Tuesday, February 19, 2019

TEXT OF SB-126 Charter Schools Transparency BILL + California AG Addresses Charter Schools and Public Integrity Laws - Opinion Confirms Applicability of the Brown Act, Public Records Act, and Conflicts of Interest Laws

California AG Addresses Charter Schools and Public Integrity Laws - Opinion Confirms Applicability of the Brown Act, Public Records Act, and Conflicts of Interest Laws | Best Best & Krieger LLP - JDSupra

California AG Addresses Charter Schools and Public Integrity Laws - Opinion Confirms Applicability of the Brown Act, Public Records Act, and Conflicts of Interest Laws


Best Best & Krieger LLP
As the year came to a close, the California Attorney General published a lengthy, sweeping opinion on the following questions:
  • Are a California charter school and its governing body subject to the Ralph M. Brown Act and the California Public Records Act?
  • Is a California charter school’s governing body subject to Government Code section 1090?
  • Is a California charter school’s governing body subject to the Political Reform Act of 1974?
  • Are the books and records of a California charter schools subject to review and inspection by the grand jury?
These questions have been the subject of much debate since the adoption of the Charter Schools Act in 1992, and the focus of several failed pieces of legislation in recent years. The Attorney General answered each question with a solid “yes” – with one narrow exception: that the records of State-approved charter schools are not subject to grand jury review.

Many charter schools are already complying with these laws because they are specifically addressed in their approved charters. However, other charter schools have not agreed to comply with these laws — in particular Government Code section 1090 — which generally prohibits public officials from participating in the making of contracts in which he or she has a prohibited interest. Violations of section 1090 carry serious penalties, including the possibility of felony charges. In addition, contracts made in violation of section 1090 are generally deemed to be null and void. This can affect charter schools in a number of ways, including calling into question the validity of existing contracts and governing board compositions.

Key to the Attorney General’s analysis is the fact that charter schools are funded by taxpayer dollars and considered “school districts” for funding purposes. The Attorney General expressly rejected arguments that charter schools operated as, or by, nonprofit public benefit corporations are entitled to different treatment under these laws.

It should be noted that opinions of the California Attorney General are advisory only and are not legally binding on courts, agencies or individuals. However, they are afforded great respect and weight by the courts and often indicate how a judge may rule on the issues if presented in court.

In light of this opinion, both charter schools and their chartering authorities should evaluate whether and what changes may be necessary to ensure charter school compliance with the Brown Act, the Public Records Act and conflict of interest laws. This could include, for example, requiring changes to the approved charter, any memorandum of understanding, governing board composition, and possibly the governance structure itself. It may also require new contracts where violations of section 1090 have occurred.

The entire Attorney General opinion can be found here.
California AG Addresses Charter Schools and Public Integrity Laws - Opinion Confirms Applicability of the Brown Act, Public Records Act, and Conflicts of Interest Laws | Best Best & Krieger LLP - JDSupra

TEXT OF SB-126 Charter Schools  Transparency BILL

at

Charter schools haven’t improved in Ohio, Stanford researchers find | cleveland.com

Charter schools haven’t improved in Ohio, Stanford researchers find | cleveland.com

Charter schools haven’t improved in Ohio, Stanford researchers find

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Charter schools in Ohio haven’t improved in recent years, Stanford University researchers have found, despite all the recent debate, public scandals and efforts to make this state’s nationally-scorned charter schools teach kids better.
“There is little to no progress in Ohio charter school performance,” concludes a new report released today by Stanford’s Center for Research on Educational Outcomes (CREDO), when comparing Ohio’s charters today to those 10 years ago, as well as those four years ago.
Though charters here made progress in helping students learn to read over time - closing a small gap between them and traditional schools - they did worse in math and fell further behind.
It would be a discouraging finding for charter backers, who have viewed the much-maligned sector as improving the last few years as tougher state laws have kicked in and some of the worst schools have closed. But many of those changes are still too new to have moved the numbers in the Stanford study.
The report also gives charter backers a big win by making a major distinction between typical charter schools and online ones.
Most charter schools - the “brick-and-mortar” schools where students come to a school every day - look great in the new findings, when they are compared to traditional public schools handling similar students. These charters helped students read better than traditional schools did with similar students, and barely did worse in math.
The big problems are with online charter schools, which lag so far behind everyone that they wipe out any gains for charters overall. Online charters did worse in both reading and math - far worse in math - than other schools. It was as if students at online charters in Ohio skipped 47 days of reading classes in a year and 136 days of math classes.
“The poor performance of online charter schools drags down the overall charter impact on student academic growth,” the report reads.



Online charter schools in Ohio have a poor showing in a new report from Stanford researchers, while other charter schools do well. The report compares how charters do with similar students in traditional public schools, with bars above zero showing charters doing better and bars below zero showing charters doing worse. Note that some charters did better in reading and worse in math, while online schools did much worse in both.





Online charter schools in Ohio have a poor showing in a new report from Stanford researchers, while other charter schools do well. The report compares how charters do with similar students in traditional public schools, with bars above zero showing charters doing better and bars below zero showing charters doing worse. Note that some charters did better in reading and worse in math, while online schools did much worse in both.  Stanford University's Center for Resarch of Educational Outcomes (CREDO)

The Fordham Institute, a national education advocacy group active in Ohio, sponsored the study, as well as a similar one CREDO did for Ohio in late 2014. Fordham, a right-leaning organization, supports charters CONTINUE READING: Charter schools haven’t improved in Ohio, Stanford researchers find | cleveland.com

Big Education Ape: Charter Schools: Competition Makes All Schools Losers | Dissident Voice - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2019/02/charter-schools-competition-makes-all.html








at

Striking West Virginia teachers push lawmakers to drop measures expanding charter schools and private school vouchers - The Washington Post

Striking West Virginia teachers push lawmakers to drop measures expanding charter schools and private school vouchers - The Washington Post
Striking West Virginia teachers push lawmakers to drop measures expanding charter schools and private school vouchers
The job action comes a year after teachers walked out to protest low pay.
Image result for Striking West Virginia teachers push lawmakers to drop measures expanding charter schools and private school vouchers


On a makeshift stage in El Paso, Texas, former Texas Teacher of the Year Leslie Anaya delivered a message to the roughly 15,000 immigrant children who are held captive in federal detention centers, where they are denied an education and separated from their mothers, fathers, and anybody else who loves them.

“Don’t cry,” she said. “Sing. Sing because you have so many people fighting for you, so many teachers who won’t stop fighting to make sure you’re treated humanely and that your families will be together.”
Hundreds of NEA members, including dozens of state Teachers of the Year, were in El Paso on Saturday, Feb. 17, for the “Teach-In for Freedom,” an all-day event organized by Teachers Against Child Detention (TACD) and led by National Teacher of the Year Mandy Manning to protest the inhumane detention of children and the criminalization of immigrant families.
“All children deserve to be in school,” Manning said. “All children have endless potential and deserve to reach that potential. All children deserve to be free.”
Educators and others have been outraged by the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy of separating immigrant and refugee children as young as 18 months old from their parents. Detained in more than 100 government detention centers across 17 states, these children have been denied access to public education, and likely will suffer irreparable, lifelong psychological damage, CONTINUE READING: Striking West Virginia teachers push lawmakers to drop measures expanding charter schools and private school vouchers - The Washington Post

at

Dana Goldstein: Why Teacher Strikes Keep Happening (and Why There’s No End in Sight) - The New York Times

Why Teacher Strikes Keep Happening (and Why There’s No End in Sight) - The New York Times

Why Teacher Strikes Keep Happening (and Why There’s No End in Sight)


American teachers in the past year have mounted the most sustained educator protest movement in decades. Their relentless string of mass walkouts continues this week in West Virginia, where education unions abruptly called a statewide strike on Monday evening, and in California, which is bracing for a districtwide strike in Oakland on Thursday.
The movement started with cries for better pay and benefits for educators, and more funding for schools and classrooms. But it has evolved into a protest against the argument that has driven the bipartisan education reform agenda for the past two decades: that traditional public schools and the people who work in them are failing, and that they must be challenged by charter schools, private school vouchers, test-driven accountability and other forms of pressure to improve.
Here’s the latest on the teacher walkouts:
The teacher protest movement began in the run-up to the 2018 midterm elections. Educators in six conservative and swing states with weak unions — West Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arizona, Colorado and North Carolina — thronged capitals to demand that politicians raise education budgets, sometimes by instituting new taxes.
Those protests won teachers a series of modest raises, but were less successful in pushing back against fiscal austerity more broadly. And though candidates who supported the walkouts won some state-level elections in November, the movement was not able to flip party control in red bastions like Arizona and West Virginia. That’s the major reason some of the same fights over local school funding, salaries and reform policies are still going on. CONTINUE READING: Why Teacher Strikes Keep Happening (and Why There’s No End in Sight) - The New York Times


at

A Clear Plan: The Revolution in School Policy | The Crucial Voice of the PeopleThe Crucial Voice of the People

A Clear Plan: The Revolution in School Policy | The Crucial Voice of the PeopleThe Crucial Voice of the People
A Clear Plan: The Revolution in School Policy



The National Governor’s Association (NGA), corporate leaders, foundations and other special interest groups advanced a clear plan to use the rise of the Information Age to float the economy. Their vessel? Our public education system.

Necessary or not, the school policy revolution began.

1969 — 75% of parents sampled (PDK/Gallup) said they would like to see one of their children teach in a public school.


1979 — 86% of parents with children 13 years and older had no desire to send their children to a different public school.
1983 — Governor Lamar Alexander created TN’s “Better Schools Program,” which put a merit pay system (pay for performance/career ladder) at the heart of the plan.
The hook: the idea of “flexibility” in exchange for “results.”
The pretense of accountability in an outcome-based (pay-for-results) system was launched ahead of the Reagan administration’s report A Nation at Risk.

6-14-1983 President Reagan participating in a Regional Forum on the National Commission on Excellence in Education Report with Governor Lamar Alexander at the Farragut High School in Knoxville, Tennessee

The Test-Based Accountability Ship Sailed

Demand for testing needed to be created but a couple of barriers stood in the way — local control and an established and effective education system. So a clear plan to take over school policy needed to begin with a strategy to undermine the public’s CONTINUE READING:A Clear Plan: The Revolution in School Policy | The Crucial Voice of the PeopleThe Crucial Voice of the People

at

Charter schools exploit lucrative loophole that would be easy to close

Charter schools exploit lucrative loophole that would be easy to close

Charter schools exploit lucrative loophole that would be easy to close
Image result for CHARTER SCHOOLS REAL ESTATE SCAM


While critics charge that charter schools are siphoning money away from public schools, a more fundamental issue frequently flies under the radar: the questionable business practices that allow people who own and run charter schools to make large profits.
Charter school supporters are reluctant to acknowledge, much less stop, these practices.
Given that charter schools are growing rapidly – from 1 million students in 2006 to more than 3.1 million students attending approximately 7,000 charter schools now – shining a light on these practices can’t come too soon. The first challenge, however, is simply understanding the complex space in which charters operate – somewhere between public and private.

Unregulated competition

Charters were founded on the theory that market forces and competition would benefit public education. But policy reports and local government studies increasingly reveal that the charter school industry is engaging in the type of business practices that have led to the downfall of other huge industries and companies.
Charter schools regularly sign contracts with little oversight, shuffle money between subsidiaries and cut corners that would never fly in the real world of business or traditional public schools – at least not if the business wanted to stay out of bankruptcy and school officials out of jail. The problem has gotten so bad that a nationwide assessment by the U.S. Department of Education warned in a 2016 audit report that the charter school operations pose a serious “risk of waste, fraud and abuse” and lack “accountability.”

Self-dealing

The biggest problem in charter school operations involves facility leases and land purchases. Like any other business, charters need to pay for space. But unlike other businesses, charters too often pay unreasonably high rates – rates that no one else in the community would pay.
One of the latest examples can be found in a January 2019 report from the Ohio auditor-general, which revealed that in 2016 a Cincinnati charter school paid $867,000 to lease its facilities. This was far more than the going rate for comparable facilities in the area. The year before, a Cleveland charter was paying half a million above market rate, according to the same report.
Why would a charter school do this? Most states require charter schools to be nonprofit. To make money, some of them have simply entered into contracts with separate for-profit companies that they also own. These companies do make money off students.
In other words, some “nonprofit” charter schools take public money and pay their owners with it. When this happens, it creates an enormous incentive to overpay for facilities and supplies and underpay for things like teachers and student services.

Millions of public dollars at stake

The Cincinnati and Cleveland charters are prime examples of this perverse incentive CONTINUE READING: Charter schools exploit lucrative loophole that would be easy to close



at

Charter Schools: Competition Makes All Schools Losers | Dissident Voice

Charter Schools: Competition Makes All Schools Losers | Dissident Voice

Charter Schools: Competition Makes All Schools Losers



For most individuals, life without competition is inconceivable. Competition seems to be part of  everything we know and do. It saturates everything. Nothing seems to escape its grip. It directs and conditions people at the conscious and subconscious levels. Competition appears natural, inevitable, and normal, as if it has always existed and can never go away.
Generations of conditioning tells us that competition is what motivates us, drives us, and makes us want to improve, excel, and achieve. Competition is supposedly intrinsic to us and makes us break through barriers and reach new heights every day.
Nothing would ever supposedly get done without competition. Everyone would just be lazy and mope around at home all day eating Doritos and playing video games in their pajamas. People would allegedly aspire to nothing without the fear of winning and losing, without a protocol of rewards and punishments to “motivate” them to be productive. Competition is therefore the only way to overcome laziness and lack of productivity so as to get what one earns and deserves. In the final analysis, winning and losing supposedly brings out the best in everyone and everything and is the main way to ensure quality, excellence, and progress.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines competition as: “The action of endeavouring to gain what another endeavours to gain at the same time’; the striving of two or more for the same object; rivalry.”
Synonyms for competition include: “contention, conflict, feuding, battling, fighting, struggling, strife, war.”
Competition, the close cousin of individualism, consumerism, selfishness, greed, and anxiety is based on many long-standing myths. A main one is the myth of scarcity. According to this myth, things acquire their value from being scarce, and when there is not enough to go around, people will necessarily feud, compete, and fight with each other to obtain scarce things.
But there is no reason to compete for something, especially if it is abundant, as CONTINUE READING: Charter Schools: Competition Makes All Schools Losers | Dissident Voice



at

Report offers ways to fix New York City's segregated schools

Report offers ways to fix New York City's segregated schools
Measuring diversity without holding schools accountable won’t bring about integration
New York City takes the first step towards integrating schools

There’s an adage many researchers and policy wonks live by: What gets measured, gets done. The saying suggests that measuring something enhances your ability to achieve it — except, of course, when you’re talking about integrated schools. We’ve quantified, studied and assessed the importance of diversity in schools, but it’s something we haven’t come close to achieving.
While housing segregation strongly influences the composition of the student body, even in diverse cities, low-income black and brown students are increasingly becoming concentrated in certain schools. This is a result of middle-income, largely white families choosing to cluster (read: segregate) in middle- and upper-income schools and neighborhoods in their pursuit of a good education for their kids. “Income segregation creates districts of concentrated poverty or affluence, but high-income black families may be less likely than high-income white families to live in the affluent districts created by income segregation,” according to 2018 research published by the American Sociological Association.
Herein lies the problem that thwarts efforts to find and create quality schools. Given that students’ test scores rise in conjunction with how much money their parents make, a wealthy school with high test scores is too often automatically deemed good. This assumption is not warranted: Wealthier families are putting more of their discretionary money into educational activities like test prep, which do increase students’ scores but, the wealth inflates what we believe teachers, curriculum and culture from inside the school are adding CONTINUE READING: Report offers ways to fix New York City's segregated schools




at

Under pressure, LAUSD releases confidential contracts for reform consultants

Under pressure, LAUSD releases confidential contracts for reform consultants
Under pressure, LAUSD releases confidential contracts for reform consultants

Outside consultants working on a plan to restructure the Los Angeles Unified School District were asked to develop a performance-based rating system for schools and to shift hiring and purchasing of services from the central district office to local campus networks, according to confidential contracts provided to The Times.
The contracts were released last week in response to repeated requests since October from Board of Education member Scott Schmerelson. The consultants’ work was not disclosed, but Schmerelson plans to continue to press to make it public.
District officials had declined requests from the Times and others to make the contracts public as Supt. Austin Beutner developed his reform plan, which he said is meant to save money and improve student success by bringing decision-making and resources closer to the campus level.

The contracts also became an issue in the weeks leading up to the January teachers’ strike, when union leaders and their members expressed concern about where Beutner — a businessman with no background in education management — would take the nation’s second-largest school system.
Beutner and other district officials said that their reform strategy, which must be approved by the Board of Education, is still taking shape and there will be ample and open discussion of it.
“In the coming weeks the superintendent and the district will be talking about their agenda to focus on student learning,” spokeswoman Janelle Erickson said Monday.
The contracts total $3 million so far, with the largest amounts going to Ernst & Young ($1.5 million), which specializes in business services and consulting, and the Kitamba Group ($765,000), whose focus is education. The agreements are being administered by the nonprofit California Community Foundation and paid for by private donors, including the Ballmer Group, the California Community Foundation, the California Endowment, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and the Weingart Foundation.
According to its contract, Ernst & Young’s mission was to analyze how the district can better use resources and cut costs in purchasing, food services, technology and transportation, as well as deal with work-related injuries and adjust its general financial practices. The work was to be completed, with a full report, before the end of November. It is not clear if that timetable was met.

Kitamba was to have developed a working definition of a “great school” and to have designed a “network structure” by the end of 2018. The Times reported in November that Beutner was considering assigning all schools to one of about 32 different networks.
Kitamba’s contract also said the company would help the district develop a way for officials to discuss giving letter grades to schools, ranking them on a 100-point scale or assigning them a color to denote their status. Kitamba was also to have developed measures that could be taken when a school fell short of standards. The triggers for taking action were to be developed in draft form by last September.
By December of 2018, each school was to have a performance rating along with a summary explanation. The goal by mid-February, according to Kitamba’s contract, was to “engage” on the plan with central office and school staff as well as with students and families. A media campaign also was due to roll out, with the new school networks slated to launch next September.
The Kitamba contract also proposed that each school network be allowed to choose or refuse “services” from the central office. The proposal does not specify which services, or say where the services would come from if the networks reject the central district’s offerings.
But the New York City school system tried a similar plan, starting in 2007, allowing local nonprofits to compete against the district to provide services. After about eight years, New York abandoned the plan, which cut costs but did not improve student achievement.
Kitamba, in the contract documents, cited its previous work in Midland, Texas as an exampleof how it would carry out its duties. In Midland and some other Texas school districts, CONTINUE READING: Under pressure, LAUSD releases confidential contracts for reform consultants


at

W.Va. Teachers Go On Strike Over State Education Bill : NPR

W.Va. Teachers Go On Strike Over State Education Bill : NPR

W.Va. Teachers Go On Strike Over State Education Bill


West Virginia public school teachers are striking over a new bill that paves the way for charter schools and private school vouchers in a state that relies primarily on public education.
In anticipation of the strike, almost all of the state's 55 public school systems have canceled classes for Tuesday.
The state's House of Delegates and Senate have been going back and forth on different versions of a bill that would overhaul West Virginia's educational system. According to the Charleston Gazette Mail, the education bill raises pay for teachers and increases funding for public schools, but also permits the creation of charter schools in the state, which currently has none.
The bill also funnels public money into a voucher system, called educational savings accounts, that could be used for private and online schooling. The new proposals are unacceptable to the state's teachers unions, which called for the strike to begin Tuesday.
"We are left with no other choice," said Fred Albert, president of the American Federation of Teachers' West Virginia chapter, according to The Associated Press.
Democrats in the Senate complained Monday that they didn't have a chance to digest details in amendments to the bill, which local media said were revealed just 10 CONTINUE READING: W.Va. Teachers Go On Strike Over State Education Bill : NPR



at