Why the shine is off the charter school movement
This is the last of a four-part series on California’s charter schools, often called the “Wild West” of the charter sector. It was written by former award-winning high school principal Carol Burris, who is now executive director of the nonprofit Network for Public Education advocacy group. She has chronicled many of the glaring problems with the charter school law in California and how students are affected.
Nationwide the charter school sector has grown over the past few decades amid a debate about its virtues and drawbacks — and even whether the publicly funded schools are public or private entities. Some charters are excellent. But as the sector has grown, so have problems that have gone unaddressed.
Ohio and Utah have distinctly troubled charter sectors, as does Arizona, where there are no laws against conflicts of interest and where for-profit charters do not have to open their books to the public. In Michigan, 80 percent of the charters are for-profit. Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale recently declared his state’s charter school law the “worst” in the nation. California has more charter schools and charter school students than any other state in the nation. One billionaire even came up with a secret plan to “charterize” half of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Among the problems:
* A report released recently by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and Public Advocates, a nonprofit law firm and advocacy group, found that more than 20 percent of all California charter schools have enrollment policies that violate state and federal law.
* In some places, charter schools open without mentioning their existence to the traditional school district in which they reside, prompting lawsuits by the districts. The Grossmont Union High School District, for example, sued to shut down two charters operating in Grossmont under agreements signed by another school district. The San Diego Union-Tribune quoted Scott Patterson, Grossmont’s deputy superintendent of business services, as saying, “It’s been described as the Wild West out there.”
*A Mercury News investigation published in April revealed that the state’s online charter schools run by Virginia-based K12 Inc., the largest for-profit charter operator in the country, have “a dismal record of academic achievement” but have won more than $310 million in state funding over the past dozen years.
* One charter school closed in 2014 after state auditors found a number of problems, including Why the shine is off the charter school movement - The Washington Post:
