For-Profit Charter School Founder Chuck Stockwell Resorts to Extortion and Voter Manipulation With CSA Parents – Up North Progressive

For-Profit Charter School Founder Chuck Stockwell Resorts to Extortion and Voter Manipulation With CSA Parents – Up North Progressive
For-Profit Charter School Founder Uses Extortion and Threats in Letter to Parents

Livingston Developmental Academy Co-Founder Chuck Stockwell is considered an institution in the Michigan for-profit charter school industry. Who knew a loving parent relying on vision therapy to cure his daughter of an inoperable brain tumor would over two decades later be the successful businessman of the charter school campus now known as Charyl Stockwell Academy? Chuck Stockwell is semi-retired these days, but he’s still very active in promoting the for-profit charter school agenda and overall operations of CSA through his management company, CS Partners.

CSA is one of the highest ranking schools academically of all for-profit charter schools operating in the state. The school has an overall achievement score of 67 percent proficient in reading and 42 percent proficient in math. Boasting 1000 students, CSA expanded and moved into a new building in 2010. In 2013, for-profit charter school authorizer Central Michigan University granted CSA the status of “school of excellence.”

With all of that wonderful news, it would seem highly unlikely CSA would ever fall on hard times. According to a letter Chuck Stockwell sent out to parents of CSA students, however, things appear to not be going so well after all:

Dear CSA District Community,

I would like to share with you some information about how the state of Michigan funds public charter schools.
• Public charter schools in Michigan are funded from the state education budget.
• The amount each school receives is determined by the number of students enrolled at that school, based on the October student count.
• The per-student amount of money that each school district receives is determined by how much money that the school district was collecting 25 years ago when Proposal A was passed.
• Proposal A was passed to equalize funding between schools. Prior to the passage of Proposal A, the amount of public tax paid to each school district ranged from $2,500 to $12,000 per enrolled student. Now, most school districts receive about $7700 per student. Some still get more and some still get less. Last year CSA District received $7871 per student
• Charter schools receive the same amount of funding as the traditional public school district in which they are located unless that amount is higher than the state average. If that amount is higher than the state average, the charter school receives the state average and the traditional public school receives the higher amount.
• CSA District has about 1,000 students which means the District receives about $7,600,000 from public taxes this year.
• CSA District has nice buildings but not as nice as those in Hartland or Brighton or Howell. Teachers in Hartland, Brighton, and Howell get paid more than teachers in the CSA District. The nicer buildings and higher teacher pay are directly related to each other. How?
◦ Every year, CSA District makes payments on the money they borrowed to buy or build their buildings. This year that payment will be $1,136,900. ALL of that debt payment comes out of the general fund, the per-pupil allotment that CSA District receives from the state.
• All of the traditional public schools in Livingston County use absolutely none of the money they Continue reading: For-Profit Charter School Founder Chuck Stockwell Resorts to Extortion and Voter Manipulation With CSA Parents – Up North Progressive

 

Charters vs. District: The Battle for San Francisco Public Schools | San Francisco Public Press

Charters vs. District: The Battle for San Francisco Public Schools | San Francisco Public Press

Charters vs. District: The Battle for San Francisco Public Schools
Charter boosters cite results. Critics say they drain funds, manufacture support and cherry-pick students.

When students at Malcolm X Academy returned to their elementary school in the Bayview neighborhood of San Francisco last month to begin a new year, they came back to a changed environment. Over the summer, part of their school building had been taken over by KIPP Bayview Elementary, a charter school operated by Knowledge is Power Program, the largest charter network in the country and in San Francisco.

For Malcolm X students and staff, the KIPP school was hardly welcome. The San Francisco School Board voted unanimously last year to reject KIPP’s application to open a new school, its third in the neighborhood and fourth in the city. Teachers and students at Malcolm X were also opposed, and marched around the neighborhood in May in protest.

But local preferences didn’t matter. The State Board of Educationoverruled the city’s school board and approved KIPP’s application. The conflict between the two schools — and activists on both sides of the issue — reflects a growing battle playing out in San Francisco and across the state.

See: Bayview School Feeling Squeezed by New Charter

Critics say charter and traditional public schools aren’t operating on equal footing — that charters take less than their fair share of the most challenging students, including homeless children and those with learning disabilities, and that they suspend and expel students at higher rates. That selectivity may boost charter test scores, but it erodes hard-won progress in public classrooms and siphons resources from public schools, these critics contend. They argue that the increasingly aggressive, privately funded push for charters amounts to a massive effort to privatize public education by turning public dollars over to private, self-governing entities.

This conflict may have a profound effect on the future of the city’s Continue Reading: Charters vs. District: The Battle for San Francisco Public Schools | San Francisco Public Press

What's Happening With H.R. 610? Everything Parents Need To Know About Betsy DeVos' Proposed Education Bill

What's Happening With H.R. 610? Everything Parents Need To Know About Betsy DeVos' Proposed Education Bill

What's Happening With H.R. 610? Everything Parents Need To Know About Betsy DeVos' Proposed Education Bill

Many parents are aware of H.R. 610 — aka the "Choices in Education Act of 2017" — an education bill that was first introduced to the House of Representatives in January 2017. The bill falls in line with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos' views about school choice, as it proposes to implement a voucher program that would theoretically give parents the opportunity to homeschool their kids or send them to private schools. But critics of the bill argue it would limit the U.S. Department of Education's ability to distribute federal assistance to schools, which would lead to the decline of public schools across the United States. And considering there's a long list of concerns and questions about the proposal, it's understandable that parents out there are wondering what's happening with H.R. 610 at the moment.

Iowa Rep. Steve King sparked a major debate about education when he introduced H.R. 610 the House of Representatives on Jan. 23, 2017, just one month before DeVos was confirmed as the Secretary of Education. The heated public discourse wasn't too surprising given the bill's questionable goals, one of which is to repeal a rule that sets nutritional standards for national school lunch and breakfast programs, according to HuffPost.

H.R. 610 also proposes to establish "an education voucher program, through which each state shall distribute block grant funds among local educational agencies (LEAs) based on the number of eligible children  Continue reading: What's Happening With H.R. 610? Everything Parents Need To Know About Betsy DeVos' Proposed Education Bill

Is California's New Ban on For-Profit Charters a Charade or a Step in the Right Direction? Education Law Prof Blog

Education Law Prof Blog

Is California's New Ban on For-Profit Charters a Charade or a Step in the Right Direction?

My recent post on California's new charter school bill may have been too quick to lavish praise on the state for banning for-profit groups from managing charters.  For-profit charter operators are definitely a problem.  Allowing them is the equivalent of laying out a welcome sign to exploitation and legalized corruption.  For-profit operators can, for instance, entering into self-serving lease and contract agreements. They can do things that would land public school officials in jail, but which are relatively common  among  charter school operators.  Barring open corruption is a big deal, at least, symbolically.  And California does have some for-profit operators that will have to change their status and practices in the future for those charters to move forward.

But whether this new ban on for-profit charter operators changes the fundamental reality of what is occurring in most charter schools in California is a different question.  And, if it does not change the industry overall, the symbolic victory of this new law may make it harder to actually go after less obvious problems in the future.  The public might simply think the state has cleaned the sector cleaned up and, thus, be more forgiving of other questionable charter expansions in the future. 

As I emphasized in my recent post, 

there is still more to be done to ensure that non-profit charters are acting like non-profits.  The California law stops charters from acting purely as shell companies for outside entities, but they don't stop non-profit charters from paying their upper level staff and management unreasonably high salaries while paying their teachers unreasonably low ones. They also don't stop non-profit charters from entering into unreasonable leases.  As Tom Kelley has shown, exorbitant leases appear to be one of the biggest profit-taking mechanisms.  No non-profit acting in its and its students' own best interests would every enter into some of these lease agreements.  California's new statute prohibits for-profit management, but it does not prohibit lease deals that are not on the up-and-up.  To be clear, the point of leasing out one's land is to make money.  So leases that send profits to landlords are not inherently problematic. but California should not think its job is done with this statute.  It still needs to exercise enough oversight to ferret out problematic contracts and leases and ensure that state money is spent on students.

Carol Burris's new essay in the Washington Post's Answer sheet digs deeper into the facts and shows that this new bill may not be that big of a deal at all.  First, "Only 34 of California’s approximately 1,200 charter schools are Continue reading: Education Law Prof Blog

#PhilanthropySoWhite: Challenging Structural Racism as White Leaders in Philanthropy | Schott Foundation for Public Education

#PhilanthropySoWhite: Challenging Structural Racism as White Leaders in Philanthropy | Schott Foundation for Public Education

#PhilanthropySoWhite: Challenging Structural Racism as White Leaders in Philanthropy

For over two decades the Schott Foundation has been a bridge, connecting philanthropy with community to resource broad based community-led movements for education equity. Part of building and reinforcing that bridge includes challenging structural racism in philanthropy and uplifting solutions rooted in equity through critical and thoughtful dialogue and trust in the power of community voices and community organizing for sustained change. In his new book, Decolonizing Wealth, Schott Vice President Edgar Villanueva writes:

Ultimately, the call to philanthropy is clear: it must fundamentally change its ivory tower culture, what it accepts as acceptable behavior, how it defines success and leadership, in order to really walk its talk: to embody the love of humanity. Up until now, diversity and inclusion tactics have been about getting different kinds of people in the door, and then asking them to assimilate to the dominant white culture. The issue is not recruitment of diverse humans—the “pipeline” focus of the past, getting people in the door, laying a seat at the table, as is often said—the issue is creating a culture of respect, curiosity, acceptance and love. It’s about building a whole new table.

We explored the unique journeys of three white philanthropic leaders striving toward race, gender and economic equity. Participants talked about when they first got “woke,” what they consider their role in philanthropy to be, how they have dealt with mistakes and criticism along the way, where they go for resources and support in their journey, how they hold themselves accountable to communities of color, and much more!

In addition, Vanessa Daniel, Executive Director of Groundswell Fund and Schott Vice President Edgar Villanueva began the webinar by sharing calls to action for white leaders and served as respondants to the conversation. For our many colleagues in philanthropy, this was opportunity to listen and understand how we as a sector contribute to racial inequities and our ability to change that.

Our speakers included:

Vanessa Daniel, Executive Director, Groundswell Fund
Nick Donohue, President, The Nellie Mae Education Foundation
Greg Jobin-Leeds, Founder and First President, Schott Foundation for Public Education and author of When We Fight, We Win!
Pamela Shifman, Executive Director, Novo Foundation
Edgar Villanueva, Vice President of Programs and Advocacy, the Schott Foundation for Public Education and author of Decolonizing Wealth

#PhilanthropySoWhite: Challenging Structural Racism as White Leaders in Philanthropy | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Richie Rich’s Schools Targeted by Destroy Public Education Movement | tultican

Richie Rich’s Schools Targeted by Destroy Public Education Movement | tultican

Richie Rich’s Schools Targeted by Destroy Public Education Movement

Schools in wealthy white communities are no longer immune to the destroy public education (DPE) movement. A review of San Dieguito Union High School District (SDUHSD) in San Diego County makes the point.

SDUHSD serves an area within the 1845 Mexican land grant to Juan Osuna known as Ranch San Dieguito. Osuna’s 1822 adobe home still stands on a knoll in the Rancho Santa Fe section. The school district includes the beach communities of Del Mar, Solana Beach, Encinitas and Carlsbad. Away from the beach it covers the communities of Rancho Santa Fe and Camel Valley.

A 2017 study sponsored by SDUHSD indicates how financially comfortable the families in this school district are.

Table 1: Economic Data

Sixty-five percent of the students come from families making more than $75,000 and almost a quarter of those families are making greater than $200,000 a year. Whites and Asians constitute 87% of the district population.

California’s 2017-2018 enrollment data by subgroups shows the dramatic difference between SDUHSD and the rest of San Diego County.

Table 2: Subgroup Percentages

During the no child left behind (NCLB) era, the school I worked at had 75% English learners and 80% socioeconomically disadvantaged. The big metric that literally determined whether a school survived was the academic performance index (API). Its 1,000 point scale score was based on California’s standardized testing. Early on my school focused on scoring higher than a 600 API and latter we challenged a 700 API. Failure to meet those goals, meant by NCLB rules, the school would be closed, a minimum of 50% of the staff would be let go and new Continue reading: Richie Rich’s Schools Targeted by Destroy Public Education Movement | tultican