Six Washington charter schools get a second start | The News Tribune

Six Washington charter schools get a second start | The News Tribune:

Six Washington charter schools get a second start

Six of Washington’s charter schools will get another lease on life under the state’s new charter law, after action by the Washington State Charter School Commission.

The commission, meeting in Tacoma last week, voted to approve five-year contracts with existing charter schools in Tacoma, Seattle and Kent.

Contracts are to be signed by the commission chairman, Steve Sundquist, and representatives of the schools by June 2.

Two other charters operate under the auspices of the Spokane School District. A former Seattle charter, First Place Scholars, has reverted to the private-school status it held before it converted to a charter school.

The commission also authorized three schools — two in Seattle and one in Walla Walla — that plan to open in fall 2017.

WE IN THE CHARTER SECTOR IN WASHINGTON HAVE JUST COME THROUGH EIGHT MONTHS OF TUMULT.

Thelma Jackson, board chair at SOAR Academy

Charters — including SOAR Academy, Green Dot Destiny Middle School and Summit Olympus High School, all in Tacoma — survived a bumpy 2015-16 school year.

“We in the charter sector in Washington have just come through eight months of tumult,” Thelma Jackson, who heads the SOAR board, told the charter commission last week.

She urged the commission to guide discussions among the state’s fledgling charters, so that they can learn from last year’s challenges.

In September, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled that a voter-approved charter school law was unconstitutional. By November, the schools had lost state per-pupil funding that had been available under the charter law.

Some of them — including SOAR and Destiny — regrouped under the banner of a small Eastern Washington school district. That allowed them to temporarily receive reduced state per-pupil funding as an alternative learning experience programs.

Summit Olympus, along with its sister school in Seattle, Summit Sierra, bypassed alternative learning funding and instead kept the doors open as homeschool centers for their students.

Private dollars filled in some of the funding gaps.

The Washington State Charter Schools Association gathered private donations and awarded $4.5 million in “bridge” grants to help schools through the rocky first school year.

The association earlier committed $2 million to help kick start several of the schools during their first year as they bought equipment and supplies.

For the coming school year, the association has committed to $1,000 per student at SOAR and other so-called stand-alone charters — those managed by individual operators, rather than by interstate networks such as Summit and Green Dot. Both organizations are based in California.

By March, the Legislature — heavily lobbied by charter supporters — passed a new charter law that kept much of the system intact but changed the source of charter school funding.

Instead of drawing money from the state common school fund, the law directs that money for charters come from state lottery proceeds.

And in a win for public school districts that opposed charters, the law also bars charters from accessing local levy dollars — a practice that would have been allowed had the Supreme Court not acted.

“The loss of local levy money is severe,” said charter commission director Joshua Halsey, who estimated the revenue reduction for the six schools at $17 million.

Charter opponents — including the teachers union, the Washington Education Association — contend changes in the charter law aren’t enough to meet constitutional demands. They have vowed to challenge charters in court again.

Opponents have raised concerns over charter governance. Rather than elected school boards, charters in Washington are run by boards appointed by the nonprofit organizations that manage the charter schools. The new law leaves that structure in place.

Melissa Westbrook, a Seattle public schools activist and blogger, told the charter commission at its Tacoma meeting that the new law does not meet constitutional requirements for the role of the state superintendent.

She also noted the law requires that parents be notified of pending litigation that could shut down charters.

Charter parent Jessica Garcia was at the Tacoma meeting and said she knew of the legalSix Washington charter schools get a second start | The News Tribune:

Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/education/article79949727.html#storylink=cpy

 

On negative effects of vouchers | Brookings Institution

On negative effects of vouchers | Brookings Institution:

On negative effects of vouchers

Executive summary

Recent research on statewide voucher programs in Louisiana and Indiana has found that public school students that received vouchers to attend private schools subsequently scored lower on reading and math tests compared to similar students that remained in public schools. The magnitudes of the negative impacts were large. These studies used rigorous research designs that allow for strong causal conclusions. And they showed that the results were not explained by the particular tests that were used or the possibility that students receiving vouchers transferred out of above-average public schools.

Another explanation is that our historical understanding of the superior performance of private schools is no longer accurate. Since the nineties, public schools have been under heavy pressure to improve test scores. Private schools were exempt from these accountability requirements. A recent study showed that public schools closed the score gap with private schools. That study did not look specifically at Louisiana and Indiana, but trends in scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress for public school students in those states are similar to national trends.

In education as in medicine, ‘first, do no harm’ is a powerful guiding principle. A case to use taxpayer funds to send children of low-income parents to private schools is based on an expectation that the outcome will be positive. These recent findings point in the other direction. More needs to be known about long-term outcomes from these recently implemented voucher programs to make the case that they are a good investment of public funds. As well, we need to know if private schools would up their game in a scenario in which their performance with voucher students is reported publicly and subject to both regulatory and market accountability.

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Recent research on statewide voucher programs in Louisiana and Indiana has found that public school students that received vouchers to attend private schools scored lower compared to similar students who did not attend private schools.[i] This is the kind of research finding that generates a reaction of ‘wait, what?’ Negative effects are rare in education research.

The magnitudes of the negative impacts were large, too. In Louisiana, a public school student who was average in math (at the 50th percentile) and began attending a private school using a voucher declined to the 34th percentile after one year. If that student was in third, fourth, or fifth grade, the decline was steeper, to the 26th percentile. Reading declined, too: a student at the 50th percentile in reading declined to about the 46th percentile. In Indiana, a student who had entered a private school with a math score at the 50th percentile declined to the 44th percentile after one year.

Voucher programs emerged in the nineties in Milwaukee, and later in New York City, Dayton, Ohio, and Washington, DC.[ii] The Milwaukee, Dayton, and New York programs were supported by state and local funds or philanthropies, and the DC program was supported by Federal funds. In each location, students applied to receive a voucher, which would be paid to the private school they chose to attend.

Since then, vouchers and voucher-like mechanisms for supporting private school choice with public funds (tax-credit scholarships, education savings accounts, and individual tax-credits) have exploded at the state level.[iii]

In publicly funded voucher programs, many of the private schools that are recipients are religious organizations. This generates thorny legal issues in the 38 states that have so-called Blaine amendments to their constitutions (which prohibit direct government aid to educational institutions that have a religious affiliation and were originally intended to target Catholic schools in states with large immigrant populations).

Legal issues aside, the present rationale for vouchers—perhaps the rationale—is to help low-income students attend private schools because they will learn more. And if parents look at data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), they would see that, historically, private school students regularly score higher than public school students by 15 to 20 points in reading and math, which is a big difference (on average, NAEP scores rise about 10 points for each grade level). So, a parent might surmise, if their child attends private school, their child’s scores will be higher too. But some part of that score difference arises because higher-performing students select into private schools. Parents do not know howtheir child would score in private school.

And, in fact, studies of vouchers have reported mixed results on scores. Scores improved for some students in some places, and scores did not improve for other students in other places.[iv] The evidence showed higher reading and math scores for black students in New York City, and higher reading scores in the third follow-up year of the DC program. The evidence showed no differences in scores for Milwaukee students in reading, for Hispanic students in New York City in reading and math, and for DC students in math. What little research there has been on other education outcomes reported higher rates of high school graduation in New York City and DC, and higher rates of college attendance in New York City.

None of these earlier studies reported significant negative effects on test scores, which adds to interest in what might be happening in Louisiana and Indiana that could explain negative effects. Is it something about how the research studies were designed, how the programs were structured, the quality of the public schools against which private schools were being compared?

The research designs are unlikely to explain the findings. The Louisiana study used a random assignment experimental design, which is a high research standard for measuring effects. Louisiana private schools that had more applicants than available seats operated lotteries to choose applicants randomly. Students who won the lottery constituted the treatment group, whereas those that lost were the control group. Random assignment experiments are central in medical research and are increasingly used in education. For example, studies of the effects of charter schools have relied on experiments created by school lotteries.[v] And two different teams of researchers studying the Louisiana data reached similar conclusions.

In Indiana, effects were measured by comparing time trends of test scores for students who initially attended public schools and then received vouchers to time trends for students who continued to attend public schools, a ‘fixed-effects’ estimator. This is a lower research standard for measuring effects than experimental designs, but sample sizes were quite large (more than 3,000 voucher students and 500,000 public school students) and the findings are consistent with findings from Louisiana.

There was an oddity in the structure of testing in Louisiana. Tests used there were mandated by the state to be the ones used for the Louisiana Education Assessment Program (LEAP) carried out in public schools. Students that used their voucher to attend private schools had to take LEAP tests, though other students in those schools did not. Because LEAP tests are part of the state’s accountability structure for its public schools, the tests are ‘high stakes’ for those schools but low stakes for private schools. Perhaps students in the voucher group did worse than those who remained in public schools because the public schools taught to the test, whereas the private schools did not.

To address this hypothesis, the Mills and Wolf study exploited the fact that some LEAP tests had more content related to Louisiana state standards, and those tests might favor public school students. The study reported that private school voucher students did worse than public school counterparts regardless of the degree of alignment of the tests with the state standards guiding instruction in public schools.

Maybe students that applied for vouchers were attending excellent public schools rather than mediocre or bad ones, so the private schools that received voucher students were up against the cream of Louisiana public schools. The Abdulkdiroglu et al. study rejected this hypothesis with the finding that Louisiana public schools attended by students applying for a voucher were below average in the state. On the recent NAEP, Louisiana ranked 43rd among states in reading scores of its fourth graders and 49th among states in math scores of its eighth graders. To test the effectiveness of the instruction of voucher students in private schools by comparing the students’ learning outcomes with those of similar students in below-average public schools in Louisiana is not a high bar.

Another possibility that these studies did not investigate is that our historical understanding of the superior performance of private schools is no longer accurate. Since the nineties, public schools have been under heavy pressure to improve test scores. No Child Left Behind and conditional waivers from it under the Obama administration are visible manifestations of this pressure, with various kinds of sanctions for not meeting targets for score growth. Private schools were exempt from these accountability requirements.

A recent study by Wong et al. used NAEP data to compare public schools to private schools from the nineties to 2011.[vi] The study reported that private schools started with higher scores in the nineties—this is the difference between private school students and public school students mentioned at the outset, above. By 2011, the gap had closed significantly, especially in math. The authors concluded that No Child Left Behind improved scores. But a broader conclusion is relevant here. Public schools improved relative to private schools, for whatever reason.

The figure showing national private and public school scores on fourth-grade math indicates some of what the authors found. In 2000, scores of private school students are well above scores of public school students, a gap of 14 points. By 2013, the gap had closed to 5 points. 

The same contrast of public and private schools cannot be done for Louisiana or Indiana per se. Their samples of private schools are too small to meet reporting standards of the National Center of Education Statistics. But Louisiana and Indiana public schools show trends on NAEP similar to national trends. The second figure uses the same national trends as the previous figure (the dashed lines) and adds score trends for Louisiana and Indiana. General improvements in the trend that were evident nationally also are evident in Louisiana and Indiana. In fact, by 2013, Indiana’s public school fourth graders score above the national private school average.

Improvements in scores also are evident for the low-income population of students most likely to apply for vouchers. The next figure compares fourth-grade math scores for all public school students in Louisiana and students eligible for a free or reduced-price school lunch, On negative effects of vouchers | Brookings Institution:

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Billionaire PAC pumps half-million dollars into crowded Penninsula assembly race - San Jose Mercury News

Education PAC pumps half-million dollars into crowded Penninsula assembly race - San Jose Mercury News:

Education PAC pumps half-million dollars into crowded Penninsula assembly race

A super PAC backing education reform policy has spent more than a half-million dollars to support State Assembly candidate Marc Berman, elevating the race's focus on education.

EdVoice, the political action arm of a Sacramento nonprofit network, has spent the money on TV, web and print ads to help Berman, a Palo Alto councilman. That amount exceeds the total sum all eight of the District 24 candidates have spent on their campaigns this year.

Berman faces grassroots organizer Jay Blas Jacob Cabrera, Cupertino Mayor Barry Chang, Mountain View councilmen John Inks and Michael Kasperzak, Menlo Park Councilman Peter Ohtaki, retired Palo Alto engineer Sea Reddy and Palo Alto attorney Vicki Veenker.

Ohtaki is the only Republican candidate and Inks is the only Libertarian in a largely Democratic district.

The top two vote-getters on June 7 will face off in the November general election.

As of Wednesday, the following committees had spent money on ads for Berman: EdVoice Independent Expenditure Committee, $585,613; California Real Estate Independent Expenditure Committee-California Association of Realtors, $143,710; and the California Dental Association Independent Expenditure PAC, $109,576.

Berman, an attorney and former development director of the Silicon Valley Education Foundation, said he has not communicated with the PACs and does not know what attracted them to him.

"I was as surprised as anybody else," Berman said, "when I saw on Twitter that they were spending that amount of money to support my campaign."

Bill Lucia, president of EdVoice, said the group has not been shy about endorsing Berman as the best candidate on public education.

"He already has a track record of it," Lucia said.

EdVoice has raised more than $5.2 million, including $1 million from Arthur Rock, an early investor in Intel and Apple; $1.4 million from William Bloomfield, a retired businessman and education advocate who had failed runs for Congress and the presidency; and $855,000 from Carrie Walton Penner, granddaughter of the founder of Walmart and a staunch advocate for charter schools.

In an interview with The Daily News, candidates vying to represent the district, stretching across two counties from Atherton to Sunnyvale, discussed the first thing they would do if elected.

Berman, who has incumbent Gordon's endorsement, said the first bill he'd sponsor would fully fund universal preschool for every 4-year-old. Legislators approved preschool for low-income students, but Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed the bill last year.

"In Santa Clara County, the average low-income student starts kindergarten 18 months behind their more affluent peers," Berman said. "So by 5 years old these students are already 1.5 years behind some of their peers. "

Berman said an additional $1.5 billion for universal preschool is a smart investment, Education PAC pumps half-million dollars into crowded Penninsula assembly race - San Jose Mercury News:

Big Education Ape: Analysis: EdVoice with an IE for Dodd; Educational Reform Group Has Ties to Vergara Suit and Wa... http://bit.ly/1SJq26U

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Big Education Ape: Local legislative races become battleground in statewide fight over education http://bit.ly/1WMlJKA

Big Education Ape: Edvoice pumps cash into Assembly campaign | News | Palo Alto Online | http://bit.ly/1s8OhSi

Big Education Ape: Charter school groups spending big in California legislative races | 89.3 KPCC http://bit.ly/1TYIvJj

California to audit L.A.’s biggest group of charter schools after anti-union allegations - LA Times

California to audit L.A.’s biggest group of charter schools after anti-union allegations - LA Times:

California to audit L.A.’s biggest group of charter schools after anti-union allegations

A panel of state lawmakers on Wednesday voted to audit Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, a move that raises the stakes in a year-long battle over unionizing teachers at the biggest charter organization in Los Angeles. 

Since launching a unionization effort last year, United Teachers Los Angeles and a group of Alliance educators have filed several complaints accusing the charter group of violating state laws that allow educators to organize without fear of reprisal.  

The state’s Joint Legislative Audit Committee approved a request by Sen. Tony Mendoza (D-Artesia) to review expenses incurred by the charter school organization that has been fighting the union’s attempts to organize teachers at its 27 schools.

Mendoza requested that auditors examine whether Alliance charter schools used money intended for instruction on "purposes unrelated to student support and learning." He also asked auditors to determine whether Alliance gave confidential student information to third-party organizations, and for a detailed review of how much money the charter group has spent on attorneys, consultants and materials to fend off unionization.

“Alliance schools are publicly funded,” Mendoza said in a statement. “The purpose of those funds is to educate children inside the classroom -- not intimidate teachers and parents.”

Administrators at Alliance deny wrongdoing. They say the audit is politically motivated because Mendoza, a former UTLA board member, does not have any of the charter’s schools in his district.

"We are sorry that our students are being used as political footballs, but can assure the public, and especially Alliance parents and students, that we refuse to let politics impact the quality of education in our high-performing schools,” said Alliance Chief Executive Dan Katzir. 

Katzir said the charter group will work with state auditors.

The battle over unionizing teachers at Alliance has far-reaching implications in Los Angeles, where a plan spearheaded by the Broad Foundation seeks to vastly expand the number of charter schools. Its impact could also cascade across the country as teachers unions grapple with declining membership amidst the growth of charter schools.

Charters are publicly financed but independently run. Some have formed unions but most resist collective bargaining, arguing that their ability to hire and fire staff without union rules is key to providing good instruction. 

State law allows educators to form a union without fear of retaliation or coercion. At Alliance, unionizing would require majority support from the charter’s 600-plus teachers and counselors. 

United Teachers Los Angeles has filed four unfair-practice claims against Alliance, alleging that the charter group is intimidating employees, conducting surveillance on teachers and blocking organizers at school sites.

In December, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge issued a preliminary injunctionprohibiting Alliance administrators from interfering with efforts to unionize its teachers.

The injunction will remain in place until California's Public Employment Relations Board, which enforces the collective bargaining laws for most public sector employees, completes a hearing process for all four complaints.

See more of our top stories on Facebook >>California to audit L.A.’s biggest group of charter schools after anti-union allegations - LA Times:

California schools need more parental involvement | The Sacramento Bee

California schools need more parental involvement | The Sacramento Bee:

California schools need more parental involvement

Students, parents and teachers line up before the first day of school at Marion Mix Elementary in Elk Grove last August. Randy Pench Sacramento Bee file

Engaging families in schools isn’t just my profession, it’s my passion. I’ve worked for many years helping children with learning disabilities, foster youth and migrant families, and I’ve seen the difference family engagement in education makes for these vulnerable children and communities.

Decades of research have confirmed that students whose parents are active participants in their learning have significantly better school and life outcomes. I’m thrilled that many welcome and needed changes have taken place to engage families in schools. Family engagement is now the law through the Local Control and Funding Formula and the related district accountability plans. But simply making family engagement the law doesn’t help school districts engage all parents, from all backgrounds, in all languages.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/soapbox/article79872242.html#storylink=cpy

Something is still missing – funding.

That’s why California State PTA is sponsoring Assembly Bill 2680, a common-sense measure that calls for a one-time, $15-per-pupil investment by the state from Proposition 98 funds to ensure that local educational agencies measure meaningful and effective parent and family engagement. The Assembly Appropriations Committee is set to hear this and other funding proposals on Friday.

Family engagement may seem like something that should come naturally to all parents. But for English-language learners, foster parents, migrant families, new immigrants, refugees and others, it’s all too often an off-putting struggle. These parents want to support their children and want to have a voice in their education, but don’t know where to begin.

With research showing that schools would need to spend $1,000 more per pupil to reap the same gains in student achievement that an involved parent brings, AB 2680’s $15-per-pupil funding is a bargain.

California parents like me are working to secure funding that allows us to work together with schools as true partners for student success. And we’re not alone: While California State PTA is sponsoring this bill, the California Federation of Teachers, California School Boards Association, Education Trust-West, the Advancement Project, Public Advocates and Families In Schools have joined our effort.

We urge members of the Appropriations Committee to support AB 2680 for all of California’s children: Nothing is a wiser, more meaningful or more important investment. California schools need more parental involvement | The Sacramento Bee:

Justine Fischer of Thousand Oaks is president of the California State PTA. She can be contacted at info@capta.org.

Washington, D.C., Teachers Union Wrestles with the Legacy of Michelle Rhee - Working In These Times

Washington, D.C., Teachers Union Wrestles with the Legacy of Michelle Rhee - Working In These Times:

Washington, D.C., Teachers Union Wrestles with the Legacy of Michelle Rhee

 It’s been five years since self-styled education reformer Michelle Rhee left her job as head of the District of Columbia Public Schools under a cloud of bitterness and controversy, but she is still throwing shade over the Washington city school system.

Rhee’s open hostility to unions was a hallmark of her tenure in D.C. and of her subsequent career as an executive of the education reform group StudentsFirst. That hostility continues to darken relations between city officials and the teachers union, labor advocates say.

That was clear earlier this month when some of the teachers took to the streets to protest current schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson for her years-long stalling on negotiations for a new union contract. Henderson, a Rhee protégé who took over when Rhee departed in 2010, won’t come settle a new contract, says Washington Teachers Union President Liz Davis, and is adding insult to injury by meddling in the internal affairs of the union.

“[Rhee] is still here, but in the form of Kaya Henderson,” Davis tells In These Times. Rhee’s schemes for re-vamping Washington public schools have largely failed, she says, but Henderson insists on continuing Rhee-like attacks on teachers as a way to scapegoat the failure of administrators to make better progress. Most recently, Henderson delayed further negotiations on contract talks on the pretext that an internal Washington Teachers Union election is taking place, which Davis says is a clearly improper attempt to influence the vote. 

“It’s Rheeism without Rhee,” remarks Leo Casey, executive director of the Albert Shanker Institute, a pro-union education research group funded by the American Federation of Teachers. (The WTU is an affiliate of the AFT.) Evidence that Rheeism has actually succeeded in improving D.C. public schools is hard to come by, Casey adds, and the city continues to rate poorlyin many national rankings.

One of Rhee’s most visible initiatives is at the heart of the current inability to reach a new contract, according to Davis. A teacher evaluation system called IMPACT rates teachers and provides generous financial bonuses for those teachers who make high scores. Low scores, on the other hand, can be the basis for dismissal. The WTU is fighting for changes to the contract’s grievance procedures, Davis says, so that members can fight unfair evaluations. Negotiations are currently deadlocked on this issue.

Disagreement over annual salary increases is the second roadblock to a new contract, according to Davis. Henderson’s most Washington, D.C., Teachers Union Wrestles with the Legacy of Michelle Rhee - Working In These Times:

THE BIG FRAUD: Newark students won’t have to meet state performance standards before state relinquishes control |

THE BIG FRAUD: Newark students won’t have to meet state performance standards before state relinquishes control |:

THE BIG FRAUD: Newark students won’t have to meet state performance standards before state relinquishes control

 Newark students will not have to meet state standards for academic performance before local control is returned, the Christie-appointed schools superintendent told a school board meeting Tuesday night.

Superintendent Christopher Cerf–who,  as state education commissioner in 2013,refused to return state control to the city’s schools because of the district’s failure to meet student performance standards–now says his successor won’t do the same thing. It’s apparently a done deal between Mayor Ras Baraka and Gov. Chris Christie.

Cerf, the superintendent and former commissioner,  said at the school board meeting he was confident the Newark school district would pass all standards needed for a return of local autonomy but one, student performance–and, hey no problem,  because he and state education Commissioner David Hespe will work that one out.

Hespe and Cerf can work it out through what’s called “an equivalency waiver,” Cerf said. That refers to the discretionary power of the state education commissioner to ignore state regulations in response to an application from a school district. Cerf is going to make that application, he said, and added:

“We have every reason to believe our application will be granted,” Cerf said.

The one standard the district will not meet deals with student scores on statewide tests, attendance figures, and graduation rates–rolled up in one category called “program and instruction.”

Although, in 2013, Cerf–as the state’s education commissioner–cited that category to deny a return to local control, he now believes the standard can be swept aside in an equivalency waiver application.   Cerf even dismissed some of these standards as “outmoded” and, therefore, irrelevant to the Newark’s effort to regain local control.

What is tragically ironic about Cerf’s prediction–and he is not stupid enough to THE BIG FRAUD: Newark students won’t have to meet state performance standards before state relinquishes control |:

Charter school groups spending big in California legislative races | 89.3 KPCC

Charter school groups spending big in California legislative races | 89.3 KPCC:

Charter school groups spending big in California legislative races

Groups that support the expansion of charter schools in California are spending big this year to support the campaigns of sympathetic Democrats vying for open seats in the state Legislature.

One charter group alone has spent more than $1 million in the Southern California contest to replace Assemblyman Mike Gatto. The committee bears a lengthy name: Parent Teacher Alliance, sponsored by California Charter Schools Association Advocates Independent Expenditure Committee.

Statewide, the Parent Teacher Alliance – which is not affiliated with the national volunteer organization Parent Teacher Association – has spent more than $3 million on legislative races so far this election cycle, according to records from the Secretary of State.

The California Charter Schools Association Advocates Independent Expenditure Committee has spent another $470,000. (The California Charter Schools Association and its political arm, CCSA Advocates, are major players in the state's education debates, including in Los Angeles. The group and its allies frequently battle teacher's union-backed groups.)

The spending by both groups has already outpaced the $1.65 million "dark money" spent by the CCSA independent expenditure committee in 2013 and 2014 races for state senate and assembly seats.

A third education reform group, EdVoice, has been spending heavily in a separate batch of Northern California races this year.

Spending by these groups are known as 'independent expenditures', because they're separate from campaigns themselves.

Colin Miller, acting Senior Vice President for Government Affairs at the CCSA, said that making it easier to charters to open and expand schools is the group's top legislative priority in Sacramento.

The power to open charters falls mostly to local school districts, which don't always support charter expansion. Charter advocates hope to create new paths.

A bill to transform charter authorizing stalled in the legislature this year, but Miller said it contains proposals his group hopes to return to. 

And charter advocates are also fending off legislative attacks on the schools, including an audit of whether Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, a network of 27 Los Angeles-area charters, improperly used public funds to battle a unionization effort. The Joint Legislative Audit Committee voted to authorize that audit on Tuesday.

Charters' interest in Sacramento

Todd Ziebarth of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools said that success for the charter movement involves engaging with lawmakers, not just school boards.

"If we're going to be successful in the long term and be a sustainable form of public schooling, you know, there's a political game that we need to engage in," Ziebarth said.

He said traditionally, charters haven't had the same oomph in Sacramento as the California Teachers Association, which often battles charters – a pattern in other states as well.

"We were fighting with relatively limited tools as compared to our opponents, who at least in some states have some of the deepest pockets in terms of political activity," he said, referring to teacher's unions.

The California Teachers Association has yet to spend in support or in opposition to candidates this year, not just in Southern California but anywhere in the state.

Legislative spending by charter-friendly groups this year has still not reached the $10 million that groups funneled into the 2014 state superintendent race, which became a flashpoint in K-12 politics.

The reform candidate, Marshall Tuck, was unsuccessful in his bid to unseat Tom Torlakson. A CTA-backed group supporting Torlakson spent more than $7.5 million that year.

Rob Pyers of the California Target Book, which analyzes legislative races, said that at Charter school groups spending big in California legislative races | 89.3 KPCC:

 

Why “21st Century Learning” is No More Than Status Quo | educationalchemy

Why “21st Century Learning” is No More Than Status Quo | educationalchemy:

Why “21st Century Learning” is No More Than Status Quo 

The proponents of 21^st Century Learning (aka digital learning, aka competency-based education, aka personalized learning) claim that those of us who stand up for public education are little more than fossils clinging to the status quo. Further, through slick bait-and-switch advertising techniques the proponents of “innovation” disguise the facts that they are profiteering and privatizing education; using clever language to cast anyone NOT on board with their agenda, as being stuck in the past. Worse yet, we (anyone opposed to their 21^st C framework) apparently want to trap kids in existing “divides” of race, culture, economics and geography, divides which they, the benevolent technologies of 21^st century policy makers, will remediate.

Yeah. Sure.

So here’s something to consider. 21^st century reformers are NOT new. They are NOT cutting-edge. They are nothing they propose to be. In a world dominated by digital services and programs, and in a time in which Silicon Valley is home to the new robber barons, how can selling our education system out to their corporate interests really be “cutting edge”? It’s what we have always done.

Let me explain:

Public schools (since their inception in the United States) have been a mirror reflection of the historical moment in which they are created. Really, we could argue this has ALWAYS been true of education going back to the Greeks and Plato, and the Monastic influences of literacy during the control of Europe by the Pope.

But let’s fast-forward a little bit. During the 1800’s when the United States was still largely made of agrarian Why “21st Century Learning” is No More Than Status Quo | educationalchemy:

Employment and disconnection among teens and young adults: The role of place, race, and education | Brookings Institution

Employment and disconnection among teens and young adults: The role of place, race, and education | Brookings Institution:

Employment and disconnection among teens and young adults: The role of place, race, and education

 Young people in their late teens and early 20s stand at a pivotal point as they transition into adulthood. Although they typically have higher unemployment rates than older workers, the Great Recession and slow recovery have focused attention on the challenges young people face when progressing from adolescence and school into full-time employment enabling self-sufficiency. 

The following analysis and related interactive examine employment trends among teens aged 16–19 and young adults aged 20–24, and compares these groups with adults aged 25–54—those typically considered to be in their prime working years. School is the primary activity for teens until high school graduation, but early work experiences (part-time and in the summer) can provide valuable opportunities for teens to learn new skills, gain experience, expand their networks, and develop positive relationships with adults. Young adults are typically in a different phase and engage in a broader mix of activities. Some continue in school full time, some combine work and school, and others work full time, or would like to do so.

Specifically, the analysis examines the employment and unemployment rates of teens, young adults, and prime-age workers, using microdata data from the American Community Survey for the years 2008–2014. The analysis also examines a key subpopulation among teens and young adult population: “disconnected youth” who are neither working nor in school. These young people are missing key educational and employment experiences and are at increased risk for a host of negative outcomes: long spells of unemployment, poverty, criminal behavior, substance abuse, and incarceration.1 Data on disconnected youth also comes from American Community Survey microdata, but to compensate for small sample sizes, the analysis uses a three-year estimate encompassing the years 2012–2014.

The research examines these three measures at the national level and in the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas. It updates previous work on labor market indicators among teens aged 16–19 and young adults aged 20–24.

Findings include:

• Whites typically have the highest employment rates and lowest unemployment rates among all ages. However, among prime-age workers, Asians have the lowest unemployment rates.

• Blacks consistently have lower employment rates and higher unemployment rates than other groups. Unlike Asians, their low employment and high unemployment rates do not improve with age. Asians’ low employment rates as young people are driven by high rates of school enrollment, and their subsequent high levels of educational attainment serve them well in the labor market as adults.

• Disparities by educational attainment are larger than disparities by race. People without post-secondary credentials do much worse in the labor market than those with higher levels of education.

• Employment and unemployment rates vary substantially by place; many of the best-performing metro areas are in the Midwest, West, or regions with highly educated residents, including state capitals and university towns.

• Nationally, an estimated 3 million young people aged 16–24 (7.6 percent) are disconnected. The majority of these young people are between 20 and 24 years old, suggesting that the problem becomes more acute after young people are of an age to have graduated high school. They are disproportionately people of color. Rates of disconnection vary widely by metropolitan area, and in some places, young blacks and Latinos are up to 3-to-6 times more likely to be disconnected than young whites.

Employment rates fell most dramatically among teens, and large disparities between whites and blacks persist, particularly among teens and young adults.

Employment rates are typically lowest among teens and steadily increase with age as people seek to find full-time work, usually after completing their education (whether or not they earned a credential). Employment rates among all age groups fell between 2008–2014, typically bottoming out in 2010 or 2011 and then increasing, although not back to pre-recession levels.

The decline was most dramatic among teens aged 16–19: Employment rates fell from 35 percent in 2008 to 29 percent in 2014. While most teens do not need to work to support themselves or their families, the decline raises concern in some quarters that teens are missing out on opportunities to learn new skills and gain experience and contacts that will improve their job prospects later in life.2 Both young adults aged 20–24 and prime-age workers aged 25–54 registered employment rate declines of three percentage points, landing in 2014 at 65 percent and 77 percent, respectively.

Among all three age groups, whites consistently had the highest employment rates, followed by Asians among prime-age adults and Latinos among teens and young adults. Among teens and young adults, blacks and Asians had similar rates at the low end, although more blacks started working post-recession than Asians did. The white teen employment rate in 2014 was 34 percent, compared to 26 percent among Latinos, 21 percent among blacks, and 19 percent among Asians. White young adults had an employment rate of 69 percent in 2014, compared to 66 percent among Latinos, 57 percent among blacks, and 51 percent among Asians. The gap by race/ethnicity narrows when adults are in their prime working years of 25–54, although the black-white gap remains a still-sizable seven to nine percentage points over the 2008–2014 time period. In 2014, the employment rate of white prime age workers was 79 percent, compared to 77 percent among Asians, 75 percent among Latinos, and 72 percent among blacks. The low employment rates among Asian teens and young adults is related to their high levels of school enrollment. While those enrolled in school can and do work, they do so at a lower rate than those who are not in school (with the exception of those with the lowest levels of education—less than a high school diploma). 92 percent of Asian teens and 63 percent of Asian young adults are enrolled in school, compared to 81 percent of all teens and 38 percent among all young adults.Among adults 25 and over, 54 percent of Asians have a bachelor’s degree, compared to 33 percent among all adults. As shown in the next section, those with bachelor’s degrees fare much better in the labor market than other groups.Employment and disconnection among teens and young adults: The role of place, race, and education | Brookings Institution:

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