A Tribute to Race To The Top and Secretary Arne Duncan

Race to the Top loses all funding in 2015 omnibus spending bill

Obama’s Race to the Top loses all funding in 2015 omnibus spending bill - The Washington Post

Obama’s Race to the Top loses all funding in 2015 omnibus spending bill - The Washington Post:

Obama’s Race to the Top loses all funding in 2015 omnibus spending bill

President Obama and firstlLady Michelle Obama both would see key initiatives whacked if the $1.01 trillion spending bill unveiled by congressional leaders this week passes without changes in these areas: the president’s chief education initiative, Race to the Top, loses all funding, and the first lady’s effort to nutritionally improve school lunches takes a hit with language that allows schools to take their good old time about meeting a mandate on serving whole grain.

The Education Department would take a slight hit in funding; at $70.5 billion, down $133 million below the fiscal year 2014, but special education grants to states would get $25 million more than last year, up to $11.5 billion. Funding for the somewhat controversial School Improvement Grant program is maintained at $506 million. (It’s somewhat controversial because there are big questions about its overall effectiveness.)

The $4.3 billion-dollar Race to the Top was Obama’s main education initiative, first announced in 2009 as an effort to ensure that every student was “college and career ready” and to achieve “educational equity” by aggressively  “turning around” the lowest-performing schools (or by closing them if they didn’t turn around fast enough.) The program was a competition among states for federal funding, with certain stipulations; states (and later districts) had to promise to implement specific school reforms favored by Education Secretary Arne Duncan in order to win the cash. The Gates Foundation awarded millions of dollars to states that sought its help in designing their Race to the Top contest entries. The program became controversial as some critics said it represented federal intrusion into local education (though states were not required to participate) and critics wondered how a competition among states  – which would create winners and losers — could create educational equity.

There is also no funding for the controversial Common Core State Standards in this legislation. The development of the standards and their implementation was not federally funded, though the Obama administration did provide $360 million to two multi-state consortia that developed new Core-aligned standardized tests, which are being given to students for the first time this school year. That money had been appropriated in previous years. The administration also linked Race to the Top funding to the adoption of common standards; an early version of the first Race competition used the Common Core standards by name but, as my colleague Lyndsey Layton reported here, that was changed out of fear that “some states would consider that unwanted — and possibly illegal — interference from Washington.”

In fiscal year 2014, Race to the Top was given $250 million, according to this legislation summary, for competitive awards to states to develop or grow early childhood programs for children from low- and moderate-income families.  Obama’s fiscal year 2015 budget proposal included $300 million for a proposed “Race to the Top-Equity and Opportunity.” While Race to the Top gets no funding in the 2015 omnibus bill, the administration’s Preschool Development Grants program gets $250 million for 2015.

The House and Senate congressional summaries of education-related funding in the 2015 omnibus bill highlight different things. The Republican-led House notes that Race to the Top is being eliminated, while the Senate version doesn’t mention it. And while the Senate version notes Obama’s Race to the Top loses all funding in 2015 omnibus spending bill - The Washington Post:

Garfield High Teacher: Standardized Tests 'Disproportionately Impact Students Of Color' | KPLU News for Seattle and the Northwest

Garfield High Teacher: Standardized Tests 'Disproportionately Impact Students Of Color' | KPLU News for Seattle and the Northwest:



Garfield High Teacher: Standardized Tests 'Disproportionately Impact Students Of Color'

By KYLE STOKES • DEC 9, 2014

 

The issues of race and class currently fueling protests around the U.S. manifest in a different way in the classroom, says Garfield High School teacher Jesse Hagopian.

"Many of our students feel they're being set up," said the educator-activist and advisor of Garfield's Black Student Union who led the school's testing boycott in 2013.

Hagopian says the setup exists in the standardized tests policymakers across the nation have increasingly used to measure the gap in academic performance. The gap, he says, too often separates students of color from their white peers, and hold teachers and school leaders accountable for closing it.

Catching Students Who Are Falling Behind

President Obama has said, "There's nothing wrong with testing. We just need better tests ... that track how well our students are growing academically so we can catch when they're falling behind, and help them before they just get passed along."

Though the mechanisms that made the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act so powerful have become largely unpopular, many, including Obama administration officials, still support the law's central aim: to shine a bright spotlight on inequities in the nation's education system.

But Hagopian sees it differently, especially when it comes to racial inequities in schools. He recently edited a book titled "More Than A Score" that criticizes education policymakers for becoming too obsessed with standardized testing.

'Disproportionate Impact' On Students Of Color

"When you discuss the problem of black success in terms of their failure to succeed or their failure to achieve," said Hagopian, "and you don't discuss the fact that the opportunities are being systematically denied to them, then you blame our black youth for the problems that our society has created."

"These tests," he added, "disproportionately impact students of color because they Garfield High Teacher: Standardized Tests 'Disproportionately Impact Students Of Color' | KPLU News for Seattle and the Northwest:

When Charter Schools Are Nonprofit in Name Only - ProPublica

When Charter Schools Are Nonprofit in Name Only - ProPublica:

When Charter Schools Are Nonprofit in Name Only

This post has been updated to include a response from National Heritage Academies.

A couple of years ago, auditors looked at the books of a charter school in Buffalo, New York, and were taken aback by what they found. Like all charter schools, Buffalo United Charter School is funded with taxpayer dollars. The school is also a nonprofit. But as the New York State auditors wrote, Buffalo United was sending " virtually all of the School's revenues" directly to a for-profit company hired to handle its day-to-day operations.

Charter schools often hire companies to handle their accounting and management functions. Sometimes the companies even take the lead in hiring teachers, finding a school building, and handling school finances.

In the case of Buffalo United, the auditors found that the school board had little idea about exactly how the company – a large management firm called National Heritage Academies – was spending the school's money. The school's board still had to approve overall budgets, but it appeared to accept the company's numbers with few questions. The signoff was "essentially meaningless," the auditors wrote.

In the charter-school sector, this arrangement is known as a "sweeps" contract because nearly all of a school's public dollars – anywhere from 95 to 100 percent – is "swept" into a charter-management company.

The contracts are an example of how the charter schools sometimes cede control of public dollars to private companies that have no legal obligation to act in the best interests of the schools or taxpayers. When the agreement is with a for-profit firm like National Heritage Academies, it's also a chance for such firms to turn taxpayer money into tidy profits.

"It's really just a pass-through for for-profit entities," said Eric Hall, an attorney in Colorado Springs who specializes in work with charter schools and has come across many sweeps contracts. "In what sense is that a nonprofit endeavor? It's not."

Neither National Heritage Academies nor the Buffalo United board responded to requests for comment. (Update: NHA spokeswoman Jennifer Hoff said in an emailed statement, “Our approach relieves our partner boards of all financial, operational, and academic risks – a significant burden that ultimately defeats many charter schools. Freed from burdens like fundraising, our partner boards can focus on governance and oversight … NHA and its partner schools comply fully with state and federal laws, authorizer oversight requirements, and education department regulations – including everything related to transparency.”)

While relationships between charter schools and management companies have started tocome under scrutiny, sweeps contracts have received little attention. Schools have agreed to such setups with both nonprofit and for-profit management companies, but it's not clear how often. Nobody appears to be keeping track.

What is clear is that it can be hard for regulators and even schools themselves to follow the money when nearly all of it goes into the accounts of a private company.

"We're not confident that sweeps contracts allow [charters schools and regulators] to fully fulfill their public functions," said Alex Medler, who leads policy and advocacy work at the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, a trade group for charter regulators. The organization discourages the arrangements. "We think this is an issue that needs attention."

Officials have gotten glimpses of questionable spending by some firms using "sweeps" contracts. 

Take the case of Brooklyn Excelsior Charter School, another National Heritage Academies school. In 2012, state auditors tried to track the $10 million in public funding given to the school, only to conclude they were " unable to determine ... the extent to which the $10 million of annual public funding provided to the school was actually used to benefit its students." From what auditors could tell, the school was paying above-market rent for its building, which in turn is owned by a subsidiary of National Heritage When Charter Schools Are Nonprofit in Name Only - ProPublica:

State’s first charter school in disarray | Local News | The Seattle Times

State’s first charter school in disarray | Local News | The Seattle Times:

State’s first charter school in disarray

Since it opened in September, the state’s first charter school has lost its special-education coordinator, principal, board president and half the rest of its board. By Wednesday, it must prove to a state board that it can solve problems in four major areas.

Just months after it opened, First Place Scholars, the first charter school in Washington state, is in turmoil.

Its first principal resigned in November, more than half of its original board of directors have left, too, and the state’s charter-school commission has identified more than a dozen potential problems that need to be fixed soon if the school wants to keep its doors open.

Among them: hiring a qualified special-education teacher for the roughly two dozen students who need those services, and completing background checks on some of its nonteaching staff.

Members of the Washington State Charter School Commission, charged with vetting and overseeing charter schools, say they are hopeful that First Place will turn itself around and that the school is on track to complete its corrective action plan on time.

But if it doesn’t, the school will face stricter negotiations that could ultimately lead to its closure.

The school’s rocky start is bad news for charter supporters, who barely got a charter law passed here two years ago after trying for nearly two decades.

Joshua Halsey, the commission’s executive director, said his group takes the school’s problems seriously.

“We’re monitoring this very closely,” he said.

First Place opened in September as the first charter under the 2012 measure, which has been hailed as one of the strongest in the country and allows for up to eight charters to be opened each year for five years.

Campaign supporters promised that the bar for instructional quality and sound financial management would be set high for nonprofits seeking to open charters — free, independently run but publicly funded schools that aren’t bound by many of the same restrictions governing typical public schools. In exchange for agreeing to a set of goals, called a charter, charter schools receive roughly as much public money as traditional public school districts do.

So far, the state’s charter commission has approved seven other charter schools. Six will open in 2015 and one in 2016. Spokane Public Schools, which also may authorize charter schools, has approved two, both opening in 2015.

First Place was the first charter to open in part because it wasn’t starting from scratch. It had long been a private elementary school, founded to serve homeless students, in partnership with Seattle Public Schools.

Located in the former Odessa Brown medical clinic in Seattle’s Central District, the K-5 school focuses on students who have been homeless or have experienced a variety of other traumas. Classes have 14 or 15 students each. Becoming a charter is helping First Place expand from about 45 students to up to 100.

Halsey, the state charter commission’s executive director, chalked some of First Place’s problems up to being the state’s first charter school.

“It’s one thing for a district to open a new school — it’s a whole different story when you talk about a whole district being established,” Halsey said. “And that’s pretty much what these charter schools are.”

When First Place opened this fall, some said a lot was riding on its success.

But Steve Sundquist, the charter commission chairman, said Tuesday that he didn’t think First Place’s troubles represent a setback for the state’s broader charter-school movement.

“This will not be the only case of struggle,” he said. “But I believe ultimately we’re going to see a successful story here.”

Troubles pop up

First Place hit its first bump when Halsey sat in on a board meeting in September and noticed the board went into executive session, saying they wanted to discuss personnel matters, which is appropriate, but also “other” issues, which is not a legal reason for public boards to meet in private. Several parents then complained to the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction about the school’s special-education practices, prompting Halsey to visit the school Oct. 30.

During that visit, Halsey noted more than a dozen ways that First Place appeared to be out of State’s first charter school in disarray | Local News | The Seattle Times:

Charter's Don't Do It Better or Cheaper

Charter's Don't Do It Better or Cheaper:



CHARTER’S DON’T DO IT BETTER OR CHEAPER

The hard spin that investors put on their own charter corporations is that they do education better, and for cheaper than those bad public schools. But, with some years of experience behind us now, it is clear that charters do neither.



The last eleven years of  my public high school teaching years were spent in a big high school that covered a part of the outer suburban ring of the Oklahoma City metro area.



Occasionally they needed me to teach a few sections of Advanced Placement U.S. History to the Juniors who wanted to tool up for college, but mostly I taught the regular U.S. History course for everyone else.



That “everyone else” category was a very mixed group of people who were special ed, those with medical disabilities, and those who were on their way to rehab. My students included the brilliant but angry, the drug/alcohol addicted, the diagnosed and undiagnosed emotionally disturbed, and the occasional athlete who just didn’t have enough time or energy to study enough for AP courses.



The Yearly Arrival of Private School Students



There was a private church-connected school in that city that proclaimed loudly each year what accomplishments their student body had shown. The general public of that city were impressed, but I wasn’t.



It’s because each year sometime around February the private school to public school sojourn would begin for those students who didn’t “fit in” at that private school and would get kicked out due to their earning enough demerits. The Juniors among them would land mostly in my classroom.



I never minded getting those students. For the most part they were pretty cool because they were glad to get out of that private school’s suffocating environment.



What I did mind was the continual bragging by the private school’s officials. I was in a unique position to see what they were doing. They collected tuition long enough to lock in the contracts that parents signed, then started kicking out those students who “didn’t work out.”



After the gleaning time, yes, they had a hand-picked group that would finish the year while my public school classroom picked up the pieces. It was ridiculously easy for them to compare and criticize the public schools for their environment while their policies actually contributed to that unstable environment.



Cherry-picking charters still don’t make the grade



My first-hand experiences with the cherry-picking of private schools has been a large contributing factor to my skepticism of investor-owned charters from the beginning. The game that investor charters are playing is an old one, finely honed by the private schools for decades.



The big difference is that investor-owned corporate charters are far more aggressive and have had huge foundations like those of Gates, and the Waltons, that buy good publicity by their largess that is actually not a gift, but a purchase of attention and viewpoint.



We now have 5-10 years of experience of those big charter Charter's Don't Do It Better or Cheaper:

HEMLOCK ON THE ROCKS: What Are My “Skelly Rights”?

HEMLOCK ON THE ROCKS: What Are My “Skelly Rights”?:

What Are My “Skelly Rights”?

RB

What Are My "Skelly Rights"?

In the late '70's, the California Supreme Court established your "Skelly Rights." This means that public employees must be provided a "pre-disciplinary hearing" with management before they may be suspended (for five days or more,) demoted or terminated. The Court decided that this right is rooted in the federal constitution which says that a citizen cannot be deprived of property without due process.  In other words, when a governmental agency threatens to take income from one of its employees, this threat to his "property" requires due process.

The "Skelly Decision" comes from Dr. Skelly, an employee who worked for the state, who also had a three-martini-lunch habit.  After some significant performance problems, he was fired. He sued, and the resulting lawsuit, Skelly vs. the State of California, established the due process rights we know today. Basically, these say that an employee has the right to two levels of hearing: first, a "pre-disciplinary meeting" with the level of management proposing the discipline (The hearing officer must have the authority to modify or withdraw the discipline, but need not be an impartial third party).

The second step, if the matter isn't settled at the Skelly, is a "full evidentiary hearing before a reasonably impartial" third party.  This hearing involves witnesses, presentation of evidence, cross examination, etc -- very much like a court case. Most of the time, the impartial third party is an arbitrator or a panel, such as a Personnel or Civil Service Board.  However, it's legal for the City Manager to function as the hearing officer, so long as he or she has not already been involved in the case.

Many people think of the first hearing, "the Skelly" as a bit of a Kangaroo Court. After all, you are appealing to the level of management that has already decided to discipline you.  It is basically an opportunity to explain why the accusations are wrong, or why the "punishment" is too severe for the "crime."  But it IS a "pre-disciplinary safeguard:" the City cannot take action against you until it has heard your appeal and provided a written answer.

The City also must provide you with all information about the charges against you, prior to the hearing, so that you may intelligently defend yourself. A "notice of proposed disciplinary action" must include:

§         A statement of the nature of the proposed discipline

§         The effective date of the proposed discipline

§         The reasons for the discipline

§         The specific policy or rule violated

§         A statement advising the employee of the right to respond orally or in writing.

Skelly Rights Apply to all Permanent Public Employees. Even managers and confidential employees are covered by Skelly. If you belong to an employees association, your association is obligated to represent you. The only exception to this is that the group is NOT required to represent you through arbitration or a board hearing if a legal analysis recommends that your case "lacks merit;" in other words, if it is "unwinnable."  (An arbitration or Civil Service hearing can be expensive; your Association isn't obligated to drain its members' treasury to defend people who commit serious offenses, for which there's little defense…)

Skelly applies ONLY to Public Employees. The idea that government cannot take the "property" of your job applies only IF you work for government. California is an "at-will state." Unless they have a good union contract, employees at private companies can be fired without cause. Skelly Due Process is the primary legal distinction between public and private employees in California.

Although appealing to your own Management doesn't sound like much of a right, the Courts have bolstered your Skelly rights considerably over the last twenty years, and Management has become more respectful of the Skelly process. This is partly due to other employment laws which have sprung up since the 70's: discrimination, harassment, disability, wrongful termination, etc. Today there is a substantial industry of attorneys prepared to take your case if the City doesn't fire you for truly good reasons – or if it HEMLOCK ON THE ROCKS: What Are My “Skelly Rights”?:

YAY! Carl Petersen Qualifies for the March Ballot

                                      

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Monday December 8, 2014

Contact: Carl Petersen (818) 869-0309

Carl Petersen Qualifies for the March Ballot in LAUSD School Board Election

The Los Angeles City Clerk has completed its verification of the signatures that Carl Petersen submitted last week and qualified him for the ballot in the March election. He seeks to represent District Number 3 on the LAUSD's Board of Education, which includes most of the San Fernando Valley west of the 405 freeway and portions of Sherman Oaks, Studio City and North Hollywood. He will run with the Ballot Designation of "Businessman/Activist Parent."

"With the Miramonte sex scandal, MiSiS crisis and iPad scandal draining hundreds of millions of dollars from our children's educations, new blood is desperately need on the School Board," the candidate said. "As a father of four children enrolled in the district, I look forward to bringing a parent's perspective to the Board's proceedings and using my business experience to bring accountability back to the district."

The election will take place on March 3, 2015.

Carl Petersen is running for LAUSD School Board District 3 to give voice to the students, parents and teachers of the district. He is a father of five, including two daughters on the autism spectrum. With four children still enrolled in the district he understands the challenges facing the district and has a direct stake in seeing them addressed. He is currently the Director of Logistics for a manufacturer of security cameras in Glendale where he has been employed for the past nine years. For additional information please visit www.ChangeTheLAUSD.com or call Carl Petersen at 818-869-0309.

###

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_______________________________________________

Carl Petersen 

Candidate for Board of Education, District 3

www.ChangeTheLAUSD.com

Open Letter to Teachers Unions, Professional Organizations, and Teacher Education | the becoming radical

Open Letter to Teachers Unions, Professional Organizations, and Teacher Education | the becoming radical:

OPEN LETTER TO TEACHERS UNIONS, PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS, AND TEACHER EDUCATION

After speaking and guiding a workshop recently, I was struck by some distinct impressions I witnessed among several hundred educators.

First, although teachers and educational leaders coming to a conference are a skewed subset of teachers, I was impressed with their passion for teaching but more so for their students.

However, I must add that these teachers repeatedly expressed a lack of agency as professionals; a common refrain was “I [we] can’t,” and the reasons were administration and mandates such as Common Core (or other standards) and high-stakes testing. That sense of fatalism was most often framed against these teachers clearly knowing what they would do (and better) if they felt empowered, professionally empowered, to teach from their expertise as that intersects with their students’ needs.

This experience came just two weeks after my trip to the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) annual convention, this year in Washington DC—where I presented on the value of books and libraries as well as delivering the Moment of History as the Council Historian. Again, I spent several days with a skewed subset of teachers, but there I would also characterize much of the talk as “I [we] can’t”—because of administration, because of Common Core.

I must admit that during my 13 years as a teacher educator, once our students enter the field of education, I listen as my highly motivated and bright young teachers begin to speak in “I [we] can’t,” often apologizing for essentially never being able to implement in their classes the many research-based practices and robust philosophies we explored when they were in methods courses.

Let me now highlight here that the first experience above was with all unionized teachers; the second example, withactive members of a professional organization; and the third, with traditionally certified teachers from a selective university and a highly praised and accredited program.

Earlier this year, Helen Klein reported:

American teachers feel stressed out and insignificant, and it may be impacting students’ educations.

Gallup’s State Of America’s Schools Report, released Wednesday, says nearly 70 percent of K – 12 teachers surveyed in a 2012 poll do not feel engaged in their work. The study said they are likely to spread their negative attitudes to co-workers and devote minimal discretionary effort to their jobs.

…When compared to 12 other occupational groups, teachers were least likely to report feeling like their “opinions seem to count” at work.

And thus, I have a very serious question:

If being unionized, a member of a professional organization, or certified results in teachers feeling the same powerlessness, the same lack of professionalism as most other teachers, how do teachers unions, professional organizations, and teacher education justify themselves?

I think this question is valid, and I think we now stand at a watershed moment for teachers unions, professional organizations, and teacher education. And I offer this hard and blunt question because, ultimately, I believe in thepromise of teachers unions, professional organizations, and teacher education as a discipline.

My first impression about this question is that far too often unions, professional organizations, and teacher education have failed teachers and education by racing to grab a seat at the table—eager to contribute to how to implement standards, testing, and bureaucracy. All three arenas of educational leadership have failed educator professionalism by rushing to participate within the partisan political accountability movement over the past thirty years.

Leadership from unions, professional organizations, and teacher education has been overwhelming as fatalistic as the teachers I described above; diligently compromising, eagerly complying, breathlessly trying to excel at accountability and bureaucracy—in effect, leading by following.

If we return to what we know about how teachers feel, Klein noted the ultimate danger of a lack of teacher professionalism:

“The problem is that when teachers are not fully engaged in their work, their students pay the price every day,” says the report. “Disengaged teachers are less likely to bring the energy, insights, and resilience that effective teaching requires to the classroom. They are less likely to build the kind of positive, caring relationships with their students that form the emotional core of the learning process.”

And thus, compliant, fatalistic educational leadership feeds compliant, fatalistic teachers—failing the most important aspect of universal public education, students.

Instead of challenging the assumption that public education needs accountability based on standards and high-stakes testing, unions, professional organizations, and teacher educators have mostly focused on helping teachers navigate each new round of standards and tests—even praising each new round despite no evidence that standards and testing work (or are in any way address the real roots of educational inequity).

Too often, that same pattern has occurred with value-added methods for teacher evaluation and calls for reforming teacher education. [1] The responses have been about implementing policies slowly so they can be done correctly—not substantive rejecting of deeply flawed policy and the dismantling of teaching as a profession.

I do not discount that a powerful consequence of high-stakes accountability is that educators and educational leaders are on the defensive, often frantic because a failure to comply with flawed policy can result in serious consequences—risking funding, lost jobs, ruined careers even.

However, the exact reasons that teachers unions, professional organizations, and teacher education should matterare the antidotes to remaining trapped in a state of frantic reaction: Collective and professional noncooperation with any policies not supported by the knowledge-base of the field of education and the established norms of professionalism.

So this is my point: Teachers unions, professional organizations, and teacher education have a duty to their own existence and to teachers as well as the field of education; that duty includes no longer fighting for a place at the education reform table, no longer putting organizational leadership and bureaucracy before the integrity of education as a discipline and a profession.

As English educator and former NCTE president Lou LaBrant announced in 1947: “This is not the time for the teacher of any language to follow the line of least resistance, to teach without the fullest possible knowledge of the implications of his medium.”

As James Baldwin declared in Nobody Knows My Name: “The challenge is in the moment, the time is always now.”

This is about time. It is time to set aside the failed pursuit of accountability, the corrosive insistence on rigor, and the dehumanizing commitment to standardization.

It is time that teaching reclaim its rightful place as a profession, setting the table for how teachers teach, how students learn.

It is time leaders in teachers unions, professional organizations, and teacher education lead by leading.

—

[1] We do have examples of resistance, although too rare; see this response to NCTQ by NCTE.

Open Letter to Teachers Unions, Professional Organizations, and Teacher Education | the becoming radical:

Charters and $$$$: Has anyone seen anything like this? | Cloaking Inequity

Charters and $$$$: Has anyone seen anything like this? | Cloaking Inequity:

Charters and $$$$: Has anyone seen anything like this?

Has anyone seen anything like this? Charter requiring parents to pay $$$$ in lieu of required volunteer hours. In the words of Jerry McGuire:

Show me the money!

Apparently the California Charter School Association hasn’t heard of such a thing happening in practice or charter school policy, even though Public Advocates delivered the evidence to the public via parent whistleblowers and publicly available policy documents. Public Advocates’ report documented its year-long investigation into an inequitable and illegal practice by some of California’s charter schools, and calls for charter schools to end requiring payment in lieu of volunteer hours. Public Advocates is demanding that the state take immediate action to stop the practice and increase its oversight of charter schools more generally.

Of course we know that there are lots of bad apples in the charter movement. The way that charters have used to limit equity and access have been discussed extensively on Cloaking Inequity. (For all posts on charters click here). See for example Breaking News: Kevin Welner’s Charter School Dirty Dozen and Colonizing the Black Natives: Reflections from a former NOLA Charter School Dean of Students and Don’t Trust Charters More than a Sweaty Used Car Salesman (A Citizen Research Template) Do I believe that ALL charters are bad apples? No. For example see The Gem on the Hill: How to Create a Community-Based In-District Charter However, based on my peer reviewed research on charters over the past five years, I posit that Travis Heights is the exception, not the rule.

Back to Show me the Money!… The San Francisco Chronicle covered the Public Advocates report:

At least 170 California charter schools are violating the state Constitution by requiring parents to volunteer up to 100 hours a year if they want their kids to participate in field trips and other activities or remain enrolled in the school, according to civil rights lawyers in a report released Thursday.

A survey of 555 California charter schools — about half of all charters in the state — found that nearly a 

Charters and $$$$: Has anyone seen anything like this? | Cloaking Inequity: