Brand New NY-Based Charter-Boosting Nonprofit Has Michigan as First Customer | deutsch29

Brand New NY-Based Charter-Boosting Nonprofit Has Michigan as First Customer | deutsch29:

Brand New NY-Based Charter-Boosting Nonprofit Has Michigan as First Customer

The School Empowerment Network (SEN) is a Brooklyn, NY-based nonprofit that received its nonprofit status in February 2016.

Just-born SEN specializes in three services: principal development, teacher development, and new school development. Its home page features an obvious link entitled, “START A NEW CHARTER SCHOOL.”

SEN’s three board members are computer science major Daniel Pasette as president; former TNTP (The New Teacher Project) and NYDOE exec director Alex Shub, and former NYDOE COO (Portfolio Planning) Eduardo Contreras.

As of August 18, 2016, it lists on its website a single funder, the Walton Foundation, and a single client: Michigan’s state-takeover Education Achievement Authority(EAA). It turns out that paint-barely-dry-on walls SEN is “leading” EAA, as the SEN website notes:

The Education Achievement Authority of Michigan (EAA) is a public system of schools whose mission is [to] turn the lowest performing schools in Michigan into the highest performing schools through people development, proven instructional strategies, and seamless operations.

At the EAA, School Empowerment Network is leading the design and implementation of teacher development pathways as well as an Achievement Leadership Institute (ALI) to prepare the next cohort of school administrators. As teachers build a track record of success in EAA schools, they have opportunities to reach more students, earn more money, and grow professionally by moving up our career ladder, from “Model” to “Lead” to “Master” Teacher—and eventually, if they are so inclined, into school administration positions.

SEN is also leading the implementation of Small Learning Communities (SLCs) to improve student academic and social/emotional outcomes. Our model assigns a cohort of staff to a specific grade or grade band of students, building one-year-at-a-time a clearly defined school culture which is modeled and embodied by all. As a result, small school communities are able to understand and meet the needs of each and every student. In 2015-2016, two SLC academies were launched in the district, and School Quality Review results already show evidence of new and much stronger school cultures, where clearer behavioral expectations have been established and are largely being met.

What lovely SEN marketing– and such a contrast to EAA reality, which includes likes of EAA embarrassment, former chancellor John Covington, who cut out as EAA leader amid questionable financial management issues.

Though Michigan’s state-run EAA is in its final year, the schools remain under the auspices of the state’s school reform office. The future jurisdiction of these schools is connected to a restructuring of the Detroit Public Schools.

Given the timing of the legislated EAA dissolution and the establishment of SEN as a nonprofit, it is possible that SEN was created to oversee the EAA school transition. Brand New NY-Based Charter-Boosting Nonprofit Has Michigan as First Customer | deutsch29:

Please Testify in State Hearings on ESSA Plans: Point Out the Road Away from Test-and-Punish | janresseger

Please Testify in State Hearings on ESSA Plans: Point Out the Road Away from Test-and-Punish | janresseger:

Please Testify in State Hearings on ESSA Plans: Point Out the Road Away from Test-and-Punish

This blog will take an end-of-summer break after today.  Look for another post on Monday, September 5, 2016.

Last December’s newly reauthorized federal education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act, uses the power of the federal government to continue holding states and schools and school districts accountable for raising students’ test scores. However, Congress turned some of the control for how all this will work back to the states, who no longer have to follow so many federal prescriptions but who still have to present an accountability plan and tell the U.S. Department of Education what they are going to do to improve the lowest scoring schools. Gone are No Child Left Behind’s demands that schools make Adequate Yearly Progress; gone are mandatory turnarounds such as school closure and privatization for so-called “failing” schools; gone is the federal requirement that states use students’ standardized test scores as a substantial portion of formal teacher evaluations.

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) demands that states come up with their own accountability plans which they must submit for approval to the U.S. Department of Education. What this means is that there is a window for change, but it must bubble up spontaneously across the 50 states. If public school supporters are to achieve any kind of policy that is more supportive and less punitive, we are going to have to organize and begin working for long-term change in the culture of punitive, test-and-punish accountability that has been normalized over the past two decades.

Where to start?  A good rule to remember, if you get a chance to testify to any kind of hearing on the plan ESSA says your state must develop, is that the hearing is a good place to present the core principles that underpin your understanding of the mission and importance of well funded and equitable public schools.  The U.S. Department of Education itself accepted comments, about 20,000 of them, until the beginning of August on the rules it is developing to implement the new Every Student Succeeds Act.  One of these comments, submitted by the Vermont State Board of Education, raises some of the most important concerns as states develop the plans they will be submitting.  Although we don’t yet even know whether the federal Department of Education will correct the Department’s draft rules to ameliorate the problems the Vermont letter identifies, Vermont’s State Board of Education models a way to speak to some of the most basic problems in current accountability-centered school policy.

The Vermont letter begins by attacking the very premises of test-and-punish school reform: “Our Board is proud to represent a state where the people support a strong state funding system, enjoy schools that foster high student performance and register narrow equity gaps as compared with the nation. Nevertheless, the opportunity gap is our most pressing concern and is the number one goal in our strategic plan. With these traditions and values in mind, we have strong concerns and reservations about ESSA. Fundamentally, if we are to close the Please Testify in State Hearings on ESSA Plans: Point Out the Road Away from Test-and-Punish | janresseger:

 

Schools Matter: Education Technology, Surveillance and America's Authoritarian Democracy

Schools Matter: Education Technology, Surveillance and America's Authoritarian Democracy:

Education Technology, Surveillance and America's Authoritarian Democracy

by Tim Scott

"The NSA has nothing on the monitoring tools that education technologists have developed in to 'personalize' and 'adapt' learning for students in public school districts across the United States" - Jesse Irwin, marketing and communications professional

The state-finance matrix defined: Influenced by David Harvey's notion of the state-finance nexus, the state-finance matrix is a highly disciplined neoliberal landscape where state power structures and technologies facilitate and protect the activities and interests of finance capitalism over all else. This matrix provides an insulated environment for financialization via securitization, which simply described, is a process where financial institutions bundle together (illiquid) financial assets - primarily loans - and transform them into (liquid) tradable securities that can be expeditiously bought and sold in secondary financial markets. Within this globalized environment, digital securities trading - including “fictitious” trading, hedging and speculating in derivative markets - generates “phantom wealth”; whereby the exchange of capital, money and currency is detached from material or labor value. In the twenty-first century, debt is the new global currency and is a primary source of (intangible) wealth accumulation.

Rebooting the System for a New Age

Writing in Forbes Magazine in 2013, technology entrepreneur Naveen Jain made an assessment of the historical origins of mass public education by pointing out that, “Our education system was developed for an industrial era.” Jain went on to explain that the U.S. education system,

…today uses the mass production style manufacturing process of standardization. This process requires raw material that is grouped together based on a specific criteria. Those raw materials are then moved from one station to another station where an expert makes a small modification given the small amount of time given to complete their task. At the end of the assembly line, these assembled goods are standardized tested to see if they meet certain criteria before they are moved to the next advanced assembly line.

Jain makes this point not as a critique of education serving the interests of capitalism through the application of the scientific management model of production (Taylorism) to schooling. On the contrary, he does so to make a case that current education reform policies are a continuation of the original mission of U.S. public education as an instrument of social control, yet only being modernized to bolster financialized capitalism. As Jain puts it, “Our education system Schools Matter: Education Technology, Surveillance and America's Authoritarian Democracy:

The Perils of PBL’s Popularity (John Larmer) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

The Perils of PBL’s Popularity (John Larmer) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

The Perils of PBL’s Popularity (John Larmer)

Recently, I have published posts on Project-based Learning. Astudent and foundation official  have raised questions with and about PBL as an appropriate instructional approach. As this instructional reform, once the darling of early and mid-20th century Progressives, has surged again in practitioner and researcher circles, criticism of its implementation and use needs to be aired. For this post, I turn to John Larmer, a champion of PBL, who believes deeply in the instructional approach but shows concern over its potential faddishness and too easy acceptance. Former high school teacher of social studies and English, Larmer is Editor in Chief of publications at the Buck Institute for Education (BIE). He writes often about Project-Based Learning. This post originally appeared March 21, 2016

As readers of this blog well know, Project Based Learning is a hot topic in education these days. The progressive teaching method is being touted as one of the best ways to engage 21st-century students and develop a deeper understanding of content as well as build success skills such as critical thinking/problem-solving, collaboration, communication, and self-management.

At the Buck Institute for Education, we think PBL is even more than that; it can be absolutely transformative for students who experience enough high-quality PBL in their K-12 years. They gain not only understanding and success skills but also confidence in their ability as independent learners and a greater sense of their own efficacy and power.

PBL is transformative for teachers and schools, too, as they create real-world connections to learning, change school culture, and guide students to successfully complete high-quality projects. And teachers who use PBL regularly can experience  “the joy of teaching,” which they may not – make that likely will not – in a test-prep, drill-and-kill environment.

You’ll notice I use the term “high-quality” twice in the above, which points to a real concern we have at BIE. We don’t want PBL to become yesterday’s news, another education fad for which much is promised and little delivered. This is why BIE developed and promotes the Gold Standard PBL model: to help ensure PBL’s place as a permanent, regular feature of 21st century education for all students.

If it’s not done well, I see PBL facing three dangers:

1. Unprepared Teachers & Lack of Support
Teachers who are not prepared to design and implement projects effectively will see lackluster student performance and face daunting classroom management challenges. Shifting from traditional practice to PBL is not a simple matter of adding another tool to a teacher’s toolbox. PBL is not just another way to “cover standards” that’s a little more engaging for students. PBL represents a different philosophy about what and how students should learn in school, and many teachers and school leaders do not yet realize its implications. It was born in theThe Perils of PBL’s Popularity (John Larmer) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

A Conversation With Nashville School Board Member Amy Frogge « Dad Gone Wild

A Conversation With Nashville School Board Member Amy Frogge « Dad Gone Wild:

A Conversation With Nashville School Board Member Amy Frogge 

I don’t think it would be breaking news for me to confess that I’m a big fan of Jennifer Berkshire and the work she does with herEduShyster blog. She’s inspired me to want to do a series of interviews with people who work in education in Tennessee. I think these interviews will be particularly relevant based on the impact Tennessee’s educational policy has on national educational policy. Our proximity to Louisiana, the cast of characters including Kevin Huffman, Todd Dickson, Ravi Gupta, and Chris Barbic, the over investment in politics by Stand For Children, being one of the first states to win Race To The Top money – these things, along with vibrant teacher/parent advocacy groups, have placed us at the forefront of the education reform movement.

For my first interview, I chose Nashville School Board member Amy Frogge. She is a parent who first decided to run for school board in 2012 and shocked everybody by winning big, despite her opponent raising $113k. And she didn’t win by a narrow margin. Outspent 5-to-1, Frogge beat her opponent by a 2-to-1 ratio — 3,524 votes to 1,725. Over the last four years, Frogge has used her position to fight for Nashville’s public schools. She pushed back against unchecked charter school growth. She fought for expanded recess and increased funding for community schools. She sounded the warning bell about over-testing and called for better treatment of teachers. Basically, she educated us about today’s prevalent issues before we were aware they were even issues.

Needless to say, this didn’t make Frogge very popular with the reform crowd. This year, she was up for re-election and along with fellow board member Will Pinkston, became a target for the privatizers. Stand for Children, along with the charter school crowd and the Chamber of Commerce, sunk over $200k in an attempt to defeat her. She failed to receive the endorsement of either the Chamber of Commerce or the local paper. In fact, the local paper used its endorsement release to attack her. They claimed, “Frogge also has served as a disruptive force unwilling to step outside her box and has shown a pattern of being responsive and respectful only when constituents agree with her.” Unfortunately for them, her constituents disagreed, and she went on to win reelection with over 60% of the vote.

Last week, Amy Frogge and I met at the local dog park to discuss a wide range of issues. I should disclose that Ms. Frogge and I are friends and often find ourselves on the same side of issues. Here’s our conversation that morning :

Dad Gone Wild: Good morning, Amy. I’d like to point out that we’re meeting at the dog park because if I’m not mistaken, your family is not just passionate about schools, but also about rescue animals.

Amy Frogge: Good morning. We’ve rescued a lot of animals and oftentimes we are not planning to rescue them, but we end up with a lot of stray pets. Right now, we have four cats, two dogs and a hedgehog. Two of our cats, I picked up on the campaign trail. They were strays.

DGW: That’s impressive. Speaking of the campaign trail, this is the second term you just A Conversation With Nashville School Board Member Amy Frogge « Dad Gone Wild:

TBFURMAN: Regarding The Spiritual Leader Of The Gulen Charters

TBFURMAN: Regarding The Spiritual Leader Of The Gulen Charters:

Regarding The Spiritual Leader Of The Gulen Charters

Just a few links here of Gulen-related information.

This ongoing video series about Gulenism is available online, and they're all quite good. I don't know anything about the person posting them, but the information jives with what you read in the scholarly work, at least from what I can tell.

It's obvious I'm not a scholar, but it would be interesting to use these videos as a starting point for a conversation about this cadre of Gulenists who are running so many charter schools.

Of course, the Gulenists would deny basically all of this.

Oh, and just for the heck of it, here are the 8 most recent H-1B certified visa applications from Concept. They're for the coming school year.

 

 

This one is really pretty frightening.. I have no idea who is posting these; this one is a bit over the top, but if you took away the music, you'd be listening to some very fascinating descriptions of the Gulen Movement by former Gulenists.

 

I understand perfectly well that there are any number of partisans who will say anything and everything about Gulen now that the momentum is there inside Turkey. And Turkey is definitely descending into madness..

 Follow

William Armstrong @WJ_Armstrong

Good piece on how Turkish govt is now pointing finger at Gülenists for every single bad thing that has ever happenedhttp://almon.co/2q3p 

2:28 AM - 18 Aug 2016

Did Gulenists sabotage Ankara’s Kurdish peace process?

Long-standing allegations of Gulenists meddling in efforts to settle Turkey’s Kurdish problem appear to have gained more credence after the failed July 15 coup attempt.

al-monitor.com

 
•  66 Retweets
 
•  66 likes

But we really need to be having a more honest conversation about the actual nature of this Movement. Because we're in pretty deep at this point.TBFURMAN: Regarding The Spiritual Leader Of The Gulen Charters:

Editorial: Attendance key to accountability | The Columbus Dispatch

Editorial: Attendance key to accountability | The Columbus Dispatch:

Editorial: Attendance key to accountability

As the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, ECOT, continues trying to duck accountability, a finding against two other shuttered charter schools underscores the need for vigilance and persistence on the part of Ohio Department of Education auditors.

Two Columbus academies overcharged the state at least $62,211. An ODE review of student data found that the Talented Tenth Leadership Academy for Boys and the Talented Tenth Leadership Academy for Girls was not eligible for most of the $80,000 it had received in state foundation payments because — wait for it — enrollments didn’t meet state minimums. Other charter schools in Ohio this year also have been told to repay excess state aid for inflated enrollment.

Provost Academy, a Columbus-based online charter, agreed to return $800,000 of the $1 million received for the 2014-15 school year; an ODE review found 32 full-time students, not the 155 the school reported. And Lakewood Digital Academy of Hebron was told to repay $150,000 after the state found 16 full-time students, not the 57 claimed.

In the case of the Talented Tenth schools, prosecutors called their founder a con man. Andre Tucker, sentenced in November for stealing $7,500 from the schools, was ordered to repay the money and given five years of probation.

But his circumstances — he was an employee of the schools’ sponsor, the North Central Ohio Educational Service Center — underscored Ohio’s lack of oversight of charter schools. Until legislative reforms took effect earlier this year, for-profit charter school operators could control their school board and sponsor-overseers had conflicts of interests, including selling their schools services.

The reform bill ended this, but only after Ohio had become a national laughingstock for its “ Wild-West” system of charter-school accountability. Now, a move is rumored to be afoot — reportedly led by ECOT, whose founder is a generous donor to Republican Statehouse campaigns — to dilute the new charter-school standards. The fear is that legislators later this year will allow online schools to be paid merely for offering 920 instructional hours a year, as if signing up students equates to educating them.

Meanwhile, ECOT appears to be trying to run out the clock in a protracted court fight to prevent the Education Department from looking at its attendance data. The state wishes to make sure that ECOT’s 15,000 students are getting an education, a required minimum of 920 hours a year, before forking over another $106 million in taxpayer funding.

ECOT, in fact, has the dubious distinction of being the leader of the nation’s school dropout factories, according to federal data. For every 100 students who graduate on time, 80 do not, The New York Times reported in May.

In the latest twist, ECOT — after much stalling — handed over student attendance records to the state. But it almost immediately demanded the records back, claiming that those records illegally contain student names. Names were stamped in a watermark across ECOT-supplied printed pages. Now, ECOT argues the state is breaking the law by having these documents that it supplied.

But surely ECOT is at fault for supplying records in a form that made it impossible to redact the names and allow a state audit.

The school’s leader already has said that if the state is allowed to see its records, it might have to close. The surmise is ECOT might have to return tens of millions of dollars. That’s honest. At least he isn’t in the same league as the convicted Talented Tenth “con man”; he only gamed the system for tens of thousands of dollars.Editorial: Attendance key to accountability | The Columbus Dispatch:

 

Teachers union strengthens schools

Teachers union strengthens schools:

Teachers union strengthens schools

More than 20 years ago, I left the University of Northern Iowa with a degree in elementary education in my hand and optimism in my heart. I was going to make the world a better place, one student at a time.

One of the first moves I made was to become a member of the Iowa State Education Association.

For me, it wasn’t because of a discount on liability insurance. That’s what Drew Klein from Americans for Prosperity suggests in his Aug. 16 column in the Register.

For me, it was because the ISEA pushed for higher standards in teaching — they led the fight to require teachers have a two-year degree, and later, a four-year degree  — which means higher quality instruction for our students.

I liked that, and I thought that an organization that worked to attract the best graduates to the profession and keep them deserved my support. It’s a philosophy that drove me to obtain national board certification in 1999 and, just this last year, a doctorate in teacher leadership.

For me, being a member was, and is, the right thing to do.

But there are a lot of different reasons educators choose to join the ISEA.

I know this, because we ask them. As president of the ISEA, I want to make sure we’re doing the best we possibly can to for our members, the students they teach and care for as well as the citizens they serve as public education professionals.

Our members continue to fill our professional development courses, they support our mentoring programs and they like that the ISEA  has a seat at the table when important decisions are being made about the Every Students Succeeds Act, Iowa’s Teacher Leadership and Compensation program and other important policies that affect our profession. And of course, they welcome the expertise we have when it comes to negotiating the master contract every Iowa school district has with its employees.

ISEA members know there are 34,000 educators across the state they can lean on for support and guidance. They know they have a choice to be a part of their association and choose to do so.

Most of all, our members tell us they are grateful students are at the center of every decision we make, whether it’s fighting to keep public resources for school programs, advocating to keep class sizes small so students have more time for one-on-one instruction or just working to make sure every child, regardless of their ZIP code, has a competent and qualified instructor in the classroom.

One more point: The ISEA operates a political action committee to help us research and evaluate candidates for public office based on their level of concern for our students and our schools. Our members understand nearly every decision made about their profession is a political one made by someone in public office.

PAC contributions are voluntary and entirely separate from union dues.

To say otherwise, as the AFP representative does, is a result of his shoddy work and simply untrue.

I encourage everyone to find out more about the ISEA PAC by visiting the ISEA website at www.isea.org.

To our students, parents, educators and our urban, suburban and rural Iowa communities, thank you for supporting your schools. You are all making this world a better place, one community, one school and one student at a time.

Let’s make this the best school year yet.

TAMMY WAWRO of Cedar Rapids is the president of the Iowa State Education Association. Contact: twawro@isea.org Teachers union strengthens schools:

Green ramps up attack on teachers' union, and Jordan fires back

Green ramps up attack on teachers' union, and Jordan fires back:

Green ramps up attack on teachers' union, and Jordan fires back

School Reform Commissioner Bill Green is ramping up his rhetoric against the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, accusing the union of stalling on any contract settlement until the turnover in School Reform Commission membership that's expected in January.

Green, a longtime PFT critic, said the District has offered a reasonable financial package to the teachers that would result in “net raises,” even after restructuring medical benefits so that members contribute toward their health-care costs, which most do not do now.

PFT president Jerry Jordan immediately shot back, accusing Green of “trash talking” and disputing his point that the District is offering his members a financial deal that the union leadership could accept in good conscience.

“We put fair raises on the table,” Green said. “Nobody would disagree that members of the PFT should contribute to health care, like everybody else in America, including all the surrounding teachers' unions in the suburbs.

“Let’s just face reality,” he added, “it’s not the District that is not bargaining in good faith, it’s the PFT simply trying to wait for a change in membership on the SRC.”

The terms of three of the five members – Chair Marjorie Neff, Sylvia Simms, and Feather  Houstoun – are due to expire in January. Their replacements will be appointed by Mayor Kenney and Gov. Wolf, both Democrats who were strongly supported by the PFT in their election campaigns.

Green spoke out during an interview the morning after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that the SRC could not unilaterally cut back medical benefits and divert savings into school personnel and programming, which it tried to do in October 2014. Green said he was “disappointed” in the ruling, which relied on a narrow definition of what state law means by a “teacher's contract.”  

Both Green and Jordan said that the last negotiations took place in June, but otherwise they disagreed on everything regarding this unprecedented four-year stalemate. The District and the union, which is prevented by state law from striking, have been unable to reach a settlement since 2012. PFT members have received no raises during that period – not even the so-called “steps” that they are entitled to based on their years of service and degrees attained.

Jordan countered Green’s accusation that the union was stalling with his own theory: that the SRC was holding out in anticipation that the state Supreme Court would support its position that it had the power to impose a contract on the District’s largest union. 

“We heard that the SRC and Green were avoiding a settlement because they were hoping to win the Supreme Court case and not have to negotiate with us,” Jordan said. “So that goes two ways. There are lots of things that people are saying that are rumors and inaccurate information floating out there.”

Evident in the separate interviews was the level of distrust between the District leadership and the union that represents its teachers – the very people expected to carry out its most Green ramps up attack on teachers' union, and Jordan fires back:

Report: Charter administration costs double those of other public schools

Report: Charter administration costs double those of other public schools:

Report: Charter administration costs double those of other public schools

Charter-school administrative expenditures are nearly double those of conventional public schools, and their highest-ranking officials are paid far more.

They spend less on instruction than school districts, but more on support services and facilities.

And while charter-school enrollment has jumped significantly over time, payments to the schools are far outpacing their actual rates of growth in admission.

All that is according to a report on Pennsylvania's charter schools issued Thursday by the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, made up of nearly 4,500 school board members.

In a 35-page study that came after rounds of records requests during the last 15 months, the conclusions present a broad picture of Pennsylvania's 173 charter schools, which have become part of an ongoing national debate about what effect the charter-school movement is having on traditional public schools.

"This is not intended to be any sort of an attack on charter schools," said Andrew Christ, education policy analyst for the organization, during a conference call Thursday.

But, he said, "charter schools need to be held to the same standards of accountability and transparency as traditional public schools."

Charter schools in the Keystone State and across the country have been growing rapidly. They also have been beset with criticism, mostly from proponents of traditional public schools.

Receiving the bulk of their revenue from districts - in Pennsylvania, nearly 84 percent - charter schools' critics have argued that using taxpayer money for charters has taken funds away from conventional schools.

Charter-school advocates have countered that charters provide more choices for families, and can increase learning opportunities and encourage innovation.

To analyze information on charter revenue and expenditures, the association filed records requests with all charter schools across the state. The association received information from nearly 85 percent.

According to the report, tuition payments to charters accounted for about 5.4 percent of all statewide school district expenditures in 2014-15. However, some districts in the area have felt the squeeze more than others.

In Delaware County's beleaguered Chester Upland School District, which has operated under receivership for four years, nearly half of its expenditures were allocated to charter-school payments, the report stated. In the Philadelphia School District, slightly more than one-quarter of its expenditures went to charter schools.

Focused largely on how money flows out of school districts and into charter schools, the report highlighted the disparities in spending between the types of schools - including special-education costs. It found that charter schools were overpaid for special education by nearly $100 million in 2014-15.

The report also called for a greater level of oversight by the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

"Charter schools are public schools," the report stated. "However, charter schools are not held to the same standards as other stewards of public tax dollars when it comes to transparency in operational and financial decisions."

In a response Thursday afternoon, the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools said that while it had not examined the report in detail, it took exception to some of its recommendations, including one for charter schools to be more open about their operations.

"Charter schools are already subject to the same accountability and transparency laws as district schools," the organization said in a statement. It said that despite some opposition from the school boards association, the legislature has been working to pass legislation that would increase charter school accountability.

Beyond analyzing payments to charters, the report focused on the differences in expenditures between district-run schools and their charter-school counterparts. On average, the report stated, charter schools allocated a greater proportion of their budgets to administrative costs - about 13.3 percent - including support personnel, building services, and maintenance. Conventional school districts spent about 5.6 percent of their budgets on administrative costs, it said.

In addition, the association reported, charter schools are spending about three times more per pupil on top administrative salaries.Report: Charter administration costs double those of other public schools: cmccabe@philly.com

ACLU says illegal policies at Central Coast charter schools can lead to discrimination | KCBX

ACLU says illegal policies at Central Coast charter schools can lead to discrimination | KCBX:

ACLU says illegal policies at Central Coast charter schools can lead to discrimination

FLICKR MEMBER ALAMOSBASEMENT. IMAGE EDITED FROM ORIGINAL FORM.

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Several charter schools in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara Counties are being accused by the Southern California branch of the ACLU of having illegal policies that force parents to volunteer their time, as well as accusations of problems with economic and racial diversity.

New Times Reporter Chris McGuinness has a piece on the parent issue in the August 11 edition of the paper and has a follow up piece looking at the diversity charges in the August 18 issue.

NOTE: This transcript is from an interview that was edited for time purposes.

Randol White: So, let's start with the issue of forcing parents to volunteer time. How does that go against state or federal law and which local schools does the ACLU point a finger at?

Chris McGuinness: Essentially charter schools are usually set up by private groups, but they still are essentially public schools because they take public funding, and under the California Constitution and under our charter school laws all kids have an  equal access to an education, which means they can't be turned away for certain reasons. And so, basically what the ACLU is saying in this report is that some of these policies, because they set certain requirements for parents to volunteer, that it may cause parents or guardians to not even bother to apply to get into these charter schools.

Randol: Like parents who may work two or three jobs and just don't have the time to volunteer.

Chris: Yeah, they also note foster parents or perhaps if you're grandparents who are guardians of a grandchild, that may not have the ability to do that.

Randol: So, because it gets the public school money, needs to follow the same equal-access rules.

Chris: Exactly. And the two specific schools here in SLO County are the Bellevue-Santa Fe Charter School which is located in San Luis Obispo, and the Almond Acres Charter Academy which is located in San Miguel.

Randol: And we should mention that your piece took a look at San Luis Obispo County schools, being a San Luis Obispo paper, but in Santa Barbara County, Peabody Charter and also Santa Ynez Valley Charter were accused of this same parent volunteering issue. You reached out to the schools and the districts for comment in San Luis Obispo County, did you get any response?

Chris: I did. After the piece ran, I did get a response from the Bellevue-Santa Fe Charter School. They're standing by their policy essentially. They did say that they are reviewing the literature and the policies on their site and are looking at possibly clarifying the language to say specifically that it is not required.

Randol: And how about the other school?

Chris: Almond Acres, they did not get back to me from the school specifically, but I did talk to the San Miguel Joint Union School District. They told me that in 2014, during some committee hearings on another matter, that a parent did bring Almond Acres Charter volunteer policies up as a concern. They said that they looked at these policies and that they had them changed, but from what I saw on the website, they are still pretty explicit in their requirements. 

Randol: Now Chris, this is all in print, does the ACLU have any proof that it's happening?

Chris: The report is only going off of the written policies that they were able to pull from the websites.

Randol: Now your new piece deals with diversity charges, what is the ACLU saying here?

Chris: Well the ACLU doesn't specifically address diversity in this current report. What they do say is that these policies, as well as some of the other policies they touched on, that they will freeze out certain groups of students. So, what I did is after looking at that, is I went and pulled data on the racial/socioeconomic and English-language learner numbers of these two charters schools and compared them to the districts that they're in as a whole to see if there were any gaps there.

Randol: And did you find any?

Chris: Yeah. In both of these charter schools, the diversity — both in terms of race and of socioeconomics — doesn't really seem to match up to the district as a wholeACLU says illegal policies at Central Coast charter schools can lead to discrimination | KCBX: