How charter schools are dodging Colorado laws | The Colorado Independent

How charter schools are dodging Colorado laws | The Colorado Independent:

How charter schools are dodging Colorado laws

Charter schools have been using waivers to get out of teaching comprehensive sexual health classes, state mandated hiring and firing practices, substitute teacher policies and many other rules. Who’s watching? Nobody.

Educators say people without college degrees, including high schoolers, are teaching in Pre-K through fifth grade classes at the Community Leadership Academy, a publicly funded charter school in Commerce City.

At the Golden View Classical Academy, in Golden, students are learning that real marriages are just between men and women, and that condoms are ineffective in preventing sexually transmitted diseases. 

Though these educational practices seem to defy Colorado law, charter schools have found a legal workaround, and many Democratic and Republican lawmakers are looking the other way. After all, charters have been the darlings of education reformers from both parties for more than 20 years.

In 1993, Colorado’s first two charter schools enrolled just 187 students. Now 226 charter schools educate more than 108,000 students statewide, making up roughly 12 percent of the total K-12 public school enrollment.

Though hundreds of laws govern public schools, many of those rules are being waived for charters both by school districts and the state Board of Education.

Currently, the Board of Education automatically grants 18 waivers involving laws related to benefits, hiring and firing at charter schools. The state makes this process easy because nearly every charter school requests these exceptions.

Golden View Classical Academy.
Photo by Derec Shuler

The Board also grants non-automatic waivers, which require charter schools to explain why they should be given a pass on rules that apply to all other schools. That’s how Golden View Classical Academy dodged state sex-ed requirements.

Individual school districts set additional policies for how charter schools obtain waivers. Jefferson County, for example, offers 42 automatic waivers and dozens more non-automatic ones. Non-automatic waivers must include a replacement plan explaining the rationale for the exception and how it is tied to the school’s mission, how the school will meet the law’s intent and how the waiver’s impact will be evaluated.

In JeffCo, replacement plans must be submitted when charters turn in contract applications.

But seven JeffCo charter schools’ waiver applications reviewed by The Colorado Independent included incomplete replacement plans, and in 10 cases, blank sheets of paper with nothing but the title of the district policy where the plan should be. All but one of the applications were for five-year contract renewals with the district.

Montessori Peaks in Littleton submitted blank sheets of paper instead of replacement plans for some district waivers.

In Golden, Free Horizon Academy – which applied for dozens of waivers — merely referred to its employee handbook or school policy manual in its replacement plans. Yet the word “waiver” never appears in the manual as it applies to district policies, and there is no justification or plan for evaluating waivers, as the district requires.

Charter schools claim to educate students better than traditional schools. One reason cited: They have more flexibility in dealing with state and How charter schools are dodging Colorado laws | The Colorado Independent:

Big Education Ape: Remembering Tom Hayden

Big Education Ape: Remembering Tom Hayden

Big Education Ape: Tom Hayden, Civil Rights and Antiwar Activist Turned Lawmaker, Dies at 76 - The New York Times - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/10/tom-hayden-civil-rights-and-antiwar.html

Big Education Ape: Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/10/mike-klonskys-smalltalk-blog-weekend.html

tomhayden.com - The Democracy Journal - http://tomhayden.com/

Big Education Ape: tomhayden.com - Peace Exchange Bulletin - An Interview with The Washington Post - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2012/07/tomhaydencom-peace-exchange-bulletin.html

Big Education Ape: Archived Wednesday speeches from Democracy Convention: Ben Manski, Tom Hayden, Paul Soglin, Cheri Honkala | - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2011/08/archived-wednesday-speeches-from.html

Big Education Ape: tomhayden.com - Peace Exchange Bulletin - 'The fight is on': Hayden, Ross lead talk on engagement and citizenry #OWS - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2011/11/tomhaydencom-peace-exchange-bulletin.html

Big Education Ape: tomhayden.com - Peace Exchange Bulletin - SDS Founder, Veteran Activist Tom Hayden on Participatory Democracy From Port Huron to Occupy Wall Street - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2012/04/tomhaydencom-peace-exchange-bulletin.html

Big Education Ape: tomhayden.com - TOM HAYDEN FROM THE PEOPLE'S CLIMATE MARCH - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2014/09/tomhaydencom-tom-hayden-from-peoples.html

Big Education Ape: Tom Hayden, counterculture icon, invites public to dig into his archives | Al Jazeera America - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2014/09/tom-hayden-counterculture-icon-invites.html

Big Education Ape: tomhayden.com - Peace Exchange Bulletin - NATO Occupies Chicago, Key Moment for Afghanistan - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2012/04/tomhaydencom-peace-exchange-bulletin_20.html

We are here to make a better world.

No amount of rationalization or blaming can preempt the moment of choice each of us brings to our situation here on this planet. The lesson of the 60's is that people who cared enough to do right could change history.

We didn't end racism but we ended legal segregation.

We ended the idea that you could send half-a-million soldiers around the world to fight a war that people do not support.

We ended the idea that women are second-class citizens.

We made the environment an issue that couldn't be avoided.

The big battles that we won cannot be reversed. We were young, self-righteous, reckless, hypocritical, brave,silly, headstrong and scared half to death.

And we were right.

Abbie Hoffman

CURMUDGUCATION: NY: Commissioner Struggles with Teacher Shortage

CURMUDGUCATION: NY: Commissioner Struggles with Teacher Shortage:

NY: Commissioner Struggles with Teacher Shortage



Maryellen Elia was brought in to the Empire State to help clean up the mess that former education honcho John King left behind.

Her results have been mixed. She invested a lot of energy in defending the Big Standardized Test,even issuing a handy propaganda kit to help push down those opt out numbers. It didn't work.

Last Friday, Elia talked to the NYS Association of Teacher Educators and the NY Association of Colleges for Teacher Education about some of the issues tied to the looming (or possibly not, or possibly already here, depending on who's talking) teacher shortage. As reported by the Times-Union, some of what she had to say was on point, and some of it indicates that she still doesn't understand the situation.

On the plus side, Elia is one policy leader who understands that more than decade of beating up on teachers and the teaching profession has not exactly made the field attractive to folks. 

But folks at the meting also talked about a side-effect of test-driven accountability that has been long-predicted and now visibly concerning. Placing student teachers is becoming increasingly difficult in a world where high stakes testing season runs the schools. How can I possibly turn my class over to a pre-rookie when so much about the future of my school and my own professional career is riding on what's happening in my classroom. And the focus at this meeting was on student teachers who are hard to place at al-- that's before we even get to student teachers who get a placement, but who are not allowed to do much of anything because of concerns about the BS Tests. 

Elia said that the department is working on "several efforts to boost district cooperation." But the CURMUDGUCATION: NY: Commissioner Struggles with Teacher Shortage:

Big Education Ape: CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Reading in the Seattle Dew (10/23) - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/10/curmudgucation-icymi-reading-in-seattle.html

Segregation, race, and charter schools: What do we know? | Brookings Institution

Segregation, race, and charter schools: What do we know? | Brookings Institution:

Segregation, race, and charter schools: What do we know?

 “Segregation, race, and charter schools: What do we know?” Brookings Senior Fellows Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst and Richard Reeves, along with Senior Research Assistant Edward Rodrigue, find that poverty—not race—is the real challenge for segregated schools, and that improving school quality is key to closing racial achievement gaps.

Examining empirical research that measures the effect of interventions to provide low-income and minority students with access to higher-performing and more racially heterogeneous schools, the authors conclude that positive impacts on student achievement are driven by school quality.

Looking at trends in racial segregation over time, the authors find that changes in schools’ racial makeup in recent decades have been driven largely by the increase in the Hispanic and Asian American populations. While black and white students have become much more likely to share classrooms with Hispanics, blacks and whites are not more likely to share classrooms with each other than they were decades ago—the original intent of the Brown v. Board of Education landmark Supreme Court ruling that desegregated schools 60 years ago.

But while many school districts are less racially segregated, school segregation by family income has increased since 1990 both within and between school districts. The authors note that race and economic status are of course highly correlated, with black students four times as likely to be in a high-poverty school as a low-poverty one; for whites the ratio is the other way round.

The authors also focus on how charter school systems influence segregation, finding that while national averages show that charters serve almost equal numbers of white, black, and Hispanic students, individual charter schools are generally more racially segregated than traditional public schools that serve the same geographical area.  In urban areas, the charter schools into which black students transfer from traditional public schools are substantially more segregated racially than the traditional public schools from which they exit.   Despite that segregation, studies of urban charter schools present compelling evidence that high quality urban charters can overcome the effects of school segregation on student achievement.

The authors conclude, “The U.S. is an increasingly diverse nation, but remains a highly segregated one. Our schools reflect both our separateness and our inequality…The desire for more integrated schools is understandable. But it is helpful to be as clear as possible about what lies behind that desire. If the main objective is to narrow racial achievement gaps, we need to understand to what extent, and in what way, segregation influences those gaps. The weight of evidence suggests that, at least in the context of the education system, the worse educational outcomes for minority students are the result not of the racial composition of their schools, but the economic backgrounds of their fellow students, and the quality of the school itself—both of which are strongly correlated with race.”

To learn more, read the full paper here.

 Segregation, race, and charter schools: What do we know? | Brookings Institution:

Matt Damon takes on Philly schools in new documentary — NewsWorks

Matt Damon takes on Philly schools in new documentary — NewsWorks:

Matt Damon takes on Philly schools in new documentary

The School District of Philadelphia’s money struggles are well documented. And now they have their own documentary.

A film opening this weekend focuses on education reforms in the Philly schools, positing that they’ve bankrupted the district.

"Backpack Full of Cash" premieres at the Philadelphia Film Festival Saturday with a 5:10 p.m. showing at the Prince Theater. A second showing is set for Oct. 29.

Narrated by Oscar winner Matt Damon, the film wastes little time revealing its point of view. Damon, a well-documented skeptic of what critics call “corporate” education reform, begins the documentary with an dark warning:

“A battle is underway over who should control public education,” he says. “Parents, teachers and activists are up against a well-organized coalition headed by business leaders and conservatives.”

It’s clear the filmmakers favor the former, arguing the proliferation of charters has infected traditional public schools and brought them to the brink of collapse.

The film serves as a rebuttal to "Waiting for Superman," the popular documentary that lionized school choice advocates. And, indeed, director and co-producer Sarah Mondale conceived the project after she saw the 2010 film.

“It was a very unbalanced, unfair characterization, and it’s kind of what got me motivated to do this film,” said Mondale. "I wanted to switch the perspective."

"Backpack Full of Cash" is set in Philadelphia during the 2013-14 school year, which began with major cutbacks and a severe budget shortfall. It features interviews with plenty of familiar faces, including Otis Hackney, head of the mayor’s office of education; district superintendent William Hite; and Councilwoman Helen Gym.

The filmmakers picked Philadelphia over other large urban school districts because they felt it best exemplified the negative consequences of education reform.

It should be noted Philadelphia is now in much better financial shape, and even had a small surplus this year. The district, does, however, anticipate long-term money woes driven by rising charter and pensions costs.Matt Damon takes on Philly schools in new documentary — NewsWorks:

Big Education Ape: BACKPACK FULL OF CASH: a new film, narrated by Matt Damon - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/10/backpack-full-of-cash-new-film-narrated.html

BACKPACK FULL OF CASH: a new film, narrated by Matt Damon by Sarah Mondale — Kickstarter:

America’s Public Education for All and America’s Foreign Wars | Reclaim Reform

America’s Public Education for All and America’s Foreign Wars | Reclaim Reform:

America’s Public Education for All and America’s Foreign Wars

While the USA rebuilds war torn foreign countries with the aim of helping them flourish independently, the establishment of decent public schools for all is deemed a necessity.

What are our taxes paying for in the foreign countries we have bombed?

Not expensive and unproven high stakes testing of various brand names, not profitable privatization via charter schools, not a labor pool of cheap and uncertified replaceable instructors called teachers, not substituting online learning for actual human and humane teaching, not pretending that data is both knowledge and wisdom, not allowing billionaire’s with so-called philanthropic foundations and propaganda laden think tanks that actually make billions of dollars of tax free money to decide what children must do.

Decent public education for all is a mainstay for peace and prosperity, and everybody knows it. American tax money pays for this – in the foreign countries we bomb.

The September 2016 issue of Harper’s Magazine has a superb and lengthy account of a panel forum titled Tearing Up the Map. Its focus is on international relations. Of necessity America’s war endgames and rebuilding policies include decent public education for all. Access for all.

“Look at northern Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, which was a hugely 

America’s Public Education for All and America’s Foreign Wars | Reclaim Reform:

Garfield High School Goes on Bended Knee for Black Lives | I AM AN EDUCATOR

Garfield High School Goes on Bended Knee for Black Lives | I AM AN EDUCATOR:

Garfield High School Goes on Bended Knee for Black Lives

By Jesse Hagopian, first published at The Progressive.

The Jocks.The marching band. The cheerleaders. The Black Student Union. The teachers. And the administration. These disparate high school groups rarely come together.

But at times of great peril and of great hope, barriers that once may have seemed permanent can collapse under a mighty solidarity. The crisis of police terror in black communities across the country is just such a peril—and the resistance to that terror, symbolized by San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick taking a knee during the national anthem—is just such a hope.

On September 16th, the entire football team of Garfield High School, the school I teach at in Seattle, joined the protest that Kaepernick set in motion by taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem. While the Garfield Bulldogs were among the first high schools to have an entire team protest the anthem, it has since spread to schools around the nation. Their bold action for justice made headlines around the country. Their photo appeared in the issue of Time Magazine that featured Kaepernick on the cover CBS news came to Garfield to do a special on the protest. And in the New York Times, Kaepernick himself commented on the Garfield football team saying, “I think it’s amazing.”

It was a rejection of the rarely recited third verse of the “Star Spangled Banner,” which celebrates the killing of black people, the ongoing crisis of state violence against black people, and an affirmation that black lives matter. As the Garfield football team said in a statement they later released,

“We are asking for the community and our leaders to step forward to meet with us and engage in honest dialogue. It is our hope that out of these potentially uncomfortable conversations positive, impactful change will be created.”

And those conversations led them to analyze the way racism is connected to other forms of oppression and the way those forms of oppression disfigure many aspects of their lives, including the media and the school system.  Yes, football players publicly challenging homophobia may be rare, but the bulldog scholar athletes aren’t having it.

Here is the teams’s six-point program to confront injustice and oppression:

1. Equality for all regardless of race, gender, class, social standing and/or sexual orientation—both in and out of the classroom as well as the community.

2. Increase of unity within the community. Changing the way the media portrays crime. White people are typically given justification while other minorities are seen as thugs, etc.

3. Academic equality for students. Certain schools offer programs/tracks that are not available at all schools or to all students within that school. Better opportunities for students who don’t have parental or financial support are needed. For example, not everyone can afford Advanced Placement (AP) testing fees and those who are unable to pay those fees, are often not Garfield High School Goes on Bended Knee for Black Lives | I AM AN EDUCATOR:

Nevada: Andre Agassi Charter School Is A Failing School, Along with Many Other Charters | Diane Ravitch's blog

Nevada: Andre Agassi Charter School Is A Failing School, Along with Many Other Charters | Diane Ravitch's blog:

Nevada: Andre Agassi Charter School Is A Failing School, Along with Many Other Charters

Angie Sullivan sent the following message. The charter schools of Nevada are performing far worse than the public schools. As Angie asks, how can more charters be the answer when they are the problem? Should the failing charters be handed over to another charter? Or should they be closed so the students return to the more successful public schools? Unfortunately, as the law is written, only low-scoring public schools can be closed, not failing charter schools. Another irony: The Andre Agassi Charter school is listed by the state as a “failing school,” yet Agassi and his business partner Bobby Turner are opening Andre Agassi charter schools in many other cities. Why? To make money, not to make better schools.

Angie writes:

We have 39 charters in the state of Nevada and 14 of them are on the lowest performing list. 36% of Nevada Charters are in the lowest of the low in the state.

We have 359 schools in Clark County School District. 2 of the schools listed are alternative schools that teach credit retrieval and adult education. 17 schools in the lowest of the low in the state. That is 5% of CCSD schools.

Can someone explain to me how charters are the solution and not the problem in my state?

Frankly the public schools are doing much much better than the charters – even according to this invalid and weird data.

Also . . . keep in mind these rural schools which are failing represent a huge percentage. If Elko has 22 schools and 5 are failing – that is 23% of all their schools.

Comparatively, Clark County School District is doing better than the rest of the state and especially better than the charters.

CCSD is serving the most disenfranchised and likely to fail communities – we are doing better than the rest WITH the least amount of per pupil money. Everyone else in the state – including charters gets more.

Just think what we could do if we funded near the middle?

Yet the Nevada Department of Education keeps threatening public school staff with turnaround and now the Achievement School District. Schools without textbooks or supplies have to have entire staffs interviewed right before holiday break?

I think we need to start having a REAL discussion about education our state.

We need to demand REAL and timely data if that is what is driving this vehicle – not this sketchy fly-by-night multiple list craziness.

Tomorrow the Charter Authority will be meeting with the Las Vegas City Council at noon.

Those in power need to have a REAL discussion about closing these failing charters and a REAL discussion about the other costs charters have in our communities.

Like receivership – with receivers from Washington DC getting paid $25,000 a month to come out and reorganize charters: Quest and Silver State Schools. Who makes $25,000 a month?

_________________

I recieved the following message from a concerned parent today:

The details how this charter school set itself up is a scam.

It is part of an eviction case.

Then the receiver gets paid $25,000 a month to rehabilitate it. Plus $35,000 for a report.

And the state is soliciting for MORE receivers!!!! (On the charter school authority page.)

Look up Josh Kern and Ten Square he hasNevada: Andre Agassi Charter School Is A Failing School, Along with Many Other Charters | Diane Ravitch's blog:

Denied: Disabled kids forced out to meet special ed target - Houston Chronicle

Denied: Disabled kids forced out to meet special ed target - Houston Chronicle:

Denied: Schools push students out of special education to meet state limit

LAREDO – A few days before school began here in 2007, district administrators called an emergency staff meeting.

The Texas Education Agency had determined that they had too many students in special education, the administrators announced, and they had come up with a plan: Remove as many kids as possible.

The staffers did as they were told, and during that school year, the Laredo Independent School District purged its rolls, discharging nearly a third of its special education students, according to district data. More than 700 children were forced out of special education and moved back into regular education.  Only 78 new students entered services.

"We basically just picked kids and weeded them out," said Maricela Gonzalez, an elementary school speech therapist. "We thought it was unfair, but we did it."

Gonzalez's account, confirmed by two coworkers and district documents, illustrates how some schools across Texas have ousted children with disabilities from needed services in order to comply with an agency decree that no more than 8.5 percent of students should obtain specialized education. School districts seeking to meet the arbitrary benchmark have not only made services harder to get into but have resorted to removing hundreds and hundreds of kids, the Houston Chronicle has found.

In San Felipe Del Rio CISD, in West Texas, officials several years ago stopped serving children with one form of autism.

In Brazosport ISD, on the Gulf of Mexico, employees were instructed in 2009 to end tutoring forDenied: Disabled kids forced out to meet special ed target - Houston Chronicle:

A Chronicle Investigation

In Texas, unelected state officials have devised a system that has kept thousands of disabled kids out of special education. Read other installments in the series here.

About this series

Part 1: How Texas keeps tens of thousands of children out of special education

Part 2: Schools push students out of special education to meet state limit

Extra: Official fights to restore special ed for autistic son

Explainer: How we know the reason for the drop in Texas special ed students

Search your school district: See how the percentage of kids receiving special ed services has changed in your area.

Share your story: Help us investigate.

Denied: Disabled kids forced out to meet special ed target - Houston Chronicle:

City school's transition brings chaos

City school's transition brings chaos:

City school's transition brings chaos

Camera icon DAVID MAIALETTI / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Tinze James (from left), Octavia Abney, Ty-Shone Mitchell, Debra Eddy, Tasha Mitchell, Shereda Cromwell and Lorraine Falligan outside Kenderton Elementary in Philadelphia.

Shereda Cromwell stood in front of an auditorium, tears in her eyes. She didn't know where else to turn.

She wanted people to know what was happening at Kenderton Elementary, the North Philadelphia school her three children attend: the fights and the children walking the hallways, even first graders. The mess. The deep academic problems.

"Our school needs help," Cromwell told the School Reform Commission. "These kids need help."

Kenderton has ping-ponged between operators multiple times in the last two decades, a product of the Philadelphia School District's myriad reform initiatives. For a time in the early 2000s, it was operated by Edison Schools, a for-profit education firm. In 2013, the Philadelphia School District gave it to Scholar Academies Inc. to run.

But the charter operator abruptly abandoned Kenderton in June, blaming the high cost of educating the school's large special-education population. For a time, Mastery Charter Schools was in talks to take over Kenderton, but Mastery was unable to handle the full school population, and it reverted to district control.

The school system had less than 90 days to get Kenderton up and running before the start of classes.

Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. is well-aware of the rocky transition at the Tioga school: He has visited multiple times, ordered a long list of supports, and has directed the assistant superintendent responsible for the school to visit daily.

"We realize that something significant has got to change, and we are working to do that," said Cheryl Logan, the district's chief of academic support.

But for now, Octavia Abney worries about sending her two daughters, a third and a sixth grader, to Kenderton, at 15th and Ontario.

"It's complete chaos," Abney said.

The K-8 school has struggled to get basic rules in place, some parents say: Some of its City school's transition brings chaos: