent of all students to about 13 percent, and expulsions, which were relatively rare, went down by about a half percent, according to GAO’s analysis. However, D.C. Black students and students with disabilities were disproportionately suspended and expelled. For example, Black students represented 80 percent of students in D.C. charter schools, but 93 percent of those suspended and 92 percent of those expelled. Further, 16 of D.C.’s 105 charter schools suspended over a fifth of their students over the course of school year 2015-16, according to D.C. data.

National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (PDF):

Across the country, more than 300 new charter public schools opened in the fall of 2016. Charter schools are public schools that have exibility to meet students’ unique needs, while being held accountable for advancing student achievement. Every year, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (National Alliance) collects data on the number of charter schools that opened and closed in each state that has operating charter schools. This information
is used to determine the current number of charter schools in each state, as well as to estimate total charter school enrollment at the state and national levels.

In 2016-17, there are more than 6,900 charter schools, enrolling an estimated 3.1 million students. Over the past 10 years, enrollment in charter schools has nearly tripled—from 1.2 million students in 2006-07 to an estimated 3.1 million in 2016-17. Between 2015-16 and 2016-17, estimated charter school enrollment increased by over 200,000 students. The estimated 7 percent growth in charter school enrollment between fall 2015 and fall 2016 demonstrates continued parental demand for high-quality educational options.

Graham Vyse:

Black History Month began Wednesday, and this year’s theme is “The Crisis in Black Education.” According to the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the group that founded BHM—this crisis “has grown significantly in urban neighborhoods where public schools lack resources, endure overcrowding, exhibit a racial achievement gap, and confront policies that fail to deliver substantive opportunities.”

President Barack Obama championed these publicly funded but independently run schools, whose promise is that freedom from traditional bureaucratic regulation will allow educators to innovate, thus improving student outcomes. Unlike vouchers—essentially publicly funded passes for select students to attend private school, which Democrats typically oppose—charters are a public form of “school choice” that enjoys bipartisan support. In particular, supporters see them as a lifeline to poor and minority families; most are located in urban and other low-income areas across the country.

But the charter movement was dealt a devastating blow last year when both the NAACP and the Black Lives Matter–aligned Movement for Black Lives called for a moratorium on these schools. With its resolution, the NAACP listed four conditions under which the nation’s oldest civil rights group would support further charter proliferation:

Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter School several years ago.

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, via Gary Bennett:

The University interprets its responsibility to authorize charter schools as a part of a larger attempt to improve education for children and in this instance, the education of children in the City. Charter schools must have programs that provide quality education to urban students and address the critical issues of today’s urban education environment. The academic achievement of children who are viewed as at-risk should be the central focus of the charter school application. Substantive outcomes must be given priority over process experiences if academic achievement is to serve as the central focus.

Being granted a charter to operate a school requires thought and planning as well as a committed organization that can sustain the development and operational requirements of a charter school. Potential applicants must be able to commit eighteen to twenty-four months of planning time before a charter school can become a reality.

The University and SOE consider the following principles to be essential to the development of charter schools authorized by the University. These principles are as follows:

Draft Wisconsin Recovery School Bill (PDF):

This bill authorizes the director of the Office of Educational Opportunity in the University of Wisconsin System to contract with a person to operate, as a four-year pilot project, one recovery charter school for no more than 15 high school pupils in recovery from substance use disorder or dependency. Under the bill, the operator must provide an academic curriculum that satisfies the requirement for graduation from high school as well as therapeutic programming and support for pupils attending the charter school. The bill requires a pupil who wishes to attend the recovery charter school to apply and to agree to all of the following: 1) that the pupil has begun treatment in a substance use disorder or dependency program; 2) that the pupil has maintained sobriety for at 30 days prior to attending the charter school; and 3) that the pupil will submit to a drug screening assessment and, if appropriate, a drug test prior to being admitted. The operator of the charter school may not admit a pupil who tests positive for the presence of a drug in his or her system. In addition, a pupil who enrolls in the school must receive counseling from substance use disorder or dependency counselors while enrolled in the charter school.

The contract between the operator of the recovery charter school and OEO must contain a requirement that, as a condition of continuing enrollment, an applicant for enrollment in the recovery charter school submit claims for coverage of certain services provided by the recovery charter school to his or her health care plan for which the applicant is covered for mental health services. The bill also requires the director of OEO to, following the fourth year of the operation of the charter school, submit a written report to the Department of Health Services regarding the operation and effectiveness of the charter school.

A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter School several years ago.

Related: An emphasis on adult employment.

Doug Erickson:

Board member Mary Burke said it was critically important to her that the student body of the new charter school reflect the demographics of the overall district in terms of racial diversity and the percentages of students with special needs. The school’s founders and its supporters convinced her through their testimonials and their diligent work that this will be the case, she said.

“I think there’s a true commitment,” Burke said. She noted that the parents who came to the board asking for the public Montessori option reflected that diversity.

More than 20 supporters spoke Monday, one telling the board the IMA proposal is “a gift you don’t want to turn down.”

Prior to voting against the proposal, Mertz said he was concerned that too many unresolved issues were being left to the administration to negotiate when they should be dealt with by the board. After the meeting, he added that he thought the overall proposal has too many weaknesses.

Independent charter schools have been rejected by a majority of the Madison School. They include the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter School and the Studio School.

This, despite our long term, disastrous reafing results.

Doug Erickson:

The Madison School Board is poised to vote Monday on whether to create its first public Montessori charter school, a decision that appears to hinge on the level of risk board members are willing to accept.

The district’s charter review committee says it cannot recommend approval of the proposal from Isthmus Montessori Academy because the plan falls short in key areas. But the board could decide the shortcomings are fixable and not major enough to derail the effort.

Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham has raised another possibility. If board members want to go forward with the proposal, she is recommending that implementation be delayed until the 2018-19 school year. That would provide more time to address remaining issues.

Melissa Droessler, a co-founder of the Montessori school, said delaying implementation by a year would be disappointing but not a deal-breaker, as long as the district kept negotiating in good faith.

Isthmus Montessori Academy (IMA), 1402 Pankratz St., is a private, nonprofit school founded in 2012 that wants to become part of the district. It is attempting to do that through the district’s charter application process, which was revised last year to be more rigorous.

Under the new process, if an applicant receives a “fails to meet expectations” rating in even one of 15 areas, the district’s charter review committee will not recommend it. The IMA proposal fails to meet the district’s expectations in four areas, including in its approach to budgeting, staffing and measuring academic growth.

However, School Board President James Howard questioned the rubric used by the district to evaluate applications, saying it “seems to be subjective” and that perhaps the threshold is too high.

Related: a majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter School.

Laura Waters:

I am typically a fierce critic of Professor Bruce Baker but this week I find myself in the delightful position of praising his scholarship. Not all of it, mind you, and I’ll get to that. But in his new analysis, “Exploring the Consequences of Charter School Expansion in U.S.Cities” published by the Economic Policy Institute, Prof. Baker arrives at several clear, data-driven conclusions about the impact of charter school growth on traditional districts with only the occasional nod to anti-choice agitprop.

The report covers eight large and mid-size urban school districts and focuses on the “loss of enrollments and revenues to charter schools in host districts and the response of districts as seen through patterns of overhead expenditures.” One of those districts is Newark, the site of much sturm und drang among anti-choice folk because the charter sector in this north Jersey city now educates 35% of students with compelling results.

While there’s been much written by the usual suspects (NJEA, Save Our Schools-NJ, Mark Weber aka Jersey Jazzman, Bob Braun) about charters desiccating district finances, Baker’s analysis contradicts this meme. Here’s Baker:

Ed White:

A teenager grips the steering wheel and presses pedals. He sees wind-blown snow in front of him as he approaches the runway. A video game? No, George Radashaw is at a public charter school, simulating a flight in a Cessna airplane.

“I’ve always loved aviation,” the 17 year-old said, keeping his eyes focused on panels of high-tech instruments. “It started at 3. I saw an airplane, and I wanted to fly them ever since.”

Radashaw is getting his wish at West Michigan Aviation Academy. It’s a unique public high school in western Michigan that was started in 2010 by Dick DeVos with much encouragement from his wife, Betsy DeVos, President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to head the U.S. Education Department, who will testify at a Senate confirmation hearing Jan. 17.

Doug Erickson:

Wright Middle School, 1717 Fish Hatchery Road, is poised to give up its status as a charter school after 22 years.

Kaleem Caire, a community member who has been heavily involved in helping the school discern its future, said the decision came about in part due to changes by the state Legislature.

In July, the state began requiring school districts to be much more deliberate and rigorous in authorizing and renewing charter schools. The new rules give charter schools greater autonomy but also impose new requirements and responsibilities.

Madison’s K-12 world lacks governance diversity. Many cities, including Minneapolis, offer families diverse school options.

Wright developed from the largely aborted “Madison Middle School 2000” project.

A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter School several years ago.

Alan Borsuk:

Just when it seemed like the annual trends involving the education landscape of Milwaukee had become predictable and boring, a couple of unpredicted things happened.

Around this time every year since 2008, I’ve put together a chart showing where Milwaukee children are getting a publicly funded education, sector by sector. I try not to get too hung up on “sector wars,” but the trends for school enrollment are crucial to understanding our complicated education scene.

In summary, the percentage of students enrolled in the conventional Milwaukee Public Schools system was falling by 1 to 2 percentage points almost every year. Use of publicly funded vouchers to attend private schools, almost all of them religious, was rising each year (this year, just under a quarter of the city’s students are in the voucher program). Enrollment in non-MPS charter schools was rising each year. And the number of Milwaukee children going to public schools in the suburbs rather than in MPS, using the state’s open enrollment law, was rising substantially.

Olivia Becker:

Public opinion has been split but leans toward the “no” side on Question 2, according to recent polls. TV ads, fliers, and phone calls coming from both sides of the fight, have been relentless leading into Election Day. If the initiative passes, it will signal a prominent nod of support for the growing charter movement nationally, which has picked up steam in the past decade as an alternative education policy solution.

Charter schools are a controversial issue, especially in Massachusetts, where education policy is not taken lightly. The schools are free and open to any student via a lottery system, but they must meet certain performance standards to stay operational over the course of five-year charters. And they’re still publicly funded: Whenever a student leaves their home public school to go to a charter school, the average cost per student in that district goes with them. So in other words, if 5 percent of a district’s students attend charter schools, 5 percent of that district’s public education funding is siphoned off with it.

Sarah Karp

But Chicago Public Schools officials said the cap does not necessarily mean there’s a district-wide moratorium on expanding charter schools.

“There’s plenty of room for high quality charter operators to apply and to go through our process,” said CPS CEO Forrest Claypool. “There is not a moratorium and there’s room under the cap for high quality charter operators.”

Charter schools are publicly funded, privately run schools that have long been criticized by the Chicago Teachers Union.

The new contract negotiated between CPS and the union states there will be no net increase in the number of charter schools approved by the Chicago Board of Education, the governing body overseeing CPS. The agreement also says the number of students enrolled at charter schools by the end of the 2018 to 2019 school year will not exceed 101 percent of the total number of students in charters during the 2015 to 2016 school year.

New Schools for New Orleans

When I was growing up, my biggest obstacle to academic success was my self-esteem, which held me back from trying hard in school. Although my parents taught me about the impact of a good education, I didn’t believe I could do well, so I never put in the effort I needed to excel. It wasn’t until my senior year in high school that that I started listening to my parents and mentors, who encouraged me to pursue my goals and live up to my potential.

That’s why when InspireNOLA took over Andrew H. Wilson in 2015, our goal was to create an environment where both the culture and structure would bring out the best in our students. We had experience taking two other charter schools- Alice Harte and Edna Karr- from a “D” academic rating to an “A,” and we were excited about working in a turnaround environment to support a similar transformation at Wilson.

InspireNOLA started by recruiting teachers and administrators who shared our vision of student excellence, and were willing to use data from our quarterly benchmark assessments to drive instruction and curriculum in the classroom.

Wall Street Journal

The national board of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People will vote this week on a resolution calling for a moratorium on charter schools. If they vote yes, they should also change their storied name because they will be voting to leave black children behind.

Delegates to the NAACP national convention this summer passed a resolution to halt charter-school expansion. Most of the resolution’s complaints against charters, such as that they perpetuate segregation, are spurious. The NAACP’s main gripe seems to be that charters are threatening the union-run public-school monopoly.

Laura Waters:

Allow me to take a wild guess: New Jersey’s newly-anointed next governor Phil Murphy has never stepped foot in a charter school. Yet on Saturday, he, along with the rest of the NAACP National Board, will vote to call for a moratorium on the expansion of charter schools.

Now allow me a wish: that Mr. Murphy had spent an afternoon last week, as I did, with a young man named Chris Eley. Chris grew up in one of Newark’s South Ward projects, sharing a three-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment with nine other people, including two loving parents and two brothers. In the winter his extended family had no hot water; they first had a working shower when he turned twenty years old.

As a young boy Chris attended Camden St. Elementary School, a traditional Newark public school where 17% of third-graders read at grade-level. He was in the gifted and talented program, spending afternoons in the public library reading about paleontology and was bullied for being a “nerd.” “School felt like a prison,” he told me. “It didn’t have anything to do with learning.”

Chris’s parents were effective, resourceful advocates. When he was ready for 8th grade they filled out an application for TEAM Academy, a Newark public charter school run by KIPP. Despite having to repeat 7th grade in order to catch up with his classmates, he recounted to me the sense of “immersing myself in a community, in a whole new world” where “the academics were challenging.”

For Chris and his family, KIPP was a life-saver. For many education advocates I’ve spoken to, NAACP’s anti-charter position is counter-intuitive. More than 160 African-American education leaders have signed a letter opposing the call for a moratorium. Parents are outraged. Chris Stewart reports that “every day more people are signing on and becoming more resolute about not allowing a retail civil rights organization to sell us down a river. But, to date, the NAACP has shown no interest in meeting with black people that disagree with them — even after repeated requests.”

Derrell Bradford writes today in The 74 that “NAACP’s long-standing resistance to empowering families with school choice remains antiquated and deeply wrongheaded.” Sharif El-Mekki, principal of Mastery Charter School Shoemaker in Philadelphia, calls the vote “alarming and unjust”; he suggests that those puzzled by the anti-choice leanings of this once-proud organization “follow the money,” which leads to anti-charter teacher union leaders who fund NAACP. (For more reactions from African-American leaders, see Education Post’s round-up.)

And here’s another riddle: how did governor-designee Phil Murphy end up as one of the Deciders?

Murphy is white. He went to Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. He worked for twenty years at Goldman Sachs, retiring as a Senior Director with a multi-million dollar net worth. He lives in Middletown, NJ on a 6-acre riverfront estate with an estimated value of $9.6 million. He and his wife exercised a form of school choice available to (very) high-income parents: his children went to a N.J. private school called Rumson Country Day School (annual tuition: $29,000) and then to private Phillips Academy Andover boarding school (annual tuition: $54, 000).

Yet Murphy gets to decide whether the powerful NAACP takes a position about whether kids like Chris Eley get to go to public charter schools that offer challenging academic programs or whether they remain “in prison” in chronically-failing traditional schools. What’s wrong with this picture?

Maybe it’s as clear as day. Some of you non-New Jerseyans may be wondering why we’re all so sure who will succeed Chris Christie a year from now. That’s because most of the time the Garden State, at least in gubernatorial elections, practices an arcane form of democracy where party bosses, not real people, decide who wins primaries. As Tom Moran of the Star-Ledger wrote this weekend, after the other top Democratic contenders for governor abruptly dropped out of a race that officially hasn’t started yet and NJEA made an early endorsement,
Murphy won this thing because he spent a ton of money out of the gate, lending his campaign $10 million and funding a “think-tank” to punch out policy ideas. And the party bosses know he’s willing to spend tons more, including writing big checks for them.
“We saw it with Corzine, and we’re seeing it now,” says Brigid Harrison of Montclair State University. “On a gut level, that tells me something is seriously wrong.”

Similarly, the NAACP top bosses will disregard real people — Chris Eley’s parents, for example — when on Saturday they decide to bend to the will of union funders and lobby for the extinction of a form of school choice that non-millionaires can afford.

I wish that Murphy would consider spending an afternoon with Chris Eley who, at the ripe old age of 23, is a budding entrepreneur, real estate agent, motivational speaker, artist, and philanthropist. (If he’s pressed for time,or Chris is, he can go to Chris’ website.) Is that too much to ask for the privileged few who will cast a vote on Saturday for real people who don’t live on riverfront estates and send their kids to private school?

On a gut level, something is seriously wrong.

EDWIN RIOS AND KRISTINA RIZGA

In late July, the NAACP called for a national moratorium on charter schools, claiming they target low-income and minority communities with practices mirroring the predatory subprime mortgage lending industry. Now a group of more than 160 black civic leaders is asking the civil rights group to reconsider, arguing that charters create opportunities for black families that could allow minority students to excel.

In a September 21 letter, a coalition of educators, current and former politicians, public officials, and black leaders claimed that a charter school moratorium would deny parents the opportunity to choose “what’s best for their children”—and restrict access to high-quality alternatives to traditional public schools.

“The proposed resolution cites a variety of cherry-picked and debunked claims about charter schools,” the letter reads. “The notion of dedicated charter school founders and educators acting like predatory subprime mortgage lenders—a comparison the resolution explicitly makes—is a far cry from the truth.”

The NAACP’s proposed resolution, which will be voted on at the national board meeting next month, said that charter schools contribute to racial and socioeconomic segregation and raised concerns over disproportionately “punitive and exclusionary” disciplinary practices, fiscal mismanagement, and lackluster oversight. A few weeks earlier, the Movement for Black Lives, a network of 50 organizations brought together by Black Lives Matter, released a policy agenda that included a similar call to curb the growth of charters.

While the charter school industry is littered with the occasional bad actor, and some charters have even been found to practice “skimming”—illegally screening out potentially challenging students, according to a 2013 Reuters investigation and a recent report by the ACLU and Public Advocates, a public interest law firm—the pro-charter letter highlighted research showing the positive academic benefits and opportunities for black students at charters. Here are three of its main arguments:

1. Black students stand to make short-term academic gains: The letter, citing a study from Stanford’s Center for Research on Educational Outcomes (CREDO), argues that black students benefit from added exposure to charter schools. The 2015 study of 41 cities in 22 states found that students attending charter schools in those areas made slightly higher academic gains in both math and reading compared to students in traditional public schools. The gains were particularly pronounced for low-income, black, and Hispanic students, as well as English-language learners. Poor black students, for instance, received the equivalent of 59 additional days of math learning and 44 days of reading learning. For poor Hispanic students, the gains were 48 days of math instruction and 25 days of reading.

Andrew Maul, an assistant professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara’s Graduate School of Education, questioned the CREDO report’s research methods, including that the sizes of the effects “are very small.” (In response, CREDO noted that the study looked at the change in student test scores from year-to-year as a sign of academic growth, rather than the test scores themselves.)

Thomas Kane:

IN NOVEMBER, VOTERS in Massachusetts will decide whether to raise the cap on charter school enrollment. The irony is that for most voters—those living in suburban and rural communities with charter enrollment far below the current cap—the vote is inconsequential. The charter cap applies to the percentage each school district’s spending which can be sent to charter schools and most communities remain far below the cap. However, for many parents living in communities which are bumping up against the current cap—cities such as Boston, Holyoke, Chelsea and Lawrence—the stakes are very high. In November, their fellow citizens will determine their children’s future educational options.

Richard Whitmire

What’s the matter with Newton?

That’s what Dawn Tillman wants to know. Why would her neighbors in the hyper-upscale Boston suburb of Newton, located just eight miles to the west, deny a KIPP charter high school to a kid in hyper-downscale Roxbury, where she lives?

Not just any kid. Tillman is thinking of her son, Brandon, who currently attends a KIPP middle school but faces dicey prospects for high school. KIPP could quickly expand its current middle school into a high school, but the current cap on charter schools prevents that.

Oddly, the question on the Massachusetts November 8 ballot to raise the current cap on charter schools — Should charter schools be allowed to expand by 12 a year? — will be decided by white suburban voters in places such as Newton, which lacks a single charter school “threatening” its budget.

Neerav

Mojo Moment #3: Thousands Rally for 100,000 More Charter Seats

Thousands of families and educators, joined by special guest Common, marched in New York City to support the doubling of the charter sector from 100,000 to 200,000 students.

I wish that those who criticize charters would grapple with the reality that families who are forced to send their children to failing public schools are marching in the streets for more high-quality charter schools.

With these rallies as a backdrop, calling for a moratorium on charter schools seems out of touch at best and malevolent at worst.

Government and civic leaders should be serving, not denying, families in need.

Sean Gill, Sarah Yatsko, Robin Lake

More than 23 cities have signed District-Charter Collaboration Compacts— formal agreements between school districts and charter schools that aim to share resources and responsibility and build trust and collegiality to ensure equal access to high-quality schools for all students. Yet, within the charter sector itself there are highly varied perspectives on and motivations for collaboration. Based on dozens of interviews and observations over four years, we look at why many cities have missed opportunities to create more lasting relationships between their district and charter sectors, and offer suggestions for fostering stronger partnerships that could help improve outcomes for all of the students in their cities.

Thomas Sowell

The one bright spot in black ghettos around the country are the schools that parents are free to choose for their own children. Some are Catholic schools, some are secular private schools and some are charter schools financed by public school systems but operating without the suffocating rules that apply to other public schools.

Not all of these kinds of schools are successes. But where there are academic successes in black ghettos, they come disproportionately from schools outside the iron grip of the education establishment and the teachers’ unions.

Some of these academic successes have been spectacular — especially among students in ghetto schools operated by the KIPP (Knowledge IS Power Program) chain of schools and the Success Academy schools.

Despite all the dire social problems in many black ghettos across the country — problems which are used to excuse widespread academic failures in ghetto schools — somehow ghetto schools run by KIPP and Success Academy turn out students whose academic performances match or exceed the performances in suburban schools whose kids come from high-income families.

A majority of the Madison school board voted to abort the proposed Madison preparatory Academy IB charter school.

Molly Knefel:

A political battle is being waged over charter schools in Massachusetts right now, and it’s a microcosm of the state of the charter debate across the country. In the lead-up to a November ballot measure in which voters will decide whether or not to lift the state’s cap on charter schools, known as Question 2, Democrats passed a resolution this month opposing charter school expansion. The resolution states that the pro-charter campaign is “funded and governed by hidden money provided by Wall Street executives and hedge fund managers.” In response, the pro-charter group Democrats for Education Reform drafted a letter to the coalition behind the resolution, called the “No on 2” campaign, claiming that they misrepresented Democrats’ attitude towards charters. “There is great Democratic support for public charter schools,” wrote Liam Kerr, Massachusetts State Director of Democrats for Education Reform.

City of Milwaukee:

The City of Milwaukee is seeking proposals from qualified consultants to provide management oversight services to the Charter School Review Committee (CSRC) as specified in Chapter 330-27 of the Milwaukee Code of Ordinances, including but not limited to board meeting attendance, school visits/monitoring, drafting reports to the CSRC, and review and administration services.

Eric Boehm

After detailing how the CEOs of charter schools in Florida and Pennsylvania had recently been convicted of embezzling school funds to enrich themselves, Oliver stressed that the two incidents were not outliers.

“In Philadelphia alone, at least 10 executives or top administrators had pled guilty in the last decade to charges like fraud, misuse of funds or obstruction of justice,” he said.

Paul Finland

They point out that most coverage they analyzed was episodic, about a new report or the latest crime. Instead, they suggest “news media commit to reflexively exploring their community over the long haul, rather than reactively reporting on events as they arise. … This would mean a change in priorities, perhaps ditching the meeting in favor of a community dinner.”

Their conclusion was edgy: “Through their embrace of value-neutral and facts-only reporting, many Madison news outlets failed to build trust, diversify their sourcing, and tell the true stories of race.”

They wrote that reporters “have been schooled that they cannot have ‘skin in the game’ on any issue. They should not sign petitions, put bumper stickers on their cars, or plant a political sign in their yards.” Yet those reporters’ own life experiences vary around race, class, education, upbringing and social circles. “In covering race, their skin, quite literally, is in the game,” the authors argued.

This raises the question of the importance of employing a diverse staff, something the Cap Times and others struggle with. Our only full-time African-American journalist resigned recently to pursue her dream of law school in Washington, D.C. We are happy for her and sorry she left. She made a big contribution.

Much more on the aborted Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter School, here.

Madison continues to spend more than most on a non diverse largely one size fits all K-12 structure.

Rachel Slade

In November, Massachusetts voters will decide whether the Department of Elementary & Secondary Education (DESE) can raise the cap on the number of charter schools allowed, or increase enrollment in existing charters in underperforming districts. If the referendum is approved, the city of Boston—which currently has 27 Commonwealth charter schools that operate independently of the district and educate about 14 percent of the student population—will likely see an increase in charters over the next several years. It’s an advance that charter advocates firmly champion but opponents see as another little push in the direction of a very steep cliff.

How did public education get so contentious, even as Boston’s public school system is near the top on every available scoring index of the nation’s major urban districts? Why does Brooke Charter Schools founder Jon Clark, a quiet, straight-talking guy from Wellesley, become slightly unhinged when I share some of the views of the anti-charter folks? What is it about this debate that brings out the tinfoil-hatted paranoia in all of us?

Ideologically speaking, charter schools—which are publicly funded but operate outside of typical district and teachers union rules—are the muddiest of all political issues, simultaneously supported by neoliberals and ultraconservatives, progressives and regressives, hedge funders and immigrants. For those who favor them, charters represent our best hope for improving education. In fact, the pro-charter movement is predicated on the certainty that public education is in crisis, and it lays the blame squarely on government incompetence and union hegemony. Well-run charters, they argue, not only educate children more cheaply, but also more effectively. The data back that up: The average SAT composite score in Boston’s charter high schools in 2015 was 100 points higher (about 10 percentile points) than the district schools’.

A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school.

Neerav Kingsland:

II. Walking Through Low Effect Size and High Effect Size Schools

The famous Anna Karena quote goes something like this: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

I think the opposite is true of schools.

When I visit low effect size schools, I am often saddened by the level of dysfunction. Students walk the halls aimlessly, teachers seem woefully unprepared for working in a low-income environment, and the principal generally spends her day putting out fires.

When I visit high effect size schools, I’m often struck by how different they are. While most hit the basics of a calm culture and thoughtful instruction, they vary greatly in atmosphere, curriculum, and staffing models – as well as the overall student experience. A Summit school is very different than a Collegiate Academies school, despite both achieving high effects. Even No Excuses schools can feel fairly different from each other, though the do tend to gravitate around some core practices (that Fryer has helped illuminate).

I also think I would struggle mightily in a blind walk through of .1 and .2 effect size schools; it is highly unlikely I would be able to tell you which school has which effect.

So while it’s easy to identify schools that are a total mess, it’s a little difficult to tease out what’s going well in non-dysfuctional schools, as well as to distinguish between high-performing and very-high-performing schools.

Citizen Stewart:

Most Black families support charter schools, not because they are duped or privatizers, but because many see their neighborhood schools, and know their children need better options. I know, because I saw it first hand in West Oakland, struggling to get my brother the education he deserved, in a system that didn’t treat him with concern or respect.

I never intended to be the charter guy, it just happened. It all started when I went to my brother “johnny’s” school in West Oakland.

When schools disrespect you

“The teacher made fun of my mama” my little brother said, restraining his sobs.

I would help Johnny with his homework if I was around, but I was in law school and out a lot. If his mom couldn’t help him, I told him to just tell the teacher he couldn’t do the homework and needed help.

A majority if the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school, among others.

Kristin Rizga:

A few weeks ago, the Movement for Black Lives, the network that also includes Black Lives Matter organizers, released its first-ever policy agenda. Among the organization’s six demands and dozens of policy recommendations was a bold education-related stance: a moratorium on both charter schools and public school closures. Charters, the agenda argues, represent a shift of public funds and control over to private entities. Along with “an end to the privatization of education,” the Movement for Black Lives organizers are demanding increased investments in traditional community schools and the health and social services they provide.

The statement came several weeks after another civil rights titan, the NAACP, also passed a resolution, calling for a freeze on the growth of charter schools. The NAACP had equated charters with privatization in previous resolutions, but this year’s statement—which will not become policy until the National Board meeting in the fall—represents the strongest anti-charter language to date, according to Julian Vasquez Heilig, a professor of education leadership and education chair of the NAACP’s California State Conference. “The NAACP is really concerned about unregulated growth of charter schools, and says it’s time to pause and take stock,” says Vasquez Heilig, who posted a copy of the resolution on his blog.

Emily Deruy:

As my colleague Vann Newkirk has noted, the Movement for Black Lives Matter coalition recently published a platform outlining a range of specific policies it would like to see take shape at the local, state, and federal levels. The education proposals are rooted in the K-12 space, activists who helped draft them told me, because the U.S. public-school system is so broken that college is never an option for many young people of color. And while many universities are privately controlled, the group sees an opportunity to return control of K-12 public schools to the students, parents, and communities they serve.

Douglas Belkin and Tawnell D. Hobbs:

The state of Texas has launched an investigation into alleged fiscal improprieties at the state’s largest chain of charter schools.

Behind the probe: charges by the president of Turkey that the schools are part of a $500 million a year front to fund the revolutionary aspirations of a Turkish cleric he claims backed a recent failed coup.

The probe by the Texas Education Agency was prompted by a series of complaints filed by a Washington-based law firm hired late last year by the Turkish government to lead its case against Fethullah Gulen, a political enemy of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Mr. Gulen, who lives in rural Pennsylvania, is on trial in absentia in Turkey on charges related to overthrowing the government. Thousands of Mr. Gulen’s followers in Turkey have been arrested or detained by Mr. Erdogan following the failed coup earlier this month.

Last week, a spokesman for Mr. Gulen denied any connection to the coup and said his goal is nonviolent reform in Turkey.

Students first:

“The real news from today is the spectacular success of New York City charter schools. The evidence is in that charter schools are the most effective urban school reform in the nation. Charter schools are serving high-risk populations incredibly effectively and it’s time for Mayor de Blasio to embrace what actually works for low income students,” said Jenny Sedlis, Executive Director of StudentsFirstNY.

While changes to the test make it harder to draw comparisons to performance from previous years, there are a few key takeaways from what we can compare:

Jersey Jazzman:

As you’ll notice, the shares of students enrolled in Chicago-area charter schools — Noble, UNO, Distinctive, etc. — are way lower. Nobel’s own annual report for 2011-12 put their enrollment at “more than 6,300,” which means they and others move into the “less than 10K” category.

Which actually reinforces a point Bruce made in his post:

Philip M. Gleason:

The charter school sector in the United States has grown steadily since the first charter school opened in 1992. As of the 2015–2016 school year, more than 6,800 charter schools served nearly 3 million students in forty states and the District of Columbia. Overall, research suggests that the average charter school performs about the same as nearby traditional public schools, but there is great variation in the effects of charter schools. Some charter schools are successful in boosting student achievement and others are not, which raises the question of what characteristics distinguish good charter schools from bad. This paper addresses this issue by summarizing the research on factors associated with successful charter schools. The research suggests that urban charter schools and charter schools primarily serving low-achieving and low-income students have the strongest positive impacts on student achievement. The policies most consistently found to be associated with positive charter school impacts include long school days or years, comprehensive behavioral policies with rewards and sanctions, and a mission that prioritizes boosting student achievement. In addition, moderately strong evidence suggests that high-dosage tutoring, frequent feedback and coaching for teachers, and policies promoting the use of data to guide teachers’ instructional practices are positively associated with charter schools’ achievement impacts.

,

George Joseph:

Over the summer, FBI agents stormed nineteen charter schools as part of an ongoing investigation into Concept Charter Schools. They raided the buildings seeking information about companies the prominent Midwestern charter operator had contracted with under the federal E-Rate program.

The federal investigation points to possible corruption at the Gulen charter network, with which Concept is affiliated and which takes its name from the Turkish cleric Fetullah Gulen. And a Jacobin investigation found that malfeasance in the Gulen network, the second largest in the country, is more widespread than previously thought. Federal contracting documents suggest that the conflict-of-interest transactions occurring at Concept are a routine practice at other Gulen-affiliated charter school operators.

The Jacobin probe into Gulen-affiliated operators in Texas, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and California found that roughly $4 million in E-Rate contract disbursements and $1.7 million in Department of Education Race to the Top grantee awards were given to what appear to be “related parties.” Awarding contracts to firms headed by related parties would seem to violate the FCC’s requirement that the school’s bidding process be “competitive” as well as “open and fair.”

Nicholas Garcia:

Colorado’s charter schools for the first time are enrolling racial and ethnic minority students at a higher rate than the state’s district-run schools, a new report by the state education department shows.

The report released Friday also found that charter school students — including those who are considered at-risk — continued to outperform their peers in district-run schools on state tests.

Molly Hensley-Clancy:

attorney general won a groundbreaking $168.5 million settlement against the country’s largest operator of online charter schools.

Or, after a lengthy investigation, it managed to collect only $2.5 million from a business that pulled in almost $1 billion in revenue in 2015 — with no fines, penalties, or admission of wrongdoing.

Which one is true? It all depends on who you ask.

After a wide-ranging investigation into virtually every aspect of the controversial business model of online charter operator K12 Inc. — from how its schools advertise to how they record attendance and collect payments — California Attorney General Kamala Harris settled for $8.5 million in actual, real-world money, which will be paid by the company to the state. Her office also extracted $160 million in what Harris called “debt relief” for the California schools that the company manages — for a total, the attorney general’s office said, of $168.5 million.

Hillel Aron:

often preposterously low, and some have suggested that a more prominent figure should be given direct control of the LAUSD. That was one of Antonio Villaraigosa’s major platforms when he ran for mayor in 2005. When he won, defeating incumbent James Hahn, Villaraigosa got the state Legislature to pass a law giving a council of mayors (with the most power apportioned to himself, naturally) control over LAUSD. But the school board sued, and the court ruled the law unconstitutional.

Villaraigosa then shifted tack, vigorously campaigning for school board candidates who supported his brand of “school reform.” He initially was successful, electing a majority, who then hired John Deasy as superintendent. But voters seem to be forever dissatisfied with the state of LAUSD, and have voted out incumbents time and time again. Villaraigosa lost control of the school board, and Deasy was fired.

When Garcetti ran for mayor, he made a conscious decision not to become embroiled in school board politics – though his campaign consultant Bill Carrick argues that Garcetti has hardly abandoned education.

Associated Press:

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown on Monday asked federal regulators to examine how Ohio charter schools that received money through a grant program stack up against their counterparts in other states before giving the state any more money.

In a letter to Education Secretary John King, the Democrat said he remains concerned Ohio charter schools lack adequate oversight.

“Ohio’s current lack of oversight wastes taxpayer’s money and undermines the ostensible goal of charters: providing more high-quality education opportunities for children,” Brown wrote. “There exists a pattern of waste, fraud and abuse that is far too common and requires extra scrutiny.”

Karen Zamora:

Besides being named Minnesota Teacher of the Year on Sunday, Abdul Wright scored two firsts.

Wright, who teaches eighth-grade language arts at the Best Academy in Minneapolis, is the first black male to win the honor, and also the first charter-school teacher so honored.

“I know that I have an opportunity to give young people who come from across this country, especially African-American people, a model of excellence to aspire to,” Wright told the gathering at the Radisson Blu hotel at Mall of America in Bloomington. “I know I will represent every educator in this room and every parent in this room. I want you to know that I will be deserving of this award.”

As his name was announced, Wright stood and had the other finalists come in for a group hug.

“Everyone in this room is deserving of this award,” he said. “We come from a diverse group of backgrounds, and we all have our own experiences. And to know that so many people who come from all over the state have one thing in common, and that’s to make our students rock stars.”

Greg Richmond:

Charter schools celebrate a milestone this year: 25 years. In our nation, 6,800 charter schools serve nearly 3 million students. Many of these schools are achieving extraordinary results.

But instead of celebrating the contributions made by charters to public education over 25 years—and there is plenty to celebrate—I’d rather focus on what must change.

Matt Barnum:

promise of Brooklyn Prospect Charter, which is using the model of school choice to break down neighborhood barriers and foster a more diverse student body.

But such an approach faces skeptics on both sides. On the one hand critics of charter schools say that far from advancing integration, they are a source of segregation. On the other hand, some advocates of school choice say that the model should stay focused on empowering parents and advancing student achievement — not integrating schools. Research on the issue is mixed, but past studies suggest that charter schools may exacerbate previously existing segregation within a district.

The new question in Brooklyn and beyond is whether integrated charter schools can successfully combine the benefits of parent choice with effective, high quality programs that would appeal to families of all backgrounds? If so, then they might manage something that has eluded much of the charter and traditional public school sector for decades — integration.

Deliberately diverse

Alan Borsuk:

The importance of principals. The school has had six principals in less than four years. That alone tells you a lot. I interviewed several people who are or were involved in the school and they all pointed to leadership as a problem. “Leadership sets the tone for everything happening in a building,” Knox said.

Lighthouse moved through several principals in rapid order at the start. Other circumstances around the school may have had an impact, but the bottom line is simply that having a good principal who provides steady, effective leadership is crucial to any school.

The importance of leadership more broadly. Adam Peck, current chair of the local Lighthouse board, summed up what went wrong: “Number one, leadership. You have to have the right leadership in place to run a school. And that’s leadership at all levels.”

Patrick Denice, Betheny Gross, Karega Rausch

Fair use of exclusionary discipline is a rising concern in public schools. At issue is whether this type of discipline is disproportionately applied to certain groups of students and whether some charter schools use it more frequently. For the first time, data compiled by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights capture discipline practices from all public schools, allowing for comparison between the traditional public and charter sectors. However, because they are reported at the school level, not at the individual student level, these data paint an incomplete picture.

To truly understand discipline practices between and within school sectors, a panel of experts recommends a more comprehensive approach to capturing discipline data and evaluating and comparing school discipline practices. A robust research agenda on school discipline might include the reasons why different approaches to discipline policy are developed, how schools define and conceptualize discipline practices, the impact of discipline practices on teacher supply and turnover, the interplay between school culture and discipline and the effects of exclusionary discipline on the affected students and their peers and teachers.

Eva Moskovitz:

school enrollment grew by 260,000 students nationwide. Most of the fastest-growing charter networks, including Success Academies in New York City, which I run, believe we have a responsibility both to push children to achieve their potential and to protect them from the mayhem that in district schools often robs students of their opportunity to learn.

This stricter approach has encountered fierce criticism in certain quarters. The New York Times, for example, has bemoaned Success Academy’s “stringent rules about behavior” that require students to have their “eyes following the speaker” and walk “in formation reminiscent of the von Trapp children at the beginning of ‘The Sound of Music.’ ”

Maggie Shepard:

When they return to their collegelike charter school campus tucked away in Sandia Park in the East Mountains, they’ll get back to their small, intimate classes and after-school sports – all publicly funded.

East Mountain High School was the first charter school launched immediately after the state fully authorized charter schools in 1999.

Fifteen years later, it is one of 99 in the state and one of 54 in Albuquerque. That represents 11 percent of public schools in the state; the current statewide enrollment for charter schools is 23,593 students.

East Mountain High School has some of the highest math and reading proficiency rates and test scores in the state.

It’s one of the schools Public Education Department Secretary Hanna Skandera means when she says some charter schools “deliver incredible opportunities.”

“Some set a very high bar. Some of our top 10 schools in the state are charter schools,” she said.

And some of the top schools in the nation are New Mexico charter schools. Cottonwood Classical Preparatory School and Albuquerque Institute for Mathematics and Science have consistently landed in national rankings for challenging and successful schools.

Betsy Hammond:

Oregon’s charter school movement is on life support, ranking worst among 18 states where at least 2 percent of students attend charter schools, a report by a pro-charter school group says.

One of the biggest problems: Oregon’s nearly 30,000 charter school students made less progress in reading and much less in math than students in traditional public schools from 2008 to 2011, the report found.

Oregon’s 100-plus charter schools also serve a more heavily white and much more heavily middle-class population than other public schools, it said. Charter schools by their nature strive to reach students poorly served by traditional schools, so charter schools ideally should serve more minority and low-income students than regular public schools, the study’s authors said.

The Advocate:

Collins and Maxie are both mid-’90s graduates of Baton Rouge public schools — Lee and Capitol high schools, respectively. Both have school-aged children. Collins, 39, has two sons, 18 and 19 years old, who are recent graduates of Belaire and Scotlandville high schools and are now in college. Maxie, 37, has six children, five in school now — two are at Belaire High, and three attend Labelle Aire Elementary.

Collins, however, is backed by traditional public education advocates, including teachers unions and local leaders, such as state Rep. Pat Smith, with ties to the school system.

Maxie, meanwhile, is getting support from business and community leaders who favor greater privatization and expansion of charter schools, public schools run by private organizations.

Richard Whitmire:

Recent big-dollar donations from pro-charter philanthropists leave traditional educators sputtering: Why don’t they just donate their money to us?

Good question, and one that was raised in Los Angeles recently in light of a possible huge gift from philanthropist Eli Broad and others that appears headed mostly to charter schools. LAUSD board member Scott Schmerelson wondered out loud, the L.A. Times reported: Why not us?

National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) PDF:

Across America, there is much debate about charter schools. Some of that debate is about the existence of charter schools and whether there should be more or fewer of them. More of the debate is about the quality and oversight of charter schools.

This publication is part of that debate and speaks to the state laws and policies that greatly determine how many charter schools exist (accessibility), the exibility they have to operate (autonomy), and the standards of quality and oversight they must meet (accountability).

It is easy to nd zealous voices arguing for or against charter school policies based on theories or ideologies. Some believe charter schools should be heavily regulated, along the lines of school districts. Some believe that 6,700 charter schools serving more than 2.9 million children can somehow all be eliminated. Others argue for less regulation and faster growth, even in places where some charter schools or types of operators are failing.

The National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) approaches this debate from a unique position— real-world experience—and that position is re ected in this publication. NACSA is a professional membership organization of the agencies that approve, monitor, renew, and sometimes close charter schools. NACSA staff has worked in virtually every state and major city with charter schools. Here is what we know from our experiences:

Perhaps someone will compare oversight practices with tradtional government schools.

Nina Rees:

of the reasons the late union leader Al Shanker advocated for the creation of charter schools was to give teachers more freedom to explore new ways of teaching without the bureaucratic stranglehold that comes with one-size-fits-all solutions. Nowhere is the need for this freedom more important than in large school districts like the Los Angeles Unified School District – the nation’s second-largest. Thanks to the freedom to create charter schools, LA now has the highest number of students in charter schools – and more than 68,000 students on charter school waitlists. LA also happens to have some of the nation’s strongest charter schools.

Some of the best are Alliance College-Ready Public Schools. Founded by a former LA Unified School District teacher, Alliance now runs 27 charter schools educating nearly 12,000 middle and high school students who are overwhelmingly from disadvantaged communities. More than 90 percent of Alliance students graduate from high school, and 95 percent of Alliance graduates are accepted to college. Many are the first in their families to ever have the opportunity to attend college.

Laura Waters:

Here’s the problem, Madam Secretary: The nature of teacher union contracts — rigid and prescriptive — is what typically precludes wider adoption of successful charter school innovations. While Clinton’s recitation of teacher union scripture may win her endorsements, it won’t win any votes from parents of New York City’s 95,000 charter school students, most of whom are Latino and black, nor will it win her the votes of the parents of another 50,000 city students who sit on charter school waiting lists, nor the the support of the parents of three million students who attend charter schools nationwide.

Can we blame them? The most recent CREDO study out of Stanford notes that New York City’s charter schools “stand out for providing positive gains for their students in both math and reading and serving a student body with achievement equal or higher than the average achievement within the state,” including black and Hispanic students, those from high-poverty backgrounds and those with disabilities.

Let’s take one simple example of the way in which teacher contracts forestall realistic implementation of innovative approaches to learning. While typical New York City school students attend school for a contractually-prescribed 178 days, 6 hours and 20 minutes per day, public charter schools are free to extend both the length of the school day and the length of the school year. Many N.Y.C. charter school students attend school for between 190 to 200 days per year, and about eight hours a day.

Susan Dynarski:

Charter schools are controversial. But are they good for education?

Rigorous research suggests that the answer is yes for an important, underserved group: low-income, nonwhite students in urban areas. These children tend to do better if enrolled in charter schools instead of traditional public schools.

There are exceptions, of course. We can’t predict with certainty that a particular child will do better in a specific charter or traditional public school. Similarly, no doctor can honestly promise a patient she will benefit from a treatment.

Mamie Hall:

My 10 years teaching in the public schools can best be described as a roller coaster of inspiration, innovation and disappointment.

After college, I began working in a pilot year-round middle school program. We had smaller class sizes and a lot of freedom. We set our own schedule, made our own policies and took our students on team-building exercises in the mountains and celebrations of success at nearby attractions. Yes, there were challenges, but being able to use our own creative methods to address those led to a sense of professionalism and accomplishment.

The icing on the cake, not that this is my main measure of my success as a teacher, was that our test scores were higher than any other in the district.

Alan Borsuk:

The key to the heated controversy: Carmen is a charter school. That means war.

Carmen operates a high school a couple miles from Pulaski with a record of academic success. Carmen’s four-year graduation rates have been around 70% in recent years. Its most recent five-year graduation rate was 96%.

By the way, the Carmen high school on the south side has 367 students this fall — 103 in ninth grade, 87 in 10th, 83 in 11th, and 94 in 12th. Those numbers show little of the grade-by-grade shrinkage that is, to me, one of the big signs that Pulaski has problems.

Carmen also is in the third year of building up a middle school and high school on the northwest side, in a building where an MPS school did poorly. It’s a big challenge, but the school is making progress.

Authorized to operate by the Milwaukee School Board, the two existing Carmen schools employ their own teachers and set their own course. The fact that the schools are under the MPS umbrella is financially beneficial to MPS, compared to if they existed outside MPS.

There are two important contexts to the Pulaski battle. One is nationwide controversy over charter schools vs. conventional schools.

Laura Waters:

KIPP elementary schools have positive, statistically significant, and educationally meaningful impacts on three of four measures of reading and mathematics skills.

Consistent with prior research, KIPP middle schools have positive, statistically significant, and educationally meaningful impacts on student achievement in math, reading, science, and social studies. Average impacts of middle schools were positive and statistically significant throughout the 10-year period covered by the study, though higher in earlier years than recent years.

KIPP high schools have positive, statistically significant, and educationally meaningful impacts on student achievement for high school students new to the KIPP network. For students continuing to KIPP high schools from KIPP middle schools, impacts on achievement are not statistically significant. For this group of continuing KIPP students, KIPP high schools have positive impacts on a variety of college preparation activities and the likelihood of applying to college.

Understanding the Effect of KIPP as it Scales: Volume I, Impacts on Achievement and Other Outcomes.

Greg Bluestein:

About 250 educators, administrators and other staffers have been hired to teach prisoners. Nearly 100 inmates have signed up for charter school courses. And 19 high school diplomas have already been awarded in a pilot program.

But the evolving program is about to face its biggest test. The first of what Gov. Nathan Deal envisions to be a statewide network of prison-based charter schools officially opened Thursday at the Burruss Correctional Training Center in Middle Georgia, and state policymakers and education analysts will carefully chart its progress.